The note of the preacher in this did not embarrass Bellair, as it would have done before the _Jade’s_ sinking. “He will be a great power,” Fleury went on, for the heart of the mother. “These things which for him pass unconsciously, will form him nevertheless. They will do their work within; and when he is grown he will know what to do and say.” “How do you know?” the mother asked. “Chiefly because I believe in you,” he answered. “I want him to live,” she said. “We want that, too,” said Fleury. Bellair felt himself nodding in the dark. “If he is to be a great man, he will have to live through his first--at least, through this adventure.” The meaning came very pure to Bellair. It had to do with crackers and water for the nourishment of the child. So strong and sure was her own fortitude that she did not need to say she was thinking only of food and drink for him. It meant to Bellair, “If I cannot nurse him, he will die.” He regarded the length and beam of the small boat. It was not more than eighteen feet long--and only the Polar seas could be emptier than this vast southern ocean. The nights would be more easily endured, but the days, one long burning. Still it would not be torrid heat; they were too far south for that. The thought of storm, he kept in the background of his mind. They all did. Roughly estimated, there was food and water enough for them to live without great agony for a week, possibly for a day or two over, but Stackhouse was not a part of this consideration. He could not live a week without an abnormal consumption of water.... Fleury was talking about the stars. They would see Venus before dawn, he said; the great one in their meridian now was Jupiter. “If we had a marine-glass, we would be able to see his moons.... That,” he pointed to the brightest of the fixed stars, a splendid yellow gleam in the east, “that is Canopus, never seen north of the Gulf States at Home. It’s so mighty that our little earth would turn molten in ten seconds if it came as near as our sun.” Bellair leaned toward him listening. The preacher pointed out the Southern Cross, and Alpha Centauri, almost the nearest of the sun’s neighbours.