‘No, I don’t suppose it will be long,’ he answered.
‘Do you know the “Shark?”’
‘Why, yes.’
‘Are we going to pick her up, think you?’
‘Well, if we gets into her wake and shoves along faster nor she, there’ll be nothin’ to stop us picking her up,’ he answered, steadily viewing Miss Jennings and myself alternately, to satisfy his mind, as I took it, that we were not quizzing him.
‘I suppose,’ said I, ‘that the captain will be testing the eyesight of the other watch presently?’
‘Ay,’ said he, with a sort of sneer, ‘they’ll go aloft after dinner.’
‘Isn’t it a good test?’
‘Don’t see no use in it at all,’ he answered gruffly, sending a look aloft and following it on with an admonitory stare at the fellow at the wheel. ‘Suppose nothen had hove into view; the men ’ud be still on the yards a-watching. ’Sides, observing an object at sea depends upon where your eyes is. One chap may be looking in another direction when his mate sings out. Is that going to stand for a sign that his sight’s poor?’
‘What do the men think?’ said I, anxious to get behind the forecastle, so to speak, for I was never to know how far knowledge of this kind might be serviceable to us later on.