‘I have no doubt of it. The shadow indicates that it is little more than a reef. Its bearings, according to my computation, accurately correspond with those given by Captain Braine.’
She projected her head over the rail, but was some time before she could distinguish the mere dash of gloom that the land made upon the horizon.
‘If it should be the island!’ she cried. ‘That you should have steered this ship straight as an arrow for it, and that it should be there—no madman’s dream, as we have both believed it! If one part of the story be true, the other part should be so.’
I was too astounded to converse. I could do no more than ejaculate. To be sure, as my companion had said, if the story of the island was true, the story of the gold might be equally true. There would be the treasure, then, for the men to possess themselves of! And afterwards?
My brains seemed to whirl like a teetotum in my skull.
Meanwhile, the sailors had reduced sail till the barque was now under topsails only, the rest of the canvas hanging from the yards in the grip of its gear. The carpenter arrived on the poop.
‘Mr. Dugdale,’ he exclaimed, in a rough, congratulatory voice, ‘you’ve done wonderfully well, sir. By ——! but I don’t think there’s e’er a navigator would have struck it true as a hair as ye have. Ye’ve got no doubts now left, I allow?’ and I saw his face darken with the wrinkles of the grin that overspread his countenance.
‘What’s to follow?’ I demanded, thinking to take advantage of his mood.
‘Why, the gold,’ he answered, ‘the money, sir; what we’ve been a-waiting for; and what I suspects we’ll most of us know what to do with when we gits it.’
‘And then?’