“So you did,” Captain Scott replied. “Well, maybe you’ll do,” he added, after a slight pause. He took the lantern out of the bucket and held it over the chart of the Kapuan Islands. Then he handed the lantern to Stump. “Hold this,” he directed, “and I’ll give you a lesson in navigating.” With parallel rulers, dividers and pencil, the captain laid down a line from a position he had made on the chart; then he transferred the line with the parallel rulers to the compass printed on the chart, and read the compass direction of the line. “There’s where I figured we were at dark,” he said to the attentive Stump. “There’s the entrance to the reef at Saluafata, and that’s our compass course. Southeast, I make it.” Then he stepped off the distance with the dividers. “Fifteen miles it is.” He glanced over the side and then up at the slack canvas. “I guess we’re making about four knots, so about eleven o’clock we should be hearing the surf on the reef.” Captain Scott took the lantern and again placed it within the bucket. “I reckon I can navigate,” Stump said to himself. High hopes came into his mind, and if Captain Scott could have read them he would not have been so sure of winning back Stump’s friendship. The mate’s thoughts had at first been upon Suva, and his desire to go back and square himself with the people before whom Captain Scott had humiliated him. Especially, Stump had wanted to tell the young girl who had tried to make him a better man that she had done him some good. Once the captain of the “Talofa,” he could try to be a better man. That in accepting such a position in command of a vessel owned by Captain Scott, he would be unable to cast off his old life, did not occur to him. In fact Stump did not consider as crimes the many acts they had committed, and were committing. To Stump a thing was a crime only when the perpetrator was caught in the act and put in jail. Stump knew that he owed his immunity to Captain Scott. Once in Suva without the captain, Stump thought he could square himself with the girl, and incidentally get even with Captain Scott. As he took the lantern from Stump, Scott held it up for an instant and observed his mate’s face. What he saw there did not seem to worry him. “I guess that offer will keep his tongue quiet,” he mused. “With an American war-ship in port, Stump’s apt to meet some friends ashore and say too much.” “Hold her on this course, Mr. Stump,” the captain said officially. “I’m going to turn in for forty winks. You can call me at ten o’clock, and then get the crew all up on deck.” Stump grunted and leaned over to look at the compass. He saw the lubber’s point was on the course the captain had figured out from the chart. Captain Scott descended the ladder to the cabin.