“You tell them,” he answered.  “That’s what you’ve got to do.  If you can only get them to realise that you’re right, they’ll be glad to put into the nearest port, and send us all ashore.”

I shook my head.

“Well, anyway, they’ll have to do something,” he replied, in answer to my gesture.  “We can’t go round the Horn, with the number of men we’ve lost.  We haven’t enough to handle her, if it comes on to blow.”

“You’ve forgotten, Tammy,” I said.  “Even if I could get the Old Man to believe I’d got at the truth of the matter, he couldn’t do anything.  Don’t you see, if I’m right, we couldn’t even see the land, if we made it.  We’re like blind men....”

“What on earth do you mean?” he interrupted.  “How do you make out we’re like blind men?  Of course we could see the land—­”

“Wait a minute! wait a minute!” I said.  “You don’t understand.  Didn’t I tell you?”

“Tell what?” he asked.

“About the ship I spotted,” I said.  “I thought you knew!”

“No,” he said.  “When?”

“Why,” I replied.  “You know when the Old Man sent me away from the wheel?”

“Yes,” he answered.  “You mean in the morning watch, day before yesterday?”

“Yes,” I said.  “Well, don’t you know what was the matter?”

“No,” he replied.  “That is, I heard you were snoozing at the wheel, and the Old Man came up and caught you.”

“That’s all a darned silly yarn!” I said.  And then I told him the whole truth of the affair.  After I had done that, I explained my idea about it, to him.

“Now you see what I mean?” I asked.

“You mean that this strange atmosphere—­or whatever it is—­we’re in, would not allow us to see another ship?” he asked, a bit awestruck.

“Yes,” I said.  “But the point I wanted you to see, is that if we can’t see another vessel, even when she’s quite close, then, in the same way, we shouldn’t be able to see land.  To all intents and purposes we’re blind.  Just you think of it!  We’re out in the middle of the briny, doing a sort of eternal blind man’s hop.  The Old Man couldn’t put into port, even if he wanted to.  He’d run us bang on shore, without our ever seeing it.”

“What are we going to do, then?” he asked, in a despairing sort of way.  “Do you mean to say we can’t do anything?  Surely something can be done!  It’s terrible!”

For perhaps a minute, we walked up and down, in the light from the different lanterns.  Then he spoke again.

“We might be run down, then,” he said, “and never even see the other vessel?”

“It’s possible,” I replied.  “Though, from what I saw, it’s evident that we’re quite visible; so that it would be easy for them to see us, and steer clear of us, even though we couldn’t see them.”

“And we might run into something, and never see it?” he asked me, following up the train of thought.

“Yes,” I said.  “Only there’s nothing to stop the other ship from getting out of our way.”