"Look here, Brown," cried the captain of the Firebrand, flinging the torn and sea-stained slip of paper across the wardroom table to his first lieutenant—"this thing troubles me. If there's anything in it, 'tis my bounden duty, I take it, to send relief of some sort—eh? Read it over again. Read it, and tell me if you think 'tis genuine."
Mr. Brown spread out the flimsy sheet in front of him, screwed up his eyes, and read aloud, slowly and deliberately, the words inscribed upon it—
"God send speedy help to his Majesty's brig Aurora, homeward bound from St. John's to Plymouth, and in dire distress. North latitude 58 degrees, west longitude 10 degrees, as near as can be made out. Benjamin Clews, 27th July 1746."
"Well?" interrogated the captain.
"I'd lay my life 'tis genuine," said Mr. Brown. "I know the Aurora. I saw her in Chatham dockyard three years ago. What's more, I believe my old messmate Arthur Vincent sailed with her on this same cruise. The only thing that troubles me is the writing on this thing." He tapped the paper with his fingers. "This is a youngster's hand—some swab of a ship's boy. Why didn't one of the officers write it? That's what I want to know."
Captain Speeding took a turn aft along the cabin floor with his hands clasped behind his back, and stood at the open port meditatively looking out across the calm, sunlit bay to where a faint film of blue peat smoke floated above the quaint old gabled houses of Stromness. Then he returned to the table, hastily took out his watch, and said decisively—
"Brown, get the chart of the North Atlantic. Find the brig's position at the time when the word was sent off; allow for her being disabled, and calculate where she may be found. I am going to despatch Moreland in search with the cutter. The craft can't be far off, for, you see, this message has only been in the water fourteen days."
"I have already consulted the chart," remarked Mr. Brown. "I make out that the Aurora is somewhere in the neighbourhood of the St. Kilda Islands."
"I never heard of them," confessed the captain. "Are they inhabited?"
"God knows," said Mr. Brown.