Captain Stannistreet was a genius in his profession; he could get more speed out of a schooner than any other man afloat, and carry more canvas without losing a stick. He was also, fortunately for Lestrange, a man of refinement and education, and what was better still, understanding.
They were pacing the deck one afternoon, when Lestrange, who was walking with his hands behind him, and his eyes counting the brown dowels in the cream-white planking, broke silence.
"You don't believe in visions and dreams?"
"How do you know that?" replied the other.
"Oh, I only put it as a question; most people say they don't."
"Yes, but most people do."
"I do," said Lestrange.
He was silent for a moment.
"You know my trouble so well that I won't bother you going over it, but there has come over me of late a feeling--it is like a waking dream."
"Yes?"
"I can't quite explain, for it is as if I saw something which my intelligence could not comprehend, or make an image of."
"I think I know what you mean."
"I don't think you do. This is something quite strange. I am fifty, and in fifty years a man has experienced, as a rule, all the ordinary and most of the extraordinary sensations that a human being can be subjected to. Well, I have never felt this sensation before; it comes on only at times. I see, as you might imagine, a young baby sees, and things are before me that I do not comprehend. It is not through my bodily eyes that this sensation comes, but through some window of the mind, from before which a curtain has been drawn."
"That's strange," said Stannistreet, who did not like the conversation over-much, being simply a schooner captain and a plain man, though intelligent enough and sympathetic.
"This something tells me," went on Lestrange, "that there is danger threatening the--" He ceased, paused a minute, and then, to Stannistreet's relief, went on. "If I talk like that you will think I am not right in my head: let us pass the subject by, let us forget dreams and omens and come to realities. You know how I lost the children; you know how I hope to find them at the place where Captain Fountain found their traces? He says the island was uninhabited, but he was not sure."
"No," replied Stannistreet, "he only spoke of the beach."
"Yes. Well, suppose there were natives at the other side of the island who had taken these children."
"If so, they would grow up with the natives."
"And become savages?"
"Yes; but the Polynesians can't be really called savages; they are a very decent lot I've knocked about amongst them a good while, and a kanaka is as white as a white man--which is not saying much, but it's something. Most of the islands are civilised now. Of course there are a few that aren't, but still, suppose even that `savages,' as you call them, had come and taken the children off--"