He reached the deck just as the men were coming up from the forecastle, and they were soon at work swabbing the planks, squaring yards, shaking out the sails to dry, and getting the vessel in order just as if she were at sea, while the cook and steward attended to their work as coolly as if nothing had happened.
At mid-day the mate had taken his observations and marked down their position on the chart just where the map showed a broad blank in the Arafura Sea.
“But are you right?” said Oliver, as he followed the mate’s pointing finger.
“As right as my knowledge of navigation will let me be, sir,” said the mate quietly. “That’s where we are.”
“But where is that?”
“Just nowhere, sir.”
“But—”
“We’re very cunning, sir, and think we know the whole world and everything there is; but now and then we find out that we are not so clever as we thought, and that there is just a little more to learn. I said that we were nowhere just now, which isn’t quite correct, because we are here; but it strikes me that we’re in a spot where no civilised vessel ever was before.”
“What, right on shore?” said Oliver, smiling.
“No, sir, I didn’t mean that. I meant no vessel ever touched here before, or it would have been marked down in the chart. Savages have been, perhaps. Maybe they’re here still, but they have been frightened into their holes by the eruption.”