"No, Westwood," said I, "it can't be the right one--nor any of these, indeed!" And on looking at the chart, which was one not meant for anything but navigation in open water, with the channels laid down clearly enough, but evidently rather off-hand as to the islands, Jones himself seemed to get uncertain about the matter; partly owing to the short glimpse he'd had of the other chart, and partly to its being, as he thought, an old one made for a purpose, by a hand that knew the islands well. After two or three days' sail, we were getting into the thick of the Maldives, where the reefs and sand-banks stretching out on every side, and beginning to lap in upon each other, made it more and more dangerous work; but at any rate the islands we saw were either very small, or else low and muddy-like, with a few scrubby-looking cocoas upon them, like bulrushes growing out of a marsh. No runaway sailors would ever think of taking up their quarters hereabouts, even if we hadn't caught sight of a smoke now and then, and once of some native craft with a couple of brown mat-sails and an out-rigger, that showed the clusters hereaway to have people about them. Besides there was no pretext any Indiaman could have for steering near enough to such a jungle of mud and water, to give a boat the chance of making towards it with any certainty. I saw at once that the spot in question must lie tolerably for the course of a ship to western India, otherwise they wouldn't have appeared so sure of their mark as Jones said they did. All this, at the same time, kept me the more bent on searching the matter out ere I did aught else, seeing that in fact the Indiaman's attempt to get rid of the schooner was the very thing likely to bring her on this track; fancying, as she would, that we were either in chase of her toward Bombay, or off on our own course again. Now, on the one hand, nothing could fit better for the said runaway scheme of Harry Foster's; and on the other hand, nothing would have pleased me more, and greatly eased my mind too, than to catch him and his chums on their spree ashore. The worst of it was, that I began to have my doubts of Jones again. He was the only man that could put us on the right scent; yet he seemed either to have lost it, or to have something creeping on his mind that made him unwilling to carry it out. "Mr Jones," said I, as the schooner was hove to, and he stood musing gloomily by the binnacle, with a glance now and then in at the compass, and out at the chart again, "if you're at a loss now, sir, just say--and I shall try my own hand for want of better!" "No, Lieutenant Collins!" answered he suddenly, in a husky voice--"no, sir, that's not it, but--God help me! no, there's no use standing against fate, I see. Whatever it costs me, Mr Collins," he went on, firmly, "I'm with you to the end of it; but--there _is_ something horrible about all this!" "How! what do you mean?" said I, startled by the difference in his manner, and the