"I suppose they think it would cost too much."
"Yes; that's it. They think only about the profits, and trust to luck for our safety. Well, I only hope we'll get safely out of this place--that's all."
And the captain walked off much more excited than usual.
They drifted on through days of calm, which were succeeded by fierce but short-lived storms, and then followed by calms. Their course lay sometimes north, sometimes south, sometimes nowhere. Thus the time passed, until at length, about the middle of September, they came in sight of a long, low island of sand.
"I've heard of that sand-bank before," said the captain, who showed some surprise at seeing it; "but I didn't believe it was here. It's not down in the charts. Here we are three hundred and fifty miles southwest of the Straits of Sunda, and the chart makes this place all open water. Well, seein's believin'; and after this I'll swear that there is such a thing as Coffin Island."
"That's the name an old sea-captain gave it, and tried to get the Admiralty to put it on the charts, but they wouldn't. But this is it, and no mistake."
"Well, he thought that rock looked like a coffin, and it's dangerous enough when a fog comes to deserve that name."
Brandon looked earnestly at the island which the captain mentioned, and which they were slowly approaching.
It lay toward the north, while the ship's course, if it had any in that calm, was southwest. It was not more than six miles away, and appeared to be about five miles long. At the nearest extremity a black rock arose to a height of about fifty feet, which appeared to be about five hundred feet long, and was of such a shape that the imagination might easily see a resemblance to a coffin. At the farthest extremity of the island was a low mound. The rest of the island was flat, low, and sandy, with no trace of vegetation perceptible from the ship, except a line of dingy green under the rock, which looked like grass.
Meanwhile the captain, in anticipation of a storm, had caused all the sails to be taken in, and stood anxiously watching the sky toward the southwest.
There a dense mass of clouds lay piled along the horizon, gloomy, lowering, menacing; frowning over the calm seas as though they would soon destroy that calm, and fling forth all the fury of the winds. These clouds seemed to have started up from the sea, so sudden had been their appearance; and now, as they gathered themselves together, their forms distended, and heightened, and reached forward vast arms into the sky, striving to climb there, rolling upward voluminous cloud masses which swiftly ascended toward the zenith. So quick was the progress of these clouds that they did not seem to come from the banks below; but it was rather as though all the air suddenly condensed its moisture and made it visible in these dark masses.