“I’m afraid they never taught you your geography very well,” said Tempest, stuffing tobacco into his now well-worn pipe with an air of great contentment. “Some people never can see a piece of luck when it comes their way, even if it is sticking out half a yard.” An idea flashed into the boy’s mind. Christmas Island was away to the northeast. They were going northeast as fast as their engines could take them. “Are you thinking about the _Hatteras_?” Dave said in a low voice. He was conscious of a little thrill even as he put the question. Hitherto, their discussions about the treasure-ship had been more or less vague. True, there had been wagging of wise heads and solemn discussions over charts in smoky cabins, but they had always taken place many thousands of miles from that mysterious island where the semblance of a camel’s back loomed up over a lagoon. The subject had been interesting, but intangible. Now, in a flash, it seemed different. “Tell me what Washington Island has got to do with it?” Dave asked, with a serious light in his grey eyes. “Only this――that if we get off there, we shall be within something like three hundred miles of the spot where your old mariner says the bones of the _Hatteras_ are sticking up out of the sand,” Tempest replied. “Even three hundred miles is a mighty long distance, in a way, but it’s better than three thousand, and it looks to me as though Old Man Opportunity was going out of his way to knock at your door a second time. Do you remember that I once told you there comes a time in everybody’s life when it’s worth while to go full steam ahead whatever effort it costs? Fussy people, who get excited over every blessed thing from sunrise to sunset, haven’t got any steam left in ’em when the big chance bobs up. They fuss along just the same as they always have done, but they haven’t got any punch to it. Now, it looks to me as though this is where you and I should wake up.” “Well, you know, Tempest, whatever you say, I’m with you.” A queer sense of excitement was beginning to creep over the boy. It was only at rare moments that Bruce Tempest dropped the mask of light-hearted carelessness, and he was unquestionably serious now. “What do you suggest?” “I can’t say,” Tempest replied with a light laugh, seeing how intent the boy had suddenly become. “Don’t let this make an old man of you. We may be on a wild-goose chase all the time――but then again we might not. And what we’ve got to do is to assume that it _isn’t_ a wild-goose chase. We’ve got to try this thing out, somehow or other.” “Well, there’s one thing,” Dave commented. “One might go to sea for a hundred years and never get as near as three hundred miles to Lost Island again.”