“Well, you wanted it badly enough; you should be glad now we have it,” I said.
“Distant fields are always green,” quoted the Marquis gravely; and I was so amazed to hear him quote a proverb right side up for once that I almost dropped the diamond on the floor.
175
V
THE SECRET OF THE STONE OVEN COUNTRY
CHAPTER V
THE SECRET OF THE STONE OVEN COUNTRY
The Marquis and I sat on the hot black sand of Kara Bay and tried to realize that we were shipwrecked.
It was not easy. There was the calm, blue, burning sea in front of us, there was the ruffle of foam on the coral reef a mile or two out from the beach. There were the sea-hawks hovering and veering just as they had been doing an hour or two ago, when we had left the little coastal steamer for a stroll on shore while some small trouble in the engine room was repaired. And there—was not—the Waiwera. With our own eyes we had seen her get under steam again, start to make a little closer in shore before putting out her boat to fetch us off, strike the ill-charted reef bow on, and go down in the deep water outside like a tin can that fills and sinks in a well.
It was so quick that they had not even time to sling the boat out. The reef, with its long knife edges, had ripped her open from end to end. She was overloaded with ore from a new mine near Samarai. She was a crank little boat at best, and as for water-tight compartments, you might as soon have expected electric light, or cold storage, or a satinwood grand piano made to turn into a high altar for Sunday services—such as they have on the western ocean liners. There were no frills of any kind about the Waiwera. When she hit, she went down and made no fuss about it.
The Marquis and I saw the whole thing, there on the beach two miles away. We heard the rattle of the engines as they broke loose and plunged when she up-ended. We heard the piteous cry, thin and faint with distance, that rose to an unpitying heaven, as the decks went under water. After that there was nothing any more, just the blue sea, and the burning sky, and the circling and hovering bronze sea-hawks, busy with their fishing again.