The tide had begun to draw out with the setting stars, and the tune of the waters on the beach had sunk to the merest thread of sound.

Then, through the silence from the far reefs to southward, came the single, lamentable cry of a gull; then a chorus, and away against the vague blue of the east, here and there, like leaves blown about a dimly lit window showed the wings of the birds already putting out to sea for the fishing.

Ratcliffe was awakened by Jude calling on him to “show a leg.”

“Satan’s on deck,” said Jude, “and if you believe in washin’ he’ll give you a swill with a bucket. Hurry up and come down again, for I want a swill myself. Swim? Not on your life! Sharks, that’s why.”

The voice came from a hammock which he had blundered against in the semidarkness. Then on deck after his swill, drying himself with an old towel provided by Satan, he stood for a moment watching the sun break up through the water and the great sea flashing to life and the white gulls flying.

The island was sending a faint breeze to them, a tepid breeze flavored with earth and cactus and bay cedar scents, perfumes that mixed with the tang of the ocean and the tar-oakum scents of the Sarah Tyler.

And all these scents and sounds and sights, from the sun flash on the sea to the trembling palm fronds on the shore, seemed like a great bouquet presented by youth and morning.

Oh, the splendor of being alive, free, happy, without a single care, and the deck of the wandering Sarah under foot!

From below through the skylight came a sleep-heavy voice.

“Ain’t you done yet?”

“Coming,” said Ratcliffe.

He dived into his pajamas and came below.

“Get into your cabin an’ shut the door,” commanded the yawning voice from the hammock.

“There’s no door.”

“Well, draw the curtain. Oh, Lord! what’s the good o’ gettin’ up? I’m near dead asleep!”

Then the voice of Satan descending the companion ladder.

“Ain’t you up? Well, you wait one minute!”

A thump on the floor, a scurry up the companion ladder, and then shuddery lamentations and the sounds of swilling from the deck above, mixed with the admonitions of Satan from below.

“Oh, my! ain’t it cold? Oh, my! ain’t it frizzin’?”

“Get on, you mad turkle! You ain’t washin’, you’re splashing the water on the deck. Slush it over you.”

“I’m slushing it.” “Think I don’t know? Why, you ain’t gasped yet! Give a gasp, or I’ll be up to you with a rope-end! That’s more like it.”

It was!

The sun was high when Ratcliffe got on deck, and a light, steady breeze was blowing up from the straits of Florida; the gulls looked like snowflakes blowing round the far reefs and against the morning blue of the sea.

Jude had put the kettle on. She had dressed on deck, having carried her “togs” with her, and she was now preparing a line for fishing, and, as she bent over it, appeared Satan,—Satan rising from the cabin hatch with a toothbrush in his hand.

“You’ve forgot your teeth,” said Satan.

“No, I haven’t,” said Jude. “I’ve been fillin’ the kettle—I’ll fix them when I’ve done with the fishin’.”

“Fishin’ will wait.” He fetched a pannikin of water. “You’re more trouble than a dozen. What’d Pap say if he saw you?”

“I’ll fix them when I’ve done with the fishin’.”

“You’ll fix them now!”

“No. I won’t!”

Satan put down the pannikin and the brush. She evaded him like a flash and skimmed up the mast to the crosstrees.

Scarcely had she got up than she came sliding down, seized the toothbrush and pannikin, and began to brush her teeth over the scupper with a fire speed and fury that seemed born of dementia. “Sardines comin’,” explained Jude between mouthfuls. “Look alive and get a bucket!”

Ratcliffe looked over the sea, where her birdlike sight had spotted the sardine shoal being driven like a gray cloud under the water by pursuing fish. A fringe of dancing silver showed the leaping sardines, and the great fish driving the shoal broke up now and then in sword-flashes.

They were coming from south to north, and the left wing of the shoal would pass the island beach by a cable length.

While Satan stood by with a bucket at the end of a rope, Ratcliffe hung over the side watching.

The driven sardines had no eyes for the Sarah. They struck her like the blow of a great silvery hand, boiled around her, and passed. The army of pursuit followed, passed and vanished, leaving the water clear and Satan with a dipped up bucket full of quivering silver.

The Tylers, absolutely blind to the wonder of the business, fried the sardines just as they were, tossed out of the blue sea into the frying pan, and, breakfast over, Satan and Ratcliffe took the dinghy to hunt for abalones on the uncovered reef.

The reefs to southward formed two spurs divided by a creek of blue water, and having got the dinghy into this creek Ratcliffe tended the boat while Satan hunted for the abalones.

Satan in search of pearls was a sight. Heart, soul, and mind bound up in the business, like a dog hunting for truffles, every find was announced by a yell or a whoop, like the whoop of a Red Indian.

Ratcliffe could see squiggly-wiggly cuttlefish tendrils running up Satan’s arms as he delved in some of the rock-clefts, and Satan disengaging them and flinging the “mushy brutes” away. The big abalones were nearly always deep down under the rock ledges and had to be chiseled off, wallowing in the water. At these times Ratcliffe might have fancied the vanished one lost or drowned, but for the profane language that rose and floated away on the breeze.

All the same, it was dull work for the boat tender. Having nothing else to think of, he thought of Jude. Her figure chased away dullness.

A man in the bright and early morning is quite a different person from the same man at noon, and coming across Jude after a long course of Skelton was like stepping from a gray afternoon to dawn. Was it possible that Skelton and Jude were vertebrates of the same species?

Then there was what women would have called the pity of it. Ratcliffe did not deal much with the conventions as a rule; still, he could not but perceive that all life has an aim and ending, and that the end of an old sailor was not what life and the fitness of things had destined for Jude. What would she grow up into? He thought of all the girls he had ever known. There was not one so jolly as Jude; still, it was terrible, somehow, monstrous. He remembered her threat to pull her skirts over her head and run down the street if skirts were ever imposed upon her. Her contempt for the feminine rose up before him, and against all that her housewifely instincts and the fact that, despite Satan’s rope-end and mock bluster, she ruled the Sarah Tyler just as a woman rules a house.

Still, it was deplorable. Looking away into distance, what would become of her?

Vague and fatherly ideas of getting her away from this life and having her brought up properly and educated came to him, only to be dispelled by Jude. Imagine Jude in a girls’ school, at a tea party!

He was aroused from these meditations by Satan,—Satan with an armful of abalones, Satan scratched and bleeding and soused in sea water, but triumphant.

He reckoned they were the biggest “fish” ever got on these reefs. There were a dozen and six all told, and when they were collected and put on board the dinghy put back.

Coming round the western spur of the reef, they found that Jude had left the Sarah—a high crime—and rowed herself ashore.

The canvas boat was on the beach, and away amid the bay cedars and cactus toward the trees could be seen the head and shoulders of the deserter moving about. She seemed in search of something.

“God love me!” cried Satan.

He beached the dinghy, helped Ratcliffe to run her up, and then started, followed by the other, running and shouting as he ran.

“Hi! chucklehead! Whatcha leave the ship for? Didn’t I tell you to stand by her? Whatcha huntin’ for—turkles’ eggs?”

“What you done with your eyes?” retorted the other. “Cayn’t you see?”

Instantly, and by her tone and by some sixth sense, Satan was appeased. He seemed suddenly to scent danger. He saw the work she had been on, camouflaging the cache more effectively. He cast his glance over the island, the western sea, turned, and then stood stock-still, shading his eyes.

Away beyond the Sarah Tyler across the purple blue stood a sail. The land wind had died off, and the stranger was bringing the sea wind with her. A small topsail schooner she showed now, with all sail set, making dead for the island.

“That’s him,” said Satan.

“Spotted him half an hour ago,” said Jude. “He was steering nor’-nor’west and shifted his helm when he saw us.”

The bay cedar bushes sighed suddenly to the new-risen wind, and as Ratcliffe glanced about him the feeling of the desolation of the place where he stood came to him strong,—strong in the scent of cactus and herbage, the tune of the water on the beach, and the rustle of the wind in the bushes.

“He’s been huntin’ for us,” said Satan, “curse him!”

“Who is he?” asked Ratcliffe.

“Friend of Pap’s, he was—”

“Pretended to be,” put in Jude.

“Spanish,” continued Satan, “and ever since Pap gave out he’s been pretty much on our heels. Jude and me worked the thing out and we came to conclude he’d scented, somehow, from Pap, about the hooker I spoke of.”

“The wreck?’

“Yep. Pap was keen on gettin’ extra money into the business of salvin’ her, and I b’lieve he sounded Carquinez,—that’s his name,—and how much he let out takin’ his soundin’s the Lord only knows! Cark’s in the tobacco line. Does a bit of everythin’,—has a shop in the Calle Pedro in Havana and a gamblin’ joint on the front, owns ships. That’s one of them, and Matt Sellers runs her for him. He don’t trouble handlin’ her: sits in the cabin all day smokin’ cigarettes.”

“He’s been after us ever since Pap died,” said Jude, “on and off.”

“It was one of his men got Jude in that doggery down by the wharf and filled her up with rum,” said Satan, turning the brim of his panama down. “Remember I told you—and what she let out the Lord only knows!”

“I didn’t let out nothin’,” said Jude; “only that we were goin’ east this trip, I owns to that.”

“Well, there’s the result of your jaw,” said Satan. “East was good enough for Cark: he’d hunt hell for a red cent. And don’t you be sayin’ you didn’t let out nothin’. Why, I heard you jawin’ about all the money you had when I come in and collared you! Cark believes Pap found that stuff and cached it—that’s what he believes, or my name’s not Tyler.”

“Well, let’s get aboard,” said Jude. “If they see us squatting about here, they’ll maybe think the stuff’s hid here.”

“They’ve seen us by this, though it’s too far for them to make out who we are,” said Satan, pushing his panama farther forward to hide his face. He led the way to where the boats were on the sand, and they reËmbarked.

The abalones were got on board, and then they stood watching the approach of the stranger.

The white had gone out of her sails. Close in now, they showed dingy and patched. She had a low freeboard. Then, as she dropped anchor and swung to her moorings broadside on to the Sarah, the rake of her masts became apparent, and her whole disreputableness spoke aloud.

Ratcliffe felt like a man who, having got into pleasant low company, suddenly finds himself drawn into unpleasant low company.

The Tylers and the old Sarah were all right, but this new crowd and that ratty old schooner he felt to be all wrong. And the newcomer somehow did not add honesty or moral stability to the appearance of the Sarah, nor did the half-disclosed character and activities of Cark shed luster on old man Tyler or his present representatives.

However, he had gone into this business open-eyed, and it was not for him to grumble at the friends or relationships of his hosts; besides he had trust in Satan and the wit of Satan to preserve them from the law.

Satan had covered the heap of abalones with some sail-cloth, and he was standing now working his lantern jaws on a bit of chewing gum, his eyes fixed on the stranger as though she were made of glass and he could see Carquinez sitting smoking his cigarettes in the cabin.

“They haven’t shown a sign,” said Jude.

“They’re bluffin’ us to believe they haven’t spotted who we are,” said Satan. “Cark doesn’t want us to twig he’s been lookin’ for us.”

“Well,” said Jude, “let’s get the mud-hook up and put out right away. They won’t have the face to chase us.”

“Yes,” said Satan, “and leave them to hunt the island and find the cache! They’d lift the stuff to the last tin of beef. They’ve seen us ashore among the bushes. You shouldn’t have gone ashore.”

“I went to see we hadn’t left no traces.”

“Traces be damned! Cark wants no traces. Once he starts to hunt, he’ll turn the durned island upside down and shake it. He’ll say to himself, ‘What were they doin’ here, anyway; what were they pokin’ about them bushes for?’ No, we’ve got to sit here till he goes, and that’ll be this time next year, maybe.”

“What’s the name of his schooner?” asked Ratcliffe.

“The Juan Bango,” replied Satan, “named after the tobacco company people. Look, they’re gettin’ a boat off. That’s Sellers, and he’s comin’ aboard.”

Then he collapsed, squatting under the bulwarks. “Guy them,” said he to Jude. “Tell them I’m down with smallpox: that’ll make them shove.”

“Leave ’em to me,” said Jude.

It was Matt Sellers right enough, a big wheezy man suggestive of Tammany Hall, but a sure-enough sailor in practice. “The biggest blackguard on the coast” was his subsidiary title. He was the henchman of Carquinez. His career was not without interest and romance of a sort. It was he who had bought, with the money of Carquinez, the bones of the Isidore, wrecked against the sheer cliffs by the black strand of Martinique. Ten thousand dollars in gold coin she had on board her, and he salved them. That was a straight job, and a wonderful bit of work, taking it all together. It was a curiosity, too, because it was straight.

The crooked jobs of Matt Sellers would have filled a book.

Like old man Tyler, Sellers had no use for people who talked of buried treasure, he knew the Caribbean and the gulf too well.

If he was keen on the wreck business, then it was because he had excellent reasons for his keenness.

As the boat drew near, Ratcliffe noticed the villainous-looking crew, Spaniards, some of them with red handkerchiefs tied round their heads.