"Can't it? Now, don't you go disappointing me." He stole a step nearer. "Those pearls have been locked in the strong room of the Brisbane steamer since early afternoon. Now then. How the devil am I—are we—to nab 'em? Come! You're the little personal Providence in this affair, at 50 per cent. Don't tell me with all your knowing you didn't know that!"
"It's your deliver," said Selden, "anyhow."
"Well, let's take counsel—I'm agreeable to have an adversary. Goodness knows I haven't had much amusement so far—the thing's been so rotten easy. By way of a text—Brother Seldom—and a point of departure: did you ever hear of the Volga? Ever hear of the Quetta or the Mecca; or a dozen of other ships lost one time or another between here and Cape Flattery?
"Pity about them too—they fell a trifle off the track. Just a few fathom off the track among these millions of reefs that will rip the heart out of anything afloat. Suppose for the sake of argument our Brisbane steamer which we're both so interested in—out there at the dock head—suppose she should happen to go wandering this trip—say, somewhere around Tribulation Passage, two hours out. Suppose she should—as a slant of luck." His voice lowered with obscurely evil suggestion. "Would it occur to you we might have any chance of salvage on those pearls?"
"I—I don't understand," stammered Selden. "The passage is lighted. There's a light on Tribulation Shoal."
"So there is. What a helpful chap you are to work with! You keep it to port as you turn the Blackbird Reef. It's a fourth order fixed dioptric—unattended. The keeper lives on Horn Island. But suppose, now—suppose that light were moved, either way?"
"Move the light!"
"In effect, merely; in effect. A man might very readily land there from the lee and blanket that light to the westward. And if that same man, with something like a discarded lightship lantern aboard his lugger, should then anchor half a mile away, and show his light at the masthead—hey? A fifty-foot elevation is visible at nearly fourteen miles twenty-five feet up. But a twenty-five-foot elevation gives a total of only eleven point four.... You begin to see the possibilities for error—particularly if the pilot of the oncoming steamer should happen to be, as you wisely suggest, a bit of a sot with a hazy eye—"
"My God! You're going to wreck her!"
"Hush!" said Wetherbee very loudly.