"Yes, Dominique, but I don't think that she wants to trade at all. What she wants to do is to lie up quietly, where she would not be noticed."
"Plenty of places in the islands for dat, sar."
"Did they take a pilot here?"
Dominique shook his head.
"No, sar; several offers, but no take. If want to hide, they no want pilot from here; they take up a fisherman among the islands, to show dem good place. But plenty of places much better in San Domingo or Cuba. Why dey stop Virgin Islands? Little places, many got no water, no food, no noting but bare rock."
"I think that they would go in there, because, as the hurricane season had begun when they got here, they would think it better to run into the port."
"Hurricane not bad here, sar; bery bad down at what English call Leeward Islands. Have dem sometimes here, not bery often; had one four days ago, one ob de worse me remember. We not likely to have another dis year."
"That is satisfactory, Dominique, We got caught in it the other day, and I don't want to meet another. Well, you understand what I want. To begin with, to search all the places a vessel that did not want to attract notice would be likely to lie up in. We want to question people as to whether she has been seen, and if we don't find her, to hear whether, when last seen, she was sailing in the direction of the Leeward Islands, or going west."
"Me find out, sar," the negro said, confidently. "Someone sure to have seen her."
"Well, you had better come below. I have got a chart, and you shall mark all the islands where there are any bays that she would be likely to take shelter in, and we can then see the order in which we had better take them."