“An accident?” repeated Carthew.  “It don’t sound natural.  What kind of an accident?”

Wicks spread his hand face-up on the table, and drove a knife through his palm.

“That kind of an accident,” said he.  “There’s a way to draw to windward of most difficulties, if you’ve a head on your shoulders.”  He began to bind up his hand with a handkerchief, glancing the while over Goddedaal’s log.  “Hullo!” he said, “this’ll never do for us—­this is an impossible kind of a yarn.  Here, to begin with, is this Captain Trent trying some fancy course, leastways he’s a thousand miles to south’ard of the great circle.  And here, it seems, he was close up with this island on the sixth, sails all these days, and is close up with it again by daylight on the eleventh.”

“Goddedaal said they had the deuce’s luck,” said Carthew.

“Well, it don’t look like real life—­that’s all I can say,” returned Wicks.

“It’s the way it was, though,” argued Carthew.

“So it is; and what the better are we for that, if it don’t look so?” cried the captain, sounding unwonted depths of art criticism.  “Here! try and see if you can’t tie this bandage; I’m bleeding like a pig.”

As Carthew sought to adjust the handkerchief, his patient seemed sunk in a deep muse, his eye veiled, his mouth partly open.  The job was yet scarce done, when he sprang to his feet.

“I have it,” he broke out, and ran on deck.  “Here, boys!” he cried, “we didn’t come here on the eleventh; we came in here on the evening of the sixth, and lay here ever since becalmed.  As soon as you’ve done with these chests,” he added, “you can turn to and roll out beef and water breakers; it’ll look more shipshape—­like as if we were getting ready for the boat voyage.”

And he was back again in a moment, cooking the new log.  Goddedaal’s was then carefully destroyed, and a hunt began for the ship’s papers.  Of all the agonies of that breathless morning, this was perhaps the most poignant.  Here and there the two men searched, cursing, cannoning together, streaming with heat, freezing with terror.  News was bawled down to them that the ship was indeed a man-of-war, that she was close up, that she was lowering a boat; and still they sought in vain.  By what accident they missed the iron box with the money and accounts, is hard to fancy; but they did.  And the vital documents were found at last in the pocket of Trent’s shore-going coat, where he had left them when last he came on board.

Wicks smiled for the first time that morning.  “None too soon,” said he.  “And now for it!  Take these others for me; I’m afraid I’ll get them mixed if I keep both.”

“What are they?” Carthew asked.

“They’re the Kirkup and Currency Lass papers,” he replied.  “Pray God we need ’em again!”

“Boat’s inside the lagoon, sir,” hailed down Mac, who sat by the skylight doing sentry while the others worked.