That night at midnight, when Lavelle relieved Chang at the steering oar, the Chinaman told him that it was hopeless to go as they were going.
 
"This boat no can do. Go loo'ard all time. All same like crab—go sideways."
 
Lavelle had observed this early in the afternoon when the wind had sprung up from the northeast and he had laid a course to the eastward. Such boats as this, lapstreaked and air-tanked, practically keelless and without centerboard or leeboard, were never built for sailing and least of all on the wind.
 
"See," said Chang, flashing an electric pocket torch which had been found among the boat's outfit. "Look him now, master." The light was on the boat compass. "Make him now eas' by sou'. One time turn all loun'. 'Nother time eas'sou'eas'—sou'eas' by eas'—fi' slix ploint off wind. No good! All same dam sklare lig ship."
 
Lavelle ordered Chang to turn in and the serang handed him the Shanghai woman's tiny emerald-studded watch—the one thing of value that remained of all her years of trafficking. She had turned it over to Lavelle to keep the boat's time. The Chinaman curled up obediently under the lee gunwale, pausing as he sank into the darkness to inquire if the "caplun's topside" still hurt. Lavelle told him that the pain had gone out of his head completely and Chang grunted in satisfaction.
 
In the first fifteen minutes of his watch Lavelle realized the truth of all that Chang had told him. It was impossible to keep the boat on an easterly course. The leeway she made in only the light breeze that was blowing was appalling. She was not making more than three knots an hour. The breeze which had persisted out of the north since the afternoon he knew for the first breath of the trades—although it was a degree or two above their northern limit. With provisions for twenty days and only a week's supply of water he had to admit to himself that he was courting destruction to try to make the chain of islands—Midway, Oceana, Gardner, and Laysan—stretching away to the northwest of the Hawaiian group.
 
Of a sudden something which he had struggled all day to visualize came to his mind's eye. He saw a pilot chart of the region as vividly as if it were spread before him on a lighted table. It was here that an offshoot of the Japan Current set to the westward at from twelve to thirty knots a day!
 
The thought straightened him with a start. To the westward lay two thousand miles of empty, unfrequented sea until one nearly fetched the coast. To the northwest twelve hundred miles at the least, lay the lanes of the liners—a bare chance there of salvation, if a ship sighted one. But with the trades and current against such a helpless craft, there was but one thing to do: take no chances. To the southwest, twelve or thirteen hundred miles away, lay the Ratack Chain of the Marshall group, with the Marianas impinging on its western axis. Under the drive of the trades, sailing before the wind, the boat, with driving, should make between one hundred and one hundred and twenty miles a day; and twelve days of such sailing meant land underfoot and—life! His heart throbbed at the thought. It meant life for her—his gold woman—and suddenly he realized that all his thoughts were of Emily Granville.
 
With a skillful sweep of the oar he brought the boat round and put her before the wind. By the flash of the electric torch he laid the course southwest. The craft instantly did better and surprised him into speaking aloud, as boats do surprise men:
 
"This is your best sailing point, old girl."
 
In the silence that followed he became conscious of somebody moving in the boat. There was a low murmur of voices. It made him uneasy until he located it finally in the space between the second and third thwarts whi............