“I expect you’re jollying me a bit,” replied the diver, “but honest Injun you know he couldn’t make a nonstop flight to South America from here and if he took a course for there our job would be all the easier. There are only a few islands between here and South America, in a direct line you know. I think the best place to ask will be Statia or St. Croix. Then, if they haven’t seen or heard him, we can swing to the east to St. Kitts or St. Barts.”
“I’m backing your hunch you know, Rawlins,” asserted Mr. Pauling, “and if you say St. Croix first, St. Croix it is. We’re outside now and we’d better give Commander Disbrow his course.”
“Well, I guess we’ll make it Statia first,” replied Rawlins after a moment’s thought. “It’s the nearest and in nearly a direct line with the course he took. Besides, the Dutch captain of the tramp may still be in the hospital there. If he is we can see him and maybe pump some information from him. Perhaps, if he knows his ship’s gone to Davy Jones and the others have skedaddled he’ll come across with a confession to clear his own skirts.”
“Yes, that’s a good scheme,” agreed Mr. Pauling. “We’ll make Statia first then.”
The two boys had thought St. Thomas and St. John fascinating and beautiful, but as the towering volcanic cone of St. Eustatius or “Statia” as it is more often called, rose above the sea with the far reaching, rich green hills and cloud-piercing, frowning heights of St. Kitts to the east, they could only gaze in rapt admiration and declared they had never seen anything so wonderful or beautiful.
“Wait until you see the other islands,” said Rawlins, laughing at the boys’ excited exclamations of delight. “Why, St. Kitts over there isn’t anything compared to Dominica or Martinique and as for Statia--well of course it looks high and it’s striking because it’s small and the cone is so perfect in shape, but it’s no bigger than little St. John and it would be only a hill on Guadeloupe or Dominica.”
“Gee, I hope the old seaplane went everywhere so we can see all the islands,” declared Tom. “It’s a shame we are down here and won’t see those you talk about.”
“Maybe we will,” said the diver. “At any rate, we’re bound to see some of them, but look over there to the west. See that big cone sticking up to the right of Statia? Well that’s the strangest island in the West Indies if not in the world. It’s Saba.”
“But no one lives there!” complained Frank, who was studying the conical mass of rock rising abruptly for a thousand feet above the sea.
“Don’t they!” exclaimed Rawlins. “I’ll say they do! But you can’t see ’em or their houses from the sea. Saba’s just a big volcano--dead of course. The town’s in the crater--about eight hundred feet above the sea. It’s called ‘Bottom.’ The people are Dutch and speak English and if you visited ’em you’d have to climb a stairway cut in the rocks with eight hundred steps. And I’ll bet my boots to a herring you can’t guess what the folks who live up in that crater do for a living.”