“We did some fishing, for we had tackle on board, and that helped us along over the line, and one morning twenty-seven days out from ’Frisco we raised an outlier of the Marqueses. Coming along a week later we raised the spot where pearl island ought to have been—we’d labelled it Pearl Island before sighting it, and that was maybe unlucky—anyhow, there was no island to meet us at noon that day and no sign of one inside or outside the horizon.
“‘That Chink sold you a pup,’ says I to Buck.
“‘Maybe it’s your navigation is at fault,’ says he.
“‘Maybe,’ says I, wishing to let him down gentle, but feeling pretty sure the navigator wasn’t born that could find that island.
“We stood a bit more to the south with a Kanaka in the crosstrees under a reward of ten dollars if he spotted land that day, and towards evening the wind dropped to a dead calm and we lay drifting all that night, the wind coming again at sun up and breezing strong from the south west.
“We put her before it, both of us pretty sick at thinking how Pat was right and how he’d landed us and used us for his purpose. We weren’t mean enough dogs to think of spoiling the cargo or piling the schooner; we just took our gruel, fixing to lay for him with our tongues when we got back, and as for the Chink, well. Buck said he’d skin that Chink if he had to bust up China Town single-handed to do it.
“He was talking like that and it was getting along for eight bells, noon, when the Kanaka look-out signals land, and there it was right ahead, but nothing to be seen only a white thumb-mark in the sky from the mirror blaze of a lagoon.
“Then the heads of cocoanut trees poked up all in a row, and I turns to Buck and we gripped hands.
“‘It’s a hundred and more miles out,’ said I, ‘but I reckon it’s not the island that’s out but me and my navigation; that old Chink was no liar. It’s the Island. Must be, for there’s nothing on the chart for five hundred miles all round here.’
“Well, we’ll see,” said Buck.