Emily stood up, but she hesitated as she started to descend the companionway.
"It's all right. There is nobody down there now. We're absolutely alone," Paul said, noting her trepidation. "'Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill.'"
Peace came to her spirit at the gentleness of his words and she went below unafraid.
By the noon sights which the Daphne's new master got he fixed her position as Latitude 33:18 north; Longitude, 177:20 east. It astounded him. He worked his calculations over and over again according to a half-dozen different formulæ. The result was the same, except for an unappreciable difference in longitude. So he made it 12 o'clock, setting the local time by an old-fashioned silver watch which he had discovered under the pillow in Elston's berth.
Assuming the correctness of his reckoning, the Daphne was approximately two hundred miles north and west of where the Cambodia had gone down. In the light of this he had to accept it as a fact that the island had drifted across the steamship lane. On the 29th the Daphne had been in Latitude 32:30 and Longitude 176:28. He visualized that day on the island. There had been a light breeze from sunrise to sunset out of the northeast. With the going down of the sun it had begun to veer through the north until it brought out of the southwest. Hove to on the port tack, the bark most have followed the hauling breeze until she had circled the island and then drifted up on it with the swell. It was the only satisfactory solution of which Paul could think.
There came to him now, with redoubled force, a thought which had formed in the instant he had read in the log the port of the vessel's departure and her destination: "What can have caused a ship bound from Sydney, New South Wales, toward San Francisco, to be steered so far to the westward?"
He was compelled to turn from the puzzle and admit that he was baffled.
During the half-hour preceding noon the swell had gone down considerably. The breeze still continued steady from the southwest. An aneroid barometer which he had discovered in the lounge, when he had spread Emily's berth there, stood at an ordinary normal height. So he decided to hold on as the bark lay until after luncheon, then get under way, run before the wind for two hours, and take another altitude.
As Paul turned away from the barometer hanging over the chart table, Emily came up through the companionway. She wore a heavy blue flannel shirt such as he had told her to put on and a blue walking skirt which came to the tops of a pair of tan tennis shoes. She had plaited her hair again and wound it round her head like a crown. The shirt was unbuttoned at the throat, the cuffs rolled back. She presented a figure of beautiful, efficient womanhood where she paused at the head of the companionway, her arms half raised as if seeking Paul's approbation. Never since the first day he had seen her had she seemed so strongly feminine.
"You are the——" There he broke an exclamation. He halted in the step which he had taken toward her. Emily waited, her eyes half lowered. When his voice broke she looked up in surprise. She was pale, despite the soft tan with which exposure had dusted her face and throat. With an embarrassed laugh Paul went on: "You would make gunny cloth seem like the finest silk. Never ship sailed the seas with such a chief mate."