So Dick Sand must watch himself, and he often climbed as far as the spars to see better.

But no sign yet of the American coast.
This astonished him, and Mrs.Weldon, by some words which escaped him, understood that astonishment.
It was the 9th of March.

The novice kept at the prow, sometimes observing the sea and the sky, sometimes looking at the "Pilgrim's" masting, which began to strain under the force of the wind.
"You see nothing yet, Dick ?" she asked him, at a moment when he had just left the long lookout.
"Nothing, Mrs.Weldon, nothing," replied the novice; and meanwhile, the horizon seems to clear a little under this violent wind, which is going to blow still harder." "And, according to you, Dick, the American coast ought not to be distant now." "It cannot be, Mrs.Weldon, and if anything astonishes me, it is not having made it yet." "Meanwhile," continued Mrs.Weldon, "the ship has always followed the right course." "Always, since the wind settled in the northwest," replied Dick Sand; "that is to say, since the day when we lost our unfortunate captain and his crew.

That was the 10th of February.

We are now on the 9th of March.