within
half an hour was slipping along through the water at the rate of a shade
over four knots by the log. The skipper was enchanted. "Furl
everything, Mr Temple," he said, "and head her due no'th. We'll just
meander along now under bare poles until we runs into the south-east
Trades; and when once we hits them we'll be all right, and needn't start
tack nor sheet again until we reaches our oyster bed."

CHAPTER SEVEN.

THE PEARL-OYSTER BED.

We caught the south-east Trade winds the next day, very light at first,
but gradually freshening as we ran farther into them; and then, as soon
as we found ourselves fairly in the grip of the true breeze, with the
water rippling blue and crisply all about us, we got the schooner under
canvas once more, hoisted our "fins" inboard, and bore away upon a
nor'-west course, with starboard studdingsails and big gaff-topsail set
and dragging like a team of cart horses. A week of this sort of thing
carried us to the calm belt under the Line; and here we once more
brought our "fins" into action, using them for three whole days and a
trifle over before we touched the southernmost fringe of the north-east
Trades, when we again went bowling along under all plain sail, that
being as much as we could conveniently show to a beam wind. Finally, on
a certain morning immediately after breakfast, I climbed to the
topgallant yard, armed with Cunningham's telescope, which I had borrowed
for the occasion, and, looking straight ahead, saw--just where I had
expected to see it, namely, some fifteen miles beyond our jibboom end--a
patch of white water, some three miles in length, stretching north and
south right athwart the schooner's hawse. It was the coral reef upon
which, if the skipper's friend Abe Johnson had spoken truth, that worthy
had suffered shipwreck, followed by all the horrors of complete solitude
for five solid months; and some two miles beyond which lay--according to
Abe--the rich pearl-oyster bed that was the real object of the _Martha
Brown's_ visit to this lonesome spot in the heart of the Pacific.

"See anything, Mr Temple?" hailed the skipper from the quarterdeck, in
a voice tense with excitement.

"Ay, ay, sir," I replied. "It is there, right enough, as plain as mud
in a wine-glass, about fifteen miles off, and stretching right athwart
our hawse. You had better luff a point, sir, and go round its northern
extremity."

"Luff a p'int it is," answered the skipper, direc