Then, with his elbows on the table, he told how Yves had discovered the ship in the lagoon; he described her. Sagesse, also with his elbows on the table, listening intently, putting in a question now and then.
“That’s all,” finished Gaspard, “she may be up to the hatches with gold for all I know—and for the matter of that—for all I care.”
Sagesse sat, now that the tale was told, musing in his chair, and pulling at his heavy moustache.
“And you were on that island,” said he at last, “you saw that wreck, you found gold and the dead bones of a man, you fancied there might be more stuff there, yet, if I had not got the tale from you you would have said nothing to anyone about it; you would have perhaps gone back to the stokehold. Pah! I believe you, for that’s the kind of thing that fills stokeholds with fools who are good for nothing but stoking—well, you will be fortunate despite yourself. I take the speculation up.”
“You intend—”
“I intend to dynamite her open and see what she contains. When La Belle Arlésienne has discharged her cargo, I will put her in ballast, take some diving apparatus and what else is needful, and return to that island; you will go with me.”
“I?”
“Yes, you; do you think I want the whole of St. Pierre in the business? I will take only my coloured crew; several of them are good divers, but I must have another white man on a job like this. You will have your share of the profits, fifteen per cent. That may be much, or it may be nothing, but you will have to work for it, for it will be horse work getting the stuff off her if she lies as you tell me. I take it she has been lying in that lagoon all of a hundred years; if she is a Spaniard there may be a lot of stuff—” Then, after a moment’s pause, “There is stuff on that island; I smell it.”
He fell into a moment’s reverie, then, as if talking to himself, “the fellow those bones belonged to had something to do with her; he was one of her crew, or he was there hunting for treasure. He may have died of starvation or accident, or he may have discovered the stuff and been killed by his companions; if that was so they would not have left that belt and money behind them.”
Gaspard sat watching Sagesse; the man’s mind seemed ferreting about the business like a hound; he seemed actually to smell money in the thing. Perhaps he did. There are men who in some uncanny way have the power of scenting fortune; their speculations rarely fail; they know what will appreciate in value, whether in land or stocks, and they will throw up the most likely venture just because their genius has discovered in it some hidden and fatal flaw unperceived by other men.