Toward eleven o'clock, when they were on deck smoking and talking, a great bird passed them, flying straight ahead.
"That chap is going twenty knots," said Cardon. "I reckon he could make forty if he wanted to. He's not much of an indication that there's land about, for a thousand miles to him is less than a thirty-mile walk to you or me. Say, Floyd, how would it be if we couldn't find your island? I heard a yarn once of a chap who spotted a guano island. He said it was a solid slab of guano a mile wide, and he started for 'Frisco and got up a syndicate to work it, and they chartered a schooner and had a champagne breakfast to start on; and when they reached the spot, the darned thing had gone—sunk into the sea."
"Rubbish!" said Floyd. "And I wish you wouldn't start those sorts of yarns just now; it's not lucky."
"Oh, I am only joking. Your island is there, safe enough, with Schumer on top of it. That sort of chap never sinks into the sea; it's only the good men Davy Jones troubles about. He's a mascot, sure."
Floyd did not answer him; he was staring right ahead.
"When I sighted it first," said he, "I was in an open boat that gave very little horizon, and what struck me first was the sky. It was pale, just a patch of it, a sort of glittering paleness that was caused by the lagoon. Have you ever seen that mark in the sky above a lagoon island?"
"Can't say I have, but then I'm not so used to the Pacific as you are. Do you see anything now?"
"No," said Floyd. "I wish I did."
Cardon whistled gently to himself, tapping the ashes out of his pipe against the rail and refilling it. He was just as anxious as Floyd, but his anxiety had not such a keen edge and he hid it better. There were times when he, like Floyd, almost doubted the reality of the island.
He was bending in the shelter of the bulwark to light his pipe when a hail came from aloft.