"There's a vigia marked on the chart for hereabouts," said Captain Spiller presently; "it got there through that old fool Banks of the _Simoom_. He reported it years ago, but it warn't never confirmed. Rocks, he said, and one like Cleopatra's Needle." "Then you don't credit it either, sir?" asked Green presently. "I know Banks," replied Spiller, snorting, "and never was such a man for imagination and want of judgment. I'd take it as proof positive as nothing was, if he said it stood to reason it must be. And I'm a man as likes a clean and decent chart. A chart is the character give to an ocean by them as has employed it, a bundle of _chits_, as the Hindoo beggars say, and to go an' lump in a suspicion agin' the character of an ocean on the word of a man like Banks, why, I've no patience. I've a notion that the law of libel ought to have a say in it." "Aye, sir," said Green. "The Indian Ocean _versus_ Banks." "And I'd believe it of Banks that he done it just to get his name mentioned, and to rise a bit of a palaver about him. He's a most conceited chap is Banks, and not by any means the seaman he'd like to be thought. And they actually sent a man-o'-war down to look up his _Simoom_ Rocks and they came back and never seen 'em." "And nobody else ever did, sir?" "Of course not," said Spiller; "they might as well set traps to catch the rats that a man sees when he's got the jimjams. And nothing makes Banks angrier than to throw out a hint you don't believe in them rocks. I always gets him on it, by asking for a clean chart and proved shoals, and what not, and giving it him hot and heavy on vigias and the like. Bah, I ain't no patience." And Spiller tramped the deck for a bit. Presently he came back to where Green stood. "He'll be in Bombay before us," he said gloomily. "I have to own the _Simoom's_ faster than the _Palembang_, but if she was sailed by a better man she'd make quicker passages. Why, an engineer in a steamer can pass a thorough sailor in a scow." His heart was bitter, but the thought that Her Majesty's cruiser _Amphion_ had discredited the _Simoom_ vigia was balm to his inmost soul, as he turned to go below. "Keep a bright look-out," he growled, and he left Green to consider the matter of vigias in general, and the _Simoom_ vigia in particular.