Captain Snaggs squinted through the eye-glass of his instrument for a bit with the sextant raised aloft, as if he were trying to stare old Sol out of countenance.
“Stop!” he sang out in a voice of thunder. “Stop!”
Then he took another observation, followed by a second stentorian shout of “Stop!”
A pause ensued, and then he roared below to Mr Flinders, asking him what he made it, the feeble voice of the first-mate giving him in return the Greenwich time as certified by the chronometer; when after a longish calculation and measuring of distances on the chart, with a pair of compasses and the parallel ruler, Captain Snaggs gave his decision in an oracular manner, with much wagging of his goatee beard.
“I guess yo’re about right this journey, Mister Steenbock,” he said, holding up the chart for the other’s inspection. “I kalkelate we’re jest in latitood 0 degrees 32 minutes north, an’ longitood 90 degrees 45 minutes west—pretty nigh hyar, ye see, whaar my finger is on this durned spec, due north’ard of the Galapagos group on the Equator. This chart o’ mine, though, don’t give no further perticklers, so I reckon it must be Abingdon Island, ez ye says, ez thet’s the furthest north, barrin’ Culpepper Island, which is marked hyar, I see, to the nor’-west, an’ must be more’n fifty leagues, I guess, away.”
“Joost zo,” replied Jan Steenbock, mildly complacent at his triumph. “I vas zink zo, and I zays vat I zink!”
The point being thus satisfactorily settled, the men had their dinner, which Hiram and I had cooked in the galley while the anchors were being got out and the skipper was taking his observation of the sun; and then, after seeing that everything was snug in the caboose, I was just about sneaking over the side to explore the strange island and inspect more closely the curious animals I had noticed, when Captain Snaggs saw me from the poop and put the stopper on my little excursion.
“None o’ y’r skulking my loblolly b’y!” he shouted out. “Jest ye lay aloft an’ send down the mizzen-royal. This air no time fur skylarkin’ an’ jerymanderin’. We wants all hands at work.”
With that, I had, instead of enjoying myself ashore as I had hoped, to mount up the rigging and help the starboard watch in unbending the sails, which, when they reached the deck, were rolled up by the other watch on duty below, and lowered to the beach over the side, where they were stowed in a heap on the sand above high-water mark.