“Do you, still, eh?” replied Captain Dinks. “I don’t quite agree with you. I thought it best to keep the ship before the wind, not only because it eases her but on account of the gale being bound to slacken down soon; and if we run down to a lower latitude, as I have frequently done in this part of the ocean before, we will probably get fine weather and be able to tinker up the old craft and make her look all a taunto again.”
“Ah!” said Mr Meldrum, “you are just as likely to run on to something else, not quite so pleasant as fine weather! Mark my words, Captain Dinks, I am as certain, and more so now than I was three days ago, as I told you then, that we are far down in the Forties; and what with the easting we have made since passing the meridian of the Cape and the leeway we have drifted, we must be pretty close to the Crozet Islands or Kerguelen Land.”
“Kerguelen Land!” ejaculated the captain; “nonsense, man; why we are hundreds of miles to the westward of it.”
“Are we?” replied Mr Meldrum. “Well, just wait till twelve o’clock and we’ll see who is right, you or I!”
Hardly, however, had the words escaped his lips than the look-out man in the maintop—who had been replaced as soon as day broke, when the prospect around the ship became more extended, thus rendering his services useful—shouted out a cry that had almost been forgotten, and which made every heart on board leap with mingled feelings of overpowering joy, consternation, surprise, dismay! Every pulse stopped for a second spellbound! The cry was—“Land ho!”
Chapter Fourteen.
Scylla and Charybdis.
“Land!” called out the captain. “Where away?”