This ended the business part of the conversation. Thereafter they went into details so highly nautical that we shrink from recording them. An amateur detective, in the form of a shipmate, having captured Jim Sloper, the Sunshine finally cleared out of the port of Batavia that evening, shortly before its namesake took his departure from that part of the southern hemisphere.
Favouring gales carried the brig swiftly through Sunda Straits and out into the Indian Ocean. Two days and a half brought her to the desired haven. On the way, Captain Roy took note of the condition of Krakatoa, which at that time was quietly working up its subterranean forces with a view to the final catastrophe; opening a safety-valve now and then to prevent, as it were, premature explosion.
"My son's friend, the hermit of Rakata," said the captain to his second mate, "will find his cave too hot to hold him, I think, when he returns."
"Looks like it, sir," said Mr. Moor, glancing up at the vast clouds which were at that time spreading like a black pall over the re-awakened volcano. "Do you expect 'em back soon, sir?"
"Yes—time's about up now. I shouldn't wonder if they reach Batavia before us."
Arrived at the Keeling Islands, Captain Roy was received, as usual, with acclamations of joy, but he found that he was by no means as well fitted to act the part of a diplomatist as he was to sail a ship. It was, in truth, a somewhat delicate mission on which his son had sent him, for he could not assert definitely that the hermit actually was Kathleen Holbein's father, and her self-constituted parents did not relish the idea of letting slip, on a mere chance, one whom they loved as a daughter.
"Why not bring this man who claims to be her father here?" asked the perplexed Holbein.
"Because—because, p'raps he won't come," answered the puzzled mariner, who did not like to say that he was simply and strictly obeying his son's orders. "Besides," he continued, "the man does not claim to be anything at all. So far as I understand it, my boy has not spoken to him on the subject, for fear, I suppose, of raisin' hopes that ain't to be realised."
"He is right in that," said Mrs. Holbein, "and we must be just as careful not to raise false hopes in dear little Kathy. As your son says, it may be a mistake after all. We must not open our lips to her about it."
"Right you are, madam," returned the captain. "Mum's the word; and we've only got to say she's goin' to visit one of your old friends in Anjer—which'll be quite true, you know, for the landlady o' the chief hotel there is a great friend o' yours, and we'll take Kathy to her straight. Besides, the trip will do her health a power o' good, though I'm free to confess it don't need no good to be done to it, bein' A.1 at the present time. Now, just you agree to give the girl a holiday, an' I'll pledge myself to bring her back safe and sound—with her father, if he's him; without him if he isn't."