‘It will all come right,’ said I, looking at my watch. ‘I must make ready now for taking sights, and letting the carpenter know the determination I have arrived at. Back me, Miss Temple, in my efforts by the utmost exertion of your tact. And now, come on deck with me, will you? There is life in the fresh and frothing scene outside, and you will find courage in the mere sight of the wide horizon, with thoughts of what lies behind it, and how time will work all things to your wishes.’ I entered the captain’s cabin to fetch a sextant, and then, with Miss Temple, went on deck. Lush was marching up and down the weather side of the poop. The sailors were sprawling about forward in whatever shadowings of the canvas they could find, most of them smoking, their faces red as powder-flags with the heat. Hot it was, with the sun shining nearly over our mastheads, with a sting like to some fierce bite in every flashing launch of his radiance betwixt the wool-white clouds blowing transversely athwart his path, spite of the strong sweep of the wind as it came splitting in long whistlings upon our rigging from a little forward of the beam, the rush of it feeling almost damp to the flesh to the view of the foaming waters melting into yeast out of the long blue lines of the Atlantic surge. The barque, making a fair breeze of it, was storming through the seas in noble style, shouldering off vast masses of throbbing white from her weather bow with a wake twisting away astern of her of twice her beam in width, a broad path of glittering, leaping, blowing crystals and foam-flakes and creaming eddies rising and falling for a mile astern into the windy blue there, full of fire and snow as it looked with the spume of breaking waves and the splendour of the darting sunlight. The carpenter came to a stand when I arrived. I went up to him at once, Miss Temple at my side. ‘I have thought the matter over,’ I said, ‘and accept the men’s terms.’ ‘Glad to hear it,’ he answered, with a slow smile breaking sulkily through his surly countenance. ‘If you care about a written hundertaking’—— ‘No,’ I interrupted contemptuously; ‘my agreement is based on yours. If you do not hold piously to every article of it, I drop my part.’ He viewed me with his head slightly on one side, but without any appearance of resentment at my peremptory tone. Coarse and unlettered as the fellow was, he had discernment enough to witness what he would regard as sincerity of purpose in my very outspokenness. ‘All you’ve got to do,’ said he, ‘is to carry us to that there island. You do your bit, and you’ll have no occasion to grumble at us for not doing ourn. But—you’ll _do_ it. You onderstand me, Mr. Dugdale? So long as you’re honest, you’ll find _us_ honest.’