"And I'd believe it of Banks that he done it just to get his name mentioned, and to rise a bit of a palaver about him. He's a most conceited chap is Banks, and not by any means the seaman he'd like to be thought. And they actually sent a man-o'-war down to look up his Simoom Rocks and they came back and never seen 'em."
"And nobody else ever did, sir?"
"Of course not," said Spiller; "they might as well set traps to catch the rats that a man sees when he's got the jimjams. And nothing makes Banks angrier than to throw out a hint you don't believe in them rocks. I always gets him on it, by asking for a clean chart and proved shoals, and what not, and giving it him hot and heavy on vigias and the like. Bah, I ain't no patience."
And Spiller tramped the deck for a bit. Presently he came back to where Green stood.
"He'll be in Bombay before us," he said gloomily. "I have to own the Simoom's faster than the Palembang, but if she was sailed by a better man she'd make quicker passages. Why, an engineer in a steamer can pass a thorough sailor in a scow."
His heart was bitter, but the thought that Her Majesty's cruiser Amphion had discredited the Simoom vigia was balm to his inmost soul, as he turned to go below.
"Keep a bright look-out," he growled, and he left Green to consider the matter of vigias in general, and the Simoom vigia in particular.
For these vigias, the terror of seamen, are like malicious spirits. Some man has seen them, or has imagined them, and for ever after they bear sway in the minds of those who sail upon the great deep. Perhaps they are but a floating mass of wreck, on which the sea breaks; in the south, what was seen was, it may be, a drifting berg; on the shores of West Africa, perchance a river has sent out a floating island. Any accident of imagination may create them; alcohol bears them on its tide: they are the rats and ghosts and terrible creeping things of the delirium of the sea that is born of rum. A heavy heeled spar as it floats becomes a pinnacle of rock; the boat that bears dead men in it is for ever after to be avoided. Here a rip of currents, and there a heavy overfall, become fixed terrors and are given names.
For this is the sea that is unknown yet, and shall for ever be unknown. It works upon the mind of man very subtly, and yet again with tremendous strength. Under the sea are earthquakes, and in it volcanoes. Of these islands are born, and again they pass away, while the little creature man skims upon the surface of the ocean like a water-beetle, and may be seen no more.
When Green was left alone upon the poop of the Palembang, save for the presence of the man at the wheel, something of the wonderful majesty of the sea came down upon him, and for a moment touched his nerves. Trust in the captain he had none, for Spiller was of the usual alcoholic order; so he got out the chart and looked at it. There stood the vigia marked "Simoom Rock." Perhaps it existed after all. He remembered the history of the Aurora Islands to the cast of the Falklands. Even now, some old sailors believe there are such islands, real land, not ice grounded on deep soundings. And the Simoom vigia was close at hand, if it existed at all. Allowing for sufficient uncertainty in its supposed position, it might be anywhere within a degree. He stared out into the darkness and imagined he saw it. It was here, it was there, it was nowhere: it was a wraith of the mind, and dissolved. He put back his night-glasses, and whistled, till he remembered there was quite enough wind, and that he had no desire to turn the hands up to shorten sail.