“That is not needed now, we know the country. With the latitude alone, I would engage to go right to the place where the wreck happened.”
“Then have we really all the particulars now?” asked Lady Helena.
“All, dear Helena; I can fill up every one of these blanks the sea has made in the document as easily as if Captain Grant were dictating to me.”
And he took up the pen, and dashed off the following lines immediately: “On the 7th of June, 1862, the three-mast vessel, BRITANNIA, of Glasgow, has sunk on the coast of Patagonia, in the southern hemisphere. Making for the shore, two sailors and Captain Grant are about to land on the continent, where they will be taken prisoners by cruel Indians. They have thrown this document into the sea, in longitude and latitude 37 degrees 11”. Bring them assistance, or they are lost.”
“Capital! capital! dear Edward,” said Lady Helena. “If those poor creatures ever see their native land again, it is you they will have to thank for it.”
“And they will see it again,” returned Lord Glenarvan; “the statement is too explicit, and clear, and certain for England to hesitate about going to the aid of her three sons cast away on a desert coast. What she has done for Franklin and so many others, she will do to-day for these poor shipwrecked fellows of the BRITANNIA.”
“Most likely the unfortunate men have families who mourn their loss. Perhaps this ill-fated Captain Grant had a wife and children,” suggested Lady Helena.
“Very true, my dear, and I’ll not forget to let them know that there is still hope. But now, friends, we had better go up on deck, as the boat must be getting near the harbor.”
A carriage and post-horses waited there, in readiness to convey Lady Helena and Major McNabbs to Malcolm Castle, and Lord Glenarvan bade adieu to his young wife, and jumped into the express train for Glasgow.
But before starting he confided an important missive to a swifter agent than himself, and a few minutes afterward it flashed along the electric wire to London, to appear next day in the Times and Morning Chronicle in the following words: “For information respecting the fate of the three-mast vessel BRITANNIA, of Glasgow, Captain Grant, apply to Lord Glenarvan, Malcolm Castle, Luss, Dumbartonshire, Scotland.”