“Nothing is strange at sea—in this sea particularly. The Spaniards are always for making their journeys by one road. Anything lying off that road they miss, unless they happen to be blown on to it, when one of two things happens; they perish, or they petition the Madonna and escape. If they escape, they have no more to tell about the rock or coast from which they narrowly came off with their lives than if they had perished. Why is that island uncharted by the Spaniards? Is it because no mariner among them has fallen in with it? Oh, they are lazy rogues all, they are lazy rogues all; timid, fearful navigators, execrable hydrographers.”
“It is odd that no Englishman should have fallen in with it.”
“That is as it happens to be.”
I fetched the glass, and steadied it upon the rail, and looked. The island stood up large and livid, tawny in patches, a huge cinderous heap. The hue, and even the appearance of it, somewhat reminded me of Ascension viewed at a distance. One or two parts were robed with green. There was a tremble and flash of surf at the extremities, and I guessed that when the sea ran high, it would break very fiercely and dangerously against all weather-fronting corners of that lonely rock. Greaves came and stood beside me. I was conscious of his presence, and talked to him with my eye at the telescope.
“In what part of the island is the cave situated, sir?”
“Do you observe a lump of land swelling above the edge of the cliff to the left?”
“Yes.”
“That lump or mound is the summit of the front of the rock in which lies the cave. We are opening it from the southward. I opened it, when I fell in with that land, from the westward.”
“It is a volcanic pile,” said I. “I observed points of rocks like chimneys. They may have smoked once upon a time.”
He took the glass from me, leisurely inspected the island, and walked the deck his earlier thoughtful posture, head bowed, hands locked behind him. I understood what was in his mind, and held off; he would have nothing to say until the wreck of the Spaniard stood before him in its dusky tomb. He mastered his anxiety, but would now and again pause and direct at the island a look that, with its accompanying play of face, expression of lip, suggestion of posture, told more of what was passing in him than had he talked for an hour.