第47章 THE SEED OF McCOY(6)

"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.