So, unable to resist either the winds or the waves, these combined forces had driven her off her course at an oblique angle, thus converting the nor’-easterly, or easterly drift proper, of the Gulf Stream into a true sou’-westerly one, taking us from latitude 41° 30 minutes north and longitude 51° 40 minutes west, where we were on the previous Friday night, when we were forced to lie-to, to our present position on the chart.
To put the case more concisely, the Star of the North had been carried for the distance of four degrees and a half exactly of longitude backward on her outward track to New York and some two degrees or thereabouts to the southwards, placing us as nearly as possible in the position the skipper had already indicated, a direction of some five hundred miles more or less from our proper course and about midway between Bermuda and the Azores, or Western Islands.
While Captain Applegarth was explaining this, as much for my benefit and instruction, I believe, as anything, a thought occurred to me.
“Are we not now, sir, in the track of all the homeward-bound ships sailing on the great circle from the West Indies and South American ports?”
The skipper looked at me steadily, “smelling a rat” at once.
“I suppose, Haldane,” he said somewhat sternly, “you want to get me back to that infernal ship again? Not if I know it, my lad. As you told Mr O’Neil just now, we’ve all had enough and to spare of that vessel and the wild-goose chase she has led us from first to last. I won’t hear another word about her, by Jingo!”
Just then old Masters, who had gone up in the foretop to set something right which had struck his sailor eye as not being altogether as it should be aboard the Star of the North, raised his arm to attract the attention of those on deck below him.
“Hullo, there, bo’sun!” called out the skipper, seeing him, for he seldom kept his glasses away from the rigging of the ship and things aloft. “What’s the row, eh?”
“I sees summit to win’ard, sir.”
“By George!” exclaimed the skipper in a tone that made every one laugh who heard, all but Masters; the coincidence was so comical after what Captain Applegarth had said only a minute before. “Not another ‘ghost-ship,’ I hope!”