“Why not?” demanded Bob, rather pugnaciously.
“Do you mean to say,” I retorted, “that you can sit there and propose in cold blood such a hair-brained scheme as that we two should undertake a voyage to the Pacific in a mere boat?”
“I do,” replied Bob emphatically. “That’s a simple way out of all your difficulties. The craft will be your own; there will be no risk of the crew rising upon us for the sake of our cargo; and nobody to say ‘What are we doing here?’ or ‘What do you want there?’ Why, it will be a mere pleasure trip from end to end, all play and no work, leastways none to speak on!”
“But, my dear fellow, do be serious,” protested I. “You know, as well as I do, that we should be swamped the first time we fell in with a capful of wind.”
“Maybe we should, if we went to work like a couple of know-nothing land-lubbers,” retorted Bob; “but if we went to work like seamen, as we are, I should like to know what’s to purvent our sailing round the world if we like! Answer me that.”
“Come, Bob, old man, let us hear the full extent of your proposition,” said I. “I know that, whatever it may be, it will be the proposal of a thorough seaman, for if any one could carry out the wild scheme you have suggested, you are the man.”
“’Tain’t such a very wild scheme neither,” replied Bob. “Answer me this. How many people was saved from the London when she foundered in the Bay of Biscay?”
“Nineteen, if I remember rightly,” replied I.
“Very well; now if a small boat of about twenty-five feet long or thereabouts, open, mind you, from stem to starn, could live twenty hours with nineteen people in her, as the London’s pinnace did, in weather that the old ship herself couldn’t stand up agin, how long will a full-decked boat of, say, thirty to thirty-five feet long, carefully constructed, and in good trim, live with only two men in her? And warn’t I,” continued he, “nineteen days alone in an open boat in the South Atlantic; and didn’t I make a v’y’ge of a thousand miles in her afore I struck soundings at Saint Helena?”
This last question referred to an adventure which had befallen Bob in his younger days, on an occasion when he had been cruelly deserted in a sinking ship by the rest of the crew, and had made his escape, as described by himself, after enduring unheard-of suffering.