The skipper then offered to sell some fresh fish, just out of the water. Louis gave him four Spanish pesetas; and for it he put fish enough on the deck of the Maud to feed the whole ship's company for three days. He was evidently feeling very good after the unexpected trade he had made, and perhaps had more money in his pocket than for six months before; and he was profuse in his compliments and his thanks.
The Maud cast off her fasts, and Morris rang one bell, which was speedily followed by the jingling of the speed bell. The captain dropped his broad shelf in the pilot-house till it became a table on which he spread out his chart. Applying his parallel rule, he took off the course from Alboran light to his point ten miles off Algiers.
"East a half south, Morris," said he when he had obtained the course.
"East a half south, sir," repeated the helmsman, after the manner it was done on board the Blanche and the Guardian-Mother. "While you were dickering for water, Captain Scott, I noticed a change, a drop, in the barometer. Did you observe it?"
"No; but I noticed that the wind was backing," replied Scott, rushing to the barometer, which was suspended by the side of the starboard door. "That felucca is going west, and she has the wind on her port beam.
"What do you mean by backing, Captain?" asked Louis, who was standing at the door of the pilot-house.
"When a west wind shifts against the sun, or works round towards the east through the south-west and south, sailors call it backing," replied the captain, who was as fond as the average young fellow of telling what he knew.
"I have heard old farmers talk about the wind backing round, and I knew that it was towards the south when it did this thing; but I did not know that the sun had anything to do with it," added Louis.
"The sun moves from east to west, as it must if it rises in the east. From east to south would be with the sun; but from west to south and to east would be against the sun," continued the captain.
"That's so," added Morris; "and there is a couplet about it:—