appeared to be a seaman of no mean order. With the charts spread out before them he and the skipper promptly became immersed in a maze of technicalities. My ignorance of matters nautical is abysmal; and I listened in some bewilderment to talk of winds and tides and channels, of soundings and of reefs. I can reconstruct the scene now—the prelude to so many strange adventures!—as the three of us over the chart, the long, low chart-house with its clean smell of paint, the holland sun-blinds rattling smartly in the breeze which blew in through the open port holes, Garth in his loose tussore suit, with his eager face and keen eyes, a fragrant cigar thrust into his mouth, Lawless, rather awed by the other and consequently a trifle formal, stubbing the chart with a huge and podgy thumb.
When they pulled down the big orange-coloured volume of “Sailing Directions” for the Eastern Pacific and opened the page at Cock Island, I could better follow them.
“The island is mountainous,” Garth read out in his pleasant, deep voice, “and entirely volcanic, rising to several peaks, of which the highest reaches 2856 feet. These peaks are probably volcanoes, but the interior is unexplored and almost impenetrable owing to its steep, rugged, and often precipitous nature, the many rushing streams and the dense vegetation. There are small areas of comparatively level ground surrounding Sturt and Horseshoe Bays...”
He turned a page and skipped a mass of detail.
“There are only two harbours,” he read, “Sturt and Horseshoe Bays. Horseshoe Bay is larger than Sturt Bay, but is less sheltered, as it opens to the west and so has a heavy swell during the early months of the year. Moreover, the slopes surrounding the bay are much more abrupt and the area of level land in its neighbourhood is much less considerable.”
Adams, I recollected, had spoken of the man Dutchy and himself coming upon the grave in a clearing in the undergrowth close to the shore. He had mentioned, too, that their ship's boat had had to find a way in through the bar. It looked to me, therefore, as though they had landed in Horseshoe Bay where the upward slopes began closer to the shore than in Sturt Bay.
We read on. The island, it seemed, had never had any permanent population. It was “the resort of buccaneers in the Seventeenth Century and later was a watering-place for whalers.” It had “little animal life”; but there were wild pigs, descendants of those left by Captain Martin, of the frigate Rover, in 1774, and rats, introduced by calling ships. Mention had been made, we were told, by various explorers of huge carved images reputed to exist in the interior of the island, similar to those for which Easter Island is famous; but there was no certain knowledge of their existence.
There were a lot of particulars about attempts to colonize the island, of stray parties of mariners who had landed, with the intention of settling there; but in a year or two had gone away in a passing ship or died off. And there was a string of names, British and foreign, of naval men and of explorers who, landing to fill up with water or to kill some fresh meat, had jotted down a few observations about the island and then sailed away again across the boundless Pacific.
“And now, Okewood,” said Garth pleasantly, “you and I and all of us, you know, are merely passengers on the high seas of Captain Lawless here, and with your permission I propose that we should tell him who you are and what you have just confided to me. You have no objection, I take it?”
“None whatever,” said I.
“Then tell him yourself!” urged Garth, dropping on to the leather settee. So, sitting between the two on the softly padded seat, I unfolded my plan while the yacht gently swayed at her moorings and the awnings without cracked like a whip in the breeze.
When I had finished, Garth said:
“You'll agree, I'm sure, that we can spare a week!”