“I’m sure I don’t know,” answered Breeze, “unless we try and row to land.”
“Wot lan’? Ware he? How far?”
“Father said yesterday that Sable Island bore due west 365 miles from where we were then. We must have come, let me see, seven and a half knots an hour for fourteen hours would be 105 miles. From 365, that leaves 260, and we have rowed perhaps ten. It must be about 250 miles away from us at this minute. Do you think we could possibly row that distance, Nimbus?”
“Don’ know. Ole Mim row hard, row long way for grub. But how you fin’ um? Got no compass. How you steer um due wes’?”
“That’s so. I didn’t think of that. I don’t suppose the wind will always blow from the southward. Perhaps it has changed and is blowing from some other direction even now, and we don’t know the difference. And to think that I have got a compass here and can’t open it! I suppose I might manage to force the ball open with my knife, but that might break the compass.”
“Wot you say? You got um compass?” exclaimed Nimbus, who had listened attentively, while his companion thus thought aloud.
“Yes,” replied Breeze, drawing the golden ball from its pocket and unclasping the chain. “There’s a compass in this ball, but nobody knows how to open it.”
“Let ole Nim see um,” said the other, extending his great black hand for the trinket.
He examined it with the closest attention for more than a minute, and then said,
“Nim can open um.”