This remark forcibly appealed to Elliott; he had said the same thing many times to himself.
It became a trifle cooler after the steamer passed the dessicated headland of Aden and put out upon the broad Indian Ocean. The weather remained fine, and there was every prospect of a quick passage to Bombay. With the lowering of the temperature, the irrepressible British instinct for games reappeared, and there were deck quoits, deck cricket, blindfold races, and a violent sort of tournament in which the combatants aimed to knock one another with pillows from a spar which they sat astride. Under the humanizing influence of these diversions Elliott found his fellow passengers less unapproachable than they had seemed, but he still spent many hours with Sevier, for whom he had conceived a genuine liking. The two Americans were further bound together by a common conviction of the absurdity of violent exertion with the thermometer in the eighties.
On the third day after leaving the Red Sea, Elliott happened to pass down the main stairway as the third officer was putting up the daily chart of the ship’s progress. He paused to look at it. The steamer was then, it occurred to him, close to the point where the Italian ship had picked up the mate of the Clara McClay.
He took from his pocket a map which he had made, and consulted it. This map showed the hypothetical course of the wrecked gold-ship in a red line, with dotted lines indicating the probable course of the driftings of both the mate’s boat and Bennett’s raft. As nearly as he could judge, the liner must indeed be at that moment almost upon the spot where the secret of the position of the wrecked treasure was saved, in the person of the Irishman.
He was still looking at the map when Sevier came quietly down the stairs, paused on the step above him, and glanced over his shoulder. Elliott dropped the map to his side, and then, ashamed of this childish attempt at concealment, raised it again boldly.
“Layin’ off a chart of your voyages?” inquired Sevier. “Ever been down there?” putting his finger on the Mozambique Channel.
“No, I never was,” answered Elliott, somewhat startled at the question.
“Neither was I. I’ve been told that there’s no more dangerous water in the world. They say the currents run like a mill-race through that channel, in different directions, according to the tides. The coast’s covered with wreckage. I thought you might have sailed along that red line you’ve marked.”
“No, I don’t know anything about the place,” Elliott denied again, putting the map in his pocket.
“Thinking of going there?”