“It’s the truth,” said the mate.
“Truth be hanged! Who says it’s the truth? I’ll——”
At that moment a slight figure appeared at the companion-way, and the next instant Miss Green seized her father’s arm. He turned roughly, but there was something in the poor girl’s face that made him look to her. She led him below, and the escaped men stood staring after her.
“You fellows can turn to with the men forward,” said Gantline. And they went.
A little later Zachary Green came on deck again and stood looking silently over the bright Pacific. He stood there by the taffrail looking long at the eastern horizon. No one approached or spoke to him, for all knew Captain Green when his mind was full of unpleasant memories.
A BLUNDER
ABOUT three o’clock in the morning Garnett slid back the hatch-slide and bawled, “Cape Horn, sir!”
Captain Green was asleep, but the news brought him to his feet in an instant, and stopping just long enough to complete his toilet, which consisted of gulping down four fingers of stiff grog, he sprang up the companion-way and was on deck.
It was broad daylight, although the wind had shifted to the northward and brought with it a thick haze which partly obscured the light of the rising sun. Some miles away on the weather-beam rose a rocky hump, showing dimly through the mist; but its peculiar shape, not unlike that of a camel lying down with its head to the westward, told plainly that it was the dreaded Cape. Beyond it lay Tierra del Fuego, now almost invisible, and past it swept the high-rolling seas of the Antarctic Drift.
Captain Green stood blinking and winking in the crisp air of the early morning as Garnett walked up. It was January and daylight twenty hours out of twenty-four, but it was cold and the morning watch was a cheerless one. The old mate came up and pointed to the northward.