"I shall have to do without a pilot most of the time," said he. "There is a large regular trade and not enough pilots to supply wandering yachts. We must go back to the methods of Drake and Cook—keep the lead going by day and lie up at night. A sailor can smell his way along anywhere if he is not pressed for time."
Madame promised him all the time that there was—she was enjoying herself and in no hurry to get at grips with the problem of the Twenty-Eighth Baron of Topsham. Every week which passed at sea made the purpose of her voyage seem more bizarre and incredible. Yet she was constantly reminded of its reality. Though they knew it not, here were Ching and Ewing, together with some two dozen officers and men, at a cost which ran into hundreds of pounds a week, steaming to the ends of the earth solely for that bizarre and incredible purpose. Madame had made her own position luminously clear. She was going with no plan and under no promise. She was not going to smother Willatopy or tip him into the sea—which would have been of little use since he swam like a dolphin. She was not going to poison his food or even to kidnap him. She was simply going to see what this half-caste Baron looked like and to order her movements in accordance with her impressions. She talked with Ching and Ewing upon every subject in earth or heaven except this one. The Family Secret must remain secret until the day arrived when secrecy should avail nothing. When that day would dawn Madame had no idea. To anyone except Sir John Toppys—and curiously enough Roger Gatepath—the whole expedition would have seemed a ridiculous waste of money. But both of them were at their wits' end, and both of them had a childlike faith in Madame Gilbert's lively intelligence and resource. Something striking would result from the voyage, of that they felt convinced; though what it would be they had no conception. Neither had Madame. Yet she went. The Family Misfortune intrigued her, and she wanted to see it at close quarters, and to make it crawl to her feet and eat out of her hand.
When at last they warped up at Auckland Ewing himself sounded the fuel tanks in the Humming Top's double bottom. He had sworn by his holy gods—the twin high-speed Parson-cum-Denny geared turbines—that the yacht would run from Panama to Auckland, via Lima and Valparaiso, on the 230 tons of fuel oil which she bore away from the Canal Zone. She had done it, and the Chief was curious to see by what small margin his judgment as Engineer had been saved from derision. The margin was just nine tons, say 270 miles of steaming at eleven knots.
"Thirty miles to the ton or thereby," murmured he, "and very good wor-r-k too. Yon's a useful figure to bear in one's heid."
At Auckland he filled up chock a block, side bunkers and ballast tanks, and felt confident that he could go up to Thursday Island, toddle about at low speed in the Straits so long as it pleased Madame to toddle, and then make his way back to the Auckland tanks while, so to speak, some shots remained unburnt in his locker. But the price of oil at the Antipodes struck horror to his thrifty heart. Suppose—it was an awful suppose—Sir John Toppys, obdurate to the wheedlings of Madame, who had promised to do her utmost to make the owner waive his share, should insist on debiting the cost of the voyage to that "owner's share" of the illicit profits. It was a dreadful supposition. Ewing thrust it from his consciousness; even the Idle Rich could not be so utterly soulless.
At Auckland in addition to the stores of oil fuel they shipped trading goods for the Islands, and stowed them carefully away in the empty cabins and in the snug wee hold which had already served the adventurers so well. These saleable commodities were designed to give to the wandering yacht a commercial status, and might possibly, almost certainly, add some few dollars of profit to their bursting treasury.
"One can never make too much profit," explained Ewing, "especially when one doesn't pay any excess taxes to an extortionate English Government. Cash, in American dollars, tells no tales."
Ewing had already decided that the Humming Top should look in at an American port on the way home, and that the boodle should be deposited out of harm's way under the protection of the Stars and Stripes. A dread lest the tax gatherers of England might yet grab some of it possessed him. In his management of the Auckland stores his genius for finance rose to lofty heights.
"We will invest the alleged share of Sir John Toppys in this Island trade," declared he. "If we make a loss—and it is not a business which I vairy clearly comprehend—then the loss will fall upon the Owner of the yacht. Which is just. Idle and rich owners must take some risk; that is what they are for. If we realise a profit—and my friends here say that the Islands are stripped and will buy anything ravenously—if we realise a profit, of course it belongs to us who have airned it. To me and Ching," he added hastily, lest Madame should intrude with a claim. "Sir John's share will be put back, untouched; we are honest men."
When Madame hinted that righteous dealing had not quite been given a full rein, Ewing protested sorrowfully that as an operation of business what he proposed was spotless, white as driven snow on the bonny hills of Scotland.