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I did not go around the chart-house and join Miss West, but stood enthralled by the spectacle of that heart that beat in the tropic heat. Boisterous shouts from the sailors attracted my attention. They had all climbed to the top of the tall rail and were watching something outboard. I followed their gaze and saw the amazing thing. That long-eviscerated shark was not dead.
In the forenoon I managed to crawl to windward on the top of the bridge-house, and under the lee of the chart-house watched the mast bending over with the wind and swaying like the branch of a tree, but after the aerial had stood throughout the winter I hardly thought the mast would carry away. "September 8. This is dull, miserable weather. Blow, snow, and calm for an hour or two.
When Elsie did ultimately climb to the chart-house, the fit of despondency had fled. Boyle was there, having been carried up in a deck chair early in the day. He was alone. "Huh!" he growled pleasantly. "You 're lookin' as bright as a new pin, Miss Maxwell. Now, if I had been among the pirates, I'd have taken you with me."
"Take a look and see that the boy ain't busy up there at a nap," said Riggs, and I mounted to the bridge, keeping well covered and to the seaward side of the chart-house. Rajah was wide awake, lying just inside the coaming of the chart-room door, chewing contentedly at his betel, and holding the spy-glass over the brass doorplate directed toward the island.
The planks of her chart-house were blackened. Her ventilators had crumpled into masses without any shape. "Laborin' like a critter in pain, she managed to make shallow water, an' a rattle o' chain told o' the droppin' o' the anchor. After that, nothin'! There wasn't a sign o' life aboard. "The harbor folks pulled out to take a look at the craft.
In the same way I was able to form a fairly accurate mental picture of the chart upon which that position had been pricked off, for Cooper, our "second", and I had been studying it together in the chart-house shortly after the skipper had "pricked her off". As a result, I knew that the Saturn had foundered some two thousand miles east-south-east of the Cape of Good Hope; that Madagascar the nearest land bore about north-by-west, true; with the islands of Reunion and Mauritius, not much farther off, bearing about two points farther east.
"I want to see the captain," said the detective. "There he is, boss, lookin' at you from the chart-house now." They glanced up toward a red-faced, hectoring sort of person who regarded them with evident disfavor. Some ships, loading for Central American ports at out-of-the-way wharves, do not want uniformed police on their decks. The two climbed an iron ladder.
The whole thing was too depressing for me to care to watch further, so I strolled aft and climbed the poop. In the lee of the chart-house Captain West and the pilot were pacing slowly up and down. Passing on aft, I saw steering at the wheel the weazened little old man I had noted earlier in the day. In the light of the binnacle his small blue eyes looked more malevolent than ever.
The long-range firing was kept up for several minutes, much to Courtenay's relief, as Suarez was certain that the Indians' stock of cartridges did not amount to more than four hundred at the utmost. The canoes crept gradually nearer, and bullets began to strike the ship frequently. One glanced off a davit and shattered a couple of windows in the chart-house.
He went up the poop-ladder three steps at a time and disappeared in the direction of the wheel behind the chart-house. Next came a promptitude of bellowed orders, and all the watch was slacking away after braces to starboard and pulling on after braces to port. I had already learned the manoeuvre. Mr. Pike was wearing ship. As I returned aft along the bridge Mr.
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