There was nothing, therefore, to keep me on deck any longer; so, following the example of my old friend Jorrocks, I speedily sought my bunk, and, turning in, did not wake again until nearly noon on the following day—the good-natured skipper having given orders to Mr Macdougall not to disturb me when the starboard watch was relieved in the early morning, saying that I had earned my rest fairly by rolling two days’ duty into one, which, indeed, I believe I had!
I was up on deck again, however, in time to “tak’ the soon,” as the Scottish mate termed it in his north-country accent, for I was anxious to see how far the gale had driven the vessel off her proper course.
It was our thirteenth day out, counting from the time we “took our departure,” as navigators say, from Lundy Island; and both the skipper and I made it out, after working the reckoning, that we were as far down as the twenty-fifth parallel, although a good deal to the eastward of what our true position should be—the leeway we had made while lying-to, and our subsequent scudding for nearly twelve hours before the north-wester, having taken us much too close in towards the African continent, thus causing us to lose all that westing we had secured on our first start from the Bristol Channel, and which we had afterwards so carefully preserved, even amidst the baffling winds of the middle latitudes.
Still, this mortifying conclusion had a redeeming feature.
If we were too far to the eastwards, we were as assuredly beyond the region specially designated by Jorrocks as the “Horse Latitudes,” where the calms of Cancer hold sway; for, now, setting all plain sail before a steady breeze from off the land, we soon managed to run into the regular north-east Trades, picking them up in the next degree or two we ran down to the southward.
From this point, keeping on the starboard tack again, with the wind well on our beam, we ran for the Line; but before crossing the equator, Mr Macdougall and I, between whom relations had been somewhat strained almost from our first introduction, came to an open rupture, the “little unpleasantness” happening in this wise.
Mr Ohlsen, the second mate—“Old son of a gun,” as the crew called him, from his taciturn manner of going about his work—was still on the sick list; and Captain Billings, who had expressed himself much pleased with my behaviour since I was on board, especially during the storm, had assigned the performance of this gentleman’s duties to me.
At this Mr Macdougall was extremely indignant, remonstrating with the skipper for putting so young a lad as myself in such an important post as that of second mate.
“What are your reasons for objecting to him?” asked Captain Billings.
“Why, the loon’s but a bairn,” said Mr Macdougall, at a nonplus for some objection to my promotion.