While Dan, the captain, and McKnight were eating lunch ashore one day, a swarthy, dapper clerk from the cable office sought the Venus Café with a message which he had tried to deliver on board the tug. It was for Captain Wetherly who read it with an air of mingled surprise and chagrin. With a glance at the engineer who was blissfully absorbed over his third plate of alligator pear salad, Captain Jim remarked as he handed the sheet to Dan:
"It is from London. Well, the cat is out of the bag, and we might as well let McKnight in. We are going to need him before we get through with this job, and need him bad. I suppose I ought to have been more suspicious, but it sounded too rotten to be true. Bill, you must have that engine room in shape this week if it breaks your back. We are going to make a record run home to Key West."
Dan read in silence before handing the cablegram to Captain Wetherly.
"Kenilworth cleared for Vera Cruz. Heavily insured. General cargo. Owners hard hit by recent losses. Will bear watching."
Captain Jim hammered the table with his fist and tried to speak in an undertone as he hotly exclaimed:
"This confidential report makes my suspicions fit together like the pieces of a puzzle. I couldn't for the life of me understand how the master of a big steamer could afford to ram her ashore and lose her, and his berth and his reputation with it, for ten thousand dollars. But if he knew that his owners would shield him and stand in with him, why, of course, he might be tempted to clean up ten thousand dollars for himself when a man like Jerry Pringle crossed his bows and passed him a few hints. A lot of good it would have done for me to cable Captain Bruce's owners and give them warning of what we heard that night in Pensacola harbor. They would have laughed at me as a meddlesome idiot. Cleared for Vera Cruz, has she? She does her ten knots right along, I picked up that bit of information at Pensacola. Allow her twenty days to the Reef."
Bill McKnight had dropped his fork and was purple with suppressed excitement. When the captain fetched up for lack of breath, he blurted in a hoarse whisper:
"It doesn't take a axe to drive an idea into my noddle. As near as I can make out, though your bearings are considerably overheated, Captain, there is scheduled to be a large and expensive wreck on the Reef, assisted by her skipper and one Jeremiah Pringle. It sounds like the good old times before the light-houses crippled the wrecking industry. And we Resolutes propose to be first on hand to pull her off and disappoint certain enterprising persons?"
"Disappoint 'em!" fairly shouted Captain Jim. "If the Kenilworth does go ashore, I'll fetch that vessel off the Reef if it tears the Resolute to kindling wood. I'll break their rotten hearts and show them what honest wrecking is."
"I didn't throw away that clamp I made to hold the safety-valve down, Captain," chuckled Bill McKnight. "And I ain't afraid to use it again, either."