“Says his other name’s M,” replied Jim. “Sure as there’s hair on his head, he’s been tellin’ me. Dick M’s his name. Ain’t it, bo?”
“Em—Em,” cried Dick, stretching out his arms to Bowers.
“And Dick M you’ll be if you wants to,” said that worthy as he hoisted him on his shoulder and went aft in search of Jenkins the steward and condensed milk.
Seven bells had struck, when along the blazing deck came the voice of the look-out, plaintive as the voice of a gull.
“Land ho-o-o.”
It was Ericsson the Swede who gave the cry, and Stanistreet, pacing the deck, hands behind his back, suddenly became galvanised into activity. He sprang with one foot on the port bulwarks and a hand clutching the main ratlins, then, shading his eyes with the other hand, he looked.
Yes, far away ahead, danced void by the sea shimmer, vague, indeterminate, lay something that was not sea and was not sky. The swell, building higher with the flood just setting in, now wiped it away, now showed it again.
Yes, it was the island, far, far away, but surely there, the thing unmapped, uncharted, known only to the gulls and the whale men, and even to the whale men scarcely known.
Away down in Stanistreet’s mind had always lain the shadow of a doubt, a doubt removed by the finding of the dinghy, but somehow illogically returning and lingering. Was the island a figment of old Captain Fountain’s imagination? a vision of the mind, useful only to shipwreck Hope? No, it was there, right before his eyes and true to place.
He dropped on deck. Lestrange was still below and the port watch was forward lazing in the sun. One fellow was standing looking with shaded eyes to get a sight of the land-fall, but the rest seemed indifferent. Then Bowers, rising from the fo’c’sle, broke up their talk, setting them to work on the fore planking with a deck beam. Having seen them busy, he took a glance forward, and then came aft to the captain.