"_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,
same as you and me. Whereby I allow it must come in time, though my
head don't seem to get no grip on it."
Captain Coffin stared for a moment at a sheet of paper on which he
had been scribbling figures, and passed it over to me, with a sigh.
"There! What d'you make of it?"
At a glance I saw that nothing could be made of it. The figures
crossed one another, and ran askew; here and there they trailed off
into mere illegibility. In the left-hand bottom corner I saw a 3 set
under a 10, and beneath it the result--17--underlined, which, as a
sum, left much to be desired, whether you took it in addition,
subtraction, multiplication, or division.
"And yet," he went on plaintively, "there's hundreds can do it--even
ord'nary men.
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