“We won’t ask for as many as that, bo’sun,” the passenger replied, unable to refrain from smiling.
“Well,” John Block answered, “if He will drive our boat towards one of those which exist already, it will be enough, and He need not make any islands on purpose, although, I must say, He seems to have been a bit stingy with them hereabouts!”
“But where are we?”
“I can’t tell you, not even within a few hundred miles,” John Block replied. “You know that for a whole long week we were shut up in the hold, unable to see what course the ship was shaping, whether south or north. Anyhow, it must have been blowing steadily, and the sea did plenty of rolling and chopping.”
“That is true, John Block, and true, too, that we must have gone a long way; but in what direction?”
“About that I don’t know anything,” the boatswain declared. “Did the ship go off to the Pacific, instead of making for the Indian Ocean? On the day of the mutiny we were off Madagascar. But since then, as the wind has blown from the west all the time, we may have been taken hundreds of miles from there, towards the islands of Saint Paul and Amsterdam.”
“Where there are none but savages of the worst possible sort,” James Wolston remarked. “But after all, the men who cast us away are not much better.”
“One thing is certain,” John Block declared; “that wretch Borupt must have altered the Flag’s course and made for waters where he will be most likely to escape punishment, and where he and his gang will play pirates! So I think that we were a long way out of our proper course when this boat was cut adrift. But I wish we might strike some island in these seas—even a desert island would do! We could live all right by hunting and fishing; we should find shelter in some cave. Why shouldn’t we make of our island what the survivors of the Landlord made of New Switzerland? With strong arms, brains, and pluck——”
“Very true,” James Wolston answered, “but the Landlord did not fail her passengers. They were able to save her cargo, while we shall never have anything from the Flag’s cargo.”
The conversation was interrupted. A voice that rang with pain was heard: