“We're anywhere within five hundred and a thousand miles along that latitude line,” Grief remarked, as he and the mate bent over the chart.
“Leu-Leu is to the south'ard somewhere, and this section of ocean is all blank. There is neither an island nor a reef by which we can regulate the chronometer. The only thing to do—”
“Land ho, skipper!” the Tongan called down the companionway.
Grief took a quick glance at the empty blank of the chart, whistled his surprise, and sank back feebly in a chair.
“It gets me,” he said. “There can't be land around here. We never drifted or ran like that. The whole voyage has been crazy. Will you kindly go up, Mr. Snow, and see what's ailing Jackie.”
“It's land all right,” the mate called down a minute afterward. “You can see it from the deck—tops of cocoanuts—an atoll of some sort. Maybe it's Leu-Leu after all.”
Grief shook his head positively as he gazed at the fringe of palms, only the tops visible, apparently rising out of the sea.
“Haul up on the wind, Mr. Snow, close-and-by, and we'll take a look. We can just reach past to the south, and if it spreads off in that direction we'll hit the southwest corner.”
Very near must palms be to be seen from the low deck of a schooner, and, slowly as the Uncle Toby sailed, she quickly raised the low land above the sea, while more palms increased the definition of the atoll circle.
“She's a beauty,” the mate remarked. “A perfect circle.... Looks as if it might be eight or nine miles across.... Wonder if there's an entrance to the lagoon.... Who knows? Maybe it's a brand new find.”