“Look at that!” cried he, pointing to the mast winch. “Wantin’ it—should think I had been! Come along and see!” He led the way to a heap of raffle and broken spars forward. “Look at them gaff jaws, galvanized an’ covered with hide, and me with old wooden ones creakin’ like an old shoe! There’s a mainsheet buffer too! Camper Nicholson’s—rubber—cringles—come along to the sail room!”
They went to the sail room, then to the galley,—everywhere finds, glorious finds, with this rough sum total:
In the sail room, sixty fathoms of new manila rope, an eighty-foot otter trawl, harpoons and grains and a seine net, a trysail, square sails, two jibs; in the galley, cooking gear, an Atkey cooking stove to burn coal or coke; in addition to all this some splendid blocks with patent sheaves with ball bearings which run so much better than dummies, a lower mainsheet block and two quarter-blocks, fathoms of galvanized chain, and two Nicholson’s patent anchors. Other things included lamps, a pair of binoculars, a sextant and a chronometer, charts, and lastly, glorious but useless, in a little engine room the auxiliary, a 13–15 horse-power petrol-paraffin Kelvin engine, two-cylinder, with the shaft running out through the quarter, and a spare Bergius propeller, which shuts up and opens out automatically when in motion.
When they came on deck again after a rapid glance at these things a brain-wave came to Ratcliffe.
“Look here!” said he. “Why not tow her back to Havana and claim salvage? She’s worth a lot and she’s derelict.”
“Not me,” said Satan. “Have you ever claimed salvage? First there’s the tow, and we’re underhanded. Then there’s the lawyers. What’s to stop this Seligmann whoever he is poppin’ up an’ swearin’ against me. He’d say he left her with the anchor down in harbor; it amounts to that, though she’s derelic’ right enough. Not me! I’ll take what I want without no lawyers to help me. She’s my meat, by all the laws of the sea, and that’s the end of it.”
Appeared Jude from the cabin hatch, carrying as a trophy a go-ashore hat she had unearthed from somewhere, a crushed-strawberry-colored straw hat—or was it a bonnet? It had long strings and a rose stuck on one side of it.
“Look what that catawampus has left behind her!” cried Jude.
“Quit your foolin’,” cried Satan, “and come along and lend a hand. Here, h’ist these things into the dinghy!”
Jude flung the hat down the open skylight, and the rank burglary of the Haliotis began.