The island, close to them now and on the starboard bow, lay burning coral-white and sage-green on the blue sea.

One could see the palms bending to the breeze, and the snow of the surf and the white flicker of the gulls, whose voices came, now and then, weak and spirit-like, across the water.

Something fluttering beneath the palms drew Gaspard’s attention; he borrowed Sagesse’s glass and looked. It was the remains of the tent, a few rags of canvas; they seemed beckoning to him like brown hands, skeleton-thin and sinister.

Even as he looked, the roar of the anchor-chain through the hawse pipe tore the air, and La Belle Arlésienne swung at her moorings in eight fathoms of water a few cable-lengths from the shore.

The barquentine had come in with scarcely a sound, but scarcely had she taken anchorage than Babel broke out on board. The voice of Jules could be heard above the others, ordering the boats to be got ready; stores were being brought on deck, whilst Sagesse, silent beside Gaspard, watched the preparations for landing with a brooding eye, throwing in a command now and then.

The longboat and a quarterboat were lowered and laden with stores and the diving apparatus; it was nearly an hour before the business was complete and Sagesse and231 his companion, taking their places in the stern of the longboat, found themselves free of La Belle Arlésienne and making for the shore.

They rowed to the southern beach.

“I will take the quarterboat across the island,” said Sagesse. “It will be a bit of a job, but she’s light enough, and eight of the hands will be able to do it. I’m going to use her for the diving. Mordieu, but it’s a desolate place, this island of yours. There’s no gainsaying that. Who would ever think there was a ship sunk here, and lying in shallow water, too?”

“It’s lonely enough,” said Gaspard, his eyes fixed on the white beach, the palms, and the grey-green stretch of bay-cedar bushes. Now that he was close in shore, all the elation of the treasure hunt had passed from him, giving place to a feeling of melancholy. Oh, those palms, that rag of tent fluttering in the wind, that scorching splash of sunlight on the beach—what visions of desolation did they not call up! The place seemed to him full of death and tragedy, repellant, as though the shade of Simon Serpente were walking in the sun-blaze of the beach, as though the voices of the gulls were the voices of his men; ghosts of old buccaneers condemned to eternal restlessness and discontent.

But with the grounding of the boat’s nose on the sand all this passed away. He flung himself over the side and helped to run her up as far on the beach as the weight of her cargo would let them pull her; the quarterboat was beached just beside her, and then the unlading began.

Whilst it was still in progress Sagesse, leaving Jules to superintend, took Gaspard’s arm.

“Come,” said he, “let’s have a look at her. The tide’s half out and she ought to show up well.”

232 “This way,” said Gaspard.

He led his companion amidst the bushes, avoiding the spot where he knew, face down amidst the bay cedars, the body of Yves was lying; he dared not even look twice towards the place, and he breathed more freely when they had passed it.

The line he took would also lead them twenty yards or so to westward of the mound beside which Yves had discovered the belt and pouch and the skeleton to which they belonged.

In a few minutes they were free of the bushes and on the northern beach.

The tide was more than half out and the whole of the encircling reef of the lagoon was visible. Gaspard led the way on to the reef, then along it, till he reached the spot opposite the foretop, weed-grown and projecting from the water.

“Look,” said he, pointing into the lagoon.

Sagesse without a word, stared down at the vision beneath him.

It was a part of the mystery of the sea that the lagoon water changed in brilliancy and clarity with the tide; with a flooding tide, and at full, its diamond brightness dimmed almost imperceptibly and brightened almost imperceptibly with the ebb. One would not have noticed the fact but for the submerged ship and her crust of coral jewellery; which shewed brighter or dimmer according to the clarity of the water.

Possibly............