The Isle of Seven Moons/Chapter 21
CHAPTER XXI
LAND HO!
The reckoning which Ben had inscribed on the bit of birchbark, later brought to Barnabee Beach, and which hangs over a Salthaven fireplace to this day, hadn't been accurate, of course, shrewd guess though it was. Ten days had elapsed since they had reached these waters, and they had circled, and tacked, and "gone about," between and around all the known islands that lie like emeralds, heavenly-soft, on the breast of the Carribean, Guadeloupe, Montserrat, and tiny Marie Galante, Rodonda, Nevis, and St. Kitts—all of the group which Captain Fairwinds knew like a book, and which, as the admiring Benson swore, with a pardonable exaggeration, the skipper could find if all compasses failed and the stars went out.
At eight bells of the tenth day—the eighteenth since they set sail—the skipper took another reckoning—62-46 West, it read, and 17-19, or thereabouts, North—no sail or strand in sight—and the North Star headed away from the outmost sentinel of the Leewards, on a course south-southwest.
"I wonder how the boy calculated that," said the skipper, scanning the horizon, "he must have kept a pretty level head. Remembered the last log entry, I suppose, counted the days he drifted, and reckoned the drift. But it's funny the island was never charted—almost spooky, an old wives' tale."
Then, seeing an expression of concern, almost of alarm, flit across her face, he hastened to add,—
"It's somewhere in these parts, of course. I was thinking of the yarns about it,—floating and haunted, and all that. Then, too, the fact that it's not populated, when every little chip of an islet in these seas is swarming with blacks.
"I've never clapped eyes on it," he continued, after making sure of the light in his brier, "but it was owned once, so the yarn goes, by a French family, some grabbag lot of dooks or markeys or discounts—they lived there a long time. But a whole flock of misfortunes landed on 'em,—fever, murder, plague, earthquake, pirates, and such, that they gave it up as a bad job. Left it to the squatters and beachcombers, and the coffee-coloured wretches that make some sort of a living from the sea. The last big earthquake or visitation of spooks or voodoos drove them off—that is, if you're to believe the tale—and, well, there you are. But that old rascal, Mr. They Say, tells us it's a little chunk of Heaven let down on the water to show folks what the good place looks like. But I guess the Devil got in his licks since—There, there, I've told you all I've heard about it" Sally smiled, for he seemed, for some reason, to be getting confused—"So take it for what it's worth—which means it's all a lot of nonsense and a pack of infernal lies," he finished lamely.
"No, no, Señor, no lie, eet is like that, for I have seen eet. This foot she have step on it."
They hadn't heard the pad of shoeless feet on the quarterdeck behind them, not quite the place for an ordinary seaman, but Spanish Dick was subject to little discipline and many privileges, the chiefest of which being that of companion or troubadour to Sally.
"It ees a floating islan'," he continued with such seriousness as Hamlet must have assumed, "no thing under it, no coral, no rock, jus' water. An' it drif' around in the blue sea."
"Drifts around just like that!" teased the girl.
Again the melting brown eyes assumed their look of injured innocence.
"Yes, by San Christobal de Colon, the good saint, I have seen eet—once in the night. We sight eet in the dogwatch an try to reach eet. All over with beautiful lights—like what you call—phosphor—an' like a beautiful veil with gold lightning in eet, and in the sky always shining, many moons, seven moons, six leetle young ones an' one ol' one.
"We never come near eet. Yet we sail very fast, twelve knot was the wind. But always eet drif on an on, though we sail so fast. In the morning—" he threw up his hands with a mystifying gesture—"gone!"
"If the law allowed, I'd put you in irons, Dick. Why do you fill the girl's head with your fool superstitions?" But the skipper's reproof was only mockly severe. Dick was really a Godsend for Sally.
"No fool, Señor," he was replying, "the fool ees he who not believe. The wise have faith."
"He's right in a way, Captain Harve," championed his ward. "I don't swallow everything, but there's enough of the kid in me to half believe him, still. He tells such pretty stories. And oh, I wish they were true! They are—in spirit anyway."
And the quaint teller of tales, guessing at her defence of him though he didn't understand all of her brief, interjected,—
"The Señorita ees kind an' have the faith."
"Besides, Uncle Harve, you'll admit it's strange—the haunted island, not a living soul on it, and such a beautiful place—yet not on any chart."
"It is strange," Captain Fairwinds admitted, "but I could always find a practical solution for every mystery I ever heard of, and every ghost that ever walked. His Seven Moons now, they're a mirage perhaps, or electrical phenomenon like St. Elmo's Fire—or whatnot. Though I have heard it called 'The Isle of Seven Moons.'"
"The Isle of Seven Moons!" She repeated it musically. "That is pretty," then slowly, "I wonder!" Which perhaps again was a girl's delicate way of saying,—"There are more things in Heaven and earth, Harvey, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
At five bells the girl, who was almost always to be found on deck these days, hailed Captain Fairwinds.
"What's that—on our starboard bow?"
Yes, she was sure of it, and to confirm it, came the lookout's cry. There was a little smudge on the horizon, a little darker than the sea's blue rim.
"The glass, Captain Harve!" and she danced up and down on the deck, her hands and mouth twitching in impatience.
The little smudge expanded just as it had, though ever so much more slowly, for Ben on his floating spar. It did grow into an island, and when the sun went down, they could see the clear outline of Cone Mountain. The stars trooped up from the sea, and on and on towards it they sailed, until they could distinguish the Twin Horns, stretching out darkly into the water, and the mountain loomed up high in the air. They had neither chart nor pilot, but the Captain, as boyishly eager to reach the harbour as Sally, instead of casting anchor outside, kept the North Star to her course. Carefully sounding with the lead, they glided between the two dark capes and rested on the placid bosom of Rainbow Bay. The anchor went down with a splash, Sally almost after it in her impatience. She was all for going ashore. That strip of sand was so white in the moonlight, the feathery crown of Royal palms waved a soft invitation—and Ben might be very near.
But the Captain of the North Star said, "Not till dawn." So Sally disappeared down the companionway, and entered her cabin. Through the porthole she tossed a kiss towards that gleaming strip of sand, then uttered a prayer of pure gratitude, and tried to fall asleep to the lapping of the water against the ship's side.
But sleep would not come in spite of the wave's lullaby. Every nerve vibrated with excitement. As the old Salthaven folk used to say of children so wrought up over the morrow's journey to Boston-town that they were neither fit for food or slumber, she was "journey-proud." And yet that journey was over but a few feet of peaceful water, to that strip of sand that had paled to a ghostly white in the silent hours of the night. So she sat up in her berth, a wistful little figure in white, with two dusky braids falling over her breast, and looked at it through the porthole. And those mysteriously waving palms! Did any sorrow lie hidden in their shadows! What was that—the cry of some night bird of ill omen? And that far-off faint roar! The slender figure shivered. Would he be there to meet her at dawn? Had anything happened to him? Could he have …!