Mr. Pike was beside himself. He could scarcely tear himself from the
deck when it was his watch below. He chuckled, rubbed his hands, and
incessantly hummed snatches from the Twelfth Mass. Also, he was
voluble.
"To-morrow morning we'll be up with the Horn. We'll shave it by a
dozen or fifteen miles. Think of it! We'll just steal around! I
never had such luck, and never expected to. Old girl Elsinore,
you're rotten for'ard, but the hand of God is at your helm."
Once, under the weather cloth, I came upon him talking to himself.
It was more a prayer.
"If only she don't pipe up," he kept repeating. "If only she don't
pipe up."
Mr. Mellaire was quite different.
"It never happens," he told me. "No ship ever went around like this.
You watch her come. She always comes a-smoking out of the sou'west."
"But can't a vessel ever steal around?" I asked.
"The odds are mighty big against it, sir," he answered. "I'll give
you a line on them. I'll wager even, sir, just a nominal bet of a
pound of tobacco, that inside twenty-four hours we'll he hove to
under upper-topsails.
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