"Five," the boy answered. "Five. To-day's Friday."
"No, no," I replied curtly. "Will you please shut up? Especially when you only darken counsel with many words. You're out of your reckoning. To-day's Saturday, I tell you."
And in point of fact, indeed, it really was Saturday.
"No, it's Friday," Martin went on with extraordinary persistence.
"Saturday," I repeated. "Knife; scissors: knife; scissors."
"But we got away from Tanaki eight days ago," the boy declared strongly with a very earnest face; "and it was Thursday when we left. I kept count of the days and nights all that awful time we were tossing about on the ocean alone, and I'm sure I'm right. To-day's Friday."
"Jim," I said, turning to my brother, "what day of the week do you make it?"
"Why, Saturday, of course," Jim answered with confidence.
I went to the bottom of the companion-ladder and called out aloud where the boy could hear me, "Tom Blake, what day of the week and month is it?"
"Saturday the sixth, sir," Tom called out.
"There, my boy," I said, turning to him, "you see you're mistaken. You've lost count of the time in this awful journey of yours. I expect you were half unconscious the last day and night. But, good heavens, Jim, just to think of what they've done! They've been out nine days and nights in an open boat, almost without food or drink, and they've come all that incredible distance before the high wind. Except with a ripping good breeze behind them they could never have done it."
"For my part," said Jim, looking up from his chart, "I can hardly understand how they ever did it at all. I declare, I call it nothing short of a miracle!"
And so indeed it was: for it seemed as though the wind had drifted them straight ahead from the moment they started in the exact direction where the _Albatross_ was to meet them.
I'm an old seafaring hand by this time, and I may be superstitious, but I see the finger of fate in such a coincidence as that one.
For the next two days we went steaming ahead as hard as we could go in a bee-line to the northeastward, in the direction of the Duke of Cumberland's Islands; and it was two days clear before those unfortunate boys, Jack and Martin--for that was what they called one another for short, in spite of their severely theological second names--were in a condition to tell us exactly what had happened, without danger to their shattered nerves and impaired digestions.