"There is," he said, at length, "a good deal I can't get the hang of about the whole affair; but if I knew just how they came to start the plates that let the water in, I'd have something to figure on. You can't very well knock holes in an iron steamer's bottom on soft, slimy mud, and I don't know where they could have found a rock here if they wanted to."
"Ah!" said Austin. "Then you think they might have wanted to find one?"
Jefferson again sat silent for almost a minute, and then slowly shook his head. "I don't know—I've nothing to go upon," he said. "She's not even an old, played-out boat. Still, it seems to me that a heavily freighted steamer, hung up by her nose on the bank, might easily have started some of her plates when the waters of the creek subsided. Then she'd settle deeper—it's nice soft mud."
"But that would be—after—she went ashore."
"Yes," said Jefferson dryly. "That's the point of it."
Austin looked thoughtful. It had also occurred to him that there was a good deal it was difficult to understand about the stranding of the Cumbria, though that, after all, did not appear to concern them greatly just then.
"What puzzles me is why the salvage men let go," he said. "You see, they're accustomed to this kind of thing, and have money behind them."
Jefferson looked at him with a little smile, and Austin saw that he guessed his thoughts. Jefferson was as gaunt as ever, a fever-worn skeleton of a man, dressed, for the most part, in oil-stained rags, while Austin was quite aware that, so far as outward appearances went, there was very little that was prepossessing about himself. His big felt hat hung over his forehead, sodden with grease, and shapeless; his hands were hard and scarred, his nails were broken, and the rent singlet hung open almost to his waist. All this seemed to emphasise their feebleness, and the fact that there was no money behind them, at least.
"Well," said Jefferson, "that's quite easy. Those salvage men are specialists, and expect a good deal for the time they put in. Now they took some oil out of her, but there is reason for believing they were not sure they'd get the Cumbria off at all, and it would cost a good deal to charter a light-draught steamer to come up here. They tried towing it down to a schooner, and lost a good deal of it on the shoals. Then they towed the schooner in, and had to wait for a smooth surf before they could get her out, with no more than sixty tons at that. The game wasn't worth while, and the men were going down with fever."
"But the gum?"