The rough sailor became an oracle; the others hung upon his words, and followed his brown finger on the chart with fearful interest.
"Ye see, sir," said he, addressing the old merchant--for there was something on his mind that made him avoid speaking directly to General Rolleston----" when we came out of Sydney, the wind being south and by west, Hudson took the northerly course instead of running through Cook's Straits. The weather freshened from the same quarter, so that, with one thing and another, by when we were a month out, she was five hundred miles or so nor'ard of her true course. But that wasn't all; when the leak gained on us, Hudson ran the ship three hundred miles by my reckoning to the nor'east; and, I remember, the day before she foundered, he told me she was in latitude forty, and Easter Island bearing due north."
"Here is the spot, then," said General Rolleston, and placed his finger on the spot.
"Ay, sir," said Wylie, addressing the merchant; "but she ran about eighty-five miles after that, on a northerly course--no--wind on her starboard quarter--and, being deep in the water, she'd make lee way--say eighty-two miles, nor'east by east." The general took eighty-two miles off the scale, with a pair of dividers, and set out that distance on the chart. He held the instrument fixed on the point thus obtained.
Wylie eyed the point, and, after a moment's consideration, nodded his head.
"There, or thereabouts," he said, in a low voice, and looking at the merchant.
A pause ensued, and the two old men examined the speck pricked on the map, as if it were the waters covering the _Proserpine._
"Now, sir," said Rolleston, "trace the course of the boats;" and he handed Wylie a pencil.
The sailor slowly averted his head, but stretched out his hand and took it, and traced two lines, the one short and straight, running nearly northeast. "That's the way the cutter headed when we lost her in the night."
The other line ran parallel to the first for half an inch, then, turning, bent backward and ran due south.
"This was our course," said Wylie.
General Rolleston looked up, and said, "Why did you desert the cutter?"
The mate looked at old Wardlaw, and, after some hesitation, replied:
"After we lost sight of her the men with me declared that we could not reach either Juan Fernandez or Valparaiso with our stock of provisions, and insisted on standing for the sea-track of Australian liners between the Horn and Sydney."
This explanation was received in dead silence. Wylie fidgeted, and his eye wandered round the room.
General Rolleston applied his compasses to the chart. "I find that the _Proserpine_ was not one thousand miles from Easter Island. Why did you not make for that land?"
"We had no charts, sir," said Wylie to the merchant, "and I'm no navigator."
"I see no land laid down hereaway, northeast of the spot where the ship went down."
"No," replied Wylie, "that's what the men said when they made me 'bout ship."
"Then why did you lead the way northeast at all?"
"I'm no navigator," answered the man sullenly.