‘No use putting it in that way!’ exclaimed the carpenter, after a brief pause, and a slow, sour wagging of his head; ‘the island’s there. ‘Tain’t no dream. Ye’ll find it right enough, I’ll warrant.’
‘It was described to me,’ I went on, ‘as little more than a reef. This is a big sea, men. A reef is easily missed in such an ocean as this.’
‘You have its bearings,’ exclaimed Forrest defiantly; ‘if you put the barque in the place on the chart where the captain said the island is, how are we agoing to miss it, unless all hands turns puppies, and keeps a lookout with their eyes shut?’
‘But,’ said I, preserving my temper, ‘may not this hope of obtaining a large treasure have rendered you all very considerably overconfident? Suppose there is no island. Reason with me on that supposition. Imagine that we have arrived, and that there is nothing but clear water. Imagine, if you will, that we have been sweeping those seas for a month without heaving into sight your late captain’s reef. What then, I ask? What next steps have you in your minds to take? I have a right to an answer, even though I should address you only in the name of the young lady whose protector I am.’
The fellows glanced at one another. Their low, suspicious intelligence manifestly witnessed some strategic fancy underlying my question.
‘Look here, Mr. Dugdale,’ exclaimed the carpenter, ‘there’s no use in your a-putting it in any other way than the way we want, and the way we mean to have.’ He accompanied this with a violent nod of the head. ‘Though we’re plain men without e’er a stroke of book-learning amongst us, we ain’t to be made fools of. The island’s where ‘ee can find it, if ye choose, and to that there island we’re bound, sir;’ and he bestowed another emphatic, malevolent nod upon me.
I gazed at the fellows in silence. One glance at the array of mulish countenances should have satisfied me that there was nothing in anything I could say to induce in them other views than those they held, or to render endurable to them a discussion that must be based upon a probability of their being disappointed.
‘We’ve stuck to our side of the bargain, sir,’ said one of them.
‘Ay,’ cried the carpenter; ‘I allow that let the gent strive as he may, there’s nothen he can find in the treatment him and the lady’s met with from us men to complain of.’
‘I do not complain,’ I exclaimed; ‘have you on your side any reason to complain?’