After a giddy night of grand and lofty tumbling, in which, over a big
and dying sea, without a breath of wind to steady her, the Uncle Toby
rolled every person on board sick of soul, a light breeze sprang up
and the reefs were shaken out. By midday, on a smooth ocean floor, the
clouds thinned and cleared and sights of the sun were obtained. Two
degrees and fifteen minutes south, the observation gave them. With a
broken chronometer longitude was out of the question.
“We're anywhere within five hundred and a thousand miles along that
latitude line,” Grief remarked, as he and the mate bent over the chart.
“Leu-Leu is to the south'ard somewhere, and this section of ocean is all
blank. There is neither an island nor a reef by which we can regulate
the chronometer. The only thing to do--”
“Land ho, skipper!” the Tongan called down the companionway.
Grief took a quick glance at the empty blank of the chart, whistled his
surprise, and sank back feebly in a chair.
“It gets me,” he said. “There can't be land around here. We never
drifted or ran like that. The whole voyage has been crazy. Will you
kindly go up, Mr. Snow, and see what's ailing Jackie.”
“It's land all right,” the mate called down a minute afterward. “You can
see it from the deck--tops of cocoanuts--an atoll of some sort. Maybe
it's Leu-Leu after all.”
Grief shook his head positively as he gazed at the fringe of palms, only
the tops visible, apparently rising out of the sea.
“Haul up on the wind, Mr. Snow, close-and-by, and we'll take a look.
We can just reach past to the south, and if it spreads off in that
direction we'll hit the southwest corner.”
Very near must palms be to be seen from the low deck of a schooner, and,
slowly as the _Uncle Toby_ sailed, she quickly raised the low land above
the sea, while more palms increased the definition of the atoll circle.
“She's a beauty,” the mate remarked. “A perfect circle.... Looks as if
it might be eight or nine miles across.... Wonder if there's an entrance
to the lagoon.... Who knows? Maybe it's a brand new find.”
They coasted up the west side of the atoll, making short tacks in to
the surf-pounded coral rock and out again. From the masthead, across
the palm-fringe, a Kanaka announced the lagoon and a small island in the
middle.
“I know what you're thinking,” Grief said to his mate.
Snow, who had been muttering and shaking his head, looked up with quick
and challenging incredulity.
“You're thinking the entrance will be on the northwest.” Grief went on,
as if reciting.
“Two cable lengths wide, marked on the north by three separated
cocoanuts, and on the south by pandanus trees. Eight miles in diameter,
a perfect circle, with an island in the dead centre.”
“I _was_ thinking that,” Snow acknowledged.
“And there's the entrance opening up just where it ought to be----”
“And the three palms,” Snow almost whispered, “and the pandanus trees.
If there's a windmill on the island, it's it--Swithin Hall's island. But
it can't be. Everybody's been looking for it for the last ten years.”
“Hall played you a dirty trick once, didn't he?” Grief queried.
Snow nodded. “That's why I'm working for you. He broke me flat. It was
downright robbery. I bought the wreck of the _Cascade_, down in Sydney,
out of a first instalment of a legacy from home.”
“She went on Christmas Island, didn't she?”
“Yes, full tilt, high and dry, in the night. They saved the passengers
and mails. Then I bought a little island schooner, which took the rest
of my money, and I had to wait the final payment by the executors to fit
her out. What did Swithin Hall do--he was at Honolulu at the time--but
make a straightaway run for Christmas Island. Neither right nor title
did he have. When I got there, the hull and engines were all that was
left of the _Cascade_. She had had a fair shipment of silk on board,
too. And it wasn't even damaged. I got it afterward pretty straight from
his supercargo. He cleared something like sixty thousand dollars.”
Snow shrugged his shoulders and gazed bleakly at the smooth surface of
the lagoon, where tiny wavelets danced in the afternoon sun.
“The wreck was mine. I bought her at public auction. I'd gambled big,
and I'd lost. When I got back to Sydney, the crew, and some of the
tradesmen who'd extended me credit, libelled the schooner. I pawned
my watch and sextant, and shovelled coal one spell, and finally got a
billet in the New Hebrides on a screw of eight pounds a month. Then I
tried my luck as independent trader, went broke, took a mate's billet on
a recruiter down to Tanna and over to Fiji, got a job as overseer on a
German plantation back of Apia, and finally settled down on the _Uncle
Toby_.”
“Have you ever met Swithin Hall?”
Snow shook his head.
“Well, you're likely to meet him now. There's the windmill.”
In the centre of the lagoon, as they emerged from the passage, they
opened a small, densely wooded island, among the trees of which a large
Dutch windmill showed plainly.
“Nobody at home from the looks of it,” Grief said, “or you might have a
chance to collect.”
The mate's face set vindictively, and his fists clenched.
“Can't touch him legally. He's got too much money now. But I can take
sixty thousand dollars' worth out of his hide. I hope he is at home.”
“Then I hope he is, too,” Grief said, with an appreciative smile. “You
got the description of his island from Bau-Oti, I suppose?”
“Yes, as pretty well everybody else has. The trouble is that Bau-Oti
can't give latitude or longitude. Says they sailed a long way from the
Gilberts--that's all he knows. I wonder what became of him.”
“I saw him a year ago on the beach at Tahiti. Said he was thinking about
shipping for a cruise through the Paumotus. Well, here we are, getting
close in. Heave the lead, Jackie-Jackie. Stand by to let go, Mr. Snow.
According to Bau-Oti, anchorage three hundred yards off the west shore
in nine fathoms, coral patches to the southeast. There are the patches.
What do you get, Jackie?”
“Nine fadom.”
“Let go, Mr. Snow.”
The _Uncle Toby_ swung to her chain, head-sails ran down, and the Kanaka
crew sprang to fore and main-halyards and sheets.