This little interlude over, the captain proceeded with his explanation.
“Yes,” said he, “we’re now in latitude 44 degrees 56 minutes north, and longitude 9 degrees 42 minutes west; so that we’ve run pretty close on four hundred miles since yesterday at noon. Just think of that, now!”
“A pretty good distance,” said Mr Meldrum; “but, you must recollect we had the gale to drive us on.”
“Aye, sorr,” said Mr McCarthy, joining in the conversation, “and didn’t it droive us too! Begorrah, there was some times that the wind tuck the ship clane out of the wather and carried us along in the air like one of them flying-fish you’ll say when we gits down to the line!”
“It was fortunate it was in our favour,” observed the captain reflectively. “We couldn’t have tried to beat against it; and, heavily-laden as we are, it would have been madness to have tried to lay-to!”
“You’re right,” said Mr Meldrum, “and it was equally fortunate that the gale carried us so far and no further! Another twelve hours of it and we would have been high and dry ashore on the Spanish coast.”
“I think you’re not far out,” replied the captain, scratching his head and pondering over the matter, “for we’ll only just shave past Cape Finisterre now keeping our course; and if we hadn’t made so much westing when we got out of the Channel I don’t know where we should have been!”
“Faix and it was grumbling at it you were all the toime, cap’en!” said McCarthy with a knowing wink; “though you do now say it was all for the best, as the man said when they buried his wife’s grandmother!”
“Aye, you’re right,” said Captain Dinks more seriously, “all is for the best, if we could only know it at the time!”
Thenceforward, the weather kept fine; and the fates seemed favourable to the Nancy Bell in her pilgrimage across the sea.