"Unless," I answered, "their flag is as black as our prospects."
"You think them black?" cried he, the look of resentment that was darkening his face dying out of it. "The vessel is sound, is not she?"
I replied that she appeared so, but it would be impossible to be sure until she floated.
"The stores?"
"They are plentiful."
"They should be!" he cried; "we have the liquor and stores of a galleon and two carracks in our hold, apart from what we originally laid in for the cruise. Everything will have been kept sweet by the cold."
"All the stores seem sound," said I; "we shall not starve—no, not if we were to be imprisoned here for three years. But all the same our prospects are black, for here is the ship high and fixed; the ice in parting may crush her, and we have no boat."
"May, may!" he cried with a Frenchman's vehemence. "You have may and you also have may not in your language. Let me feel my strength improving; we shall then find means of throwing a light upon these black prospects of yours."
He smiled, or rather grinned, his fangs making the latter term fitter for the mirthless grimace he made.
"May I ask your name?" said I.