I gave Mr. Lush this piece of news; he received it with a flush of excitement that almost humanised the insipid coarseness of his dull, wooden, leather-bound, weather-hardened visage. ‘Ye may calculate upon our keeping a bright lookout, sir,’ said he with a grin that disclosed his tobacco-coloured fangs, and that might fairly be called sardonic, since the eyes bore no part in this disagreeable expression of satisfaction. I watched him walk forwards to convey the information to the men. They went in a whole body on to the forecastle, and stood staring about them, as though the ocean wore a new countenance to their gaze, now that they believed Braine’s island to be a short distance past the slope of it. The carpenter pointed, and was full of talk; there was much lighting of pipes, expectoration, puffing of great clouds indicative of emotion, uneasy, impatient, flitting movements amongst the men, some of whom presently broke up into couples and fell to pacing the forecastle like marines on sentry; talking, as I did not doubt, of the money they were going to dig up, what they would do with it when they had it, and so on; the expressions on their faces varying at every instant, one emotion suppressing another in a manner that to a contemplative and leisurely eye would have provided a study at once ludicrous and informing. I had the watch that afternoon; and when Miss Temple and I had eaten our little midday meal, I drew chairs into the shadow of the short awning, and we sat together, I, pipe in mouth, occasionally quitting her side to take a look outside the edge of our canvas roof, along with a brief stare ahead, for I could not be sure of Captain Braine’s chronometer, nor of the exactness of my own calculations, and if the madman’s island was where he had declared it to be, it might heave into view off either bow or right ahead at any moment, for all I could tell.