“Oh, in a day or two,” says Buck.
Now we weren’t due to touch at that place for fourteen days if the wind held good, and when I got him alone a few minutes later I asked him why he had told her that lie.
“And what would you have had me say?” he asked.
“Why, that we wouldn’t be there for a fortnight,” I answered.
“Well,” said he, “that would have been as big a lie, for we aren’t going to touch there at all. I’ve got extra water casks from that cooper chap at Levua and an extra supply of bananas.”
“What’s your reason?” I asks.
“I’ll tell you when this deal is through,” he answers, and knowing it was useless to ask any more, I didn’t.
A few days later. Buck told us that we’d passed the location of the island and that it wasn’t there; must have sunk in the sea, he said, same as these small islands sometimes do.
When he sprung this on us you might have thought by the way Sadie went on she’d lost a relative; said that she wanted to see it more than the New Jerusalem, owing to Buck’s description of it, and asked couldn’t we poke round and make sure it was gone and that we weren’t being deceived owing to some error of the compass.
Buck says: “All right,” and we spent the better part of two days fooling about pretending to look for that damn island and then we lit for ’Frisco.