“Four days,” repeated the skipper; “four days. Then I reckon you better go ahead straight away; and turn it out as quick as ever you can, for this here ca’m looks as though it meant to last a goodish while yet. The glass is high an’ steady, with an upward tendency, if anything, and I don’t see no sign of wind anywheres about.”
Within an hour Cunningham and Chips were hard at work upon the contrivance for circumventing the “ca’ms”, and before knocking-off time they had got on deck all the timber they required, and some of it sawn to its proper length. The next day saw the completion of the cutting, sawing, and planing; and then came a fresh westerly breeze which enabled us to lay up within about two points of our course for the next five days, during which Cunningham completed his work, all but the bolting on of the fins, which could be done in about ten minutes. Then the wind gradually veered until we were not only enabled to lay our course, but had it a couple of points free, when, the wind being light, our big jack-yard gaff-topsail came into play with magnificent effect, pushing the little hooker along at about six knots, when but for it she would scarcely have done four. And finally it fell calm again, and the schooner lost steerage way altogether. There was again every sign that the calm was likely to be prolonged—in fact, we were in the latitudes of the “Doldrums”, or calms that occur just to the north and south of the Trade winds, where, as on the Line, the calms sometimes last for weeks at a stretch. It was therefore an excellent opportunity to test Cunningham’s contrivance, and we accordingly proceeded to bolt it up and fix it in position. It was rather an awkward and cumbersome arrangement, demanding the united strength of all hands to get it over the side, and it took us a full hour to get both parts fixed firmly and to Cunningham’s satisfaction. But it had not been in position five minutes before we saw that it was going to prove a success; for not only did it serve to steady the little vessel, and ease her rolling to a considerable extent, but she immediately began to gather way, and within half an hour was slipping along through the water at the rate of a shade over four knots by the log. The skipper was enchanted. “Furl everything, Mr Temple,” he said, “and head her due no’th. We’ll just meander along now under bare poles until we runs into the south-east Trades; and when once we hits them we’ll be all right, and needn’t start tack nor sheet again until we reaches our oyster bed.”
Chapter Seven.
The Pearl-oyster Bed.
We caught the south-east Trade winds the next day, very light at first, but gradually freshening as we ran farther into them; and then, as soon as we found ourselves fairly in the grip of the true breeze, with the water rippling blue and crisply all about us, we got the schooner under canvas once more, hoisted our “fins” inboard, and bore away upon a nor’-west course, with starboard studdingsails and big gaff-topsail set and dragging like a team of cart horses. A week of this sort of thing carried us to the calm belt under the Line; and here we once more brought our “fins” into action, using them for three whole days and a trifle over before we touched the southernmost fringe of the north-east Trades, when we again went bowling along under all plain sail, that being as much as we could conveniently show to a beam wind. Finally, on a certain morning immediately after breakfast, I climbed to the topgallant yard, armed with Cunningham’s telescope, which I had borrowed for the occasion, and, looking straight ahead, saw—just where I had expected to see it, namely, some fifteen miles beyond our jibboom end—a patch of white water, some three miles in length, stretching north and south right athwart the schooner’s hawse. It was the coral reef upon which, if the skipper’s friend Abe Johnson had spoken truth, that worthy had suffered shipwreck, followed by all the horrors of complete solitude for five solid months; and some two miles beyond which lay—according to Abe—the rich pearl-oyster bed that was the real object of the Martha Brown’s visit to this lonesome spot in the heart of the Pacific.
“See anything, Mr Temple?” hailed the skipper from the quarterdeck, in a voice tense with excitement.
“Ay, ay, sir,” I replied. “It is there, right enough, as plain as mud in a wine-glass, about fifteen miles off, and stretching right athwart our hawse. You had better luff a point, sir, and go round its northern extremity.”
“Luff a p’int it is,” answered the skipper, directing the helmsman. Then, as the schooner came to her new course, “How’s that, Mr Temple?”