Barnay shook his head.
"You've a bad time comin' with the home-sickness," he prophesied, tucking his beard far down in his collar until he looked, for Barnay, smooth-shaven. "I've sailed the sou' Atlantic up an' down fer a matther av four hundhred years, more or less, an' I niver as much as seed hide nor hair av the place before this prisint. There ain't map or chart that iver dhrawed breath that shows ut, new or old. Ut's been lifted out o' ground to be afther swallowin' us in--a sweet dose will be the lot av us, mesilf with as foine a gir-rl av school age as iver you'll see in anny counthry."
"Ah yes, Barnay," said St. George soothingly--but he would have tried now to soothe a man in the embrace of a sea-serpent in just the same absent-minded way, Amory thought indulgently.
The sun was lowering and birds of evening were beginning to brood over the painted water when The Aloha cast anchor. In the late light the rugged sides of the island had an air of almost sinister expectancy. There was a great silence in their windless shelter broken only by the boom and charge of the breakers and the gulls and choughs circling overhead, winging and dipping along the water and returning with discordant cries to their crannies in the black rock. Before the yacht, blazoned on a dark, water-polished stratum of the volcanic stone, was the White Blade which Jarvo told them marked the subterranean entrance to the mysterious island.
St. George and his companions and Barnay, Jarvo and Akko were on deck. Rollo, whose soul did not disdain to be valet to a steam yacht, was tranquilly mending a canvas cushion.
"The adôn will wait until sunrise to go ashore?" asked Jarvo.
"Sunrise!" cried St. George. "Heaven on earth, no. We'll go now."
There was no need to ask the others. Whatever might be toward, they were eager to be about, though Rollo ventured to St. George a deprecatory: "You know, sir, one can't be too careful, sir."
"Will you prefer to stay aboard?" St. George put it quietly.
"Oh, no, sir," said Rollo with a grieved face, "one should meet danger with a light heart, sir," and went below to pack the oil-skins.
"Hear me now," said Barnay in extreme disfavour. "It's I that am to lay hereabouts and wait for you, sorr? Lord be good to me, an' fwhat if she lays here tin year', and you somewheres fillin' the eyes av the aygles with your brains blowed out, neat?" he demanded misanthropically. "Fwhat if she lays here on that gin'ral theory till she's rotted up, sorr?"