Here was I,
placed by strange circumstances in command of two vessels, a
schooner and a barque, and without the power or skill to take
either of them into port--not knowing, indeed, where a port could
be found. Had Davie Flett, Peter, and Jerry still been with me on
the Falcon, we might have taken the Pilgrim to Stromness; we might
also have given to her crew, or what remained of them, the decent
burial for which they had waited so long. But, as things stood, I
should have been thankful if I could have simply foreseen the
possibility of getting out of my position of difficulty, regardless
of either vessel. The sight of those dead bodies on the Pilgrim had
made me utterly downcast. Their terrible fate had suggested to me
the uncertainty of my own.
When I had taken some breakfast, I again went aboard the Pilgrim. I
discovered that her cargo consisted for the most part of sulphur.
Now, sulphur I knew to be a product of Iceland, and I judged from
this that the ship had touched at that northern island.
I went into the chart room. A couple of charts were spread out on a
couch. One of them was a chart of the north of Scotland, including
the Orkney and Shetland Islands; the second was a continuation of
the first, and gave the whole coast of Iceland and the sea beyond
as high as the seventy-seventh degree of north latitude.
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