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As Jude came on deck the portmanteau was being hoisted on board. Ratcliffe passed down a five-pound note to the boat’s crew, and then stood, waving to Simmons as the boat put away. Then, turning to Satan, he tried to discuss terms, but was instantly silenced by Jude and Satan. They would hear nothing of money. Used to sea changes and strange happenings, they seemed to think nothing of the business, and after the first words fell to talking together.

The trend of their talk induced in Ratcliffe a vaguely uncanny feeling. It was as though they had already discussed his coming on board and the storage of himself and his baggage, as though they had known by instinct that he would return. The size of the portmanteau affected Jude.

“You can’t keep that,” said Jude, giving the portmanteau a slight kick. “It’s a long sight too big. Say, what have you got in it?”

“Clothes.”

“Pajamas?”

“Yes, and lots of other things.”

Jude tilted back the old panama she was wearing and took her seat on the portmanteau. Her feet were bare, and she twisted her toes in thought as she sat for a moment turning matters over in her mind.

“You can stick the things in the spare locker,” said she at last. “You gonna have a gay old time if you keep this in the cabin, tumblin’ over it. Better empty her here an’ cart the stuff below.”

“Right!” said Ratcliffe. “But what shall I do with the portmanteau when it’s empty?”

“Heave her overboard,” said Jude.

“Shut your head!” said Tyler, suddenly cutting in. “What you talkin’ about? Heave yourself overboard!” Then to Ratcliffe, “She’s right, all the same; there’s no room for luggage. If you’ll help Jude to get the things below, I’ll look after the trunk. When you’ve done with the cruise you can get a bag to hold your things.”

Ratcliffe opened the portmanteau. The steward of the Dryad was an expert: in a past existence he had probably been a pack rat. In any given space he could have tucked away half as much again as any other ordinary mortal. But he certainly had no imagination, or perhaps he had been too busy to cast his eye overboard and see the manner of craft Ratcliffe was joining, and Ratcliffe had been far too much exercised in his mind about Skelton to notice what was being packed.

Jude on her knees helped.

“What’s this?” asked Jude, coming on a black satin lining.

“Confound the fool!” said Ratcliffe. “He needn’t have packed that: it’s a dinner jacket.”

“Mean to say you sit down to your dinner in a jacket?” Jade choked and snorted while Ratcliffe hurriedly, on his knees, hauled out the trousers and waistcoats that went with the garments.

“That’s the lining—it’s worn the other way about—I know it’s tomfoolery. Stick ’em all in one bundle—Lord! look at the shirts he’s packed!”

“They’ve got tucks in them,” said Jude, looking at the pleated fronts.

“I know. They go with that tomfool dinner suit. You can’t knock sense into the head of a bedroom steward. Come along and let’s get them down below.”

While they were carting the stuff down, Satan on the hatch cover cut himself a chew of tobacco (he sometimes chewed) and, with his lantern jaws working regularly like the jaws of a cow chewing the cud, contemplated the steadily emptying portmanteau.

He had a plan about that portmanteau, a plan to turn it to profit. Satan’s plans generally had profit for their object. He had taken a genuine liking for Ratcliffe; but it was a curious thing with Satan that even his likings generally helped him along toward profit—perhaps because they were the outcome of a keen intelligence that had been sharpened by knocking about among rascals, beachcombers, wharf rats, as well as honest folk.

When Ratcliffe had fetched down the last load and come up again, he found Satan and the portmanteau gone.

The canvas boat had not been brought on board, but streamed astern on a line. He looked over the side. Satan was in the boat with the portmanteau and in the act of pushing off.

“I’m takin’ her back to the yacht,” said Satan.

Ratcliffe nodded.

At that moment Jude came on deck blinking and hitching up her trousers. She had washed her face and made herself a bit more tidy—perhaps because she had remembered it was Sunday or perhaps because company had come on board. She had evidently put her whole head into the water. It was dripping, and as she stood with the old panama in her hand and her cropped hair drying in the sun Ratcliffe observed her anew and thought that he had never seen a more likable figure. Jude would never be pretty, but she was better than pretty—healthy, honest and capable, trusting and fearless, easily reflecting laughter, and with a trace of the irresponsibility of youth. It was a face entirely original and distinctive. Dirty, it was the face of a larrikin; washed, a face such as I have attempted to describe; and the eyes were extraordinary—liquid-gray, with a look of distance, when she was serious, a look acquired perhaps from life among vast sea spaces.

“Where’s Satan?” asked Jude.

Ratcliffe pointed.

Jude, shading her eyes, looked. Then she laughed.

“Thought he was up to somethin’,” said she. “He’s gone to kid that officer man out of some more truck.”

In a flash Ratcliffe saw the reason of Satan’s activities, and in another flash he saw again, or seemed to see, in Satan and Jude a pair of gipsies of the sea. A gipsies’ caravan camped close to a neat villa—that was the relationship between the Sarah Tyler and the Dryad—and Satan was the caravan man gone round to the villa’s back door to return an empty portmanteau and blarney the servants out of scraps and old odds and ends not wanted, maybe to commandeer a chicken or nick a doormat—heaven only knew! He remembered the fancy Satan had taken to the dinghy. And he, Ratcliffe, had thrown in his lot with these people! Fishing cruise! Rubbish! Gipsy patter, sea thimblerigging, wreck-picking, and maybe petty larceny from Guadaloupe to dry Tortugas—that was what he had signed on for. Why, the Sarah Tyler, could she have been hauled into any law court, would have stood convicted on her very appearance! Jude was honest enough in her way; but her way was Satan’s way, and she had owned up with steadfast, honest eyes to the plundering of a brig and the caching of the plunder. They were “passons to what Pap had been,” but they were his offspring, and the law to them was no doubt what it had been to him—a something to be avoided or outwitted, like a dangerous animal.

All these thoughts running through his head did not disturb him in the least. Far from that! The reckless in him had expanded since he had cut the cable connecting him with the Dryad, and not for worlds would he have changed the Sarah into a vessel of more conventional form, or altered Satan from whatever he might be into a figure of definite respectability.

He reckoned that if Satan broke the law he would be clever enough to avoid the consequences. His tongue alone would get him out of most fixes, and just this touch of gipsiness in the business gave a new flavor to life—the flavor boys seek when they raid orchards and hen-roosts and go pirating with corked faces and lath swords.

“He’s goin’ aboard her,” said Jude.

The portmanteau had been taken up by one of the crew, and now Satan, evidently at the invitation of one of the white-clad figures leaning over the rail of the Dryad, was going up the accommodation ladder, leaving the boat to wash about in the blue water by the stage.

Ratcliffe guessed that one of the white-clad figures was Skelton and that it was on Skelton’s invitation he had gone on board. He felt vaguely uneasy. What did Skelton mean by that? Was he up to any dodge to “crab” the cruise?

However, he had no time to bother over this, for Jude, who had him now to herself without fear of interruption, had opened her batteries.

“Say,” said Jude, hanging over the rail where the awning cast its shadow, speaking without looking at him and spitting into the water, “what are you when you’re ashore, anyway?”

“I’m one of the idle rich,” said Ratcliffe, lighting his pipe.

“Well, you won’t be idle aboard here,” said Jude definitely. “What was your dad? Was your dad an idle-rich?”

“No, he was a ship owner.”

“How many ships did he own?”

“About forty.”

“What sort?”

“Steamers.”

“What sizes?”

“Oh, anything from two to five thousand tons.”

She turned to see if he were guying her.

“There was another man in the business,” said Ratcliffe, “a partner; Ratcliffe & Holt was the same of the firm. The governor died intestate.”

“Somethin’ wrong with his inside?”

“No, he died of a stroke; he was found in his office chair dead; he died at his work.”

“Did they get the chap that did him in?” asked Jude.

“No, it wasn’t a man that struck him; it was apoplexy, a disease, and dying without a will, all his money was divided up between my two brothers and me.”

“How much did you get?”

“Over a hundred thousand.”

“Dollars?”

“No, pounds—four hundred thousand dollars.”

“Got ’em still?”

“Yes.”

“In the bank?”

“Some; the rest is invested.”

She seemed to lose interest in the money business and hung for a moment over the rail, whistling almost noiselessly between her teeth and kicking up a bare heel. Then she said:

“Who’s the chap you were sailin’ with?”

“Skelton is his name.”

“He owns that hooker?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” said Jude suddenly, as if waking from a reverie, “this won’t boil potatoes—I’ve got to get dinner ready. Come ’long and help if you’re willin’.”

There was half a sack of potatoes in the galley. She set the stove going, and then, on her knees before the open sack, she sent him to fetch half a bucket of water from overboard. He found the bucket with a rope attached, brought the water, and filled the potato kettle, then he brought more water for the washing of the potatoes.

She did the washing squatting on her heels before the bucket.

“Where did you get them from?” asked Ratcliffe.

“Get which?”

“The potatoes.”

“Bought them,” said Jude; then, as though suddenly smitten by rectitude, “No, we didn’t, nuther: we kidooled them out of a fruiter.”

“What’s a fruiter?”

“Fruit steamer. Satan fixed her.”

“How did he fix her?”

“Well,” said Jude, “it’s no harm to hold up a packet if you don’t throw her off her course—much. It’s the owners pays, and they can stand the racket. The crew likes it, and if there’s passengers aboard they just love it.”

“Do you mean to say you hold up steamers?” asked Ratcliffe.

“Yep.”

“But how do you do it?”

“Oh, it’s only now and then. What’s easier than to lay in her course with the flag half-mast? Then she heaves to.”

“And you board her and ask for potatoes, or whatever you want?”

“Not much!” said Jude. “They’d boot you off the ship. Water’s what you ask for, pretendin’ you’re dying of thirst; then you drink till you’re near bustin’ and fill the breaker you’ve brought with you. It’s all on the square. Satan would never hold a ship unless he had some fish to offer them for whatever he wants—potatoes or fruit or tobacco. He’s got the fish in the boat and hands it up. They’re always glad of fresh fish and they offer to buy it; but he won’t take money, but says, ‘If you’ve got a few potatoes handy, I don’t mind takin’ them for the fish.’ Sometimes it’s fruit he wants, or other things. Then you push off—and if it’s a passenger packet the passengers, thinkin’ they’ve saved you from dyin’ of thirst, line up and cheer. It’s no end of fun.”

“What flag do you sail under?”

“ ’Murrican, what else? You see,” went on Jude as she put the potatoes into the kettle, “fish costs nothing to us and they’re mighty glad of it, but I reckon they’d bat our heads off if they knew about the dyin’ of thirst business.”

“But suppose you struck the same ship twice?”

“It’s not a job one does every day,” said Jude, with a trace of contempt in her tone, “and Satan don’t wear blinkers, and it’s not a job you could do at all if you didn’t know the lie of the fishin’ banks by where the ship tracks run. I reckon you’ve got to learn something about things.”

“I reckon I have,” said Ratcliffe, laughing, “and I bet you’ll teach me!”

“Well, shy that over to begin with,” said Jude, giving him the pail of dirty water.

He flung the water over the side, and as he did so he took a glance at the Dryad. Satan was in the boat just pushing off. When he returned to the galley with the news, Jude was preparing to fry fish: not the early morning fish, but some caught just before Ratcliffe had come on board.

Then he went to the rail again just as Satan was coming alongside.

Satan had a cargo of sorts. His insatiable appetite for canvas and rope was evidenced by the bundle in the stern, and there were parcels. The return of the empty portmanteau had not been waste labor.

“That’s coffee,” said he to Ratcliffe, handing up the goods. “We were runnin’ short. And here’s biscuits—catch a holt—and here’s some fancy muck in cans and c’ndensed milk—I told the chap our cow died yesterday. ‘Take everything you want,’ says he. ‘Don’t mind me—I’m only the owner.’ Offered me the mainsail as I was putting off an’ told me to come back for the dinghy. I’d told him I was sweet on her—full of fun he was—and maybe I will. Claw hold of this bundle of matches—they’re a livin’ Godsend—and here’s a case of canned t’marters—and that’s all.”

Skelton’s irony was evidently quite lost on Satan, or put down to his “fun,” but Ratcliffe could appreciate it, and the fact that its real target was himself.

The canned t’marters appeared with the food at dinner, and during the meal more of Skelton came out. He had offered Satan vinous liquors, hoping, so Ratcliffe dimly suspected, to send him back a trouble to the Sarah Tyler and an object lesson on the keeping of disreputable company; but the wily Satan had no use for liquor. He was on the water wagon.

“I leave all them sorts of things to Jude,” said he, with a grin. He was referring to Jude’s boasted drunk at Havana, and Ratcliffe, who was placed opposite to the pair of them, across the table, saw Jude’s chin project. Why she should boast of a thing one moment and fire up at the mention of it at another was beyond him.

For a moment it seemed as if she were going to empty the dish of tomatoes over Satan, but she held herself in, all but her tongue.

“You’d have been doin’ better work on board here, mendin’ the gooseneck of that spare gaff, than wangling old canvas an’ rope out of that man,” said she. “We’re full up of old truck that’s no more use to us than Solomon’s aunt. It’s in the family, I suppose, seein’ what Granf’er was—”

“Oh, put a potato in your mouth!” said Satan.

“He used to peddle truck on the Canada border,” said she to Ratcliffe—“hams—”

“Close up!” said Satan.

“—made out o’ birchwood, and wooden nutmegs—”

“That was Pap’s joke,” said Satan. “And another word out of you and I’ll turn you over me knee and take down your—”

“Then what do you want flingin’ old things in my face?” cried Jude, wabbling between anger and tears. “Some day I’ll take me hook, same as mother did.”

“There’s not a Baptis’ minister would look at you,” said Satan, winking at Ratcliffe.

“Damn Baptis’ ministers! You may work your old hooker yourself. I’ll skip! Two thousand of them dollars is mine, and next time we touch Havana I’ll skip!”

“And where’ll you skip to?”

“I’ll start a la’ndry.”

“Then you’ll have to black your face and wear a turban, same as the others—and marry a nigger. I can see you comin’ off for the ship’s washin’.”

Jude began to laugh in a crazy sort of way, then all at once she sobered down and went on with her dinner. One could never tell how her anger would end—in tears, laughter of a wild sort, or just nothing.

Not another word was said about the family history of the Tylers, at least at that meal, and after it was over Jude made Ratcliffe help to wash up the plates and things in the galley.

“Satan’s Cap,” said Jude. “He never helps in the washin’ or swillin’. Not cold water!—land’s sake! where did you learn washin’ up?—hot! I’ve left some in that billy on the stove.”

She had taken off her old coat and rolled her guernsey sleeves up to the shoulders nearly, and it came to Ratcliffe as he helped that, without a word of remonstrance, naturally, and as a part adapts itself to the economy of a whole, he had sunk into the position of kitchen maid and general help to the Tyler family, taken the place of the nigger that had skipped; furthermore that Satan was less a person than a subtle influence. Satan seemed to obtain his ends more by wishing than by willing. He wanted an extra hand, and he had somehow put the spell of his wish on him, Ratcliffe. He had wished a drum of paint out of Simmons—and look at Skelton, the cynical and superior Skelton, sending off doles of coffee and “t’marters” to the dingy and disreputable Sarah Tyler, offering his mainsail to the rapacious Satan as a gibe! What had he been but a marionette dancing on the string of Satan’s wish?

Only for Jude and the Sarah and the queer new sense of freedom from all the associations he had ever known, only for something likable about Satan, the something that gave him power to wheedle things out of people and bend them to his wishes, Ratcliffe might have reacted against the Tyler hypnotism. As it was, the whole business seemed as jolly as a pantomime, as exciting as a new form of novel in which the folk were real and himself a character.

Leaving Satan and the old Sarah aside, and the extraordinary fascination of spars, sails, narrow deck, and close sea, catching one’s own fish, cooking one’s own food, and dickering with winds, waves, reefs, and lee shores for a living—leaving all these aside, Jude alone would have held him; for Jude gave him what he possessed when he was nine—the power of playing again, of seeing everything new and fresh. Washing up dishes with Jude was a game. To the whole-souled Jude all this business was a game—hauling on the halyards, fishing, cooking, hanging on to the beard of a storm by the sea anchor, wreck picking and so on—and she had infected him. Already they were good companions and, when together, of the same age, about nine—though she was fifteen and he over twenty.

“Stick them on that shelf,” said Jude. “Oh, Lord!—butter-fingers!—lemme! That’s the gadget to keep them from shiftin’ if the ship rolls. Now stick the knives in that locker. You don’t mind my tellin’ you, do you?”

“Not a bit.”

“Well, that’s all.”

They found Satan under the awning, attending to the gooseneck of the spare gaff.

Jude sat down on the deck clasping her knees, criticized Satan’s handiwork, received instructions to hold her tongue, and then collapsed, lying on her back with knees up and the back of her hand across her eyes. She could sleep at any odd moment.

The horizon had vanished in haze, the crying of the gulls had died down, and the washing of the lazy swell on the island beach sounded like a lullaby.

A trace of smoke was rising from the yellow funnel of the Dryad as she lay like a white painted ship on a blue painted ocean. They were firing up.

“How about getting ashore?” asked Ratcliffe. “I want to see that cache of yours. Care to come?”

“I’d just as soon leave it till they’re away,” said Satan, jerking his hand toward the Dryad. “There’s no tellin’, they might be spottin’ us on the location with a glass, and they’ll be off tonight—so the chap told me. You leave it to me and I’ll show you a cache better nor that in a day or two.”

“Shut up, Satan!” came a drowsy voice from the deck.

“Shut up yourself!” said Satan. “I’m not talkin’ of what you mean: I’m talkin’ of the abalone reef—lyin’ there like a lazy dog and lippin’ your betters!”

“Where’s me betters?” cried Jude, sitting bang-up suddenly, like the corpse in “Thou art the man.”

“I’m your betters.”

“You!”

“Me!”

Jude broke into a cracked laugh.

“Listen to him talkin’!” cried she to the universe in general. “Ain’t fit to bile potatoes!” She was on her feet, and he was after her with a rope’s end, dodging her round the mast. “Touch me and I’ll tell him!” A flick of the rope’s end caught her, and next moment she was clinging to Ratcliffe and using him as her shield. “It’s an old ship sunk south o’ Rum Key!” cried Jude. “South o’ Rum Key! I told you I’d tell him if you touched me.”

Satan dropped the rope and resumed the gooseneck business.

“Now you’ve done it!” said he.

“Told you I would,” said Jude. She sat down on the deck again as though nothing had happened and nursed her knees.

“You needn’t mind me,” said Ratcliffe. “I won’t tell.”

“Oh, it’s not that,” said Satan, “but Pap was mighty particular about keepin’ close. He located that hooker only three months before the fever took him—and he didn’t come on it by chance nuther. And now Jude’s given the show away!”

“I told you I’d tell him,” said Jude broodily.

“Told me you’d tell him! Why, ever since last fall you’ve been at me to keep my tongue in my head about it, and then you bring it out bing, first thing, yourself! That’s a woman all over.”

“Who are you callin’ a woman?”

“Me aunt. Shut your head and give over handlin’ that ball of yarn, clutch hold of the gaff and keep it steady while I fix this ring on her!”

He worked away in silence while Ratcliffe sat watching, vaguely intrigued by what had just passed. It was less the words than the place and circumstance—the little deck of the Sarah Tyler, the blue lazy sea, the voice of the surf on Palm Island, the figure of Jude and Satan. He had seen Rum Cay: They had passed it in a pink and pearly dawn. The steward had called him up to look at it. South of that lonely and fascinating place old man Tyler had located a sunk ship. What sort of ship he knew instinctively and that the Tylers were not the people to halloo over nothing. The gulls did not know these seas better than they. He said nothing, however. It was Satan who spoke next.

“Pap had reckoned to lay for it this spring,” said Satan, “but the fever took him. Then we were underhanded. Jude and me can make out to work the boat and get a livin’, but we’re too underhanded for a big job. Why, takin’ that truck off the brig I told you about near laid us out, and we had the nigger to help and she was hove up so that it was like takin’ cargo off a wharfside.”

“Look here,” said Ratcliffe, “I’ll help if you care to go for it. I don’t want any share: just the fun. What’s in her?”

“Well,” said Satan in a half-hearted way, “maybe we’ll have a look at her; but it’s a job that wants more than three by rights. Pap was three men in himself; he’d a done it. It’s a dynamite job. She’s got to be blasted open.”

“I’ve heard stories about buried treasure in these seas—” began Ratcliffe. Jude turned her head.

“That’s bilge,” said she.

“Yarns,” said Satan. “Pap used to turn any man down that talked of stuff bein’ buried. First he said that chaps didn’t bury stuff, second if they did you couldn’t find it, what with earthquakes and sand siftin’ and such, and third that never an ounce of silver, or gold for the matter of that, has ever been dug up by the tomfools huntin’ for it. Havana is full of tall stories of buried treasure—chaps make a livin’ sellin’ locations and faked charts and the like of that. It’s a Spanish game, and it takes good American money every year. You see, Pap was a book-readin’ man—taught himself to read, too, and didn’t start the job till he was near forty—so he had a head on him, but somehow or ’nother he never made the money he ought. If he’d stuck in towns and places, he’d have been a Rock’feller; but he liked beatin’ about free, said God’s good air was better than dollars. But it stuck in him that he hadn’t made out, somehow. Then he turned into unbelievin’ ways, Said he was a soci—what was it, Jude?”

“Somethin’ or ’nother,” said Jude.

“Socialist?” suggested Ratcliffe.

“That’s it! Said the time was coming when all the guys that were down under would be on top of the chaps that were on top, and that there’d be such a hell of a rough house money’d be no use anyway; said the time was comin’ when eggs would be a dollar apiece and no dollars to buy them with, and me and Jude would be safest without money gettin’ our livin’ out of the sea. He was a proper dirge when he got on that tack. But all the same it stuck in him that he wasn’t on top, and one night when he was in Diegos’ saloon he heard three Spanish chaps layin’ their heads together. He knew the lingo well enough to make out their meanin’. They were in the bar. Pap wasn’t on the water wagon, but he was no boozer. He was sittin’ there that night just dead beat, as any man might be after the day’s work he’d done, runnin’ the customs—”

“Luff!” said Jude in a warning voice.

“Oh, close your head! Think I am talkin’ to a customs officer? He don’t care.”

“Not a bit,” said Ratcliffe. “Heave ahead.”

“Well, he was sittin’ with his eyes shut, and he heard these guys colludin’ together. He didn’t get more than half they said, but he got enough to make him want to hear more. Then they quit the bar and went into a back room with their lemon juice and cigarettes. Ten minutes after hell broke loose in that back room, and when Pap and the bartender got the door open there was the chaps, one on the floor shot through the head and the other two near done in. Two of them had set on the guy that was dead; but they hadn’t knocked him out before he began to shoot, and he’d pretty well riddled them with a Colt automatic pistol—”

“Them’s the things!” said Jude. “I’m savin’ up to buy one of them things on my own—twenty-five dollars—”

“Shut your head! Then they must have knocked it out of his hand and used the last shot on him.”

“His brains were all over the floor,” said Jude with relish. “Pap said they looked like white of egg beat up and enough to fill a puddin’ basin.”

“Pap spotted somethin’ else on the floor,” went on Satan, “a piece of paper folded double. He put it in his pocket while the fellers were bein’ lifted to the hospital, where they died that same night. He was on the square all right, takin’ that paper, and I’ll tell you why. Six months before that we’d spotted a wreck comin’ up from Guadaloupe. She’s so placed—as maybe you’ll see yourself one day—that a hundred ships might have passed her without spottin’ her, and bein’ out of trade tracks made her all the safer. These guys had been talkin’ about a wreck before they left the bar for the back room, and he reckoned it was our find they were onto. The piece of paper made him sure of that, and, takin’ it with the talk he’d heard, he reckoned he had got the biggest thing that ever humped itself in these waters. He said there was a hundred thousand dollars aboard her.”

It was a fascinating story, yet it seemed to Ratcliffe that Satan showed little enthusiasm over the business.

“You don’t seem very keen about it,” said he.

“Well,” said Satan, “it seems a bit too big, and that’s the truth. The hooker’s there right enough, but I don’t seem to see all that stuff aboard of her.”

“It’s there right enough,” said Jude.

“Then there’s the getting of it,” went on Satan. “That’s a tough job to tackle. Months of work, no pay, and the chance of bein’ let down at the end of it.”

“Satan’d sooner be grubbin’ round after abalones,” said Jude. “Bone lazy, that’s what he is! I know the stuff’s there, and I’m goin’ to get it if I have to dig it out myself.”

“Well, off with you then,” said the other, “and a good riddance you’d be!” Then to Ratcliffe, “We’ll run you down there some day and you can see for yourself. If you’ve any money to burn, you might like to put it in the spec’. We’d want extra help. Jude’s talkin’ through her hat. We can’t tackle that business alone, even Pap saw that—though he was mighty set on doin’ it single-handed. And that’s where the bother comes in, for the island where she’s lyin’ is Spanish, and the Dagoes would claim what we got if they knew.”

“We’d have to get half a dozen men and give them a share,” said Ratcliffe. “That would make them hold their tongues; but I see an awful lot of difficulties. Suppose you got the stuff, how are you to get rid of it?”

“We’d have to get it down to a Brazil port,” said Satan, “or run it into Caracas. That’s handier. Them Venezuelans are the handiest chaps when it comes to loose dealin’.”

“For the matter of that,” said Ratcliffe, “one could run it straight to England. There are lots of places there where we could get it ashore—but we’ve got to get it first.”

“That’s so,” said Satan. “Look! She’s puttin’ a boat off.” He pointed to the Dryad.

A quarter-boat had been lowered and was pulling away from the yacht. As she drew closer Ratcliffe saw that the man in the sternsheets, steering, was Skelton—Skelton coming either to make trouble or to make friends.

The oars rose up and fell with a crash as the bow oar hooked on to the dingy old Sarah.

“Hulloo!” said Ratcliffe.

“Hulloo!” said Skelton.

“Won’t you come on board?”

“No, thank you.” A sniff from Jude. “I just came over to say that we are starting.”

Ratcliffe saw that he wanted to say a lot, but was tongue-tied before the boat’s crew and the Tylers.

“Better come on board,” said he, “and have a chat in the cabin before you’re off.”

Skelton hesitated a moment, then he came. He gave Satan a nod, utterly ignored Jude, and, followed by Ratcliffe, passed below. Downstairs his manner changed. Standing and refusing a seat, as though fearing to contaminate his lily-white ducks, he began to speak as if addressing the portrait of old man Tyler.

“I can’t believe you absolutely mean to do this,” said he. “I can understand a moment’s temper, but—but—this is a joke carried too far.”

“My dear Skelton,” said the other, “what’s the good? I have the greatest respect for you, but we are dead opposites in temperament and we make each other unhappy. What’s the good of carrying it on? It’s not as if you minded being alone. You like being alone, and I like this old tub and her crew. Well, let’s each carry out our likings. I’m as happy as anything here.”

“I’m not thinking of your happiness, but of the position. You were a guest on my yacht, and you leave me like this—I need not embroider on the bare fact.”

“Do you want me to go back?”

“Not in the least,” said Skelton. “You are a free agent, I hope.”

Ratcliffe’s blood was beginning to rise in temperature. He knew quite well Skelton wanted him to go back, but was too proud to say so, and he knew quite well that Skelton wanted him back, not for any love of him, but simply because the position was irregular and people, if they heard of all this, might talk; also it might seem queer to the yacht’s crew.

“Well, then, if you don’t specially want me back, I’ll stay,” said he.

“Very well,” said Skelton, “as you please. I wash my hands of the affair, and if you come to grief it is your own lookout. I will have the remainder of your baggage forwarded home to you when I reach England.”

“I’ll maybe see you at Havana when this cruise is over,” said Ratcliffe vaguely.

“I doubt it,” said Skelton. “It is quite possible I may not call there.” He turned and began to climb the companionway. On deck he nodded frigidly to Satan and got over the side.

Satan, leaning across the rail, looked down.

“How about that mains’l?” asked Satan jocularly.

“I’m afraid I have no more spare canvas available,” said Skelton, with a veiled dig at the rapacity of the lantern-jawed one, “or provisions. Anything else I shall be delighted to let you have.”

“Well, then,” said Satan, “you might send us a loan of the dinghy. We’re short of boats.”

“You shall have her,” said Skelton with a glance at Ratcliffe, who was also leaning over, as though to say, “This is the sort of man you have thrown your lot in with!”

The boat pushed off.

“Goodby!” cried Ratcliffe, half laughing, half angry, with Satan, but quite unable to veto the promised gift.

“ ’By,” replied the other, raising a hand.

Jude, who had said not one word, suddenly began to giggle.

“What’s wrong with you?” asked Satan.

“I dunno,” replied Jude, “but there’s somethin’ about that guy that makes me want to laugh.”