[Illustration: Captain Slocum drifting out to sea.]
On August 22, the kpeting, or whatever else it was that held the sloop
in the islands, let go its hold, and she swung out to sea under all
sail, heading again for home. Mounting one or two heavy rollers on the
fringe of the atoll, she cleared the flashing reefs. Long before dark
Keeling Cocos, with its thousand souls, as sinless in their lives as
perhaps it is possible for frail mortals to be, was left out of sight,
astern. Out of sight, I say, except in my strongest affection.
The sea was rugged, and the _Spray_ washed heavily when hauled on the
wind, which course I took for the island of Rodriguez, and which
brought the sea abeam. The true course for the island was west by
south, one quarter south, and the distance was nineteen hundred miles;
but I steered considerably to the windward of that to allow for the
heave of the sea and other leeward effects. My sloop on this course
ran under reefed sails for days together. I naturally tired of the
never-ending motion of the sea, and, above all, of the wetting I got
whenever I showed myself on deck. Under these heavy weather conditions
the _Spray_ seemed to lag behind on her course; at least, I attributed
to these conditions a discrepancy in the log, which by the fifteenth
day out from Keeling amounted to one hundred and fifty miles between
the rotator and the mental calculations I had kept of what she should
have gone, and so I kept an eye lifting for land.
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