“It’s liftin’, sir,” said Bowers. “You haven’t a chart of the soundin’s by any chance?”
“Oh, Lord, no,” said Stanistreet; “it’s mile-deep water off the reef all round and there’s a clear run through the break. That’s all Fountain said and we’ve got to take his word. Where’s the kid?”
“I’ve give him his breakfast and he’s in the bunk asleep,” said Bowers. “The gentleman was down there reading a book, but he didn’t seem to be takin’ much notice, not of the kid or anything.”
“No,” said the other, “everything’s nothing to him now but just what’s on his mind. You’d have thought their child would have been more to him than them, even, seeing they are dead—but he’s got them fixed in his head—he’s got it screwed down in his nut that he’s going to meet them on that island.”
“Good Lord, sir!” said Bowers. “D’ye mean to say he’s thinkin’ to meet them, knowin’ they’re dead an’ all?”
“I can’t say what he thinks,” replied the other. “He’s had a dream or something, and he’s got it in his head they’re going to meet him on that island. Maybe if you and me had been through the mill he’s been through we’d be just as crazy, but I wish to the Lord he’d chosen some other skipper for this cruise. It’s a heavy responsibility. If he was fighting mad, I could clap him in his cabin and put about for Frisco; but there you are, he’s mild as milk and sensible as Sam on everything but that point, and what’s going to happen when he gets to that infernal island and maybe finds traces of them I don’t know. Bowers, what would you do if you were in my place?”
“I’d carry on, sir,” said Bowers. “Crazy folk are like children. I remember old Sam Hatch; he used to be sittin’ all day watching Sydney Harbour, sittin’ on Circular Wharf waitin’ for his son’s ship to come in, and she lost beyond the Heads and he knowing it. Cross him in his ideas and he’d be the devil, but leave him be and he’d make no trouble. Carry on, sir—there he is.”
Lestrange had come on deck. He took the news from Stanistreet, walked forward a bit, and then, with arm upon the starboard rail, he stood and watched.
The wind had shifted almost dead aft, came stronger and the vast trapezium of the mainsail loomed out, stood rigid against the blue, whilst the Ranatonga, running with swell and wind, laid the knots behind her, swift, gracile, and silent as the gulls that followed on the wind, land gulls that seemed escorting her like spirits white as snow.
And now, minute by minute, rising like Aphrodite from the sea, the island before them bloomed to life. With every lift of the swell, the gull-strewn barrier reef showed its foam, whilst ever more distinctly beyond the reef, green and fair, grew the foliage, changing in depth of emerald to the touch of the wind.