A faint smile crept into Wyllard's eyes. "No," he said, "not after that little affair on the beach. Since it's very probable that the vessel they send up to the seal islands would deliver stores along the coast, the folks in authority would have a record of it. They'd call the thing piracy—and, in a sense, they'd be justified."
He said nothing more for a little, and then looked up again wearily.
"I wonder," he said, "how that boat's crew ever got across to Kamtchatka. It was north of the islands where the man brought Dunton the message."
Dampier understood that he desired to change the subject, for this was a question they had often discussed already.
"Well," he said, "I still hold by my first notion. They were blown ashore on the beach we'd just left, and made prisoners. Then a supply schooner or perhaps a steamer came along, and they sent them off in her to be handed over to the authorities. The vessel put in somewhere. We'll say she was lying in an inlet with a boat astern, and somehow they cut that boat loose in the dark, and got away in her."
He broke off for a moment, and then looked at his companion significantly.
"You can find quite a few points where that idea seems to fail," he added. "They were in Kamtchatka, but I'm beginning to feel that we shall never know any more than that."
Wyllard made a little weary gesture of concurrence, but before he closed them Dampier saw no sign that he meant to abandon his project in his eyes. In another few minutes he seemed to sink into sleep, and Dampier, who went up on deck, paced to and fro awhile before he stopped by the wheel and turned to the helmsman.
"You can let her come up a couple of points. We may as well make a little southing while we can," he said.
Charly, who was steering, looked up with suggestive eagerness. "Then he's not going for the Aleutians?"