"Too risky. I thought of all that. We can only trust our boats to takes us a little way. I must pile her up near the mainland. There's a reef I know of——"
"A reef!" scoffed Lemaire, "and you de best skipper on either side! Who d'you s'pose believe dat? Not unless we first had an accident to de engines, anyway. What about Olsen? Does he—know?"
"Yes. It could not be carried through without him."
"Ah, I see. . . . Only poor Lemaire was to be kept out. . . . And dis reef?"
"It's uncharted. I found it years ago. I had reasons for not wanting it known where I'd been and I never reported. It's a tricky place, the sea don't break true on it, sets in sideways. Beyond it's flat to the shore. No risk of salvage; it's out of the course, and a wooden ship goes to pieces at once, anyway."
"Where is it, dis reef?"
Elderkin drew his pencil down the chart to an indented bit of coast not a couple of degrees below the fortieth parallel. Lemaire sweated to think how near he had been to risk.
"If this north-west gale holds, and we are to have an accident which made her unmanageable," went on Elderkin, "we should be driven ashore, on to that reef. Or at least we could always say so afterwards."
"We might arrange so's Olsen was neber able to give us de lie . . ." suggested Lemaire, glancing sidelong at the other.
"If needful."