I was prevented from talking more on the subject just then by being summoned on deck, and when I told Jim he repeated what he had before said—
“We’ll find him, Peter. We’ll find him.”
Chapter Twenty.
A mutiny and its consequences.
I told Dr Cockle all I had heard about my brother Jack from Miles Soper. He seemed greatly interested, and said that he sincerely hoped we might find Jack or hear of him, though he confessed that it was very much like looking for a needle in a bundle of hay. Jim and I talked of little else. We neither of us any longer thought of going home, but I got a letter ready to send, by the first ship bound for England, to my sister Mary, and another to Mr Troil, telling them that I had got tidings of Jack, and much as I wished to get back, should stay out in those seas till I found him.
My great wish now was to fall in with other whalers, that I might make inquiries about my brother. The captain—though, I suppose, Dr Cockle and Mr Griffiths told him what I had heard—seemed to take no interest in the matter, nor did he show me any more attention than before.
We had left Juan Fernandez more than a month, when a cry came from the masthead of “Land ho!” It proved to be Chatham Island, one of the Galapagos, a group of volcanic islands almost under the line, some hundred miles away from the coast of Peru. We brought up in a fine bay, but the shore as far as we could see looked black and barren. There were, however, thick, low bushes of a peculiar kind, covering the ground at some distance from the beach. As Dr Cockle was going on shore with one of the mates and a party of the men, he to botanise and they to obtain fresh provisions, I went up to the captain and asked leave to accompany him.
“I understand you have made up your mind not to run away,” he observed, in his usual sarcastic tone.