"I have seen it, but I never went ashore there," replied the second engineer. "I think there must be water there."
The captain was at the wheel. Pitts had sounded the water-jar in the cabin, and declared that there was hardly water enough left to enable him to get dinner; and he reported accordingly at the pilot-house.
"Alboran is not more than a dozen miles off our course, and we will try there," said Captain Scott, after he had looked the water-question over again. "We have passed Malaga; and the next place on the Spanish coast is Almunecar, but it is thirty-five miles off our course. Then we have no papers; and I am afraid we should be sent into quarantine."
The captain changed the course to south-east.
CHAPTER XXX
THE MAUD INCLINED TO TURN SOMERSETS
Among other nautical furniture, Captain Ringgold had put an old-fashioned log-line, chip, reel, and second glass on board of the Maud. Captain Scott had been unable to use it during the mid watch for the want of some one to assist him. After he had changed the course he gave the wheel to Felix, and with the assistance of Morris, Louis, and Don, had heaved the log. It gave him very nearly ten knots an hour; but he was not confident that his work had been accurate.
Felipe kept account of the number of revolutions a minute; and he insisted that the Maud was making her ten knots an hour, and the current might make it a trifle more than that. The captain had timed the steamer by distances on the chart, and he was satisfied that the log was substantially correct.
"It is now half-past nine, and we have made ninety-five miles from Gib," said he, after he had taken the wheel again. "It would have been thirty-five miles to Alboran if we had kept on our former course; it is less than that now, say about thirty-two. At about eleven o'clock it will be time to be on the lookout for the lighthouse."
At ten Felix took his trick at the wheel, and the captain was the lookout man. Morris and Louis lay down in the cabin and went to sleep. There was nothing to occupy their attention. The weather was pleasant, the sky exceedingly blue, and the sea was quite smooth. Scott had seated himself on the forecastle, and everything on board was as quiet as midnight in a church. He had a spy-glass within his reach, and he occasionally looked through it in the direction in which the steamer was headed.