Ratcliffe picked up a book, a volume of O. Henry. There was a name in it,—J. Seligmann.
Jude, delving in the starboard after-cabin, came out holding up something. It was a pair of boots, women’s, patent leather with white suede tops and heels three inches high.
“Look at them things!” said Jude with a burst of suppressed laughter.
“A girl’s boots,” said Ratcliffe. “Try them on, Jude.”
“If I wore them things,” said Jude, “I’d have to walk on my hands. There’s dead loads more of stuff, and the place smells as if a polecat had been living there.”
Ratcliffe stuck his head into the little cabin. It reeked of California poppy as though a bottle of it had been upset, California poppy and cosmetic scents. Clothes were lying about in disorder; a woman’s white yachting cap, deck shoes, lingerie, bursting like froth out of a cabin trunk, gave added touch to the hysterical distraction of the scene.
One could see her, the woman, rushing about saving or collecting her valuables, leaving everything else, and calling on the gods to witness that she would never set foot again on another small yacht for a pleasure cruise among the islands.
Jude picked out a frilled garment from the lingerie box, looked at it, rolled it up, and cast it with a chuckle into the bunk, then she reached up and opened the little port.
Ratcliffe left her pursuing her investigations, attracted by the whoops of Satan, who seemed pursuing things about the deck.
Satan, with his hair wild and his eyes ablaze, had rapidly sampled his treasure. Everything he wanted had been left. Had he found the Nombre de Dios with gold to her hatches, it is doubtful if his excitement would have been so intense.