“That shows all you know about navigation, my boy,” rejoined the blunt old sailor. “An island like this, stuck right bang out in the track of ships, wouldn’t be left uncharted.”
“And yet it was solid enough to knock a hole in us,” said Tom. “It must have been here right along.”
Captain Sprowl’s rejoinder was an astonishing one.
“Now d’ye know, I ain’t so all-fired sure of that,” said he.
“You think it is of volcanic origin?” asked Mr. Chadwick.
“No sir-ee, not by a jugful. You see, we are somewhere’s off the mouth of the Amazon River. A bit to the south maybe, but the drift sets south. Did you ever hear of the floating islands of the Amazon?”
“Yes,” rejoined Mr. Chadwick, while the others said nothing, “but I always thought that they were more or less of a myth.”
“Not so’s you could notice it,” was the reply. “I’ve heard tell of bigger ones than this. They get detached from the upper reaches of the river during floods and are carried out to sea. They’ve been met with much further out than this, and a dern sight bigger, too. They’re perfectly good islands, they say, except for one thing.”
“What’s that?” asked Jack, for the captain had paused as if he expected someone to put a question.
“Why, they’ve got a mighty oncomfortable habit of sinking. You see, they ain’t much more than a sort of big door mat held together by twisted roots and so forth, and when they get good and soaked through—down they go.”