“Not at present.”
“I wish I could find out something definite about the islands in that channel. Nobody knows anything about them at all except the Arab coast pirates, and they keep all the pickings there are to themselves.”
“You’ll find better pickings in India, you vulture,” cried Elliott, with an easy laugh.
He was far from feeling easy, however, and for a time he was sharply suspicious of the Alabaman. Yet it was highly improbable that any one else knew the secret of the Clara McClay’s cargo and of her end; and it was practically impossible that any one knew more of the wreck than he did himself. Certainly Sevier could have no more definite information, or he would be sailing to the Madagascar coast instead of to India. Elliott persuaded himself that the young Alabaman’s questions had been prompted by mere curiosity, and that their startling appositeness was the result of coincidence. Still, the incident revived his sense of the need for haste, and renewed his eagerness to discover the traces of Burke, the brutal mate, the one man living who knew the whole secret of the drowned millions.
Rapidly as the good ship rolled off the knots, her slowness irritated him. He counted the hours, almost the minutes, and it was hard to contain his impatience till they came at last in sight of the low, green-brown Indian shore.
Bombay came in sight on the port bow that evening, a strange sky-line of domes and squares. Heat lightning flickered low on the landward horizon, casting the city into sharp silhouette against the sky, and from some festival ashore the clash and boom of cymbals and the terrific blare of conches rolled softened across the water.
For hours after the steamer had anchored, the English civil and military servants stayed on deck to look at the field of their coming labours, and all night long the ship resounded with the clacking roar of the derricks clearing the baggage hold.
“Poor devils!” murmured Sevier, looking at the English clustered along the rail. “I wonder how many of the passengers on this boat will ever see England again—or America, either.”
And Elliott, thinking of his perilous mission, wondered also.