“Faytan!” he said. “Look, Ketaha, is it not so?”
Ketaha was Nux’s original name, never used since Uncle Naboth had picked him up. He too stared at the coast line steadily, and then nodded his head.
“It may be Faytan, my Louiki. Perhaps we are wrong. But it surely looks like Faytan.”
“Do you know this island, then?” I asked, speaking their own language.
“If it is Faytan, we have been very near to it; but we have never landed upon the island,” replied Bry. “The Pearl People live in Faytan, and they are the enemies of all the other islanders—of all the world. If it is Faytan, we are risking our lives to land there.”
“It is risking our lives to try to keep afloat in this sea,” I replied. “Our men cannot fight these waves for long, Bry.”
He turned away and whispered to Nux. After a brief confab the latter said to us in English:
“Jus’ try to turn dat point o’ rock yonder, Cap’n Steele. Den I guess you find a cove to land, where dere am no rocks.”
The English of the blacks was somewhat imperfect, although they spoke their own language with excellent expression. But you must remember they had acquired our language on shipboard, from all classes of people, and seamen are not noted for grammatical precision.
Captain Steele at once took command of our boat and directed the men to pull around the point of rock. They obeyed with a will and, although they found it a desperately hard task in such a raging sea, finally succeeded in breasting the waves and making the point. Immediately we found ourselves sheltered from the force of the waves and, sure enough, a strip of white sand lined the shore of a small cove just ahead.