This astonished him, and Mrs. Weldon, by some words which escaped him,
understood that astonishment.

It was the 9th of March. The novice kept at the prow, sometimes
observing the sea and the sky, sometimes looking at the "Pilgrim's"
masting, which began to strain under the force of the wind.

"You see nothing yet, Dick?" she asked him, at a moment when he had
just left the long lookout.

"Nothing, Mrs. Weldon, nothing," replied the novice; and meanwhile, the
horizon seems to clear a little under this violent wind, which is going
to blow still harder."

"And, according to you, Dick, the American coast ought not to be
distant now."

"It cannot be, Mrs. Weldon, and if anything astonishes me, it is not
having made it yet."

"Meanwhile," continued Mrs. Weldon, "the ship has always followed the
right course."

"Always, since the wind settled in the northwest," replied Dick Sand;
"that is to say, since the day when we lost our unfortunate captain and
his crew. That was the 10th of February. We are now on the 9th of
March. There have been then, twenty-seven since that."

"But at that period what distance were we from the coast?" asked Mrs.