“Don’t you think,” said the young soldier, whose general knowledge was a little more extensive than that of the seaman, “that the Gulf Stream may have something to do with it?”
Molloy looked at the deck with philosophically solemn countenance. Deriving no apparent inspiration from that quarter, he gazed on the tumultuous chaos of salt-water with a perplexed expression. Finally and gravely he shook his weather-beaten head—
“Can’t see that nohow,” he said. “In course I knows that the Gulf Stream comes out the Gulf o’ Mexico, cuts across the Atlantic in a nor’-easterly direction, goes slap agin the west of England, Ireland, and Scotland, and then scurries away up the coast o’ Norway—though why it should do so is best known to itself; p’r’aps it’s arter the fashion of an angry woman, accordin’ to its own sweet will; but what has that got for to do wi’ the Bay of Biscay O? That’s wot I wants to know.”
“More to do with it than you think, Jack,” answered the soldier. “In the first place, you’re not quite, though partly, correct about the Gulf Stream—”
“Well, I ain’t zactly a scienkrific stoodent, you know. Don’t purfess to be.”
“Just so, Jack. Neither am I, but I have inquired into this matter in a general way, an’ here’s my notions about it.”
“Draw it fine, Willum; don’t be flowery,” said the sailor, renewing his quid. “Moreover, if you’ll take the advice of an old salt you’ll keep a tighter grip o’ that belayin’-pin you’ve got hold of, unless you wants to be washed overboard. Now then, fire away! I’m all attention, as the cat said at the mouth o’ the mouse-hole.”
“Well, then,” began Armstrong, with the slightly conscious air of superior knowledge, “the Gulf Stream does not rise in the Gulf of Mexico—”
“Did I say that it did, Willum?”
“Well, you said that it came out of the Gulf of Mexico—and, no doubt, so far you are right, but what I mean is that it does not originate there.”