she was, though I allows it would have
been risky. I would have just chucked the sail over her and covered that
with an inch or so of sand, so that it would not have been noticed by a
boat a short way out. But if there is a village up here, why, a boat might
come down any moment to do some fishing, and there we should be caught at
once; as for getting away with them makeshift paddles, it would not be
worth even thinking of. I hope our chaps will come back without having
seen a monkey or a village, or as much as a banana, then the mate won't be
hankering to go up again; and I should make free to advise him to get the
boat up amongst the trees here till we have decided that the ship won't
come, and agree to make a start."

"I am with you to some extent, Wilcox, and I do think that it is a risky
thing going up the river. If we were to fill up with cocoa-nuts they would
last us for a week anyhow, and then when we saw another grove of them we
could land and load up again."

"You can't take an observation, I suppose, Mr. Stephen, and find out in a
rough way whereabouts we are?"

Steve shook his head. "No, Wilcox. If I had had my quadrant I might have
got near enough to have made a rough guess, for I have got that watch I
bought in my pocket, and I have timed it every day with the chronometers,
and find that it does not gain more than half a minute a day, so that at
the present moment it is not much more than a minute out by them, and if I
had had the quadrant I could have made a pretty close calculation. We were
about a degree and a half south at noon before that cyclone struck us, but
I don't see that that would help us now."

"It is a pity, sir," the sailor said, "for it would help us wonderful if
we could find out our position within fifty miles or so."

"I wish we could, Wilcox;" and Stephen sat for some time thinking. At last
he said, "I might, anyhow, find out in a rough sort of way whether we have
been blown north or south. We will see if we can find a perfectly straight
stick, ten or twelve feet long. If I fix that upright in sand the shadow
would help us. It was the 25th of March yesterday, and the sun at noon
would therefore be exactly overhead of the line at twelve o'clock.
Therefore, if we have been blown north, we should get a very short shadow
to the south at twelve o'clock; whereas if we have been blown south, there
would be a shadow north. It might not be more than an inch long; but even
that would tell u