That's the way all the old navigators did."

Broad of beam, heavily sparred, with high freeboard and bluff, Dutchy
bow, the _Uncle Toby_ was the slowest, tubbiest, safest, and most
fool-proof schooner David Grief possessed. Her run was in the Banks and
Santa Cruz groups and to the northwest among the several isolated atolls
where his native traders collected copra, hawksbill turtle, and
an occasional ton of pearl shell. Finding the skipper down with a
particularly bad stroke of fever, Grief had relieved him and taken the
_Uncle Toby_ on her semiannual run to the atolls. He had elected to make
his first call at Leu-Leu, which lay farthest, and now found himself
lost at sea with a chronometer that played tricks.

II

No stars showed that night, nor was the sun visible next day. A stuffy,
sticky calm obtained, broken by big wind-squalls and heavy downpours.
From fear of working too far to windward, the Uncle Toby was hove to,
and four days and nights of cloud-hidden sky followed. Never did the sun
appear, and on the several occasions that stars broke through they were
too dim and fleeting for identification. By this time it was patent to
the veriest tyro that the elements were preparing to break loose. Grief,
coming on deck from consulting the barometer, which steadfastly remained
at 29.90, encountered Jackie-Jackie, whose face was as brooding
and troublous as the sky and air. Jackie-Jackie, a Tongan sailor of
experience, served as a sort of bosun and semi-second mate over the
mixed Kanaka crew.

"Big weather he come, I think," he said. "I see him just the same before
maybe five, six times."

Grief nodded. "Hurricane weather, all right, Jackie-Jackie. Pretty soon
barometer go down--bottom fall out."

"Sure," the Tongan concurred. "He goin' to blow like hell."

Ten minutes later Snow came on deck.

"She's started," he said; "29.85, going down and pumping at the same
time. It's stinking hot--don't you notice it?" He brushed his forehead
with his hands. "It's sickening. I could lose my breakfast without
trying."

Jackie-Jackie grinned. "Just the same me. Everything inside walk about.
Always this way before big blow. But _Uncle Toby_ all right. He go
through anything."

"Better rig that storm-trysail on the main, and a storm-jib," Grief said
to the mate. "And put all the reefs into the working canvas before you
furl down. No telling what we may need. Put on double gaskets while
you're about it."

In anothe