“But, sir, captain—you—you are not going to sink—— You don’t mean that——”
“No, of course not! I sink nothing. But you think it over carefully and answer my questions,” Drake continued. And the pilot, still wondering, slowly lowered his eyes, shut them as if to ponder such a case, and then asked: “What time of year, captain?”
“This time of year,” Drake replied.
And again the weather-beaten old pilot shut his eyes and thought.
“Listen, sir,” he said in his quaint but adequate English. “Many things one must think of. If mens want to sink ship, but not drown anybody, they must be not too far from land for open boat, eh? Must be some place where not too much danger big seas for small boats, eh? Must also be some place where nobody see—away from fishermen’s boats, or cargo boats, or bigger ships—some place lonely this time year. Plenty places man could scuttle ship, but few where get all these things what want, eh? Well, about now most fishin’ boats work”—he got up and walked to a rough map that was tacked on the wall and that was almost solidly smeared with the trails of many fingers across its surface—“works up about here mostly. In some months, here; some months, there; but now, about here. So no good up there.” His finger moved as he talked. “No good through here, because big ships go there. No good there, because small ships what do island trade work in and out. So, here best place for all things. Almost only place which fit all I speak between here and Island of Rhodes. Not too far out of the way. Very good place. Deep water—plenty water and not much chance boat ever drift when hit bottom. Yes, captain, sir, that best place anybody can think of—right about there.”
His gnarled finger ceased to move—pointed at open water off Nauplia.
They sat down again and, while Christophe eyed him with perplexed looks, the captain reflected.
“That, you think, is a place a man who knew these waters well would select?” he said. “But a man who didn’t know them?”
“God knows where!” the pilot exclaimed, lifting his hands and letting them fall to the table again. “It is the place—the place I say—where one who knew would choose in, say—seven times out of ten. As you, sir, know, there are some thousands of islands.”
For half an hour Drake continued to catechize, but without stirring the old pilot from his conclusions.