"How in blazes do you remember like that?" asked Ching once as Willatopy drove at full speed with a five-knot tide under him into the hidden maze of coral.
"I don't remember," replied Willie easily, as he delicately manipulated the steering telegraph, and swung the big yacht this way and that, as surely as a racing motorist swings his car. "I don't remember; I know." He never looked at Ching's chart; he never appeared to take any bearings--although those bright, penetrative blue eyes, ranging out over the encircling islands, were all the while noting familiar land features and making their own quick unconscious calculations. He never hesitated for one instant. The Skipper down below, following Willatopy's course upon the chart, would sometimes tremble when he saw by how much the boy ignored the line a careful Admiralty had laid down. But he was too wise to interfere. If you take a pilot you must trust to him, and Willatopy, though he scorned the professional title, was a pilot beyond compare. He did not remember; he knew.
Madame Gilbert was on the boat deck when the yacht drew in towards Port Kennedy. She frowned viciously upon Thursday Island, that sorry western gate of the lovely tropic Straits. A treeless, desolate waste dotted with corrugated iron buildings. Cluster the iron buildings a little, drive wide dusty roads between clumps of them, and one has Port Kennedy, the seat of government. Impelled by greed of pearl and shell, and undeterred by the stark hideousness of the Island, the sweepings of most nations have poured down upon that uncomely spot, and have greatly contributed to make it what it is, and to keep from reaching up towards better things.
"Poor Willatopy," murmured Madame as she gazed upon the polluted scene. "So this is his point of contact with white civilisation. Better Tops Island, a hundred times."
A mile away from the port, Willatopy handed over his charge to her lawful skipper. "Take her in. I go in my yawl." He dropped down the bridge ladder, and ran pattering along the deck. At a sign from Madame he stopped.
"I go in my yawl," cried he, pointing to where that little craft of his bobbed up and down in the yacht's wash at the end of her towing line.