Captain Higgins never queried owners’ orders.
“Very good, sir,” he replied, stolidly, and walked out of the cabin.
A minute or two later we felt the yacht swing round. There is always something impressive when a ship on the open sea goes about upon her course, but I never felt it more powerfully than then. It seemed that there was a fateful significance in our deliberate action.
Geoffrey meanwhile was poring over the sheet of paper on which he had transcribed his sister’s reversed scrawl.
“It’s all perfectly clear,” he said, triumphantly. “We’ve got to make this island of Santa Katalina, thirteen-twenty-four North, eighty-one twenty-seven West, try and find a place called Skull Point, look for three trees south-west-by-south of it, and dig! We understand every word of it now!”
“All except the word ‘lucia’” I corrected, “and whose turn it is.”
“Yes—there’s that,” he said, dubiously. “I suppose every word has some meaning.”
“You can bet it has!” I replied, half sarcastically humouring his credulity, half surrendering myself to an uncritical acception of these mysteriously given directions. “I wonder who this John Dawson was—if he existed?”
“He’s a sure-enough ghost of some old pirate!” said Vandermeulen, with complete conviction. “And I guess he’s putting us fair and good on to his pile!”