It is still there, and that is why no pilot will take the _Glarus_ out,
no captain will navigate her, no stoker feed her fires, no sailor walk
her decks. The _Glarus_ is suspect. She will never smell blue water
again, nor taste the trades. She has seen a Ghost.
THE GHOST IN THE CROSSTREES
I
Cyrus Ryder, the President of the South Pacific Exploitation Company,
had at last got hold of a "proposition"--all Ryder's schemes were, in
his vernacular, "propositions"--that was not only profitable beyond
precedent or belief, but that also was, wonderful to say, more or less
legitimate. He had got an "island." He had not discovered it. Ryder had
not felt a deck under his shoes for twenty years other than the
promenade deck of the ferry-boat _San Rafael_, that takes him home to
Berkeley every evening after "business hours." He had not discovered it,
but "Old Rosemary," captain of the barkentine _Scottish Chief_, of
Blyth, had done that very thing, and, dying before he was able to
perfect the title, had made over his interest in it to his best friend
and old comrade, Cyrus Ryder.
"Old Rosemary," I am told, first landed on the island--it is called
Paa--in the later '60's.
He established its location and took its latitude and longitude, but as
minutes and degrees mean nothing to the lay reader, let it be said that
the Island of Paa lies just below the equator, some 200 miles west of
the Gilberts and 1,600 miles due east from Brisbane, in Australia.
Pages:
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156