Willis the Pilot

CHAPTER III.

WHERE­IN WILLIS THE PI­LOT PROVES “IR­REFRAGABLY” THAT EPHEMERIDES DIE OF CON­SUMP­TION AND HOME-​SICK­NESS--THE CA­NOE AND ITS YOUNG ONES--THE SEARCH AF­TER THE SLOOP--FOUND--THE SWORD-​FISH--FLOAT­ING ATOMS--AD­MI­RAL SOCRATES.

When they had come with­in a short dis­tance of the bay, Jack thought he saw a large black crea­ture mov­ing in the bush­es that lined the shore.

“A sea mon­ster!” he cried, lev­el­ling his mus­ket; “I dis­cov­ered it, and have the right to the first shot.”

“No, sir,” said Fritz, whose keen eye was a sort of lo­co­mo­tive tele­scope, “I ob­ject to that, for I do not want you to kill or wound my ca­noe.”

“Non­sense, it moves.”

“Whether it moves or not, we shall all see by and by; but do you not ob­serve this mon­ster's young ones gam­bolling by its side?”

“Which proves I am right, un­less you mean to say your ca­noe has been hatch­ing,” and Jack again lev­elled his ri­fle.

“Don't fire, it is the hat and jack­et of Willis!”

“What!” ex­claimed Ernest, “is the Pi­lot a tri­ton then, that he could dis­pense with the ca­noe?”

“Well, yes, un­less the ca­noe has found its way back of its own ac­cord, which would in­deed make it an in­tel­li­gent crea­ture.”

“The Pi­lot has ev­ident­ly reached Shark's Is­land by swim­ming, in spite of surf and break­ers--a feat al­most with­out a par­al­lel.”

“Bah!” said Ernest, par­ody­ing Jack's wit­ti­cism about the oars, “what does a pi­lot care about surf and break­ers?”

Strong­ly moored in a creek of the Jack­al Riv­er, and pro­tect­ed by a bluff, form­ing a screen be­tween it and the sea, the pin­nace had in no way suf­fered from the storm.

The swell was so vi­olent, that they had a world of trou­ble in mak­ing the is­land; as they ap­proached, Willis, who had made a speak­ing-​trum­pet by join­ing his hands round his mouth, was roar­ing out al­ter­nate­ly, “star­board,” “lar­board,” “hard-​a-​port,” just as if these terms had not been He­brew to the im­promp­tu mariners.

At last, tired of hol­loaing, “Stop a bit,” he said, “I shall find a quick­er way;” with that he threw him­self di­rect­ly in­to the sea, and cut through the waves to­wards them as if his arms had been driv­en by a steam en­gine.

Ar­rived on board, he gave a vig­or­ous turn to the tiller, laid hold of the sheet, let out a reef here, took in an­oth­er there; the pin­nace was soon com­plete­ly at his com­mand, and be­haved ad­mirably; true, she pitched fu­ri­ous­ly, and the gun­wale was un­der wa­ter at ev­ery plunge. He head­ed along the coast till the point be­yond which Fritz had first ob­served the _Nel­son_ was fair­ly dou­bled; some days be­fore this point was called Cape De­liv­er­ance, it was now, per­haps, about to ac­quire the term of Cape Dis­ap­point­ment, but for the mo­ment its fu­ture des­ig­na­tion was in em­bryo.

Leap­ing on the poop, Willis care­ful­ly scanned the hori­zon as the boat rose up­on the sum­mit of the waves; but see­ing noth­ing, he at last leapt down again with an ex­pres­sion of rage that, un­der oth­er cir­cum­stances, would have been ir­re­sistibly com­ic. Aban­don­ing the di­rec­tion of the pin­nace, he went and sat down on a bulk-​head, and cov­ered his face with his hands, in an at­ti­tude of pro­found des­ola­tion.

“Willis! Willis!” cried Jack, “I shall tell Sophia.”

But there was nei­ther the soft voice there, the ca­ress­ing hand, nor the sweet fas­ci­na­tion of the young girl's pres­ence, and Willis con­tin­ued im­mov­able.

Beck­er saw that his was one of those minds that grew less calm the more they were urged, and the ex­cite­ment of which must be per­mit­ted to wear it­self out; he there­fore beck­oned his sons to leave him to his own re­flec­tions.

The wind still blew a gale, and the pin­nace pitched heav­ily; but the sun was now be­gin­ning to break through the mass­es of lurid cloud, and the air was be­com­ing less and less charged with va­por.

“I can de­scry noth­ing ei­ther,” said Beck­er; “and yet this is the di­rec­tion the storm must have driv­en the sloop.”

“The sea is very capri­cious,” sug­gest­ed Fritz.

“True, but not to the ex­tent of car­ry­ing a ship against the wind.”

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly,” said Jack, “it is not on sea as on land, where the slight­est in­di­ca­tions of an ob­ject lost may lead to its dis­cov­ery; a word dropped in the ear of a pass­er-​by might put you on the track, but here it is no use say­ing, 'Sir, did you not see the _Nel­son_ pass this way?'”

“Fire a shot,” said Ernest; “it may per­haps be heard, now that the air is less hu­mid.”

The two-​pounder was ready charged; Fritz struck a light and set fire to a strip of mi­mosa bark, with which he touched the piece, and the re­port boomed across the wa­ters.

Willis raised his head and lis­tened anx­ious­ly, but soon dropped it again, and re­sumed his for­mer at­ti­tude of hope­less de­spair.

“It may be,” said Ernest, “that the _Nel­son_ hears our sig­nal, though we do not hear hers.”

“How can that be?” in­quired Jack.

“Why, very eas­ily. Sound in­creas­es or di­min­ish­es in in­ten­si­ty ac­cord­ing as the wind car­ries it on or re­tards it.”

“What, then, is sound, that the wind can blow it about, most learned broth­er?”

“It is a re­sult of the com­pres­sion of the air, that from its elas­tic­ity ex­tends and ex­pands, and which caus­es a sort of trem­bling or un­du­la­tion, sim­ilar to that which is ob­served in wa­ter when a stone is thrown in­to it.”

“And you may add,” said Beck­er, “that bod­ies strik­ing the air ex­cite sonorous vi­bra­tions in this flu­id; thus it rings un­der the lash that strikes it with vi­olence, and whis­tles un­der the rapid im­pul­sion of a switch: it like­wise be­comes sonorous when it strikes it­self with force against any sol­id body, as the wind when it blows against the cordage of ships, hous­es, trees, and gen­er­al­ly ev­ery ob­ject with which it comes in con­tact.”

“I can un­der­stand,” replied Jack, “how this sonorous ef­fect is pro­duced on the par­ti­cles of air in im­me­di­ate con­tact with the ob­ject struck; but how this sound is prop­agat­ed, I do not see.”

“Very like­ly; but still it trav­els from par­ti­cle to par­ti­cle, in a cir­cle, at the rate of three hun­dred and forty yards in a sec­ond.”

“Three hun­dred and forty yards in a sec­ond!” said Willis, who was be­gin­ning by de­grees to re­cov­er his self-​pos­ses­sion. “Well, that is what I should call go­ing a-​head.”

“And by what sort of com­pass­es has this speed been mea­sured, Mas­ter Ernest?”

“The first ac­cu­rate mea­sure­ment, Mas­ter Jack, was made at Paris in 1738. There are there two tol­er­ably el­evat­ed points, name­ly, Mont­martre and Montl­héry--the dis­tance be­tween these, in a di­rect line, is 14,636 _tois­es_. Can­nons were fired dur­ing the night, and the en­gi­neers on one of the el­eva­tions ob­served that an in­ter­val of eighty-​six sec­onds and a half elapsed be­tween the flash and the re­port of a can­non fired on the oth­er.”

“That half-​sec­ond is very amus­ing,” said Jack laugh­ing; “if there had been on­ly eighty or eighty-​six net, one might still be per­mit­ted to en­ter­tain some doubts; but eighty-​six and a half ad­mits noth­ing of the kind. But why not three-​quar­ters or six-​eighths, they would do as well?”

“What is more nat­ural than to reck­on the frac­tion, if we are de­sirous of ob­tain­ing ab­so­lute pre­ci­sion? Is six months of your time of no val­ue? Are thir­ty min­utes more or less on the di­al of your watch of no sig­ni­fi­ca­tion to you?”

“Your broth­er is per­fect­ly right, Jack; you are not al­ways suc­cess­ful in your jokes.”

“Oth­er ex­per­iments have been made since then,” con­tin­ued Ernest, “and the re­sults have al­ways been the same, mak­ing al­lowances for the wind, and a slight vari­ation that is as­cribed to tem­per­ature.”

“To con­firm the ac­cu­ra­cy of this state­ment, the speed of light would have to be tak­en in­to con­sid­er­ation.”

“True; but the ve­loc­ity of light is so great, that the in­stant a can­non is fired the flash is seen.”

“What­ev­er the dis­tance?”

“Yes, what­ev­er the dis­tance. Bear in mind that the rays of the sun on­ly re­quire eight min­utes to tra­verse the thir­ty-​four mil­lions of leagues that ex­tend be­tween us and that body. Hence it fol­lows that the time light takes to trav­el from one point to an­oth­er on the earth may be re­gard­ed as _nil_.”

“That is some­thing like dis­tance and speed,” re­marked Willis, “and may be all right as re­gards the sun, but I should not be dis­posed to ad­mit that there are any oth­er in­stances of the same kind.”

“Very good, Mas­ter Willis; and yet the sun is on­ly a step from us in com­par­ison to the dis­tance of some stars that we see very dis­tinct­ly, but which are, nev­er­the­less, so re­mote, that their rays, trav­el­ling at the same rate as those of the sun, are sev­er­al years in reach­ing us.”

Willis rose abrupt­ly, whistling “the Mariner's March,” and went to join Fritz, who was steer­ing the pin­nace.

At this _naïve_ mark of dis­ap­pro­ba­tion on the part of the Pi­lot, Beck­er, Ernest, and Jack burst in­vol­un­tar­ily in­to a vi­olent peal of laugh­ter.

“Laugh away, laugh away.” said Willis; “I will not ad­mit your cal­cu­la­tions for all that.”

The sky had now as­sumed an opal or azure tint, the wind had grad­ual­ly died away in­to a gen­tle breeze, the waves were now swelling gen­tly and reg­ular­ly, like the move­ments of the in­fant's cra­dle that is be­ing rocked asleep. Nev­er had a day, open­ing in the con­vul­sions of a tem­pest, more sud­den­ly lapsed in­to sun­shine and smiles: it was like the fairies of Per­rault's Tales, who, at first wrapped in sor­ry rags, beg­ging and borne down with age, throw off their chrysalis and ap­pear sparkling with youth, gai­ety, and beau­ty, their wal­let con­vert­ed in­to a bas­ket of flow­ers, and their crutch to a mag­ic wand.

“Fa­ther” in­quired Fritz, “shall we go any far­ther?”

Since the weath­er had calmed down, and there was no longer any ne­ces­si­ty for ex­er­tion, the ex­pe­di­tion had lost its charm for the young man.

“I think it is use­less; what say you, Willis?”

“Ah,” said the lat­ter, tak­ing Beck­er by the hand, “in con­sid­er­ation of the eight days' friend­ship that con­nects you even more in­ti­mate­ly with Cap­tain Lit­tle­stone than my af­fec­tion for him of twen­ty years' stand­ing, keep still a few miles to the east.”

“If the sloop has been driv­en to a dis­tance by the storm, and is re­turn­ing to­wards us, which is very like­ly, I do not see that we can be of much use.”

“But if dis­mast­ed and leaky?”

“That would al­ter the case, on­ly I am afraid the ladies will be un­easy about us.”

“But they were half pre­pared, fa­ther.”

“Jack is right,” added Fritz, whose en­er­gies were again called in­to play by the thought of the _Nel­son_ in dis­tress; “let us go on.”

“Be­sides, on the word of a pi­lot, the sea will be very calm and gen­tle for some time to come: there is not the slight­est dan­ger.”

“And what if there were?” replied Fritz.

“Well, Willis, I shall give up the pin­nace to you till dark,” said Beck­er, “and may God guide us; we shall re­turn to-​night, so as to ar­rive at Rock­house ear­ly in the morn­ing.”

“Hur­rah for the cap­tain!” cried Willis, throw­ing a cap in­to the air.

The evo­lu­tions of a cap, thrown up to­wards the sky or down up­on the ground, were very usu­al modes with Willis of ex­press­ing his joy or sor­row.

This homage ren­dered to Beck­er, he has­tened to let a reef out of the sheet, and the pin­nace, for a mo­ment at rest, re­dou­bled its speed, like post-​hors­es start­ing from the inn-​door un­der the com­bined in­flu­ence of a cheer from the pos­til­lion and a flour­ish of the whip.

“There is a cock­le-​shell that skips along pret­ty fair­ly,” said Willis; “but it wants two very im­por­tant things.”

“What things?”

“A ca­boose and a nig­ger.”

“A ca­boose and a nig­ger?”

“Yes, I mean a pantry and a cook; a gale for break­fast is all very well, one gets used to it, it is light and eas­ily di­gest­ed; but the same for din­ner is rather too much of a good thing in one day.”

“I ob­served your thought­ful moth­er hang a sack on one of your shoul­ders, which ap­peared tol­er­ably well filled--where is it?”

“Here it is,” said Jack, is­su­ing from the hatch­way; “here are our stores: a ham, two Dutch cheeses, two callabash­es full of Rock­house mala­ga, and there is plen­ty of fresh wa­ter in the gourds; with these, we have where­with­al to de­fy hunger till to-​mor­row.”

“Cap­ital!” said Willis.

This time, how­ev­er, a cap did not ap­pear in the air, as the last one had not been seen since the for­mer ova­tion.

“Let us lay the ta­ble,” said Jack, ar­rang­ing the coils of rope that crowd­ed the deck. “Well, you see, Willis, we want for noth­ing on board the pin­nace, not even a what-​do-​you-​call-​it?”

“A ca­boose, Mas­ter Jack.”

“Well, not even a ca­boose.”

“Quite true; and if the _Nel­son_ were in the off­ing, I would not ex­change my pi­lot's badge for the epaulettes of a com­modore; but, alas! she is not there.”

“Cheer up, Willis, cheer up; one is ei­ther a man or one is not. What is the good of use­less re­grets?”

“Very lit­tle, but it is hard to be yard-​armed while ab­sent at my time of life--and af­ter­wards--your health, Mr. Beck­er.”

“That would be hard at any age, Willis; but I rather think it has not come to that yet.”

“When it has come to it, there will be very lit­tle time left to talk it over.”

“Did you not say, broth­er, that the _Nel­son_ might hear our sig­nals with­out our hear­ing hers? If so, there is a chance for Willis yet.”

“Cer­tain­ly, Jack, be­cause she has the wind in her fa­vor to act as a speak­ing-​trum­pet, whilst we had it against us act­ing as a deaf­en­er.”

“Is there any oth­er in­flu­ence that af­fects sound be­sides the wind?”

“Yes, I have al­ready men­tioned that tem­per­ature has some­thing to do with it. Sound varies in in­ten­si­ty ac­cord­ing to the state of the at­mo­sphere. If, for ex­am­ple, we ring a small bell in a closed ves­sel filled with air, it has been ob­served that, as the air is with­drawn by the pump, the sound grad­ual­ly grows less and less dis­tinct.”

“And if a vac­uum be formed?”

“Then the sound is to­tal­ly ex­tin­guished.”

“So, then,” ob­ject­ed Willis, “if two per­sons were to talk in what you call a vac­uum, they would not hear each oth­er?”

“Two per­sons could not talk in a vac­uum,” replied Ernest.

“Why not?”

“Be­cause they would die as soon as they opened their mouths.”

“Ah, that al­ters the case.”

“If, on the con­trary, a quan­ti­ty of air or gas were com­pressed in­to a space be­yond what it ha­bit­ual­ly held, then the sound,” con­tin­ued Ernest, “would be more in­tense than if the air were free.”

“In that case a whis­per would be equal to a howl!”

“You think I am jok­ing, Willis; but on the tops of high moun­tains, such as the Hi­malaya and Mont Blanc, where the air is much rar­ified, voic­es are not heard at the dis­tance of two paces.”

“Awk­ward for deaf peo­ple!”

“Whilst, on the icy plains of the frozen re­gions, where the air is con­densed by the se­vere cold, a con­ver­sa­tion, held in the or­di­nary tone, may be eas­ily car­ried on at the dis­tance of half a league.”

“Awk­ward for se­crets!”

“And how does sound op­er­ate with re­gard to sol­id bod­ies?” in­quired Jack.

“Ac­cord­ing to the de­gree of elas­tic­ity pos­sessed by their veins or fi­bres.”

“Ex­plain your­self.”

“That is, sol­id bod­ies, whose struc­ture is such that the vi­bra­tion com­mu­ni­cat­ed to some of their atoms cir­cu­lates through the mass, are sus­cep­ti­ble of con­vey­ing sound.”

“Give us an in­stance.”

“Ap­ply your ear to one end of a long beam, and you will hear dis­tinct­ly the stroke of a pin's head on the oth­er; whilst the same stroke will scarce­ly be heard through the breadth of the wood.”

“So that, in the first case, the sound runs along the lon­gi­tu­di­nal fi­bres where the con­ti­gu­ity of parts is clos­er, than when the body is tak­en trans­verse­ly?”

“Just so.”

“And across wa­ter?”

“It is heard, but more fee­bly.”

For some time Fritz had been close­ly ob­serv­ing with the tele­scope a par­tic­ular part of the hori­zon, when all at once he cried, “This time I see him dis­tinct­ly; he is bear­ing down up­on us.”

“Who? the sloop?” cried Willis, start­ing up and let­ting fall the glass he had in his hand.

“What an ex­traor­di­nary pace! he bounds in­to the air, then plumps in­to the wa­ter, then leaps up again, just like an In­dia-​rub­ber ball, that touch­es the ground on­ly to take a fresh spring!”

“Im­pos­si­ble, Mas­ter Fritz; the _Nel­son_ tops the waves hon­est­ly and gal­lant­ly; but as to leap­ing in­to the air, she is a lit­tle too bulky for that.”

“Ah, poor Willis, it is not the _Nel­son_ that is un­der my glass at present, but an enor­mous fish, ten or twelve feet in length.”

“Oh, how you star­tled me!”

“Fa­ther! Ernest! pre­pare to fire! Jack, the har­poon! he is com­ing this way.”

Fritz stood at the stern of the pin­nace, his ri­fle lev­elled, fol­low­ing with his eyes the move­ments of the mon­ster; when with­in reach, he fired with so much suc­cess and ad­dress that he hit the crea­ture on the head. It then changed its course, leav­ing be­hind a train of blood.

“Let us af­ter him, Willis; quick!”

The Pi­lot turned the head of the pin­nace, and Jack im­me­di­ate­ly threw his har­poon.

“Struck!” cried he joy­ful­ly.

By the hiss­ing of the line, and then the rapid im­pul­sion of the pin­nace, it was felt that the mon­ster had more strength than the craft and its crew to­geth­er.

Ernest and his fa­ther fired at the same time; the ball of the for­mer was lost in the an­imal's flesh, that of the lat­ter re­bound­ed off a horny pro­tu­ber­ance that armed the mon­ster's up­per lip.

Fritz had time to recharge his ri­fle; he lev­elled it a sec­ond time, and the ball went to join the for­mer; but, for all that, the pin­nace con­tin­ued to cleave the wa­ter at a fu­ri­ous rate.

Beck­er seized an axe and cut the rope.

“Oh, fa­ther, what a pity! such a splen­did cap­ture for our mu­se­um of nat­ural his­to­ry!”

“It is a sword-​fish, chil­dren; a mon­ster of a dan­ger­ous species, and of ex­treme vo­rac­ity. If, by way of reci­procity, the fish have a mu­se­um at the bot­tom of the sea, they will have some fine spec­imens of the hu­man race that have be­come the prey of this crea­ture; and it may be that we were on the way to join the col­lec­tion.”

“Did you ob­serve the formidable den­ti­lat­ed horn?”

“It is by means of this horn or sword, from which it takes its name, that it wages a con­tin­ual war with the whale, whose on­ly mode of es­cape is by flour­ish­ing its enor­mous tail; but the sword-​fish, be­ing very ag­ile, eas­ily avoids this, bounds in­to the air as Fritz saw it do­ing just now, then, falling down up­on its huge ad­ver­sary, pierces him with its sword.”

“By the way, talk­ing about the whale,” said Jack, “all nat­ural­ists seem agreed, and we our­selves are con­vinced from our own ob­ser­va­tion, that its throat is very nar­row, and that it can on­ly swal­low mol­luscs, or very small fish­es--what, in that case, be­comes of the his­to­ry of Jon­ah?”

“It is rather un­for­tu­nate,” replied Beck­er, “that the whale has been as­so­ci­at­ed with this mir­acle. There is now no pos­si­bil­ity of sep­arat­ing the whale from Jon­ah, or Jon­ah from the whale; yet, in the Greek trans­la­tion of the Chaldean text, there is _Ke­tos_--in the Latin, there is _Cete_--and both these words were un­der­stood by the an­cients to sig­ni­fy a fish of enor­mous size, but not the whale in par­tic­ular. The shark, for ex­am­ple, can swal­low a man, and even a horse, with­out man­gling it.”

“I have heard,” said Jack, “of nav­iga­tors who have land­ed on the back of a whale, and walked about on it, sup­pos­ing it a small is­land.”

“There is noth­ing im­pos­si­ble about that,” ob­served Willis.

“One thing is cer­tain, that we had just now with­in reach a sea mon­ster who has car­ried off four lead­en bul­lets in his body with­out seem­ing to be in the least in­con­ve­nienced by them; on the con­trary, he seemed to move all the quick­er for the dose.”

“Life is a very dif­fer­ent thing with those fel­lows than with us. The carp is said to live two hun­dred years, and it is sup­posed that a whale might live for ten cen­turies if the har­poon did not come in the way to short­en the pe­ri­od.”

“Ah!” ex­claimed Willis, with a sigh that might have moved a train of wag­gons, “these fel­lows have no cares.”

“And the ephemeride, that dies an in­stant af­ter its birth, do you sup­pose that it dies of grief?”

“Who knows, Mas­ter Jack?”

“The ephemeride does not die so quick­ly as you think,” said Beck­er; “it com­mences by liv­ing three years un­der wa­ter in the form of a mag­got. It af­ter­wards be­comes am­phibi­ous, when it has a horny cov­er­ing, on which the rudi­ments of wings may be ob­served. Then, four or five months af­ter this first meta­mor­pho­sis, gen­er­al­ly in the month of Au­gust, it is­sues from its skin, al­most as rapid­ly as we throw off a jack­et; at­tached to the re­ject­ed skin are the teeth, lips, horns, and all the ap­pa­ra­tus that the crea­ture re­quired as a wa­ter in­sect; then it is no soon­er winged, gay, and beau­ti­ful, than, as you ob­serve, it dies--hence it is called the day-​fly, its ex­is­tence be­ing ter­mi­nat­ed by the shades of night.”

“I was cer­tain of it,” said Willis.

“Cer­tain of what?”

“That it died of grief at be­ing on land. When one has been ac­cus­tomed to the wa­ter, you see, un­der such cir­cum­stances life is not worth the hav­ing.”

“The day-​fly,” con­tin­ued Beck­er, “is an epit­ome of those men who spend a life-​time hunt­ing af­ter wealth and glo­ry, and who per­ish them­selves at the mo­ment they reach the pin­na­cle of their am­bi­tious de­sires. Whence I con­clude, my dear chil­dren, that there are noth­ing but be­gin­nings and end­ings of un­hap­pi­ness in this world, and that true fe­lic­ity is on­ly to be hoped for in an­oth­er sphere.”

“What a cu­ri­ous se­ries of trans­for­ma­tions! First an aquat­ic in­sect, next am­phibi­ous, then throw­ing away the or­gans for which it has no fur­ther use, and be­com­ing pro­vid­ed with those suit­ed to its new state!”

“Yes, my dear Fritz; and yet those com­pli­cat­ed and beau­ti­ful op­er­ations of Na­ture have not pre­vent­ed philoso­phers from as­sert­ing that the world re­sult­ed from _float­ing atoms_, which, by force of com­bi­na­tion, and af­ter an in­fin­ity of blind move­ments, con­glom­er­ate in­to plants, an­imals, men, heav­en, and earth.”

“I am on­ly a plain sailor,” said Willis “yet the eye of a worm teach­es me more than these philoso­phers seem to have imag­ined in their phi­los­ophy.”

“Such a sys­tem could on­ly have orig­inat­ed in Bed­lam or Char­en­ton.”

“No, Ernest, it is the sys­tem of Epi­cu­rus and Lu­cretius. With­out go­ing so far back, there are a thou­sand oth­ers quite as ridicu­lous, with which it is un­nec­es­sary to charge your young heads.”

“All mad­men are not in con­fine­ment, and it may be that Epi­cu­rus and Lu­cretius had ar­rived at those lim­its of hu­man rea­son, where ge­nius be­gins in some and fol­ly in oth­ers.”

“It is not that, Fritz; but if men, says Male­branche some­where,[A] are in­ter­est­ed in hav­ing the sides of an equi­lat­er­al tri­an­gle un­equal, and that false ge­om­etry was as agree­able to them as false phi­los­ophy, they would make the prob­lems equal­ly false in ge­om­etry as in moral­ity, for this sim­ple rea­son, that their er­rors af­ford them grat­ifi­ca­tion, whilst truth would on­ly hurt and an­noy them.”

“Very good,” ob­served Willis; “this Male­branche, as you call him, must have been an ad­mi­ral?”

“No, Willis, noth­ing more than a sim­ple philoso­pher, but one of good faith, like Socrates, who ad­mit­ted that what he knew best was, that he knew noth­ing.”

The sun had grad­ual­ly dis­ap­peared in the midst of pur­ple tinged clouds, leav­ing along the hori­zon at first a fringe of gold, then a sim­ple thread, and fi­nal­ly noth­ing but the re­flec­tion of his rays, sent to the earth by the lay­ers of at­mo­sphere,[B] like the adieu we re­ceive at the turn­ing of a road from a friend who is leav­ing us.

There was a fes­ti­val in the sky that night; the fir­ma­ment brought out, one by one, her cir­clet of di­amonds, till the whole were sparkling like a blaze of light; the pin­nace al­so left a fiery train in her wake, caused part­ly by elec­tric­ity and part­ly by the phos­pho­res­cent an­imal­cu­lae that peo­ple the ocean.

“Willis,” said Beck­er, “I leave it en­tire­ly to you to de­cide the in­stant of our re­turn.”

The Pi­lot changed at once the course of the boat, with­out at­tempt­ing to ut­ter a word, so heavy was his heart at this un­suc­cess­ful ter­mi­na­tion of the ex­pe­di­tion.

“It will be cu­ri­ous,” ob­served Fritz, “if we find the _Nel­son_, on our re­turn, snug­ly at an­chor in Safe­ty Bay.”

“I have a pre­sen­ti­ment,” said Jack; “and you will see that we have been play­ing at hide-​and-​seek with the _Nel­son_.”

Willis shook his head.

“Are there not a thou­sand ac­ci­dents to cause a ship to de­vi­ate from her route?”

“Yes, Mas­ter Ernest, there are ty­phoons, and the wa­ter­spouts of which I spoke to you be­fore. In such cas­es, ships of­ten de­vi­ate from their route, but gen­er­al­ly by go­ing to the bot­tom.”

Willis con­clud­ed this sen­tence with a ges­ture that de­fies de­scrip­tion, im­ply­ing an­ni­hi­la­tion.

“Re­mem­ber Ad­mi­ral Socrates, Willis,” said Jack; “_what I know best is, that I know noth­ing_, and avow that God has oth­er means of ac­com­plish­ing his de­crees be­sides ty­phoons and wa­ter­spouts.”

“My ex­cel­lent young friends, I know you want to in­spire me with hope, as they give a toy to a child to keep it from cry­ing, and I thank you for your good in­ten­tions. Now, for three days you have, so to speak, had no rest, and I in­sist on your prof­it­ing by this night to take some re­pose; and you al­so, Mr. Beck­er; I am quite able to man­age the pin­nace alone.”

“Yes pro­vid­ing you do not play us some trick, like that of this morn­ing, for in­stance.”

“All stratagems are jus­ti­fi­able in war. Mas­ter Ernest had fair warn­ing that I had an idea to work out. Be­sides, a pris­on­er, when un­der hatch­es, has the right to es­cape if he can: un­der pa­role, the case is quite dif­fer­ent.”

“Well, Willis, if you give me your sim­ple promise to steer straight for New Switzer­land, and awake me in two hours to take the bear­ings--”

“I give it, Mr. Beck­er.”

The three Green­lan­ders then de­scend­ed in­to the hold, for trop­ical nights are as chilly as the days are hot, and Beck­er, rolling him­self up in a sail, lay on deck.

In less than five min­utes they were all fast asleep, and Willis paced the deck, his arms crossed, and me­chan­ical­ly gaz­ing up­on a star that was mir­rored in the wa­ter.

“Sev­er­al years to come to us, and that at the rate of sev­en­ty thou­sand leagues a sec­ond--that is _a lit­tle_ too much.”

Then he went to the rud­der, his head lean­ing up­on his breast, and glanc­ing now and then with dis­tract­ed eye at the course of the boat, buried in a world of thought, sad and con­fused, doubt­less be­hold­ing in suc­ces­sion vi­sions of the _Nel­son_, of Su­san, and of Scot­land.

FOOT­NOTES:

[A] “Search af­ter Truth,” book ix.

[B] The twi­light is en­tire­ly ow­ing to this.