About this time there hung a dark cloud over the pagoda in Hong-Kong. Even the bright eyes of Molly Machowl could not pierce through this cloud. Rooney himself had lost much of his hopeful disposition. As for Edgar Berrington, Joe Baldwin, and David Maxwell, they were silently depressed, for adversity had crushed them very severely of late.
Immediately after their losses, as already detailed or referred to, stormy weather had for several weeks prevented them from resuming operations at the wreck, and when at last they succeeded in reaching the old locality, they found themselves so closely watched by shore boats that the impossibility of their being able to keep anything they should bring up became obvious. They were forced, therefore, to give up the idea of making further attempts.
“It’s too bad,” growled Maxwell one morning at breakfast, “that all our trouble and expense should end in nothin’—or next to nothin’.”
“Come, Maxwell,” said Edgar, “don’t say ‘nothing.’ It is true we lost our first great find that luckless night when we left it with Wilson, but our second haul is safe, and though it amounts only to eight thousand pounds sterling, that after all is not to be sneezed at by men in our circumstances.”
“Make not haste to be rich,” muttered Joe Baldwin in an undertone.
“Did we make haste to be rich?” asked Edgar, smiling. “It seems to me that we set about it in a cool, quiet, business-like way.”
“Humph, that’s true, but we got uncommon keen over it—somethin’ like what gamblers do.”
“Our over-keenness,” returned Edgar, “was not right, perhaps, but our course of action was quite legitimate—for it is a good turn done not only to ourselves but to the world when we save property; and the salvor of property—who necessarily risks so much—is surely worthy of a good reward in kind.”
“Troth, an’ that’s true,” said Rooney, with a wry grin, “I had quite made up me mind to a carridge and four with Molly astore sittin’ in silks an’ satins inside.”
“Molly would much rather sit in cotton,” said the lady referred to, as she presided at the breakfast-table; “have another cup, Rooney, an’ don’t be talking nonsense.”