“What have you discovered?”
He took his time about replying.
“That man never was picked up in an open boat at sea, Mr. Pitt,” he said quietly. “The land where he claims to have come from is about six hundred miles away. No small boat could have lived five minutes in the storm we have been having, and that storm was stronger farther north.”
He spoke as if he were stating an ordinary fact, and his calmness helped me to control myself.
“What does it mean, then, Wilson?” I asked as easily as I could.
“I don’t know, sir. I’m a seaman; I can’t follow such a queer course. I only know that this man was not picked up, after a long voyage as he claims; because his boat could not have lived through.”
“Captain Brack must know that, too?”
“Any seaman who has sailed these waters in Springtime knows that, sir.”
“Yet Brack seemed to accept the man’s story as true. Oh!” I gasped as I saw him smile. “Then it was Captain Brack who claimed to have picked him up?”
“I can’t discuss that, sir; Captain Brack is my superior. But I know that what I have told you is the truth; and I thought it right you should know.”