A second later he seized a pencil and marked down upon a pad a series of dots and dashes.
Then, wheeling about, he put his fingers on a key to flash back an answer.
"It's the boys," he shouted. "Got their location. Joe, decode what I wrote there, then go ask the skipper how much we're off it."
He turned once more to click off his message, a repetition of the first one; then he shouted a second message into his transmitter.
Joe Marion studied the pad for a moment, then rushed out of the cabin.
All alert, Curlie sat listening for any further message which might reach him. Presently Joe returned. There was a puzzled look upon his face.
"Skipper says," he shouted, "that the point you gave me is the exact location of the island shown on that ancient map and that we must be about ten knots to the north of it. When I told him that the boys were in a seaplane at that point, he suddenly became convinced that there must be an island out there somewhere and refused to change his course.
"'For,' he says, 'if they've been sending messages from a plane in a gale like this they must be on the ground to do it and if on the ground, where but on an island? And if there's an island, how are we going to get up to her in the storm that's about to hit us. We'll be piled on the rocks and smashed in pieces.' That's what he said; said we'd be much safer in the open sea."
Curlie stared at the floor. His mind was in a whirl. Here he had been about to furnish proof that the mysterious island did not exist and just at that instant there came floating in from the air proof of the island's actual existence, proof so strong that even a seasoned old salt believed it and refused to change his course. What was he to say to that!
Fortunately, or unfortunately, he was to be given time enough to think about it, for at that moment, with an unbelievable violence the storm broke.