"Ay," said the captain, wrapping up the little spoons in a meditative manner; "perhaps that will be best."

He felt certain in his own mind that the search would be fruitless, but he did not say so. If he had been absolutely certain in his mind without being able to produce the proof, he would not have counselled Lestrange to any other course, knowing that the man's mind would never be settled until proof positive was produced.

"The question is," said Lestrange, "what is my quickest way to get there?"

"There I may be able to help you," said Fountain tying the string round the box "A schooner with good heels to her is what you want; and, if I'm not mistaken, there's one discharging cargo at this present minit at O'Sullivan's wharf. Missus!"

The woman answered the call. Lestrange felt like a person in a dream, and these people who were interesting themselves in his affairs seemed to him beneficent beyond the nature of human beings.

"Is Captain Stannistreet home, think you?"

"I don't know," replied the woman; "but I can go see."

"Do."

She went.

"He lives only a few doors down," said Fountain, "and he's the man for you. Best schooner captain ever sailed out of 'Frisco. The Raratonga is the name of the boat I have in my mind--best boat that ever wore copper. Stannistreet is captain of her, owners are M'Vitie. She's been missionary, and she's been pigs; copra was her last cargo, and she's nearly discharged it. Oh, M'Vitie would hire her out to Satan at a price; you needn't be afraid of their boggling at it if you can raise the dollars. She's had a new suit of sails only the beginning of the year. Oh, she'll fix you up to a T, and you take the word of S.

Fountain for that. I'll engineer the thing from this bed if you'll let me put my oar in your trouble; I'll victual her, and find a crew three quarter price of any of those d----d skulking agents. Oh, I'll take a commission right enough, but I'm half paid with doing the thing."

He ceased, for footsteps sounded in the pa.s.sage outside, and Captain Stannistreet was shown in. He was a young man of not more than thirty, alert, quick of eye, and pleasant of face. Fountain introduced him to Lestrange, who had taken a fancy to him at first sight.

When he heard about the business in hand, he seemed interested at once; the affair seemed to appeal to him more than if it had been a purely commercial matter, much as copra and pigs.

"If you'll come with me, sir, down to the wharf, I'll show you the boat now," he said, when they had discussed the matter and threshed it out thoroughly.

He rose, bid good-day to his friend Fountain, and Lestrange followed him, carrying the brown paper box in his hand.

O'Sullivan's Wharf was not far away. A tall Cape Horner that looked almost a twin sister of the ill-fated Northumberland was discharging iron, and astern of her, graceful as a dream, with snow-white decks, lay the Raratonga discharging copra.

"That's the boat," said Stannistreet; "cargo nearly all out. How does she strike your fancy?"

"I'll take her," said Lestrange, "cost what it will."

CHAPTER IV

DUE SOUTH

It was on the 10th of May, so quickly did things move under the supervision of the bedridden captain, that the Raratonga, with Lestrange on board, cleared the Golden Gates, and made south, heeling to a ten-knot breeze.

There is no mode of travel to be compared to your sailing-ship. In a great ship, if you have ever made a voyage in one, the vast s.p.a.ces of canvas, the sky-high spars, the finesse with which the wind is met and taken advantage of, will form a memory never to be blotted out.

A schooner is the queen of all rigs; she has a bounding buoyancy denied to the square-rigged craft, to which she stands in the same relationship as a young girl to a dowager; and the Raratonga was not only a schooner, but the queen, acknowledged of all the schooners in the Pacific.

For the first few days they made good way south; then the wind became baffling and headed them off.

Added to Lestrange's feverish excitement there was an anxiety, a deep and soul-fretting anxiety, as if some half-heard voice were telling him that the children he sought were threatened by some danger.

These baffling winds blew upon the smouldering anxiety in his breast, as wind blows upon embers, causing them to glow. They lasted some days, and then, as if Fate had relented, up sprang on the starboard quarter a spanking breeze, making the rigging sing to a merry tune, and blowing the spindrift from the forefoot, as the Raratonga, heeling to its pressure, went humming through the sea, leaving a wake spreading behind her like a fan.

It took them along five hundred miles, silently and with the speed of a dream. Then it ceased.

The ocean and the air stood still. The sky above stood solid like a great pale blue dome; just where it met the water line of the far horizon a delicate tracery of cloud draped the entire round of the sky.

I have said that the ocean stood still as well as the air: to the eye it was so, for the swell under-running the glitter on its surface was so even, so equable, and so rhythmical, that the surface seemed not in motion. Occasionally a dimple broke the surface, and strips of dark sea-weed floated by, showing up the green; dim things rose to the surface and, guessing the presence of man, sank slowly and dissolved from sight.

Two days, never to be recovered, pa.s.sed, and still the calm continued.

On the morning of the third day it breezed up from the nor'-nor'west, and they continued their course, a cloud of canvas, every sail drawing, and the music of the ripple under the forefoot.

Captain Stannistreet was a genius in his profession; he could get more speed out of a schooner than any other man afloat, and carry more canvas without losing a stick. He was also, fortunately for Lestrange, a man of refinement and education, and what was better still, understanding.

They were pacing the deck one afternoon, when Lestrange, who was walking with his hands behind him, and his eyes counting the brown dowels in the cream-white planking, broke silence.

"You don't believe in visions and dreams?"

"How do you know that?" replied the other.

"Oh, I only put it as a question; most people say they don't."

"Yes, but most people do."

"I do," said Lestrange.

He was silent for a moment.

"You know my trouble so well that I won't bother you going over it, but there has come over me of late a feeling--it is like a waking dream."

"Yes?"

"I can't quite explain, for it is as if I saw something which my intelligence could not comprehend, or make an image of."

"I think I know what you mean."

"I don't think you do. This is something quite strange. I am fifty, and in fifty years a man has experienced, as a rule, all the ordinary and most of the extraordinary sensations that a human being can be subjected to. Well, I have never felt this sensation before; it comes on only at times. I see, as you might imagine, a young baby sees, and things are before me that I do not comprehend. It is not through my bodily eyes that this sensation comes, but through some window of the mind, from before which a curtain has been drawn."

"That's strange," said Stannistreet, who did not like the conversation over-much, being simply a schooner captain and a plain man, though intelligent enough and sympathetic.

"This something tells me," went on Lestrange, "that there is danger threatening the--" He ceased, paused a minute, and then, to Stannistreet's relief, went on. "If I talk like that you will think I am not right in my head: let us pa.s.s the subject by, let us forget dreams and omens and come to realities. You know how I lost the children; you know how I hope to find them at the place where Captain Fountain found their traces? He says the island was uninhabited, but he was not sure."

"No," replied Stannistreet, "he only spoke of the beach."

"Yes. Well, suppose there were natives at the other side of the island who had taken these children."

"If so, they would grow up with the natives."

"And become savages?"