? ? ? ? 'Yes, and only one hundred and forty miles if it continues for three days and nights.'
? ? ? ? 'But it won't continue,' she said, with easy confidence. 'It will turn around and blow fair.'
? ? ? ? 'The sea is the great faithless one.'
? ? ? ? 'But the wind!' she retorted. 'I have heard you grow eloquent over the brave trade-wind.'
? ? ? ? 'I wish I had thought to bring Wolf Larsen's chronometer and sextant,' I said, still gloomily. 'Sailing one direction, drifting another direction, to say nothing of the set of the current in some third direction, makes a resultant which dead-reckoning can never calculate. Before long we shall not know where we are by five hundred miles.'
? ? ? ? Then I begged her pardon and promised I would not be disheartened any more. At her solicitation, I let her take the watch till midnight- it was then nine o'clock; but I wrapped her in blankets and put an oilskin about her before I lay down. I slept only catnaps.
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