“They don’t seem to be shivering,” remarked the ensign. “As a matter of fact, I’ll wager that you’ve often been in water that was colder than this.”
“Show us what you’ve got up your sleeve,” urged Bob. “You’re just kidding us along.”
“It’s simple enough,” was the smiling reply. “The Meteor has picked out a warm strip of water for her men to bathe in. At the present moment, she’s lying right across it. The water temperature is twenty-two degrees colder at one end of the boat than it is at the other. At the bow it’s thirty-four, at the stern it’s fifty-six.”
“It doesn’t seem possible,” ejaculated Bob.
“A good many things are possible in this part of the world,” replied the ensign. “That’s what forms one of the fascinating features of our work. You see, the boundary line between the cold Labrador Current and the Gulf Stream is very sharply defined, and we’re just astride it at this moment.”
“But how do you pick it out?” asked Joe, in wonderment. “I can recognize boundaries on land, all right; but how you can see them in the water is beyond me.”
“Matter of practice,” was the reply. “We can tell by the color of the water and the ‘rips’ between the two currents. If you’ll look closely, you’ll be able to see a decided difference between the color of the water at the stern and the water at the bow.”
“I can see it now,” declared Joe, after a moment’s close scrutiny. “But I’d never have noticed it if you hadn’t called our attention to it.”
Bob looked enviously at the men sporting around in evident enjoyment in the water.
“I’ve a good mind to take a crack at it,” he said suddenly. “What do you say, fellows? Are you game?”