Nina, who was endowed with excellent good sight, was the first to detect a nearly submerged tree-trunk bobbing about in the channel, nearly a mile distant. The atmosphere happened, however, to be unusually clear that day, so they could follow the progress of the derelict for another mile or more. As soon as it emerged from the actual channel between the two headlands, it swung away to the left, or eastward, and kept on that course until lost in the waste of waters.
Maseden whistled in sheer vexation when he gave up the attempt to follow this floating index any longer.
“What is it now, son?” inquired Sturgess.
“The worst,” snapped the other vindictively.
“Great Scott! Didn’t you like the look of that log. I thought it lolloped along in a devil-may-care style that was rather attractive.”
“But it turned towards the land, and not towards the sea.”
“I guess that’s so.”
“And doesn’t that convey any meaning to you?”
“Sure. The tides hereabouts go all ways for Sundays. Before that thing reaches Nelson Straits it has to round the eastern end of the island opposite.... Yes, yes, Alec. You’ve wised me up on heaps of things I didn’t give a hooraw in Hades for at one time. I can tell the time by the sun, skin an eel, or a seal, or a teal, open oysters like a bar-keep, and read an eddy like a Mississippi pilot. And, to my reckoning, our boat, or any boat, has as much chance of winning through that proposition out there as a lump of butter in a fiery furnace. I never did hold very strongly by that story about Shadrack, Mesack and Abednego. I’ve a notion we haven’t got the complete facts. One day in Pittsburg—”