"Twelve."
"Then bring me the correct latitude, while I calculate the longitude. I have had a capital sight to-day."
He then relinquished the quadrant, and proceeded, compass in hand, to "prick off," as the sailors term it, the ship's place upon the chart.
Looking the while at a large chart of the Southern and Northern Atlantic, Morley asked:
"Where should a vessel, bound for the Mauritius, be now, if she left London at the same time I said the Hermione would sail?"
"Always the same thought, Morley?" said Bartelot, looking up with a smile.
"Well, Tom?"
"If winds are fair, and all went well"—at these words Morley gave a sigh of anxiety—"she should now be here, about St. Helena, or a few miles to the southward, and off the African coast."
"And we are how far from that?"
"Farther than I should like to fly, Morley."