Chapter Twelve.
Boat Ahoy!
By the time the sun was near the meridian our top-masts were up and the upper yards swayed aloft and crossed, making the old barquey all ataunto again and pretty nearly her old self, our broken bulwarks and smashed skylight betraying the only damage done by the storm, on deck, at all events.
“I ‘calculate,’ Fosset, as our Yankee friends would say, we may now cry spell O!” observed the skipper, who was highly pleased with the progress made in refitting the ship. “Tell the bo’sun to pipe the hands to dinner, and you and I had better go up on the bridge and see what we can do in the way of determining our position on the chart. That gulf-weed must have lost its bearings, I’m sure. It seems impossible to me that we could have drifted so far to the south as to bring us in the Stream!”
“An observation will soon settle the point, sir,” replied the first mate, passing the word to Masters to knock off work. “Run down, Haldane, and get my sextant for me, there’s a good chap! I left it on the cabin table, all ready. You’ll find it there!”
“Belay, there!” sang out the skipper, as I started off towards the companion-way. “You may as well bring mine, too, while you’re about it. Two heads are better than one, eh, Fosset?”
“Yes, sir, perhaps so,” rejoined the other, before I got out of earshot. “It seems, though, as if we’re going to have three on the job; for here comes Mr O’Neil with his sextant under his arm, evidently bent on the same errand!”
I soon was back with the instruments for the other two, and presently all three were at work taking the sun’s altitude and measuring off the angle made by the luminary with the horizon.