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The men had agreed to do this, but when they had seen the light on shore, they had made an agreement among themselves that, if this should be nothing but a fire built by savages or shipwrecked people of no account, they would not work the schooner any farther south. They would put Cardatas and Nunez in irons, if necessary, and take the Arato back to Valparaiso.
Cardatas turned toward the captain, and at the same time Burke said: "Captain, hadn't you better squat down a little? You're making a very fine mark of yourself." But the captain still stood up to listen to Cardatas. "I'll tell you what we've come for," said the latter. "We are not officers of the law, but we are the same thing.
"She left here four days ago, and we could never catch up with her, even if we could find such a pin-point of a vessel on the great Pacific." Cardatas laughed. "You don't know much about navigation," said he, "but that's not to be expected. With a good sailing-vessel I could go after her, and overhaul her somewhere in the Straits of Magellan.
"That remains to be calculated," replied Cardatas. Then the two went to work to calculate, and spent an hour or two at it. When they parted, Nunez had not made up his mind that the plan of Cardatas was a good one, but he told him to go ahead and see what could be done about getting the Arato and a reliable crew, and that he would talk further to him about the matter.
Having never had, until now, the responsibility of a vessel upon him, Cardatas was a good deal more cautious and prudent, perhaps, than Captain Horn would have been had he been in command of the Arato.
Cardatas wished to know much more, but the mate, who had had but little conversation with Shirley, could only tell him that the brig was then bound from Acapulco to Rio Janeiro in ballast, which he thought rather odd, but all he could add was that he knew Captain Horn, and he was a good man, and that if he were sailing in ballast, he supposed he knew what he was about.
But when Cardatas had talked to him, Señor Nunez had come among them and promised them good rewards, whether they sighted their prize or not, if they would work faithfully for ten days more.
"I agree with you," said Cardatas, as he lighted his twenty-seventh cigarette. Nunez did not smoke, but he mused as he walked along. "If she has gold on board," said he, presently, "it must be a good deal." "Yes," said the other. "They wouldn't take so much trouble for a small lot. Of course, there can't be enough of it to take the place of all the ballast, but it must weigh considerable."
He had gone back so far that he had begun to consider it useless to make further search, when suddenly he caught the name Miranda. There it was. The brig Miranda had cleared from Acapulco September 16, bound for Rio Janeiro in ballast. Nunez counted the months on his fingers. "Five months ago!" he said to himself. "That's not this trip, surely. But I will talk to Cardatas about that."
"When we are on such business as ours, we should not pass anything without understanding it." Cardatas had always supposed that these islands were uninhabited, and he could not see why anybody should be on one of them making a fire, unless it were a case of shipwreck. If a ship had been wrecked, it was not at all impossible that the Miranda might be the unfortunate vessel.
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