'I dare say they are very happy in their belief,' she answered.
He arched his eyebrows and spread his waistcoat, and had fetched a deep breath preparatory to delivering one of his fathoms of tedious commonplace, but his eye was at that instant taken by the clock under the skylight.
'Ha!' he cried, 'I must fetch my sextant; it is drawing on to noon. I will bring you an instrument, Miss Nielsen; we will shoot the sun together.'
'No, if you please,' she exclaimed.
He entreated a little, but her no was so resolutely pronounced that, contenting himself with a bland flourish of his hand, he went below.
'What is to be done?' whispered Helga. 'We shall not be able to induce him to land us at Santa Cruz. Is he mad, do you think?'
'No more than I am,' said I. 'One vocation is not enough for the fellow. There are others like him in my country of Great Britain. What a sea-captain, to be sure! How well he talks—I mean for a sea-captain! He has a good command of words. I wager he has made more than one rafter echo in his day. And he is sincere too. I saw the struggle in him when you asked that the men should have their bit of beef.'
'How am I to make him understand,' said she, 'that nothing can follow his keeping us here?'
'At all events,' I exclaimed, 'we can do nothing until we sight a ship heading for home.'
'That is true,' she answered.