"Take care of yourself," he said, "for you must remember none of us can take care of you. There's no settlement where you're going—no telegraph or wireless; you could be murdered, and none of us hear of it for a month, or for ever. And the fellows you're after are a dangerous lot, take my word for it. Keep a good watch on your guns, and we'll be on the look out for the first news of you, and anything we can do we'll be there, you bet."
And so the Maggie Darling once more bared her whiteness to the breeze, and the world seemed once more a great world.
"It's good to be alive, Tom," I said, "on a day like this, though we get killed to-morrow."
Tom agreed to this, so did Sailor; and so, I felt, did the Maggie Darling, the loveliest, proud-sailed creature that ever leaned over and laughed in the grasp of the breeze.
CHAPTER VII
In Which the Sucking Fish Has a Chance to Show Its Virtue.
The breeze was so strong that we didn't use our engine that day. Besides, I wanted to take a little time thinking over my plans. I spent most of the time studying the charts and pondering John P. Tobias's narrative, which threw very little light on the situation. There was little definite to go by but his mark of the compass engraven on a certain rock in a wilderness of rocks; and such rocks as they were at that.
As I thought of that particular kind of rock, I wondered too about my three friends, trussed like fowls, on their coral rock couches. Of course they had long since cut each other free, and were somewhere active and evil-doing; and the thought of their faces seemed positively sweet to me, for of such faces are made "the bright face of danger" that all men are born to love.