"They're fixed and done for," said Cardon, "and I reckon Schumer will start repenting in a minute that he sent the crew ashore. Come, we have no time to waste here."
He ran to the port rail, followed by Floyd.
The boat Schumer and Luckman had come in was alongside. Every plan they had made and every preparation seemed working now for their destruction and for the success of their enemies. The thought crossed Floyd's mind as he followed Cardon down into the boat, but there was little time to think in, and, taking the stern oar while Cardon took the bow, they pushed off for the shore.
Having beached the boat, Floyd led the way up to the house, and as they approached it a figure came out of the grove into the starlight. It was Isbel. Floyd ran up to her as Cardon entered the house; then, as he was holding her hands and trying to tell her all that had occurred, Cardon appeared at the house door with a lighted match in his hand.
"There's no safe here," said he.
He lit another match as they followed through the main into the inner room.
There was nothing there at all, except the bed which Schumer slept on and the tossed blankets. The safe, which had stood in one corner of the room, was gone.
"That does us," said Floyd. He had fancied that the pearls were a secondary consideration, that Isbel was the one and only thing. Now he knew different. Isbel was not the only thing. Without the pearls and the money they would fetch he was nothing. Nothing but a sailorman earning a few shillings a week, tossed hither and thither about the world at the will of an owner.
For one terrible minute before the loss of these things he felt his poverty, and there is nothing much more terrible than that if one loves. What had stricken him would strike Isbel. Where could he take her? What could he do with her, he who had no home but a sailors' lodging home, no resources but a miserable pittance only to be earned at the cost of separation from her?
Cardon brought him back to himself.