Truck announced his intentions to
stand as far south as he could to strike the trades, and then to make a
fair wind of it across the Atlantic, unless, indeed, he might be able to
fetch into the Cape de Verde Islands, where it would be possible, perhaps,
to get something like a now outfit.
"All I now ask, my dear young lady," he said to Eve, who ventured on deck
to look at the desolation, as soon the wreck was cut adrift, "all I now
ask, my dear young lady, is an end to westerly winds for two or three
weeks, and I will promise to place you all in America yet, in time to eat
your Christmas dinner. I do not think Sir George will shoot many white
bears among the Rocky Mountains this year, but then there will be so many
more left for another season. The ship is in a category, and he will be an
impudent scoundrel who denies it; but worse categories than this have been
reasoned out of countenance. All head-sail is not a convenient show of
cloth to claw off a lee-shore with; but I still hope to escape the
misfortune of laying eyes on the coast of Africa."
"Are we far from it?" asked Eve, who sufficiently understood the danger of
being on an uninhabitable shore in their present situation; one in which
it was vain to seek for a port. "I would rather be in the neighbourhood of
any other land, I think, than that of Africa.
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