We were nigh a thousand leagues from rescue or help that day!

"Mutinied!" shrieks La Chesnaye, with his voice all athrill.
"Mutinied? What will my father have to say?"

And he clapped his tilted chair to floor with a thwack that might have
echoed to the fo'castle.

"Shall I lend you a trumpet, La Chesnaye, or--or a fife?" asks M.
Radisson, very quiet.

And I assure you there was no more loud talk in the cabin that day;
only the long, low wash and pound and break of the seas abeam, with the
surly wail that portends storm. I do not believe any of us ever
realized what a frail chip was between life and eternity till we heard
the wrenching and groaning of the timbers in the silence that followed
M. Radisson's words.

"Gentlemen," continues M. Radisson, softer-spoken than before, "if any
one here is for turning back, I desire him to stand up and say so."

The St. Pierre shipped a sea with a strain like to tear her asunder,
and waters went sizzling through lee scuppers above with the hiss of a
cataract. M. Radisson inverts a sand-glass and watches the sand
trickle through till the last grain drops. Then he turns to us.

Two or three faces had gone white as the driving spray, but never a man
opened his lips to counsel return.