As he ate he enlarged on his finds, and when he had finished his supper he piled the fire with light sticks to make a blaze, and spread them out for Miss Drummond's inspection.
He had evidently lighted on the personal baggage of some person of quality. There were rings and brooches and pins and bracelets, of gold and silver, set with coloured stones, a couple of small watches beautifully chased and studded with gems, a small silver-mounted mirror all blackened with sea-water, two gold snuff-boxes with enamelled miniatures on the lids—quite a rich haul and very satisfactory to the craving of his spirit.
The Girl examined them all carefully, and Wulfrey, watching her quietly through the smoke of his pipe, thought she handled them somewhat gingerly and distastefully, and understood her feeling in the matter. And now and again he caught also a glimpse in the mate's black eyes, as they rested on her, of that which she herself had felt and resented.
It might be only the unconscious continuation of the gloating proprietorial look with which he regarded his treasures, which still gleamed in his eyes when they rested on her as though she herself were but one more of them. But whatever it was it was not a pleasant look, and Wulfrey was not surprised at her discomfort under it. He was as devoutly glad that he was there as she could be. Alone with this wild riever, in whom the cross-strain of his wilder forebears was running to licence in its sudden emancipation from all life's ordinary shackles.... It would not bear thinking of. Yes, he was truly glad he was there. And then he remembered, with another grateful throb, that if he had not been there, neither would she have been. For the mate most assuredly would never have brought her back to life.
"Some of these are of value," she was saying. "But they are rather pitiful to me.... Some dead woman has treasured them and she is gone. Perhaps you came upon her skeleton out there.... But they are not all real stones——"
"And how can ye tell that now?" asked Macro gruffly.
"I can tell at once by the feel of them. That now"—pointing to a heavily-gemmed bracelet—"the emeralds are real, the rubies are real, but they are all small. The white stones are not diamonds, but very good imitations. They look almost as well, but they are not diamonds. If they were that bracelet alone would be worth some hundreds of pounds."
"Deil take 'em! And you can tell that by feeling at 'em?"
"I can tell in a moment. You see I have handled many jewels—some of the finest in the world, and I have seen very many imitations of them."
"The deil ye have! How that?"