“I suppose they think it would cost too much.”
“Yes; that’s it. They think only about the profits, and trust to luck for our safety. Well, I only hope we’ll get safely out of this place—that’s all.”
And the captain walked off much more excited than usual.
They drifted on through days of calm, which were succeeded by fierce but short-lived storms, and then followed by calms. Their course lay sometimes north, sometimes south, sometimes nowhere. Thus the time passed, until at length, about the middle of September, they came in sight of a long, low island of sand.
“I’ve heard of that sand-bank before,” said the captain, who showed some surprise at seeing it; “but I didn’t believe it was here. It’s not down in the charts. Here we are three hundred and fifty miles southwest of the Straits of Sunda, and the chart makes this place all open water. Well, seein’s believin’; and after this I’ll swear that there is such a thing as Coffin Island.”
“Is that the name?”
“That’s the name an old sea-captain gave it, and tried to get the Admiralty to put it on the charts, but they wouldn’t. But this is it, and no mistake.”
“Why did he call it Coffin Island?”
“Well, he thought that rock looked like a coffin, and it’s dangerous enough when a fog comes to deserve that name.”
Brandon looked earnestly at the island which the captain mentioned, and which they were slowly approaching.