“O! I’ve met with an accident and can’t write,” replied Wicks.
“An accident,” repeated Carthew. “It don’t sound natural. What kind of an accident?”
Wicks spread his hand face up on the table, and drove a knife through his palm.
“That kind of an accident,” said he. “There’s a way to draw to windward of most difficulties if you’ve a head on your shoulders.” He began to bind up his hand with a handkerchief, glancing the while over Goddedaal’s log. “Hullo!” he said; “this’ll never do for us—this is an impossible kind of yarn. Here, to begin with, is this Captain Trent, trying some fancy course, leastways he’s a thousand miles to south’ard of the great circle. And here, it seems, he was close up with this island on the sixth, sails all these days, and is close up with it again by daylight on the eleventh.”
“Goddedaal said they had the deuce’s luck,” said Carthew.
“Well, it don’t look like real life—that’s all I can say,” returned Wicks.
“It’s the way it was, though,” argued Carthew.
“So it is; and what the better are we for that, if it don’t look so?” cried the captain, sounding unwonted depths of art criticism. “Here! try and see if you can tie this bandage; I’m bleeding like a pig.”
As Carthew sought to adjust the handkerchief, his patient seemed sunk in a deep muse, his eye veiled, his mouth partly open. The job was yet scarce done when he sprang to his feet.
“I have it,” he broke out and ran on deck. “Here, boys!” he cried, “we didn’t come here on the eleventh; we came in here on the evening of the sixth, and lay here ever since becalmed. As soon as you’ve done with these chests,” he added, “you can turn to and roll out beef and water-breakers; it’ll look more ship-shape—like as if we were getting ready for the boat voyage.”