He had divided Ratcliffe and Jude into watches, port and starboard.

Jude turned in first, relieving him somewhere about two in the morning. At six, when Ratcliffe turned out and came on deck, he found Satan at the wheel, relinquished by Jude, and day pursuing the Sarah across a wrinkled sea of tourmaline and hinted blue. Away ahead somewhere to the south lay Cormorant Cay, the true tomb, if the chart indications were correct, of the Nombre de Dios.

A strong sailing wind was blowing, and Satan gave their speed at seven knots. He refused to hand over the wheel.

“I’ve had a snooze on deck,” said he, “while the kid took charge. We’re nearly sixty miles south of Lone, and if this wind holds will be on to Cormorant somewhere about eight bells.”

“Not a sign of those chaps,” said Ratcliffe, looking back over the sea, clear of Cleary and Sellers and their dirty crowd.

“Naw; they’ll be just about rousin’ up now and rubbin’ their eyes.” “You don’t think they’ll try to follow us?”

“Not likely, I don’t think. They’re wastin’ time and money if they cruise after us. Cark’s got his business in Havana to attend to, and Cleary’s the same. What’s gettin’ me is the fac’ that Sellers has spotted the kid for what she is. It’ll be all over Havana, and she knows it.”

“Well, it had to come out some time.”

“Maybe.”

“Look here, Satan!” said Ratcliffe. “I’ve been thinking a lot about the girl and what’s to become of her. She can’t go on as she is. We must fix up something.”

“That’s easy said.”

“Well, I’ve grown fonder of her than any person I’ve ever met, that’s the truth. There’s no one like her; she’s gold right through.”

“She ain’t bad.”

“This sort of thing was all right when she was a child,” went on Ratcliffe; “but she’s growing out of that. Why, even in the little time since I’ve come aboard, she seems different, somehow.”

“Well, if you ask me,” said Satan, “you seem to have made a change in her. She’s brightened up, somehow, has more sass in her. Y’see, when we were cruisin’ round since Pap died, me, she, and the nigger, there wasn’t much company, and she was gettin’ a bit down-hearted. Then, when you came aboard, she picked up. She hadn’t laughed for weeks till she saw you in that pajama rig; then she chummed onto you.”

“She did.”

“Liked you from the first minute she saw you. There’s no two ways about Jude,—it’s either like or the other thing, right off.”

“Well, I’m pretty much the same—and I don’t want to lose sight of her—or you.”

“How’d you mean?”

“Oh, just that. I’m bothering about when this cruise is over. That’s bothering me a lot. Well, we’ll leave it at that for the present.”

Satan turned his lantern face to starboard for half a moment to expectorate right over the starboard rail—maybe also to hide a grin.

“I reckon it’ll come all right somehow,” said he. “We ain’t much in the world, but we’re straight. Reckon you’re straight too. That’s all I want. That feller Thelusson, y’remember I told you he wanted to come for a cruise with us. Well, he was straight enough s’far as dollars went, but I wouldn’t have had him on this ship, not if he’d paid me a dollar a minute and a bonus for every knot we made—not with Jude aboard—Here’s the wheel for a sec’, if you’ll take it whiles I get some coffee ready.”

Toward noon a wreath of gulls in the sky showed Cormorant.

Jude was at the wheel, Satan forward on the lookout.

Twenty minutes later Satan came running aft, fetched the old glass out of its sling, and went forward with it.

“There’s a hooker on the sands!” cried he. “Looks like a small fruiter or suthin’ hove up.”

Ratcliffe, standing beside him, could see nothing,—the sand, owing to their low level, was invisible from the deck of the Sarah,—then, straining his eyes, he made out a speck on the sea-line.

“Mast’s gone,” said Satan, “white painted, not more’n fifty ton, and she’s layin’ in the lagoon. She must have come in over the sand where it narrows to the westward. There’s a pinch of sand there that’s near under water at flood, and the seas come right over it in an east’ard gale.”

He handed the glass to Ratcliffe.

“Funny,” said Ratcliffe, “if you were right about the Nombre de Dios being sunk here and we come to have a look for her and find another wreck.”

“Well, I don’t take no shares in the Nombre de Dios,” said Satan. “I ran here more for somewhere to run to than with any thought of the Nombre. She’s a hundred foot under the sand if she’s here at all; but it’s luck all the same. There’ll be pickin’s. There was a big blow two weeks ago from the east,—that’s what’s done her,—and the salvage men won’t be here yet, if they ever come.”

He stuck the glass to his eye.

“She’s a yacht, that’s what she is, one of them small cruisers, not more’n fifty or sixty, and her fittin’s will just do for us, if she’s not been stripped. There’s all sorts of folks come from New York and Philadelphia and N’ y’Orleans, cruisin’ about these seas in tubs like that,—fishin’ mostly.”

The Sarah held on, almost due south, with the daring of a sea-bird, Satan giving directions to the steersman and seeming absolutely regardless of the death and dangers around them,—reefs that they shaved, rocks that waved fathom-long ribbons of fuci a few feet under water,—he avoided them all.

South, east, and west Cormorant Cay is devoid of danger. Only here to the north do the reefs and rocks show, and it is just here that the only entrance to the lagoon lies.

The place consists really of two sandspits widely separated to the north so as to form a pondlike harbor running from five to ten fathoms deep. Farther south the sandspits join so as to form a wide street, like the spit to eastward of Lone Reef.

They held on. The sound of the gentle surf on the sands came now, and a full view of the lagoon water reflecting the sun blaze like a mirror.

On the still lagoon, with strange stereoscopic effect seen between the two sand-arms holding off the wrinkled sea, lay the craft, floating on an even keel, and showing a stump of mainmast against the skyline. From her lines she had been a yacht.

“Why, Go’ bless my soul, she’s anchored!” cried Satan. “Derelic’ and anchored. The people must have got away in a boat or suthin’. There’s not a sign of them. Port—hard—port—as you were—steady—so!”

He ran to let go the halyards.

Another anchor had been bent on to some spare chain. It was heaved over, and the Sarah came up to it, swinging less than fifty yards from the stranger. She was a picture, a forty-ton fishing yawl, white painted, gracile as a fish, dismasted, abandoned, and swinging to a taut anchor chain; beyond her and the emerald of the lagoon lay the great stretch of sands, running due south, blanketing to the heat and showing ponds of aquamarine and storms of gulls.

The anchor down, Satan stood with his eyes fixed on his prey; Jude too. They seemed considering her as a butcher might consider a carcass before he cut it up.

“Aren’t you going to board her?” asked Ratcliffe.

“Have you ever seen a dead b’ar?” asked Satan. “Sometimes a b’ar isn’t as dead as he looks, and sometimes a derelic’ isn’t as empty as it looks. It’s a common thing for men on the Florida coast to hide in a driftin’ canoe and rise up and laugh at them that come out to collect it. I can’t make out that anchor chain bein’ down, and I’ll just give them one hour whiles we have dinner.”

When they came on deck again after the meal, they dropped the dinghy, and the three of them put off for the derelict.

She must have been dismasted outside the sands, for not a spar lay in the water alongside,—dismasted and driven over by a big wave, her crew clinging to her. On the bow was her name, Haliotis. They tied up and scrambled on board. The deck ran flush fore and aft. The wheel looked all right, but was jammed and immovable; the binnacle glass was smashed.

Satan stood, whistling and looking about him. Then he dived below, followed by the others. The cabin had been left in good order. It was a bit over-gilded and decorated for a plain man’s taste, but everything was of the best, and a hanging lamp of solid brass still swung over the center-table. The walls were of bird’s-eye maple, the cushions of the best blue cloth, and the fittings of the tiny sleeping cabins to match.

There was plenty of stuff lying about,—books, clothes, boots. The people had evidently put off in a hurry, not caring much what they took as long as they got away. Perhaps they had taken advantage of a passing steamer.

Ratcliffe picked up a book, a volume of O. Henry. There was a name in it,—J. Seligmann.

Jude, delving in the starboard after-cabin, came out holding up something. It was a pair of boots, women’s, patent leather with white suede tops and heels three inches high.

“Look at them things!” said Jude with a burst of suppressed laughter.

“A girl’s boots,” said Ratcliffe. “Try them on, Jude.”

“If I wore them things,” said Jude, “I’d have to walk on my hands. There’s dead loads more of stuff, and the place smells as if a polecat had been living there.”

Ratcliffe stuck his head into the little cabin. It reeked of California poppy as though a bottle of it had been upset, California poppy and cosmetic scents. Clothes were lying about in disorder; a woman’s white yachting cap, deck shoes, lingerie, bursting like froth out of a cabin trunk, gave added touch to the hysterical distraction of the scene.

One could see her, the woman, rushing about saving or collecting her valuables, leaving everything else, and calling on the gods to witness that she would never set foot again on another small yacht for a pleasure cruise among the islands.

Jude picked out a frilled garment from the lingerie box, looked at it, rolled it up, and cast it with a chuckle into the bunk, then she reached up and opened the little port.

Ratcliffe left her pursuing her investigations, attracted by the whoops of Satan, who seemed pursuing things about the deck.

Satan, with his hair wild and his eyes ablaze, had rapidly sampled his treasure. Everything he wanted had been left. Had he found the Nombre de Dios with gold to her hatches, it is doubtful if his excitement would have been so intense.

“Look at that!” cried he, pointing to the mast winch. “Wantin’ it—should think I had been! Come along and see!” He led the way to a heap of raffle and broken spars forward. “Look at them gaff jaws, galvanized an’ covered with hide, and me with old wooden ones creakin’ like an old shoe! There’s a mainsheet buffer too! Camper Nicholson’s—rubber—cringles—come along to the sail room!”

They went to the sail room, then to the galley,—everywhere finds, glorious finds, with this rough sum total:

In the sail room, sixty fathoms of new manila rope, an eighty-foot otter trawl, harpoons and grains and a seine net, a trysail, square sails, two jibs; in the galley, cooking gear, an Atkey cooking stove to burn coal or coke; in addition to all this some splendid blocks with patent sheaves with ball bearings which run so much better than dummies, a lower mainsheet block and two quarter-blocks, fathoms of galvanized chain, and two Nicholson’s patent anchors. Other things included lamps, a pair of binoculars, a sextant and a chronometer, charts, and lastly, glorious but useless, in a little engine room the auxiliary, a 13–15 horse-power petrol-paraffin Kelvin engine, two-cylinder, with the shaft running out through the quarter, and a spare Bergius propeller, which shuts up and opens out automatically when in motion.

When they came on deck again after a rapid glance at these things a brain-wave came to Ratcliffe.

“Look here!” said he. “Why not tow her back to Havana and claim salvage? She’s worth a lot and she’s derelict.”

“Not me,” said Satan. “Have you ever claimed salvage? First there’s the tow, and we’re underhanded. Then there’s the lawyers. What’s to stop this Seligmann whoever he is poppin’ up an’ swearin’ against me. He’d say he left her with the anchor down in harbor; it amounts to that, though she’s derelic’ right enough. Not me! I’ll take what I want without no lawyers to help me. She’s my meat, by all the laws of the sea, and that’s the end of it.”

Appeared Jude from the cabin hatch, carrying as a trophy a go-ashore hat she had unearthed from somewhere, a crushed-strawberry-colored straw hat—or was it a bonnet? It had long strings and a rose stuck on one side of it. “Look what that catawampus has left behind her!” cried Jude.

“Quit your foolin’,” cried Satan, “and come along and lend a hand. Here, h’ist these things into the dinghy!”

Jude flung the hat down the open skylight, and the rank burglary of the Haliotis began.