Sturgess opened his oilskin coat, and showed how the lining had fallen out of his coat and the back had parted from the front of his waistcoat.
“If it hadn’t been for the oilskins we would all have been stripped stark naked,” he went on. “Gee! It’s marvelous what one can withstand in the shape of exposure when one is pushed to it good and hard. I should have said that those two girls would have died fourteen times on the wreck, let alone the hour before dawn yesterday.”
Maseden, meanwhile, was pulling the trunk free from the twisted frame of the bunk, which, screwed to the deck, had carried a precious argosy nearly a mile from the reef; then, most luckily, it had caught in a clump of seaweed, and remained anchored during two ebbs.
“We needn’t bother to open it here,” he said. “I know exactly what is inside—rough stuff, bought to maintain my disguise as a vaquero, but all the better for present purposes.”
He paused dramatically, and said something which might, perhaps, sound better in Spanish. When a man who has not been perturbed in the least degree by grave and imminent danger shows signs of real excitement, his emotion is apt to be contagious, and his companion’s eyes sparkled.
“Holy gee! What is it?” he almost yelped. “Spit it out! Don’t mind me!”
“This trunk contains a gun and cartridges!”
“Gosh! I thought it must be either a steam launch or an aëroplane! What is there to shoot, anyhow?”
“Don’t you understand? Waterproof cartridges mean fire. We’ll have a roaring fire within five minutes.”
“Put it there!” shouted Sturgess, holding out his right hand. “There’s millions of tons of iron-stone in that hill above the wood. Let’s start a ship-yard!”