"What could they do, anyway?" I said, despondently. "As things are going, we'll all be dead before another week is over, at this rate."
"You tell them," he answered. "That's what you've got to do. If you can only get them to realise that you're right, they'll be glad to put into the nearest port, and send us all ashore."
I shook my head.
"Well, anyway, they'll have to do something," he replied, in answer to my gesture. "We can't go round the Horn, with the number of men we've lost. We haven't enough to handle her, if it comes on to blow."
"You've forgotten, Tammy," I said. "Even if I could get the Old Man to believe I'd got at the truth of the matter, he couldn't do anything. Don't you see, if I'm right, we couldn't even see the land, if we made it. We're like blind men…."
"What on earth do you mean?" he interrupted. "How do you make out we're like blind men? Of course we could see the land—"
"Wait a minute! wait a minute!" I said. "You don't understand. Didn't I tell you?"
"Tell what?" he asked.
"About the ship I spotted," I said. "I thought you knew!"
"No," he said. "When?"