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“I am not a regular sailor, as I said before, but I got out on the yard, and cut the square sail loose and let it drop on the deck, and I let the jib come down on a run, and managed to bundle it up some way on the bowsprit. This sort of thing took all the nautical gymnastics that I was master of, and entirely occupied my mind, so that I found myself whistling while I worked. I hoped Miss Minturn heard me whistle, because it would not only give her courage, but would let her see that I was not a man who couldn’t keep up his spirits in a case like this.

“When that work was over, I began to wonder what I should do next, and then an idea struck me. ‘Suppose,’ thought I, ‘that we are not stationary, but that we are in some queer kind of a current, and that the water, ship and all are steadily moving on together, so that after awhile we shall come in sight of land, or into the track of vessels!’

“I instantly set about to find out if this was the case. It was about noon, and it so happened that on the day before, when the chief officer took his observation, I was seized with a desire to watch him and see how he did it. I don’t see why I should have had this notion, but I had it, and I paid the strictest attention to the whole business, calculation part and all, and I found out exactly how it was done.

“Well, then, I went and got the quadrant,–that’s the thing they do it with,–and I took an observation, and I found that we were in latitude 15 deg. north, 90 deg. east, exactly where we had been twenty-four hours before!

“When I found out this, I turned so faint that I wanted to sit down and cover up my head. The Water-devil had us, there was no mistake about it, and no use trying to think of anything else. I staggered along the deck, went below, and cooked myself a meal. In a case like this there’s nothing like a square meal to keep a man up.

“I know you don’t like to hear her mentioned,” said the marine, turning to the blacksmith, “but I am bound to say that in course of the afternoon Miss Minturn came on deck several times, to ask if anything new had happened, and if I had seen a vessel. I showed her all that I had done, and told her I was going to hang out lights at night, and did everything I could to keep her on deck as long as possible; for it was easy to see that she needed fresh air, and I needed company. As long as I was talking to her I didn’t care a snap of my finger for the Water-devil. It is queer what an influence a beautiful woman has on a man, but it’s so, and there’s no use arguing about it. She said she had been puzzling her brains to find out what had stopped us, and she supposed it must be that we had run onto a shallow place and stuck fast in the mud, but thought it wonderful that there should be such a place so far from land. I agreed with her that it was wonderful, and added that that was probably the reason the captain and the crew had been seized with a panic. But sensible people like herself and her father, I said, ought not to be troubled by such an occurrence, especially as the vessel remained in a perfectly sound condition.

“She said that her father was busily engaged in writing his memoirs, and that his mind was so occupied, he had not concerned himself at all about our situation, that is, if he had noticed that we were not moving. ‘If he wants to see the steward, or anybody else,’ I said, ‘please call upon me. You know I represent the whole ship’s company, and I shall be delighted to do anything for him or for you.’ She thanked me very much and went below.