He did not think they were anywhere near the place yet; for, although it was more than two months since they had left Narraganset Bay, the ship appeared to sail so sluggishly and the voyage to be so tedious, that he would not have been surprised to hear some day from the captain that they would not reach their destination until somewhere about Christmas time! "Ya-as, really, I guess so, mister.

No doubt you're a bit flustered at gettin' thaar so soon; but the _Pilot's Bride's_ sich a powerful clipper thet we've kinder raced here, an' arrove afore we wer due, I reckon!" The skipper innocently took Fritz's expression of surprise to be a compliment to the ship's sailing powers; and so Fritz would not undeceive him by telling him his real opinion about the vessel.

It would have been cruel to try and weaken his belief in the lubberly old whaler, every piece of timber in whose hull he loved with a fatherly affection almost equal to that with which he regarded his daughter Celia.
Fritz therefore limited himself to an expression of delight at the speedy termination of their voyage, without hazarding any comment on the _Pilot's Bride's_ progress; by which means he avoided either hurting the old skipper's feelings or telling an untruth, which he would otherwise have had to do.
He was undoubtedly glad to have advanced so far in their undertaking; for, once arrived at Tristan d'Acunha, a few more days would see them landed on Inaccessible Island, when, he and Eric would really begin their crusoe life of seal-catching and "making the best" of it, in solitary state.
Wasn't he up on deck early next morning, turning out of his bunk as soon as he heard the first mate calling the captain at four bells--although, when he got there, he found Eric had preceded him, he having charge of the morning watch and having been up two hours before himself! However, neither of the brothers had much the advantage of the other; for, up to breakfast time, Tristan had not been sighted.
But, about noon, "a change came o'er the spirit of their dream!" Captain Brown had just gone below to his cabin to get his sextant in order to take the sun, while Fritz, to quiet his impatience, had sat down on the top of the cuddy skylight with a book in his hand, which he was pretending to read so as to cheat himself, as it were; when, suddenly, there came a shout from a man whom the skipper had ordered to be placed on the look-out forward--a shout that rang through the ship.
"Land ho!" Fritz dropped his book on to the deck at once and Eric sprang up into the mizzen rigging, hurriedly scrambling up the ratlins to the masthead, whence he would have a better point of observation; the skipper meanwhile racing up the companion way with his sextant in his hand.
"Land--where away ?" he sang out, hailing the man on the fore cross- trees.
"Dead away to leeward, two points off the beam," was the answer at once returned by the man on the look-out, who happened, strangely enough, to be Fritz's whilom acquaintance, the "deck hand!" "Are you sure ?" hailed the captain again to make certain.
"As sure as there's claws on a Rocky Mountain b'ar," replied the man in a tone of voice that showed he was a bit nettled at his judgment being questioned; for he next added, quite loud enough for all to hear, "I guess I oughter know land when I see it.

I ain't a child put out to dry nurse, I ain't!" "There, thet'll do; stow thet palaver!" said Captain Brown sharply, "else you'll find thet if Rocky Mountain b'ars hev claws, they ken use 'em, an' hug with a prutty good grip of their own too, when they mean bizness, I guess, Nat Slater; so, you'd better quiet down an' keep thet sass o' yourn for some un else!" This stopped the fellow's grumbling at once; and Captain Brown, after proceeding aloft to have a look for himself and see how far the island was off, gave directions for having the ship's course altered, letting her fall off a point or two from the wind.
"I guess I wer standin' a bit too much to the northward," he said to Fritz, who was waiting on the poop, longing to ask him a thousand questions as to when they would get in, and where they would land, and so on; "but thet don't matter much, as we are well to win'ard, an' ken fetch the land as we like." The island, which at first appeared like a sort of low-lying cloud on the horizon, was now plainly perceptible, a faint mountain peak being noticeable, just rising in the centre of the dark patch of haze.
"Is it far off ?" asked Fritz.
"'Bout fifty mile or so, I sh'u'd think, mister," answered the skipper--"thet is more or less, as the air down below the line is clearer than it is north, so folks ken see further, I guess.

I don't kinder think it's more'n fifty mile, though, sou'-sou'-west o' whar the shep is now." "Fifty miles!" repeated Fritz, somewhat disconcerted by the announcement; for, he would not have thought the object, which all could now see from the deck, more than half that distance away.