"So it is not surprising that we should cry out very frequently 'A sail, a sail!' when there was not a sail perhaps within many hundred miles of us.
"Well, as I was going to say, the Dean and I sat upon the hillside overlooking the sea, thinking the icebergs were ships, or hoping so at least, until hope died away, and then it was that we fell to talking.
"'Do you think, Hardy,' asked the Dean, 'that any other ship than ours ever did come this way or ever will?'
"'I'm afraid not,' said I; and I must have looked very despondent about it, as in truth I was,--much more so than I would have liked to own.
"I had not considered what the Dean was about, for he was despondent enough himself, and no doubt wished very hard that I might say something to cheer him up a bit; but, instead of doing that, I only made him worse, whereupon he seemed to grow angry, and in a rather snappish way he inquired of me if I knew what I was.
"'No,' said I, quite taken aback. 'What do you mean?'
"'Mean!' exclaimed the Dean. 'Why, I mean to say,'--and he spoke in a positive way that was not usual with him,--'I mean to say,' said he, 'that you are a regular Job's comforter, and no mistake.'
"I had not the least idea at that period of my life as to what kind of a thing a Job's comforter was. I had a vague notion that it was something to go round the neck, and I protested that I was nothing of the sort.
"'Yes, you are, and you know you are,' went on the Dean,--'a regular Job's comforter,--croaking all the time, and never seeing any way out of our troubles at all.'
"'I should like to know,' said I,--and I thought I had him there,--'how I can see any way out of our troubles when there isn't any!'
"'Well, you can think there is, if there isn't,--can't you?' and the Dean was ten times more snappish than he was before; and, having thus delivered himself, he snapped himself up and snapped himself off in a great hurry; but, as the little fellow turned to go away, I thought I saw great big tears stealing down his cheeks. I thought that his voice trembled over the last words; and when he went behind a rock and hid himself, I knew that he had gone away to cry, and that he had been ashamed to cry where I could see him.
