“Then drive it is.” Captain Davenport evidenced his intention of descending to the deck. “We've missed Mangareva. God knows where the next land is. I wish I'd held her up that other half-point,” he confessed a moment later. “This cursed current plays the devil with a navigator.”
“The old navigators called the Paumotus the Dangerous Archipelago,” McCoy said, when they had regained the poop. “This very current was partly responsible for that name.”
“I was talking with a sailor chap in Sydney, once,” said Mr. Konig. “He'd been trading in the Paumotus. He told me insurance was eighteen per cent. Is that right?”
McCoy smiled and nodded.
“Except that they don't insure,” he explained. “The owners write off twenty per cent of the cost of their schooners each year.”
“My God!” Captain Davenport groaned. “That makes the life of a schooner only five years!” He shook his head sadly, murmuring, “Bad waters! Bad waters!”
Again they went into the cabin to consult the big general chart; but the poisonous vapors drove them coughing and gasping on deck.
“Here is Moerenhout Island,” Captain Davenport pointed it out on the chart, which he had spread on the house. “It can't be more than a hundred miles to leeward.”
“A hundred and ten.” McCoy shook his head doubtfully. “It might be done, but it is very difficult. I might beach her, and then again I might put her on the reef. A bad place, a very bad place.”
“We'll take the chance,” was Captain Davenport's decision, as he set about working out the course.