FRUITLESS NEGOTIATIONS 
133 
would help matters, I poured some out of my flask 
on to the rag amongst the shaved-up pieces of wood. 
My hunter had the same idea, and he did the same, 
neither of us, owing to the darkness, knowing the 
other had done so. We then both stooped down, 
one on each side of the wood, and blew at the 
smouldering rag. Suddenly there was a flash, and 
the wood was scattered. For several minutes I was 
blinded, and thought I had lost my sight altogether ; 
then I realized that my eyebrows, eyelashes, and one 
side of my moustache, were burned off, and one 
cheek singed. Fortunately, the blindness was only 
temporary. My hunter fared somewhat similarly, 
and we decided to give up trying to make a fire. It 
was a long, weary wait until daylight, sitting all 
huddled together on a big log of driftwood, with the 
boat-sails wrapped round us ; but daylight came at 
last, and with it the fog lifted, and we found we were 
about twelve miles from the schooner down the 
coast. We returned cold, wet, and hungry. 
Some days after this came another disagreeable 
experience. We had pulled out to sea some eight 
miles or so, leaving the schooner anchored under the 
land. It came on to blow off the shore from the 
north-west, increasing to a smart gale. We had 
turned back before the worst came on, and got 
within nearly two miles of the vessel by about one 
o’clock p.m., when the tug came, and it took us 
six hours to make those two miles. Needless to 
say, we were wet through, tired out, and not in the 
best of tempers. I was not over-civil to my skipper, 
who ought, of course, to have got up anchor and 
run out and picked us up, as two other schooners 
in sight just above us did for their boats. 
