"Good Lord!" said Captain Branscome for the third time. "And it's
Saturday, too! You'll excuse me a moment."

With that he caught up the letter, and made a dart up the wooden
staircase, which led straight from a corner of the room through a
square hole in the ceiling to his upper chamber.

"Money again!" said Captain Coffin, turning his eyes upon me and
blinking. "Nothing like money!"

He picked up a pair of compasses, spread them out on the paper of
figures before him, and looked up again with a sly, silly smile.

"You won't guess what I'm doing?" he challenged.

"No."

"I'm studyin' navigation. Cap'n Branscome's larnin' it to me. Some
people has luck an' some has heads; an' with a head on my shoulders
same as I had at your age, I'd be Prime Minister an' Lord Mayor of
Lunnon rolled into one, by crum!" He reached across for Captain
Branscome's sextant, and held it between his shaking hands.
"_He_ can do it; hundreds o' men--thick-headed men in the ord'nary
way--can do it; take a vessel out o' Falmouth here, as you might say,
and hold her 'crost the Atlantic, as you might put it; whip her along
for thirty days, we'll say; an' then, 'To-morrow, if the wind holds,
an' about six in the mornin',' they'll say, 'there'll be an island
with a two-three palm-trees on a hill an' a spit o' sand bearing
nor'-by-west. Bring 'em in line,' they'll say, 'an' then you may
fetch my shaving-water'--and all the while no more'n ordinary men,