By breakfast time both wind and sea had gone down, and there was every expectation of fine weather once again.
"No damage done is there, mate?" said Talbot to Morgan.
"No, sir, nothing worth speaking about. Some of the coal tanks got a drop o' water in them, that's all."
"Well, that will make them last the longer. But, mind you, Morgan, I'm rather pleased than otherwise that we've had that blow."
"So am I."
"It just shows what the barque can do."
"That's it. If she is as good against the ice as she is against a sea-way, then, by my song, sir, she'll take us safely to the Antarctic, and just as safely back home again. Pass the sugar, sir."
CHAPTER IV.--ON THE WINGS OF THE WIND.
"Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching." So runs a line of the old Yankee war-song.
Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys (Duncan and Frank) were treading the deck that forenoon, talking, as sailors do, about anything or everything that suggested itself. And two subjects that always came to the front on such occasions were home life and their life on the ocean wave.