“No need whatever.”
“Fielding,” said he, looking and speaking very gravely, “you have greatly occupied my thoughts since you returned to consciousness yesterday, and since I discovered that you were not a half-hanged pirate or smuggler, but a gentleman and an English sailor after my own heart. I mean to tell you a very curious story, and when I have told you that story I intend to make a proposal to you. You shall hear what errand this brig is bound on. You shall learn to what part of the world I am carrying her, and I believe you will say that you have never heard of a more romantic nor of a more promising undertaking.”
He opened the door of his berth and looked out. Van Laar was seated at the table, eating his breakfast. Greaves closed the door and seated himself on his bed.
“Last year,” said he, “I was in command of a small vessel named the Hero. It matters not how it happened that I came to be at the Philippines. There I took in a small lading for Guayaquil. When about sixty leagues to the south’ard of the Galapagos Islands we made land, and hove into view an island of which no mention was made in any of the charts of those seas which I possessed. There was nothing in that. There is much land yet to be discovered in that ocean. I have no faith in any of the charts of the Western American seaboard, and trust to nothing but a good lookout. We hove this island into view, and I steered for it with a leadsman in the chains on either hand. I hoped to be of some humble service to the navigator by obtaining the correct bearings of the island; but I had no mind to delay my voyage by sounding, saving only for the security of my own ship.
“We sighted the island soon after sunrise, and at noon were abreast of it. It was a very remarkable heap of rock, much after the pattern of the Galapagos, gloomy with black lava, and the land consisted of masses of broken lava, compacted into cliffs and small conical hills, that reminded me somewhat of the Island of Ascension. I examined it very carefully with a telescope and beheld trees and vegetation in one place, but no signs of human life—no signs of any sort of life, if it were not for a number of turtle or tortoises crawling upon the beach and looking like ladybirds in the distance. But, as we slowly drew past the island, we opened a sort of natural harbor formed by two long lines of reef, one of them incurving as though it was a pier and the handiwork of man. The front of cliff that overlooked this natural harbor was very lofty, and in the middle of it was a tremendous fissure—a colossal cave—the shape of the mouth like the sides of a roughly-drawn letter A. Inside this cave ’twas as dark as evening; yet I seemed with my glass to obscurely behold something within. I looked and looked, and then handed the telescope to the mate, who said there was something inside the cave. It resembled to his fancy the scaffolding of a building, but what it exactly was neither of us could make out.
“The weather was very quiet; the breeze off the island, as its bearings then were at this time of sighting the cave, and the water within the natural harbor was as sheet-calm as polished steel. I said to the mate:
“‘We must find time to examine what is inside that cave. Call away four hands and get the boat over. Keep a bright lookout as you approach. There is nothing living that is visible outside, but who knows what may be astir within the darkness of that tremendous yawn? At the first hint of danger pull like the devil for the ship, and I will take care to cover your retreat.’
“To tell you the truth, Fielding, the sight of that extraordinary cave and the obscure thing within it, along with the natural harbor, as I call it, had put a notion into my head fit, to be sure, to be laughed at only; but the notion was in my head, and it governed me. It was this: suppose that huge cave, I thought to myself, should prove to be a secret dock used by picaroons for repairing their vessels or for concealing their ships under certain conditions of hot search? Because, you see, it was a cave vast enough to comfortably berth a number of small craft, and their people would keep a lookout; and who under the skies would suspect a piratic settlement in a heap of cinders?—So I, as a good, easy, ambling merchantman—a type of scores—come sliding close in to have a look, and then out spring the sea wolves from their lair, storming down upon their quarry to the impulse of sweeps three times as long as that oar upon which Galloon saw you floating.”
He paused to draw breath. I smiled at his high-flown language.
“Do you find anything absurd in the notion that entered my head?” said he.