Looking at a map of the West Indies, the reader, if he or she will take that little trouble, will see that the many islands lay in a sort of curved hook, extending from Cuba, the largest, down to Tobago, one of the smallest, just off Trinidad. In fact, Trinidad is a little off-set of the end of the hook, and, for the purpose of this illustration, need not be considered.
The problem, then, that confronted the motor girls, and, no less, Jack and Walter, was to cruise in among these islands, in the hope of finding, on one of them, Mrs. Kimball, and Mr. and Mrs. Robinson, who, by great good fortune, might have been able to save themselves from the wreck of the Ramona.
Looking at the map again, which is the last time I shall trouble you to do so, the problem might not seem so hard, for there are not so many islands shown. The difficulty is that few maps show all of them, and even on the best of navigating maps there may be one or two that are not charted. The shipwrecked ones, providing they lived to get off on a life raft, or in a boat, might as likely have been driven to one of these little islands, as to a larger one.
"But we can cut out a lot of them," said Jack, when they were in the cozy cabin of the Tartar, and he and his sister, with the others, were bending over the charts.
"It's like this," Jack went on, pointing with a pencil to where Porto Rico was shown, in shape and proportion not unlike a building brick. "Our folks started for Guadeloupe—that's here," and he indicated the island which bears not a little resemblance to an hour-glass on the map. Guadeloupe, in fact, consists of two islands, separated by a narrow arm of the sea—Riviere Salee—which divides it by a channel of from one hundred to four hundred feet in width.
"Whether they arrived is of course open to question," said Jack.
"I'm inclined to think they didn't, or we'd have heard from them.
The storm came before the ship got anywhere near there. Now, then, I
think we shall have to look for them somewhere between Porto Rico and
Guadeloupe."
"Why not near St. Kitts?" asked Walter, covering with his finger the little island that is included in the discoveries of Columbus. "That's near where the two sailors were picked up," Walter went on.
"Yes—I think we ought to go there," agreed Jack. "But it's only one of many possible places where our folks may be. It's going to be a long cruise, I'm afraid."
"Where is Sea Horse Island?" asked Cora, as Inez flashed an appealing look at her.
"Here," replied Jack, indicating a rather lonesome spot in the watery waste, where no other islands showed. "It's about half way between Guadeloupe and Aves, or Bird Island. Speaking sailor fashion, its latitude is about sixteen degrees north of the equator, and the longitude about sixty-two degrees, fifty-one minutes west."