The box was not tin; it was thin steel. Inside, it was padded and lined with gleaming white satin. Bedded into a depression in the middle was a glow of green brilliancy which shifted and burned under the moving light. There were two rubies for eyes in the exquisitely carven thing; a piece of subtle Persian workmanship somewhat larger than a Vesta matchbox, and wound with gold links into a pendant.
"Hold it!" shouted Morgan, as a jerk of the deck nearly carried the box overboard. He clutched it in. Wet splashes flashed out on the satin… "Thought," he yelled, "gone overboard… "
He swallowed hard, and a nauseating suspicion struck him as he peered over his shoulder.
"By the Lord! had he pinched the emerald elephant?" demanded Warren. "Look here; we did better than we knew. Getting this back — ha! Why old Sturton'll — What's the matter with you all? What are you thinking about?" His eyes suddenly widened. They all stared at one another under the wild screaming of the night. "Look!" muttered Warren, swallowing hard. "That is, you don't think— hurrum?"
Captain Valvick groped his way down to where a stout mass in a waterproof, dead to the world, was wedged into an angle of the glass enclosure. Bending down, and sheltered by the enclosure, they saw the spurt of a match.
"Oh, Yesus!" said the captain, in an awed voice. He got up. He pushed back his cap and scratched his head. When he came back to them his leathery face had a queer, wrinkled, wryly amused expression, and his voice was matter-of-fact.
"Ay t'ank," he observed, scratching his head again— "ay t'ank we haf made a mistake. Ay t'ank we are in one most hawful yam. Ay t'ank de man you haff busted in de yaw is Captain Whistler."
6 — The Missing Body
Morgan reeled, in a more than merely literal sense. Then he recovered himself, after a long silence in which everybody stared at everybody else. He hooked his arms in the rail and took a meditative survey of the deck. He cleared his throat.
"Well, well!" he said.