They rose from the conference table, and Carquinez stood holding his coat together with a veined and knotted hand while the visitors were making their adieux.

“You haven’t a few feet of galvanized wire aboard?” asked Satan as he passed out, following Sellers.

“Come on deck,” said Sellers.

On deck he stood listening, while the other passed from galvanized wire to the question of spare ring-bolts and other trifles he stood desperately in need of. Like a hypnotized fowl in the hands of Satan, he made scarcely any resistance.

He had no ring-bolts, but the galvanized wire was forthcoming, also a little barrel for use as a buoy, some Burgundy pitch, an old paintbrush, a small can of turpentine, and a couple of pounds of twine.

A small boat-anchor that had raised Satan’s desires brought the sÉance to a conclusion and broke the spell that seemed to lie on Sellers.

Blessed if Satan wouldn’t be asking for his back teeth yet! What did he take the Juan for, a marine store? What would he want next, Carquinez?

They rowed off with the spoil, Sellers leaning on the rail and lovingly pressing on them the acceptance of other trifles, including a guitar.

Alongside the Sarah they found Jude waiting to receive them. She had been cleaning up the abalones, was dissatisfied with the result,—quarter of a matchbox full of seed pearls,—and said so.

When her eye lighted on the stuff in the boat that Satan had wangled out of Sellers, she laughed in a dreary fashion.

“What you laughin’ at?” demanded Satan.

“Nothing,” said Jude.

She sat down on an upturned keg while they brought the truck on board. Then, nursing her knee and wiggling her bare toes to the warmth of the sun, she sat without a word, waiting for explanations.

It seemed to Ratcliffe all at once that a critic had come on the scene. He had forgotten Jude in relation to the deal over the wreck, and he was wondering now how she would take it. The female does not always see eye to eye with the male, as many a business man has discovered on revealing a transaction to the wife of his bosom.

Leaning against the rail, he filled his pipe and awaited the revelation with interest; but Satan, the revealer, seemed in no hurry for the business. He was bustling about disposing of the new-gotten “stores,”—the turpentine and pitch forward in the hole where paints were kept, the galvanized wire in a locker, and the little barrel behind the canvas boat.

Then he came aft again and, lighting a pipe, stood beside Ratcliffe. “Well, what you been doing, anyway?” asked Jude, suddenly opening her batteries.

“Doing—which?” asked Satan. “Oh, you mean with Cark. Well, I’ve settled things with him, fixed it up so’s he’s goin’ to help.”

“Which way?” asked Jude.

“Why, to get the stuff, if it’s there—what else? He’s our only chance of doing the thing proper.”

“What’s he askin’?” said Jude.

“You mean terms?”

“Yep.”

“Well, it’s this way: He’ll have to do the wreckin’ business, and then if the stuff’s got he’ll have to run it ashore, and after that he’ll have to get rid of it. I’m givin’ him two dollars out of every three.”

“Oh, Lord!” said Jude.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Why didn’t you give him the lot?”

“Now look you here!” cried Satan. “I don’t want no sass! Who’s runnin’ this show, you or me? How do you know what I’ve got up my sleeve? Have you ever known me done on a deal yet? Now you take my orders where Cark’s concerned and take them smart, with no questions! If you don’t—well, then, trade with him yourself, take charge of the Sarah and run her yourself! Lippin’ your betters!”

Jude took off her old hat and looked into it as if for inspiration; then she clapped it on her head again, drew up both feet, clasped her arms round her knees, and sat on the keg-top speechless and brooding, her eyes fixed on the Juan.

Satan turned and went below.

“Jude,” said Ratcliffe.

“What you want?” said Jude, without shifting her gaze.

“Suppose you had all the money off that old wreck, if the money is there, what would you do with it?”

“What’s the good of askin’ me things like that?” said Jude. “I’d precious soon do something with it!”

“No, you wouldn’t. You’d put it in the bank, and then your trouble would begin.”

“Which way?”

“Well, you’d have it in the bank or invested and it would bring you in, say, twenty thousand dollars a year; well, you couldn’t spend that on the dock-side, could you? You wouldn’t be able to spend it at all unless you gave up the Sarah and lived ashore in a fine house with a carriage and horses and servants, and to do that you’d have to become a lady—or gentleman,” hastily put in Ratcliffe, the figure on the keg suddenly threatening to turn on him. “You’d have to do that, and you’d have to do more than that: you’d have to learn all sorts of things.”

“Which sort?”

“Oh, lots. Can you write, Jude?”

“You bet!”

“Told me the other day you couldn’t.”

“Well, I’ve most forgot. Pap started to learn me, then he said he reckoned I was more cut out for makin’ puddin’s, but he learned me to write my name.”

“Well, if you ever grow rich, you’ll have to do a lot more than write your name.”

“Which way?”

“You’ll have to write checks and letters, and, what’s more, you’ll have to be able to read them.”

“Well, I reckon,” said the philosophical Jude, “it’ll be time enough to bother about that when I’m rich—and seems to me I’ll never be rich with them two diddling Satan same as they’ve done.”

“Oh, yes, you will; you are going to be rich some day, as rich as I am. I’m a fortune teller. Show us your hand.”

Jude held out a hand, and Ratcliffe examined the palm where the lines were few but straight and clear cut. It was a beautiful little hand, despite the hard work it had done, full of character and vigor, and expressing kindliness and honesty and capability.

Ratcliffe had an instinct for hands. A hand could attract or repulse him just as powerfully as a face; more so, perhaps, for a hand never lies.

“Oh, yes,” said he, “you are going to be rich, you can’t escape it, and you are going to learn reading and writing and arithmetic, and you are going to live to be a hundred.”

“Cut me throat first!” said Jude. “Heave ahead.”

“And you are going to England some day, and you’ll turn into a Britisher.”

“Damned if I do! Satan!”

“Hullo!” came a faint voice from below. “Rat says I’m goin’ to turn into a Britisher.”

“They wouldn’t own you. Quit foolin’ and get the dinner ready.”

Jude uncurled herself, came down from the keg with a thud, ran to the open skylight, and was about to reply in kind, when her eye caught sight of something that brought her to a halt.

They were handling the canvas on the Juan.

“Cark’s off!” cried she.

Satan came on deck. Across the blue blaze of the sea they could hear now the clank of the windlass pawls,—the Juan’s anchor was coming up.

“I thought Sellers would have come on board before they started,” said Ratcliffe. “They’re in a big hurry, aren’t they?”

“You bet,” said Satan with a grin. “He’ll crack on everything to get to Havana for that dynamite; won’t stop to eat their dinners till they’re back,—that’s what they’d have us believe—swabs!”

“Why, don’t you think they are going to Havana?”

“Oh, they’re goin’ to Havana right enough,” said Satan. “You watch and you’ll see them headin’ that way. Look! she’s fillin’ to the wind.”

The anchor was home now, and they watched the sails filling as she headed on the same course the Dryad had taken. She dipped her flag, and they returned the compliment; then she drew past the southern reefs, the hull vanished, and nothing remained but the topsails far against the western blue.

Ten minutes later, down below at dinner, Jude, who had said no word about the departure of the Juan, but seemed to have been thinking a lot, suddenly spoke.

“You never told me that chap was going to Havana for dynamite,” said Jude. “What for—to bust the wreck open?”

“That’s it,” replied Satan. “Did you think he wanted it to eat?”

“There’s no knowing what a feller may swallow, seeing you’ve swallowed that yarn,” said Jude. “He’s gone to Havana to sell us, that’s my ’pinion.”

“Which way?”

“Lord! there’s many a way of sellin’ fools.”

Ratcliffe felt that the truth was with Jude, he felt an uneasy conviction that they had been done. The hurried departure of Carquinez seemed to put a seal on the business. He looked at Satan expecting an explosion; but Satan was quite calm and helping himself to canned ox tongue.

“Seein’ I have the chart,” said he, “where’s the sellin’ to come in?”

“But you’ve give him the location,” said Jude. “You said yourself that the place was fixed on every chart and a chap had only to have Lone Reef in his head to put his claws on the wreck.”

“That’s so,” said Satan; “but the location is no use without the chart.”

“What are you gettin’ at?”

“I’m tryin’ to get at your intellects. How often have you seen that chart?”

“Dozens of times.” “Ever noticed anything queer about it? Not you! Giving sass to your betters is your lay in life instead of usin’ your eyes.” He pushed his plate away, produced the tobacco box, and, taking the chart from it, laid it on the table.

Jude got up and came behind him to look, while Ratcliffe leaned forward.

“There’s the chart,” said Satan. “There’s the reef, and there’s the name of the hooker pointin’ at the reef, and there’s the latitude and longitude wrote up in the corner. Plain, ain’t it?”

“That’s plain enough,” said Ratcliffe.

Jude, munching a biscuit, concurred.

“Plain enough, ain’t it?” went on Satan. “Give a man the name of Lone Reef, and with any old Admiralty chart he’ll get there, and he has only to land on the reef to find the hooker stuck there in that crik between them two arms. Jude has seen her, and I’ve walked over her and ’xamined her, and she’d have been broke open maybe by this, only chaps don’t land on reefs like that, not unless a storm lands them. We struck it huntin’ for abalones. Plain enough, ain’t it? Well, I tell you the whole business is no use to any man who hasn’t that chart in his hand and who can’t read what’s written on it secret. Here you are! Take a good long look, and I’ll give you ten dollars if you spot what I mean. It’s as clear as simple.”

Ratcliffe spread the thing before him on the table.

“I can’t see anything in it,” said he at last, “except what’s written plain enough. There’s Rum Cay, there’s the reef, the name of the wreck with a pointer to the reef, and the latitude and longitude up in the corner. No, I can’t see anything but that: it all seems plain as a pikestaff. I take an interest in cryptograms, too.”

“What’s that?”

“Cryptograms? Hidden writing.”

“Well, that’s what’s before you,” said Satan. “Pap never twigged it, nor any of the crowd that had the handlin’ of it. It’s only a month ago I spotted it.”

“You never said a word to me,” cut in Jude.

“Get back to your place and don’t be chewin’ in my ear,” said Satan, reaching for the chart and pocketing it again. “Tell you? Likely! Why, if I had, you’d have let it out, same as you did the lie of the reef to Rat here the other day. Get on with your dinner! Why haven’t we any potatoes?”

“No time to boil them,” said Jude, “cleanin’ up your mushy abalones.”

“No time, and you yarnin’ and havin’ your future told! I heard you.”

“My fault,” said Ratcliffe. “I began the business.”

“Not you,” said Satan. “I heard her start in on it, sayin’ what she’d do with a fortune if she had it and finishin’ up by mistrustin’ me.”

“Lord love you for a liar! I only said them two guys had done you in over the wreck,” cried Jude. “Don’t be stickin’ words in my mouth.”

“How was it you came to spot the cryptogram?” asked Ratcliffe, eager to cut the dissension short.

“The which?” asked Satan. “Oh, ay—well, it come natural for me to say to myself, ‘Here’s a thing that’s been hid up and kept secret, yet it’s all wrote out as plain as my palm.’ I said to myself, ‘It’s too blame simple! A man who knows where money is hid doesn’t write the location on a bit of paper, to be lost, maybe, and picked up by God knows who. Why, drop that chart in the streets of Havana, and the first chap with any knowledge in his head that picks it up will turn it into dollars right off. It’s a sure bait for fools, anyhow, and a wreckin’ expedition would be out before the end of the week. They’d only have to look up any chart that’s been printed the last hundred years to find Lone Reef as easy as the Swimmer Rocks.’ Then I said to myself, ‘What in the nation did the guy want makin’ a chart at all for? Why couldn’t he have written on a piece of paper, “The Nombre de Dios lies on Lone Reef, sou’west of Rum Cay”? That’s all the chart says, and yet he must go and make drawin’s; must have taken him an hour’s pen scraping to make that chart.’ Puttin’ the two things together, I says to myself, ‘The feller concerned must have been a fool in two ways if this thing’s genuine,—a fool to leave the fac’s as plain as an ad for liver pills, and a fool to waste his time drawin’ his advertisement instead of writin’ it,’ but I reckoned he was no fool. Dad was always quotin’ some damn ass who said the world was most made up of fools. Well, in my ’xperience that don’t hold. Maybe in Europe it does, but not in Havana and the Gulf ports, anyway. So I says to myself, ‘Let’s try and see what the guy was drivin’ at.’” “And you won’t tell us how you did it?”

“I’d just as soon not.”

“Why?”

“Because,” said Satan, “I may be wrong; though I’m pretty sure I’m right—and I b’lieve in a shut head.”

“You opened your head to Cark, anyhow,” said Jude.

“I’ll tell you once and I won’t tell you twice, if I have any more chat out of you, I’ll lay into you with a slipper! O’ course I opened my head to him! Did you want him hanging round here and sniffin’ out the cache? Haven’t we got rid of him? I don’t want any more talkin’. I’ve my plan laid out and you’ve get to take my orders right from now without questions!” He turned to Ratcliffe. “You don’t mind helpin’ to work the boat, leavin’ sailing directions to me?”

“Not I,” said Ratcliffe. “I’m quite content to help and look on, leaving things to you. What’s your first move?”

“I’m goin’ to clear out of this tomorrow.”

“Why, I thought you was going to wait for Cark to come back,” said Jude.

“Never you mind what you thought. I’m goin’ to clear out of this tomorrow. Meantime, I want more stuff from the cache, and you’d better take the dinghy and get it right off. I want provisions for a month for the three of us.”