There happened to be in the harbour a vessel, due to sail in a fortnight. She was the Flag, an English three-masted vessel of five hundred tons, captain Harry Gould, bound for Batavia, in the Sunda Islands. To put in at New Switzerland would take her very little out of her course, and the passengers for the island were prepared to pay a good price for their passage.
Their proposal was accepted by Captain Gould, and the Unicorn’s passengers transferred their baggage to the Flag.
The three-master’s preparations were finished in the afternoon of the 20th of September. That evening they said good-bye, not without regret, to Captain Littlestone, promising to look out for the arrival of the Unicorn at the mouth of Deliverance Bay towards the end of November.
Next morning the Flag sailed, with a favouring wind from the south-west, and before the evening of that first day the high summits of the Cape, left forty miles behind, disappeared below the horizon.
Harry Gould was a fine sailor, with cool courage equal to his resolution. He was now in the prime of life, at forty-two, and had shown his quality both as mate and captain. His owners had every confidence in him.
To this confidence, Robert Borupt, the second officer on the Flag, was not entitled. He was a man of the same age as Harry Gould, jealous, vindictive, and of uncontrolled passions. He never believed that he received the due meed of his merits. Disappointed in his hope of being given the command of the Flag, he nursed at the bottom of his heart a secret hatred of his captain. But his temper had not escaped the vigilance of the boatswain, John Block, a fearless, reliable man devoted heart and soul to his chief.
The crew of the Flag, mustering some score of men, was not of the first-class, as Captain Gould very well knew. The boatswain noticed with disapproval the indulgence too often shown by Robert Borupt to some of the sailors, when fault should have been found with them for neglect of duty. He thought that all this was suspicious, and he watched the second officer, fully determined to give Captain Gould warning, if needful.
Nothing of note happened between the 22nd of August and the 9th of September. The condition of the sea and the direction of the wind were alike favourable to the ship’s progress, though the breeze was a shade too light. If the three-master were able to maintain the same rate of progress she would reach New Switzerland waters about the middle of October, within the time anticipated.
But about this time the crew began to manifest symptoms of insubordination. It even looked as though the second and third officers, in defiance of every sense of duty, connived at this relaxing of discipline. Robert Borupt, influenced by his own jealous and perverse nature, took no steps to check the disorder.
But the Flag continued to make her way north-east. On the 9th of September she was almost in the middle of the Indian Ocean, on the line of the Tropic of Capricorn, her position being 20° 17′ latitude and 80° 45′ longitude.