“Yes, yes,” repeated Captain Len Guy, “it made part of a stern.”
Hunt, who still remained kneeling, nodded his big head in assent.
“But,” I remarked, “this plank must have been cast upon Bennet Islet from a wreck! The cross-currents must have found it in the open sea, and—”
“If that were so—” cried the captain.
The same thought had occurred to both of us. What was our surprise, indeed our amazement, our unspeakable emotion, when Hunt showed us eight letters cut in the plank, not painted, but hollow and distinctly traceable with the finger.
It was only too easy to recognize the letters of two names, arranged in two lines, thus:
AN
LI.E.PO.L.
The Jane of Liverpool! The schooner commanded by Captain William Guy! What did it matter that time had blurred the other letters? Did not those suffice to tell the name of the ship and the port she belonged to? The Jane of Liverpool!
Captain Len Guy had taken the plank in his hands, and now he pressed his lips to it, while tears fell from his eyes.
It was a fragment of the Jane! I did not utter a word until the captain’s emotion had subsided. As for Hunt, I had never seen such a lightning glance from his brilliant hawk-like eyes as he now cast towards the southern horizon.