"Our drift is to the south-east, or south-south-east, at the rate of at least two miles an hour." "That will be only twenty-four miles," she urged, "if the wind remains high all night." "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 won't know where we are by five hundred miles." Then I begged her pardon and promised I should 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.