"This was the first of many voyages; he remained in the San Francisco trade for several years. Half a dozen times he passed the island, always leaving it far to leeward; and the memory didn't grow cold. Rather, it burned warmer and higher under this harrowing tantalization, a flame fed by hope and clarified by love. Some time, if he waited patiently, the elements would be propitious, the right chance would come.
"But he, too, became practical about it, recognizing that until he was his own master he wouldn't be free to seize a chance if it came his way. He saved his money, and worked hard to advance his reputation. In due time he was rewarded with the command of a little barque. For a number of voyages his owners sent him to the China Sea; it was at this time that I first met him, to fall under the spell of his romantic destiny. At last, however, he arrived in Singapore one voyage to learn that he'd been chartered to carry coals from Newcastle, New South Wales, to San Francisco. He felt a wonderful elation at the news. It looked like his long-awaited opportunity.
"In the natural order of things, you know, on the passage from Newcastle to California, he would cross the Pacific in the westerlies below the southeast trades, strike north through the trade winds close hauled on the starboard tack, fetch within a reasonable distance of the coast of Mexico, pick up the northeast trades there, and take a weatherly departure for the last stage of the journey. By crossing the equator in 135° west longitude he would be thrown to leeward heavily on that last stage. But he must chance it; no one would know, and he could make his easting in the North Pacific, above the trades. Chance it?—he couldn't have failed to accept the opening, his whole life was centred on the play. God knows, he'd waited long enough, devotedly enough, for deliverance from this protracted anguish, for the resumption of happiness, for another glimpse of the form of love and beauty, for a sight of the island that more and more appeared to him in the nature of a vivid dream.
"And, by Jove, when he got there, he couldn't find it! It didn't seem, to be in existence any longer; at least, it wasn't to be discovered in the region where he had expected to come across it. He couldn't remember the exact latitude and longitude, you'll remember, although he had an approximate position which ought to have served the purpose. He cruised in the locality for over a week, backward and forward, around and around, combing every square mile of its waters; but he saw no sign of land. He had a terrible feeling that he might have passed it by night, that if the night could have been turned to day he might have caught a glimpse of it on the distant horizon. It was at night, he says, that the sense of its nearness was most acute, an ethereal presence lying all about him in the soft, impenetrable obscurity. At times he could almost smell the land. He felt that she, too, had remembered, and had remained faithful to him; that the pain and longing in her heart hung in mysterious vibrations about the island, to guide him to her if ever he came that way. But, as of old, he couldn't tell the direction; it was always his bitter fate to lack a compass at the crises of life. He didn't find either the island or the rock that had split the Evening Star; and in the end he had to go away.
"He tried again, some years later, but with the same lack of success. I have an idea that his latitude and longitude were away off; yet the place where he had been picked up was exact enough. Or perhaps ... But what's the use of speculating on a hypothesis without tangible grounds? He couldn't find the island. He is the story—as you see him over there.
"By this time a hopeless melancholy had settled on him; yet he persisted in what he conceived to be the main business of life. His faith, indeed, was unquestioning; he apparently couldn't have done otherwise, and all his days and designs arranged themselves around this central purpose as naturally as mists rise to the sun. He left the sea, and went into the pearl fishing enterprise down on the north coast of Australia. He wanted to make money—and he made it. As soon as he possessed the means, he bought a schooner, fitted her up for a year's cruise, and disappeared over the eastern rim of the Pacific. It was well over a year, in fact, before he turned up again.
"I happened to be in Singapore when he arrived from that first cruise. Going down the Jetty late one afternoon to lake my sampan, I met him wandering in the opposite direction. One look at his face told me that he'd failed again. He had come in at noon, wasn't going anywhere, didn't know what he wanted to do. I took him aboard with me to supper, and we had a long evening on deck under the awning.
"'Devereux, has it ever occurred to you that the island may have sunk in a volcanic disturbance?' I suggested, after he'd gone over the affair for the twentieth time.
"The idea gave him comfort, strange as it may seem; he could contemplate the entire destruction of his beloved as an event of minor importance. It offered something to fall back on, in his mental agony; a practical explanation to dull the edge of the frantic feeling that all the while the island existed, if he could only find it. When I noted how he devoured the suggestion, I enlarged on its possibility.
"'You see, you haven't been able to find the rock, either' I pointed out 'And I remember you told me there wasn't any coral formation in the neighbourhood of that rock. A sure sign of recent volcanic activity. I'd be willing to bet that it hadn't been on the surface very long; it had been poked up recently for your especial benefit. And where volcanic action is busy poking things up, it's just as liable to sink them down again'