‘Fine, clear night, sir; the stars plentiful and the moon arising; the wind’s drawed a bit norradly, and’s briskening at that; yet it keeps a draught, with nothing noticeable in the shape of weight in it. Well, your honour, and you, Mr. Monson, sir, and you, my lady, all I’m sure I can say, is, here’s luck,’ and down went the wine. ‘Captain,’ said Sir Wilfrid, ‘oblige me by giving Mr. Monson your views of the chase we have started upon.’ Finn put down the wine-glass and dried his lips on a pocket handkerchief of the size of a small ensign. ‘Well,’ he began, with a nervous uneasy twisting about of his legs and feet, ‘my view’s this: Fidler isn’t likely to take any other road to the Cape than the one that’s followed by the Indiemen. Now,’ said he, laying a forefinger in the palm of his big hand, yellow still with ancient stains of tar, whilst Wilfrid watched him in his near-sighted way, leaning forward in the posture of one absorbed by what is said, ‘you may take that there road as skirting the Bay o’ Biscay and striking the latitude of forty at about fifteen degrees east; then a south by west half west course for the Canaries; the Equator to be cut at twenty-five degrees west, and a straight course for Trinidad to follow with a clean brace up to the South-east trades. What d’ye think, sir?’ ‘Oh, ’tis about the road, no doubt,’ said I, for whatever might have been my thoughts, I had no intention to drop a discouraging syllable then before Finn in my cousin’s hearing. ‘But,’ said the captain, eyeing me nervously and anxiously, ‘if so be as we should have the luck to fall into that there “Shark’s” wake, you know, we shan’t need to trouble ourselves with the course to the Cape south of the Equator.’ ‘Of course not,’ exclaimed Sir Wilfrid. ‘By which I mean to say,’ continued the captain, giving his back hair a pull as though it were some bell-rope with which he desired to ring up the invention or imagination that lay drowsy in his brain, ‘that if we aren’t on to the “Shark” this side the Line it’ll be better for us to tarn to and make up our mind to crack on all for Table Bay to be there afore her, without further troubling ourselves about her heaving in sight, though, of course, the same bright look-out’ll be kept.’ ‘Good,’ said Wilfrid with a heavy emphatic nod; ‘that’s not to be bettered, I think, Charles.’ ‘I suppose,’ said I, addressing Finn, ‘that, though your hope will be to pick up the “Shark” any day after a given period, and though you’ll follow the scent of her as closely as your conjecture of Fidler’s navigation will admit, you will still go on sweating--pray pardon this word in its sea sense, Miss Jennings--your craft as though the one business of the expedition was to make the swiftest possible passage to the Cape of Good Hope?’ ‘Ay, never sparing a cloth, sir, and she’s something to jockey, Mr. Monson. You don’t know her yet, sir.’ ‘The “Shark”’s a fore-and-aft schooner?’ ‘Yes,’ he answered.