Again a curious furtive look that suggested uneasiness crept into Robertson's eyes.
"He's always just ahead or just astern, and we've altered our sailing bill twice," he said, as if communing with himself.
"I guess you dropped on the reason. Anyway, if you can give me a little more steam, we'll be clear of this unhallowed conglomeration of reefs and tides by this time to-morrow. If it's necessary, you can run her easier afterward."
Robertson laid a grimy finger on the chart. "She'll be feeling the indraught now—it's running ebb," he said. "If I can read the weather, you'll soon have the breeze strong on your starboard bow."
The skipper flung a swift glance at him, in which there was a trace of astonishment. "How'd you come to know just where she is?"
"Taffrail log," said Robertson. "I generally run a rough reckoning in my head. Well, you want another knot or two out of her until you have the big bight to lee of you? See what I can do, though I'd sooner take a knot off her. That high-press piston's worrying me."
He jerked himself heavily to his feet, and when he shambled out of the room the skipper, who made a little gesture of relief, took up his dividers and laid their points on the chart. One of them rested in the middle of the mark left by the engineer's greasy finger. After that he rolled the chart up and stowed it away from the others in a drawer beneath his berth, and the look of annoyance in his face had its significance. He did not like his engineer, and although he had no particular reason for distrusting him he remembered that when the latter had found it necessary to stop his engines at sea, as he had done once or twice during the last trip or two, it had generally been in the last spot a nervous skipper would have desired. Then he went out, and climbed to his bridge.
"You can head her out two points more to westward," he said to the mate.
"Very good!" said the latter. "Still, we decided that the course she was on would keep her off the land."
"We did," said the skipper dryly. "Anyway, you'll head her out. We're going to have a wicked breeze from the west before this time to-night."