ng the PYRENEES through
the water at an eight-knot clip. Captain Davenport worked up his dead
reckoning, allowing generously for drift, and announced Moerenhout
Island to be not more than ten miles off. The Pyrenees sailed the
ten miles; she sailed ten miles more; and the lookouts at the three
mastheads saw naught but the naked, sun-washed sea.

"But the land is there, I tell you," Captain Davenport shouted to them
from the poop.

McCoy smiled soothingly, but the captain glared about him like a madman,
fetched his sextant, and took a chronometer sight.

"I knew I was right," he almost shouted, when he had worked up the
observation. "Twenty-one, fifty-five, south; one-thirty-six, two, west.
There you are. We're eight miles to windward yet. What did you make it
out, Mr. Konig?"

The first mate glanced at his own figures, and said in a low voice:

"Twenty-one, fifty-five all right; but my longitude's one-thirty-six,
forty-eight. That puts us considerably to leeward--"

But Captain Davenport ignored his figures with so contemptuous a silence
as to make Mr. Konig grit his teeth and curse savagely under his breath.

"Keep her off," the captain ordered the man at the wheel. "Three
points--steady there, as she goes!"

Then he returned to his figures and worked them over. The sweat poured
from his face. He chewed his mustache, his lips, and his pencil, staring
at the figures as a man might at a ghost. Suddenly, with a fierce,
muscular outburst, he crumpled the scribbled paper in his fist and
crushed it under foot. Mr. Konig grinned vindictively and turned away,
while Captain Davenport leaned against the cabin and for half an
hour spoke no word, contenting himself with gazing to leeward with an
expression of musing hopelessness on his face.

"Mr. McCoy," he broke silence abruptly. "The chart indicates a group
of islands, but not how many, off there to the north'ard, or
nor'-nor'westward, about forty miles--the Acteon Islands. What about
them?"

"There are four, all low," McCoy answered. "First to the southeast is
Matuerui--no people, no entrance to the lagoon. Then comes Tenarunga.
There used to be about a dozen people there, but they may be all gone
now. Anyway, there is no entrance for a ship--only a boat entrance,
with a fathom of water. Vehauga and Teua-raro are the other two. No
entrances, no people, very low. There is no bed for the Pyrenees in that
group. She would be a total wreck."

"Listen to that!" Captai