“We’ll lose no time,” Jimmy assured him. “The glass is dropping, but I don’t expect much wind just yet.”
“Thanks!” Aynsley responded with deep feeling. “There’s another thing—if the wind’s light or unfavorable, we’ll start under steam and could tow you south as long as it keeps fine. It may save you a few days. And you could stay with us if your friends can spare you. To tell the truth, it would be a kindness to me. I’m worried, and want somebody to talk to.”
Jimmy agreed, and was shortly afterward rowed back to the sloop.
By noon the next day they had brought up the last of the gold. After a hasty luncheon, they went down again, but their next task took some time, because the diver insisted on clamping the charges of dynamite firmly to the principal timbers and boring holes in some. Then a series of wires had to be taken below and coupled, and it was nearly supper time when Jimmy came up from his last descent.
A faint breeze flecked the leaden water with ripples too languid to break on the sloop’s bows; the island was wrapped in fog, and the swell was gentle. Only a dull murmur rose from the hidden beach. To seaward it was clearer and the yacht rode, a long white shape, lifting her bows with a slow and rhythmic swing, while a gray cloud that spread in a hazy smear rose nearly straight up from her funnel. The sloop’s cable was hove short and everything was ready for departure. Her crew sat in the cockpit watching the diver fit the wires to the contact-plug of the firing battery.
The men on the sloop were filled with keen impatience. They had borne many hardships and perils in those lonely waters, and, now that their work was finished, they wanted to get away. There was a mystery connected with the wreck, but they thought they would never unravel it, and, on the whole, they had no wish to try. They were anxious to see the end of her and to leave the fog-wrapped island.
“I guess we’re all ready,” the diver said at last. “See that you have left nothing loose to fall overboard: she’ll shift some water.”
He inserted the firing-plug; and a moment afterward the sea opened some distance ahead and rolled back from a gap in the bottom of which shattered timber churned about. Then a foaming wave rose suddenly from the chasm, tossing up black masses of planking and ponderous beams. A few, rearing on end, shot out of the water and fell with a heavy splash among fountains of spray, while a white ridge swept furiously toward the sloop. It broke before it reached her, but she flung her bows high as she plunged over the troubled swell, and the yacht rolled heavily with a yeasty wash along her side.
Jimmy ran forward with a sense of keen satisfaction to break out the anchor. The powerful charge had done its work; the wreck had gone.
While the Cetacea drifted slowly with the stream the yacht’s windlass began to clank, and a few minutes later she steamed toward the smaller craft. Her gig brought off a hawser, and a message inviting Jimmy to come on board. As soon as he reached her deck the gig was run up to the davits and the throb of engines quickened. The sloop, swinging into line astern, followed along the screw-cut wake, and in half an hour the fog-bank about the island faded out of sight.