Harry Collingwood - Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn

Happily for our impatience, matters shortly afterwards improved somewhat, for with the setting of the sun the breeze freshened, and by the end of the second dog-watch we were slashing away to windward at a fine rate, reeling off our eight knots per hour, with the royal stowed. The breeze held all through the night, and when I went on deck at eight o’clock on the following morning the cone that I had viewed through the telescope on the previous evening was only some fifteen or sixteen miles distant, broad on the weather bow, and the arrangement of white rocks on the hill-side — five of them forming a vertical line — which the diary assured me was the distinguishing mark by which I might identify the spot for which I was searching — was clearly visible in the lenses of the telescope, while the mouth of the estuary was about five miles ahead.

“Yes,” I said to Enderby, who was standing beside me as I closed the instrument, “we are all right — so far; the opening to the nor’ard of that curious hummock is the mouth of the estuary into which Barber drifted while in a state of delirium, and the stranded hulk which is supposed to contain the treasure stands, according to him, somewhere on the southern shore. We shall have to make short boards along that southern shore, keeping a sharp look-out for anything in the nature of a stranded craft, anchor abreast it, and go ashore and give it a careful overhaul. Thus far it looks as though there might be some truth in the man’s story. I have no longer any doubt that Barber actually entered that estuary; but I shall still have to see that wreck before I am finally convinced of her existence. Barber was admittedly crazy when he landed yonder, and for all that we know to the contrary he may have remained crazy all the time that he was there, and have imagined the whole thing.”

“Holy Moses!” exclaimed the boatswain, in consternation, “you surely don’t mean to say, sir, that after all this time you still has doubts about the truth of that there treasure yarn, do ye? If we don’t find that wrack there’ll be the dickens to pay in the forecastle. The men — especially them Dagoes — ’ll be that disapp’inted that there’s no knowin’ what game they may try to play.”

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