“Do you think that can be it?�
“I can’t tell for certain,� I replied, determined not to commit myself, “until I get another shot at the sun. I should think the latitude about right, but as to the longitude—�
“An’ you can’t git no shot at the sun ’til noon, can you?� unceremoniously put in Glibby, casting a long look to the eastward where the sky was thick and cloudy already.
“I can’t even get an observation then unless we have clear weather,� I answered.
“There’ll be no clear weather today, I take it,� said an old seaman, standing with the other two.
“I don’t much think it,� I assented.
“Well, what do you advise, then?� asked Pimball.
“That we stand on slowly during the day and heave to at night, and if we can’t get a shot at the sun, stay hereabouts until the sky is clear and the sun visible, then we will know just exactly what course to take and just what’s best to be done.�
The advice was so self-evidently good, in fact, the only practicable course, that there was no hesitation in accepting it. Pimball, Glibby, and the older sailors conferred together for a few minutes and decided that what I had said was sensible. The boatswain stepped up to the horse block, grabbed the trumpet, and shouted his orders. Presently the ship was hove to with the island well under her lee, distant perhaps a league and a half or maybe two leagues. Personally I should not have hove to a ship so close to a lee shore. I should not have advised it and indeed would have protested against it, had I not suddenly developed a plan, a plan as desperate as ever came into man’s head, but then the situation required desperate remedies. And for the accomplishment of the plan the ship was now in the very best position I could have put her.
There were thirty able-bodied men on that ship, not one of whom could have matched me individually, but collectively I was nothing compared to them. If that were the island for which we had been headed, I did not want to leave it without an inspection. Privately I had no doubt but that it was, because, as near as I could calculate from our last observation, it was exactly in the spot where it ought to be, did the parchment tell the truth. As I said before, I prided myself on my navigation and I do still. It was no light thing to sail a ship from England across the whole length of the Atlantic, round Cape Horn and take her up into the tropics and put her just where she ought to be; and I submit that I had a right to be proud.