McCoy calmly considered. He did not refer to the chart. All these islands, reefs, shoals, lagoons, entrances, and distances were marked on the chart of his memory. He knew them as the city dweller knows his buildings, streets, and alleys.
'Papakena and Vanavana are off there to the westward, or west-nor'westward a hundred miles and a bit more,' he said. 'One is uninhabited, and I heard that the people on the other had gone off to Cadmus Island . Anyway, neither lagoon has an entrance. Ahunui is another hundred miles on to the nor'west. No entrance, no people.'
'Well, forty miles beyond them are two islands?' Captain Davenport queried, raising his head from the chart.
McCoy shook his head.
' Paros and Manuhungi—no entrances, no people. Nengo-Nengo is forty miles beyond them, in turn, and it has no people and no entrance. But there is Hao Island . It is just the place. The lagoon is thirty miles long and five miles wide. There are plenty of people. You can usually find water. And any ship in the world can go through the entrance.'
He ceased and gazed solicitously at Captain Davenport, who, bending over the chart with a pair of dividers in hand, had just emitted a low groan.
'Is there any lagoon with an entrance anywhere nearer than Hao Island ?' he asked.
'No, Captain; that is the nearest.'
'Well, it's three hundred and forty miles.' Captain Davenport was speaking very slowly, with decision. 'I won't risk the responsibility of all these lives. I'll wreck her on the Acteons. And she's a good ship, too,' he added regretfully, after altering the course, this time making more allowance than ever for the westerly current.
An hour later the sky was overcast. The southeast trade still held, but the ocean was a checker board of squalls.
'We'll be there by one o'clock,' Captain Davenport announced confidently. 'By two o'clock at the outside. McCoy, you put her ashore on the one where the people are.'
The sun did not appear again, nor, at one o'clock, was any land to be seen. Captain Davenport looked astern at the Pyrenees ' canting wake.
'Good Lord!' he cried. 'An easterly current? Look at that!'
Mr. Konig was incredulous. McCoy was noncommittal, though he said that in the Paumotus there was no reason why it should not be an easterly current. A few minutes later a squall robbed the Pyrenees temporarily of all her wind, and she was left rolling heavily in the trough.
'Where's that deep lead? Over with it, you there!' Captain Davenport held the lead line and watched it sag off to the northeast. 'There, look at that! Take hold of it for yourself.'
McCoy and the mate tried it, and felt the line thrumming and vibrating savagely to the grip of the tidal stream.
'A four-knot current,' said Mr. Konig.
'An easterly current instead of a westerly,' said Captain ' Davenport , glaring accusingly at McCoy, as if to cast the blame for it upon him.
'That is one of the reasons, Captain, for insurance being eighteen per cent in these waters,' McCoy answered cheerfully. 'You can never tell. The currents are always changing. There was a man who wrote books, I forget his name, in the yacht Casco. He missed Takaroa by thirty miles and fetched Tikei, all because of the shifting currents. You are up to windward now, and you'd better keep off a few points.'
'But how much has this current set me?' the captain demanded irately. 'How am I to know how much to keep off?'
'I don't know, Captain,' McCoy said with great gentleness.
The wind returned, and the PYRENEES , her deck smoking and shimmering in the bright gray light, ran off dead to leeward. Then she worked back, port tack and starboard tack, crisscrossing her track, combing the sea for the Acteon Islands , which the masthead lookouts failed to sight.
Captain Davenport was beside himself. His rage took the form of sullen silence, and he spent the afternoon in pacing the poop or leaning against the weather shrouds. At nightfall, without even consulting McCoy, he squared away and headed into the northwest. Mr. Konig, surreptitiously consulting chart and binnacle, and McCoy, openly and innocently consulting the binnacle, knew that they were running for Hao Island . By midnight the squalls ceased, and the stars came out. Captain Davenport was cheered by the promise of a clear day.
'I'll get an observation in the morning,' he told McCoy, 'though what my latitude is, is a puzzler. But I'll use the Sumner method, and settle that. Do you know the Sumner line?'
And thereupon he explained it in detail to McCoy.
The day proved clear, the trade blew steadily out of the east, and the Pyrenees just as steadily logged her nine knots. Both the captain and mate worked out the position on a Sumner line, and agreed, and at noon agreed again, and verified the morning sights by the noon sights.
'Another twenty-four hours and we'll be there,' Captain Davenport assured McCoy. 'It's a miracle the way the old girl's decks hold out. But they can't last. They can't last. Look at them smoke, more and more every day. Yet it was a tight deck to begin with, fresh-calked in Frisco. I was surprised when the fire first broke out and we battened down. Look at that!'
He broke off to gaze with dropped jaw at a spiral of smoke that coiled and twisted in the lee of the mizzenmast twenty feet above the deck.
'Now, how did that get there?' he demanded indignantly.
Beneath it there was no smoke. Crawling up from the deck, sheltered from the wind by the mast, by some freak it took form and visibility at that height. It writhed away from the mast, and for a moment overhung the captain like some threatening portent. The next moment the wind whisked it away, and the captain's jaw returned to place.
'As I was saying, when we first battened down, I was surprised. It was a tight deck, yet it leaked smoke like a sieve. And we've calked and calked ever since. There must be tremendous pressure underneath to drive so much smoke through.'
That afternoon the sky became overcast again, and squally, drizzly weather set in. The wind shifted back and forth between southeast and northeast, and at midnight the Pyrenees was caught aback by a sharp squall from the southwest, from which point the wind continued to blow intermittently.
'We won't make Hao until ten or eleven,' Captain Davenport complained at seven in the morning, when the fleeting promise of the sun had been erased by hazy cloud masses in the eastern sky. And the next moment he was plaintively demanding, 'And what are the currents doing?'
Lookouts at the mastheads could report no land, and the day passed in drizzling calms and violent squalls. By nightfall a heavy sea began to make from the west. The barometer had fallen to 29.50. There was no wind, and still the ominous sea continued to increase. Soon the Pyrenees was rolling madly in the huge waves that marched in an unending procession from out of the darkness of the west. Sail was shortened as fast as both watches could work, and, when the tired crew had finished, its grumbling and complaining voices, peculiarly animal-like and menacing, could be heard in the darkness. Once the starboard watch was called aft to lash down and make secure, and the men openly advertised their sullenness and unwillingness. Every slow movement was a protest and a threat. The atmosphere was moist and sticky like mucilage, and in the absence of wind all hands seemed to pant and gasp for air. The sweat stood out on faces and bare arms, and Captain Davenport for one, his face more gaunt and care- worn than ever, and his eyes troubled and staring, was oppressed by a feeling of impending calamity.
'It's off to the westward,' McCoy said encouragingly. 'At worst, we'll be only on the edge of it.'
But Captain Davenport refused to be comforted, and by the light of a lantern read up the chapter in his Epitome that related to the strategy of shipmasters in cyclonic storms. From somewhere amidships the silence was broken by a low whimpering from the cabin boy.
'Oh, shut up!' Captain Davenport yelled suddenly and with such force as to startle every man on board and to frighten the offender into a wild wail of terror.
'Mr. Konig,' the captain said in a voice that trembled with rage and nerves, 'will you kindly step for'ard and stop that brat's mouth with a deck mop?'
But it was McCoy who went forward, and in a few minutes had the boy comforted and asleep.
Shortly before daybreak the first breath of air began to move from out the southeast, increasing swiftly to a
