But when one has got acclimatized to the crow’s-nest, it is a real pleasure to be in it, and to have an eye on the sea and the cloudscape. There are splendid telescopes kept up here, and it is always nice to be the first to sight a craft of any kind, with only her topmasts rising over the far-off horizon.
It was Charlie who had the luck to first discover the Crozet Islands, and bleak and dismal they did look, for, this being summer, there was no snow on the rocks, but with his fine sight he could distinguish birds in myriads.
He felt quite a man, too, when he hailed the quarter-deck, trying to imitate the hoarse shout of the bo’s’n’s mate with his ringing—
“Below there!”
“Ay, ay, sir,” sang up the officer of the watch, putting particular emphasis on the “sir,” more for fun, I think, than anything else.
“Thank you,” said Captain Mayne Brace. “How does it lie?”
“About two points on the weather bow.”
This was so nautical that the boy had to take a long breath after it, and wind himself up as it were.
But the hail, anyhow, although it had had the effect of making even the man at the wheel smile a little, produced no little excitement on board, and more than one camera was got ready to take snapshots at the shore as soon as it put in an appearance from the deck.