I am afraid that when that crash came the Chief Engineer laughed. He had seen nothing of the incidents on deck, but the sudden grounding of the yacht, after the strange vacillations of the telegraph, suggested that Ching had blundered badly. And Ewing, as a platonic rival with Ching for the favours of Madame Gilbert, was not disposed to cry over the Skipper's troubles. He gave full speed astern with a will and under the hefty pull of the twin screws the yacht was dragged off within a few seconds. The tide happily was flowing.
"Keep her so," ordered the boy, indicating the correct course with his hand, and the Skipper, to his own surprise, kept her so. There was an intimate local knowledge and a masterful confidence about this intrusive Melanesian which made him irresistible.
From that moment, extraordinary as it may seem to the reader, that strange boy took charge. He set the backward course, and kept the Humming Top at full speed astern for more than three miles. Ching had overshot a hidden turning in the channel; he had run into a narrow byway in which there was no space for so long a vessel to turn round. She was 230 feet over all. The new pilot quite evidently needed no chart, and possibly would not have understood one had it been spread before him. Every reef and bank was as familiar to him from constant sailing by them as are the streets of one's native town. He conned the Humming Top by movements of his hand, for though he understood the uses of an engine-room telegraph, that other telegraph which controlled the wheel below was apparently strange to him. He gave his orders by signs and the rightful skipper humbly obeyed. It was a triumph of intensive local experience over professional training.
When he had backed the yacht a sufficient distance to satisfy his own judgment this boy sent her forward once more—not at poor Ching's cautious dead slow or half speed, but at a ramping eleven knots—following the windings of the deep waterways with consummate assurance. Now and then, when it seemed to the eye of Ching that he was running straight upon surf-broken dangers, a sailor would be ordered forward with the lead, but the result was always the same. The depth was never less than ten fathoms, and the broken water was an innocuous tide rip.
This went on for more than an hour, the evening drew on, and Ching, at last convinced that he was in the hands of a master of the Coral Sea, spoke. Hitherto he had obeyed the signs of the boy, obeyed though savagely reluctant, yet had said nothing. Now he spoke.
"Are you a pilot, boy?"
"Oh, no. I am no pilot. I am very rich and do not work. I was sailing down to Thursday Island in my yawl—to see my banker and collect my money. I have much money. When I saw you running this nice ship on the Warrior Reefs I sailed across to show you the proper way. No pearl raking pilot can teach me anything. They are no good, no good at all."
"You seem to know the channels," assented Ching.
"All of them," said the boy. "Not these only for a big big ship, but the little ones too. I do not sail in and out as I am taking you now. I cut across wherever I please. There is always water to be found if one knows where to look for it."
"It is getting dark," said Ching, "and there is a short twilight in these latitudes. Can you see or shall we anchor now?"