"Oh! The Long Reef," I said; "why didn't you say so at first? I know that well enough by sight on the chart; but I never heard it called Tanaki before. That accounts, of course, for the milk in the cocoa-nut. Jim, hand along the calipers here, and let's measure out the course. Two—four—six—eight," I went on, looping along line of sailing with the calipers. "A trifle short of eight hundred miles. Say seven hundred and eighty. And we have till Wednesday morning. Well, we ought to do it."
"You'll be in time to save them, then!" the elder boy cried, jumping up once more like a Jack-in-the-box. "You'll be in time to save them!"
"Will you be quiet, if you please?" I said, poking him down again flat, and holding my hand on his mouth. "O, yes! I expect we'll be in time to save them. If only you'll let us alone, and not make such a noise. We can do nine knots an hour easy, under all steam; and that ought to bring us up to Tanaki, as you call it, by Wednesday morning in the very small hours. Let's see, we've got four clear days to do it in."
"Five," the boy answered. "Five. To-day's Friday."
"No, no," I replied curtly. "Will you please shut up? Especially when you only darken counsel with many words. You're out of your reckoning. To-day's Saturday, I tell you."
And in point of fact, indeed, it really was Saturday.
"No, it's Friday," Martin went on with extraordinary persistence.
"Saturday," I repeated. "Knife; scissors: knife; scissors."
"But we got away from Tanaki eight days ago," the boy declared strongly with a very earnest face; "and it was Thursday when we left. I kept count of the days and nights all that awful time we were tossing about on the ocean alone, and I'm sure I'm right. To-day's Friday."
"Jim," I said, turning to my brother, "what day of the week do you make it?"