“You just gather up that wreckage, my son, and put the unbroken things back into their places,” exclaimed Maxwell. “Also, clap a stopper upon your jawing tackle, younker; you have altogether too much too say, for a little ’un. Here, you Fleming—” to another mid, who was lying upon a locker with his hands clasped under his head by way of a pillow—“rouse and bitt, my hearty, and make yourself useful for once in a way; grab the corners of this chart and hold them down to the table until I give you a spell. That’s it. Now then, Delamere, what is it that you want to know?”
“First of all,” I said, “prick off the ship’s position as it was a quarter of an hour ago. There is Point du Raz. Very well: when I came below it bore exactly North 3 quarters East by compass, distant, say, seven miles. Mark off that bearing and distance, to start with.”
Maxwell did so, making a little dot with his pencil on the chart.
“There you are,” he said. “Now, what next?”
“The ship was heading North-North-West,” I said. “What I want to know is, Are we going to weather that point; and, if so, what lies beyond it?”
“Ah!” exclaimed Maxwell, as the critical nature of our situation began to dawn upon him, “I see—or, rather, we shall see in a minute or two. Gascoigne, were you on deck when the log was last hove? If you were not, you ought to have been, you know, and—”
“I was,” interrupted Gascoigne. “She was doing a bare seven, and making two and a half points leeway.”
“Whew!” whistled Maxwell; “two and a half points! That’s bad. The old girl ought to be ashamed of herself. No self-respecting frigate ought ever to make more than two points leeway.”
“Oh, oughtn’t she!” jeered Gascoigne. “You just go up on deck and see how every sea that hits her knocks her bodily to leeward, and you’ll tell a different story, my friend.”
“Well, well, I’ll take your word for it this time, young man, just to encourage you a bit, you know. Now, let’s see how that works out. How did you say she was heading, Delamere?”