Woosung you have to get hold of two bamboo poles stuck up on the bank a
hundred feet apart as a leading mark, and, with these in range, steer for
the bar. The channel is very narrow, and he says the _Nautilus_ would
have to wait for high water, perhaps for the spring tide. She may have
got ashore, strained and sprung a leak, and had to discharge her cargo
for repairs."

"That's never Gerrit," the elder replied positively. "There isn't a
better master afloat. He can smell shoal water. I was certain we'd hear
from him when the _Sorsogon_ was back from Calcutta. Do you suppose,
William, that he took the _Nautilus_ about the Horn and--?" Laurel
wondered at the unmannerly way in which he gulped his coffee. "He might
have driven into the Antarctic winter," he proceeded. "My deck was swept
and all the boats stove off the Falklands in April."

"Gerrit's got a ship," the other asserted, "not a hermaphrodite brig
built like a butter box. You'll find that I am right and that he has been
tied up in port."

"I made eight hundred per cent on a first cargo for my owners," the elder
retorted. "Then there was trading, yes, and sailing, too. No chronometers
with confounded rates of variation and other fancy parlor instruments to
read your position from. When I first navigated it was with an astrolabe
and the moon. A master knew his lead, latitude and lookout then.

"Eight hundred barrels of flour and pine boards to Rio and back with
coffee and hides for Salem," he continued; "then out to Gibraltar and
Brazil with wine and on in ballast for Calcutta. Tahiti and Morea, the
Sandwich Islands and the Feejees. Sandalwood and tortoise shell and beche
de mer; sea horses' teeth, and saltpeter for the Chinese Government. I