"Yes, by George!' said I hurriedly to Westwood and Jones, 'that's a trick! The fellow means to give us the slip. Clap the helm down, Mr Snelling, and haul aft the sheets there—luff, luff!' We were losing our weather-gage; in fact, the Indiaman must actually be to windward of us ere then, and if the breeze freshened we might lose them altogether. The thing that troubled me most was, that I couldn't believe the man had thought of such a plan himself; and if he once took a hint from any of the scoundrels I knew were aboard, why, there was no saying what might be the upshot in the end. Finch was a common enough character at bottom; but with such notions as I was sure were working in his head about Miss Hyde, one step might lead him on to another, till any chance occasion might make a desperate villain of him, especially if he suspected myself of aught like good fortune with the young lady. It wasn't much past midnight, the air was wonderfully heavy and sweltering, and the swell going down, when we heard a murmur amongst the men on the forecastle, and saw a red fire-ball pass high over to nor'ard for half-a-minute, leaving a trail in the dark sky beyond the headsails.
"A queer ghastly sort of ruddy gray streak opened out in the black of the horizon, where some of them thought they made out the ship; but soon after we could hear a low hollow kind of a hum, rushing as it were from east to west, till it grew almost like the sound of waves on a beach; which made us begin to look to ourselves. There was a bright line of light directly in the opposite quarter, and the sea far away seemed getting on fire, with a noise and hubbub coming along below, that nobody appeared to know the meaning of; while aloft it was as still as a church. For a moment I saw the Seringapatam quite plainly several miles off; but from the confusion, I never could say whether it was north or east; in fact, we kept watching the canvas, expecting to have a hurricane into it next minute. Suddenly the sea came gleam-gleaming and flickering on, as it were, with a washing bubble and a hissing smother of foam, till it splashed right against our larboard bulwarks, heaping up like perfect fire upon the schooner's side, and running past both stern and bows, away with a long rolling flash to the other horizon. All was pitch-dark again after that, and a whisper went about our decks and round the binnacle lamp of 'The ripples!—It's the ripples!' [27] 'Nothing more, sir!' said Jones, even he seemingly taken by surprise at first. Twice again we had it, though each time fainter, right out of the midst of the gloom; after which it was as calm as before. 'Thank God!' said I, breathing hard, 'we'll have that Indiaman in the morning, at any rate!' 'Why, sir,' answered Jones, thoughtfully, 'after this we are likely to have the south-west monsoon upon us ere long—'tis just the place and the season for it.'
"And so it was. Instead of sighting the Seringapatam at daybreak, I had a strong suspicion she had gone to eastward; but of course the faster the schooner was, why if it were the wrong way we should only get from her the farther, and miss her altogether, without ever knowing how matters went, even if she got quietly into port; so, being the best plan I could think of for the meantime, away we drove north-westward, sweeping the horizon with the glass every morning. We had run so far, indeed, without success, that I was sure she couldn't be ahead; when one day I asked Mr Jones to bring me up the chart for those parts, as we took the latitude. We were a long way to westward of our own course at the time, and Jones's finger went along eastward till it stopped right upon the Maldive islands, while he looked up with a sudden sharp glance. 'By heaven,' said I, 'yes!—I forgot that story altogether—be so good as to send that man there, Jacobs, to me. Jacobs,' said I, 'which of the officers' clothes did that fellow Foster use to scrub lately, in the Indiaman?' Jacobs gave his hair a rub, recollected a moment, and answered, 'Why, sir, the captain's own.' 'Oh!' I said, 'well, that'll do, Jacobs'—and Jacobs walked forward again. 'Mr Jones,' said I, quickly, 'that chart belonged to the captain!—I'll have a look at that said desert island, sir!' We found something answering to it on the chart; and in a few minutes the schooner was bowling before the dregs of the monsoon to eastward.
"'At all events,' added I, 'we'll see if these vagabonds mean to keep their word and turn hermits—either we catch them there, Mr Jones, or else we must find that Indiaman, though she were in sight of Colibah [28] lighthouse!' Jones's eye lighted, and he turned his nostrils to the monsoon as if he snuffed it in; in fact, he was that sort of man that needed somewhat out of the common way to keep him right."
CHAPTER XXVIII
"'No, Westwood,' said I, 'it can't be the right one—nor any of these, indeed!' And on looking at the chart, which was one not meant for anything but navigation in open water, with the channels laid down clearly enough, but evidently rather offhand as to the islands, Jones himself seemed to get uncertain about the matter; partly owing to the short glimpse he'd had of the other chart, and partly to its being, as he thought, an old one made for a purpose, by a hand that knew the islands well. After two or three days' sail, we were getting into the thick of the Maldives, where the reefs and sandbanks stretching out on every side, and beginning to lap in upon each other, made it more and more dangerous work; but at any rate the islands we saw were either very small, or else low and muddy-like, with a few scrubby-looking cocoas upon them, like bulrushes growing out of a marsh. No runaway sailors would ever think of taking up their quarters hereabouts, even if we hadn't caught sight of a smoke now and then, and once of some native craft with a couple of brown mat-sails, and an out-rigger, that showed the clusters hereaway to have people about them. Besides, there was no pretext any Indiaman could have for steering near enough to such a jungle of mud and water, to give a boat the chance of making towards it with any certainty.
"I saw at once that the spot in question must lie tolerably for the course of a ship to Western India, otherwise they wouldn't have appeared so sure of their mark as Jones said they did. All this, at the same time, kept me the more bent on searching the matter out ere I did aught else, seeing that in fact the Indiaman's attempt to get rid of the schooner was the very thing likely to bring her on this track; fancying, as she would, that we were either in chase of her toward Bombay, or off on our own course again. Now, on the one hand, nothing could fit better for the said runaway scheme of Harry Foster's; and on the other hand, nothing would have pleased me more, and greatly eased my mind too, than to catch him and his chums on their spree ashore. The worst of it was, that I began to have my doubts of Jones again. He was the only man that could put us on the right scent; yet he seemed either to have lost it, or to have something creeping on his mind that made him unwilling to carry it out.
"'Mr Jones,' said I, as the schooner was hove-to, and he stood musing gloomily by the binnacle, with a glance now and then in at the compass, and out at the chart again, 'if you're at a loss now, sir, just say—and I shall try my own hand for want of a better!'
"'No, Lieutenant Collins!' answered he suddenly, in a husky voice—'no, sir, that's not it, but—God help me! no, there's no use standing against fate, I see. Whatever it costs me, Mr Collins,' he went on firmly, 'I'm with you to the end of it; but—there is something horrible about all this!' 'How! what do you mean?' said I, startled by the difference in his manner, and the quiver of his lip. 'Oh,' said he, 'as for the present matter, there may be nothing more in it than what I heard on the ship's boom yonder. The truth is, I didn't know at first but this cluster here might have been the one—though I see now there is only one island in the whole chain that can answer the description, and that is not here.' With that he pointed to another piece of the chart, showing no more than a few spots upon the paper, not to speak of shades in it standing for reefs and shoals, towards the 'Head' of the Maldives; one spot lying away from the rest, with the single name of Minicoy for them all. I asked him hastily enough what it was called, and all about it, for the whole affair made me more and more uneasy; but on this point Jones seemed inclined to keep close, plainly not liking the topic, except that I found it went by several names, one of which I had heard before myself—White-water Island.