"And I thot you was all learn'd!" said Simpkins, with great contempt. "I mean he'd just sock it to you till you was fair broke up."
The day passed without any incident of vital importance. It is true they sighted the smoke of a steamer hull down on the southern horizon, but they saw nothing else across the waste of heaving water. Every now and again the captain woke up and made a few remarks on the nature of authority, and what he proposed doing to those who did not "knuckle under." But the night fell without any signs of mutiny on the part of the scientific crew.
In the very early dawn the astronomer, who had slept in uneasy snatches, woke up for the tenth time and changed his position. Simpkins and the geologist were keeping the boat before the sea, which was running south-east, and they were both half-blind with fatigue.
"I believe I see something out there," said the astronomer feebly.
"You are always seein' suthin'," said Simpkins crossly, but as he spoke he looked round and almost dropped his oar.
"Wake up, captain!" he shouted. "Here's a barque almost so near we could touch her."
The skipper roused up, and with him the rest. They jumped to their feet.
"Sit down, sit down, you gang of idiots," said the captain; "d'ye want to capsize us?"
"Oh, we are saved, we are saved!" said the ethnologist, for within half a mile of them a vessel lay with her main-topsail aback. There was nothing odd about her to the uneducated eye, but the skipper looked at Simpkins, and Simpkins looked at the skipper.
"Derelict," said both.