'What island?'
I answered her.
'Is there no harbour in it, no place where ships touch, no place where men are? If they came fishing down here for whales and seals there should be a port.'
I put my hand upon a life-line and walked to the captain's cabin. It was as dark as night there, for the heel of the hulk depressed the cabin windows to within arms' reach of the beach, as it looked. I lighted a bull's-eye, and, finding the chart I required, returned with it.
It was a chart of the discoveries made in these waters between 1819 and 1843. It outlined Graham Land down to sixty-eight degrees south, and a little more than sixty-eight degrees west, and submitted a shaded tracing of the South Shetlands; but I was very certain that our island was none of them. I put the chart on Miss Otway's knee and threw the lamplight upon it, and said, pointing to Coronation Island and then to Laurie Island:
'Which of them this is I can't tell you, but I should guess by our drift that it's the bigger of the two, and that our lodgment's here,' and I put my finger upon a bight named Palmer's Bay. 'Here's a mountain at back of it, you see,' said I, 'towering to a height of nigh four thousand five hundred feet; it was the blue shadow we saw in the air, and our drift was nigh hard straight for that.'
She put her face close to the chart, listening, meanwhile, greedily to me.
'But here are many English names,' said she—'Cape Dundas—Despair Rock—Saddle Island.' She read thus a little; then went on: 'Surely an island that has been named in this fashion is inhabited?'
'Well, it may be. I hope it is,' said I.