They went down and had breakfast, and after the meal Ginnell, going to the locker where he had stowed the wrecking tools, fetched them out and laid them on deck. There were two crowbars and a jimmy, not to mention a flogging hammer, a rip saw, some monstrous big chisels, and a shipwright’s mallet. They looked like a collection of burglar’s implements from the land of Brobdignag.
“There you are,” said Ginnell. “You never know what you may want on a job like this, with bulkheads maybe to be cut through and chests broke open. Get a spare sail, Misther Harman, and rowl the lot up in it so’s they’ll be aisier for thransport.”
He was excited, and the Irish in him came out when he was like that; also, as the most knowledgable man in the business, he was taking the lead. You never could have fancied, from his cheerful manner and his appearance of boss, that Blood was the real master of the situation, or that Blood, only a few days ago, had nearly pounded the life out of him, captured his revolver, and taken possession of the Heart of Ireland.
The schooner carried a whaleboat, and this was now got in readiness for lowering, with provisions and water for the landing party, and, when that was done, the island, now only four miles distant, showed up fine, a sheer splinter of volcanic rock standing up from the sea and creamed about with foam.
Not a sign of a wreck was to be seen, though Ginnell’s glasses were powerful enough to show up every detail from the rock fissures to the roosting gulls.
Gloom fell upon the party, with the exception of Harman.
“It’ll be on the other side if it’s there at all,” said he. “She’d have been coming up from the s’uth’ard, and if the gale was behind her, it would have taken her right on to the rocks; she couldn’t be on this side, anyhow, because why? There’s nuthin’ to hold her. It’s a mile-deep water off them cliffs, but on the other side it shoals gradual from tide marks to ten-fathom water, which holds for a quarter of a mile. Keep her as she is; you could scrape them cliffs with a battleship without danger of groundin’.”
After a minute or two, he took the wheel himself, and steered her, while the fellows stood by the halyards, ready to let go at a moment’s notice.
It was an impressive place, this north side of the island of San Juan. The heavy swell came up, smacking right on to the sheer cliff wall, jetting green water and foam yards high to the snore and boom of caves and cut-outs in the rock. Gulls haunted the place. The black petrel, the Western gull, and the black-footed albatross all were to be found here. Long lines of white gulls marked the cliff edges, and, far above, in the dazzling azure of the sky, a Farallon cormorant circled like the spirit of the place, challenging the newcomers with its cry.
Harman shifted his helm, and the Heart of Ireland, with main boom swinging to port, came gliding past the western rocks and opening the sea to southward, where, far on the horizon, lovely in the morning light like vast ships under press of sail, the San Lucas Islands lay remote in the morning splendour.