Only, I will ask you what you mean
by a `Happy New Year' under our circumstances? Do you mean
the year that will bring us to the end of our imprisonment,
or the year that sees us continue this strange voyage?"
"Really, I do not know how to answer, master. We are sure to see
curious things, and for the last two months we have not had time
for dullness. The last marvel is always the most astonishing;
and, if we continue this progression, I do not know how it will end.
It is my opinion that we shall never again see the like.
I think then, with no offence to master, that a happy year would be
one in which we could see everything."
On 2nd January we had made 11,340 miles, or 5,250
French leagues, since our starting-point in the Japan Seas.
Before the ship's head stretched the dangerous shores
of the coral sea, on the north-east coast of Australia.
Our boat lay along some miles from the redoubtable bank
on which Cook's vessel was lost, 10th June, 1770. The boat
in which Cook was struck on a rock, and, if it did not sink,
it was owing to a piece of coral that was broken by the shock,
and fixed itself in the broken keel.
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