“It don’t, Dumpty, and that’s a fact,” was the reply. “But it’s all in the voyage, little ’un, and the more months the more cash, and that’s how I looks at it.”
The captain’s face and Ingomar’s too were wreathed in smiles as they sat down to the good things sent forward.
“Seems,” said the former, “we’re going to go zigzagging round the world.”
“Yes. Going to resume your course now?”
“No; the wind brought us here. I’ll forego the Marions now, and bear up for the Boukets and Lindsays, weather permitting; but not until we now have a look at the country the storm has been unkindly enough to drive us to nolentes volentes.”
“I wonder where the Sea Elephant is about this time?”
“Ah, it would be hard to say, but the gale that we encountered, if it has passed far on to the east, would have been more favourable for them, and they are now in open seas off Budd or even Knox Land. They’ll beat us in the race round the world, you’ll find.”
Every one had the greatest faith in the sturdy old Walrus, for icebergs to her were nothing, so long as she did not get into a powerful squeeze.
The “ice blink,” a reflection like snow on the horizon over the pack, was seen that forenoon early, and Mayne Brace headed away directly for it. He judged himself to be about the longitude of Cape Anne, and he was right.
Young sailors like Charlie and Walt wondered a little that they did not sooner come into fields of slush and streams of smaller ice, that of broken-up floes and hummocks.