The launch, manned by a crew numerous enough to have thrown us overboard if we had raised a hand in rebellion, sped silently across to the narrow inlet in the reef and entered the peaceful lagoon. Almost at once a sickening, terrifying conviction began to force itself upon me. From the first out-of-door glance at the surroundings there had been something familiar in the appearance of the reef, the pond-like lagoon, and the low-lying island. As we were passing through the inlet the moonbeams struck out the black and shattered remains of a wreck hanging upon the outer reef a short distance on our right, and then I knew!
"The Lord have mercy!" I gasped; and Van Dyck looked up quickly.
"What is it?" he asked.
"The wreck of the Mary Jane!" I whispered, pointing to the black skeleton on the rocks. "This is the island I told you about—the horrible place where we were shipwrecked a year ago last winter!"
"You don't say so!" he returned; and then, to make the reply still more trite: "What a remarkable coincidence!"
His indifference was maddening, and my temper—the temper that had once cost me any shadow of a chance that I might have had in persuading Miss Mehitable Gilmore that, money or no money, Conetta's happiness, as well as my own, was of more importance than any mere fortune lost or gained—this flyaway temper got the better of me and I said things for which I was sorry the moment they were said.
"Pile it on as thick as you please, old man," Van Dyck rejoined, meekly, after I had abused him like an angry fishwife. "It is coming to you—and to the others, as well. What they will do to me presently will doubtless be good and plenty, and you'll have your revenge."
Two minutes later the launch was nosing the white sand of the beach, and the man at the tiller made motions for us to get out. Van Dyck stepped ashore and I followed him. A few yards away, at the edge of the jungle thicketing, our cabin castaways were huddled around a great pile of luggage and ship's stores. Their greeting of Van Dyck when he joined them was all that his most vindictive accuser could have desired; cries and reproaches, eager questionings and sobbing protests from the women; and from the men a fierce storm of demandings led by the major and Holly Barclay. Since Jerry Dupuyster made no move to do it, I drew Conetta quickly out of the Babel and walked her beyond earshot. Major Terwilliger was so far forgetting himself as to swear savagely at his late host, and Ingerson's language was brutal.
"Tell me, reasonably and sanely, if you can, Dick, just what has been done to us," urged my companion, with a little shiver of fright or disgust—or possibly of both; this when we paused to watch the retreating launch cleave its way across the lagoon to the waiting yacht.