“Call him up! Send him to me at once!”
The first officer hurries away towards the head, and soon returns, Gomez with him.
The latter meets the gaze of Lantanas with a sullen look, which seems to threaten disobedience.
“How is this?” asks the Chilian. “You had the wheel during the last watch. Where have you been running to?”
“In the course you commanded, Captain Lantanas.”
“That can’t be, sir. If you’d kept her on as I set her, the land couldn’t have been there, lying almost across, our cut-water. I understand my chart too well to have made such a mistake.”
“I don’t know anything about your chart,” sulkily rejoins the sailor. “All I know is, that I kept the barque’s head as directed. If she hasn’t answered to it, that’s no fault of mine; and I don’t much like being told it is.”
The puzzled skipper again rubs his eyes, and takes a fresh look at the coast-line. He is as much mystified as ever. Still the mistake may have been his own; and as the relieved steersman appears confident about it, he dismisses him without further parley, or reprimand.
Seeing that there will be no difficulty in yet clearing the point, his anger cools down, and he is but too glad to withdraw from an angry discussion uncongenial to his nature.
The Condor now hauled close to wind, soon regains lost weather-way, sufficient for the doubling of Punta Marietta; and before the bells of the second dog-watch are sounded, she is in a fair way of weathering the cape. The difficulty has been more easily removed by the wind veering suddenly round to the opposite point of the compass. For now near night, the land-breeze has commenced blowing off-shore.