I
With a last long scrutiny at the unbroken circle of the sea, David Grief
swung out of the cross-trees and slowly and dejectedly descended the
ratlines to the deck.
“Leu-Leu Atoll is sunk, Mr. Snow,” he said to the anxious-faced young
mate. “If there is anything in navigation, the atoll is surely under the
sea, for we've sailed clear over it twice--or the spot where it ought to
be. It's either that or the chronometer's gone wrong, or I've forgotten
my navigation.”
“It must be the chronometer, sir,” the mate reassured his owner. “You
know I made separate sights and worked them up, and that they agreed
with yours.”
“Yes,” Grief muttered, nodding glumly, “and where your Summer lines
crossed, and mine, too, was the dead centre of Leu-Leu Atoll. It must be
the chronometer--slipped a cog or something.”
He made a short pace to the rail and back, and cast a troubled eye at
the _Uncle Toby's_ wake. The schooner, with a fairly strong breeze on
her quarter, was logging nine or ten knots.
“Better bring her up on the wind, Mr. Snow. Put her under easy sail and
let her work to windward on two-hour legs. It's thickening up, and I
don't imagine we can get a star observation to-night; so we'll just hold
our weather position, get a latitude sight to-morrow, and run Leu-Leu
down on her own latitude. That's the way all the old navigators did.”
Broad of beam, heavily sparred, with high freeboard and bluff, Dutchy
bow, the _Uncle Toby_ was the slowest, tubbiest, safest, and most
fool-proof schooner David Grief possessed. Her run was in the Banks and
Santa Cruz groups and to the northwest among the several isolated atolls
where his native traders collected copra, hawksbill turtle, and
an occasional ton of pearl shell. Finding the skipper down with a
particularly bad stroke of fever, Grief had relieved him and taken the
_Uncle Toby_ on her semiannual run to the atolls. He had elected to make
his first call at Leu-Leu, which lay farthest, and now found himself
lost at sea with a chronometer that played tricks.