“My dear girls, you really must listen to reason. What you propose to do is so absurd that it doesn’t even admit of argument. Why, it’s a filibustering expedition, that’s what it is. You girls are as crazy as Walker of Nicaragua. Do you imagine that a retired Captain of the United States Navy is going to take command of a pirate craft of far less legal standing than the ‘Alabama,’ for then we were at war, but now we are at peace. Do you actually propose to attack the domain of a friendly country! Oh!” cried the Captain, with a mighty explosion of breath, for at this point his supply of language entirely gave out.
“No one would know anything about it,” persisted Katherine.
“Not know about it? With a crew of men picked up here in New York, and coming back to New York? Not know about it? Bless my soul, the papers would be full of it before your men were an hour on shore. In the first place, you’d never find the rock.”
“Then what’s the harm of going in search of it?” demanded his daughter. “Besides that, Johnson knows exactly where it is.”
“Johnson, Johnson! You’re surely not silly enough to believe Johnson’s cock-and-bull story?”
“I believe every syllable he uttered. The man’s face showed that he was speaking the truth.”
“But, my dear Kate, you didn’t see him at all, as I understand the yarn. He was here alone with you, was he not, Dorothy?”
“I told Kate all about it, and gave my own impression of the man’s appearance.”
“You are too sensible a girl to place any credit in what he said, surely?”
“I did believe him, nevertheless,” replied Dorothy.
“Why, look you here. False in one thing, false in all. I’ll just take a single point. He speaks of a spring sending water through the cells up there in the rock. Now, that is an impossibility. Wherever a spring exists, it comes from a source higher than itself.”
“There are lots of springs up in the mountains,” interrupted Katherine. “I know one on Mount Washington that is ten times as high as the rock in the Baltic.”
“Quite so, Katherine, quite so, but nevertheless there is a lake, subterraneous or above ground, which feeds your White Mountain spring, and such a lake must be situated higher than the spring is. Why, girl, you ought to study hydrometeorology as well as chemistry. Here is a rock jutting up in midocean--”