“That’s how it seems to me,” said Satan. “I’m not sayin’ I’m right, but that’s how it seems to me, and if he figured that no one would trouble about readin’ and verifyin’ the latitude and longitude as given there he was right. Pap didn’t, and it was only by chance I did, a month ago.”
“Have you seen Cormorant Cay?”
“Lord, yes! It’s a lagoon sandspit, and the hooker may be in the lagoon for all I know, or under the sand for all I know, or I may be wrong all through and that may be her on the reef over there. Well, we’ve got to see; but it seems to me I’m pretty safe anyway, if I can touch Cark for that thousand.”
So thought Ratcliffe.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE WRECK
After breakfast, leaving Jude to keep ship, they got the dinghy overboard and rowed for the reef. Here to eastward the landing was made easy by a scrap of beach a hundred yards long, where the boat of the Natchez was lying, having landed Sellers and his working party.
Satan, scrambling, led the way over the rocks to the central creek between the two reef arms, where, ponded round with water, lay the wreck.
The reef, seen from the deck of the Sarah, showed little sign of a wreck. One had to land on it to discover that the long hogback of rock rising from the creek had structure. There was not even the indication of where a mast had been, bowsprit there was none, stem and stern were almost indistinguishable; yet, standing there, with the gulls flying round him and the lonely tune of the sea in his ears, Ratcliffe knew that the thing he was gazing upon was a ship. Structure speaks! You can destroy it, but can scarcely disguise it.