McLAGAN surveyed the litter strewn about the beach. It was a queer collection. There were two upturned boats with their white seams smeared and daubed heavily with tar. They were hardly recognisable as the well-painted lifeboats that had once stood on the boat deck of the wreck lying on the far shore of the bay. A wealth of ship’s ropes sprawled upon the shingle. Ropes collected as a result of sheer covetousness rather than from a point of view of utility. Many of them were great hawsers and of no use whatsoever in the sort of sailing that Sasa Minnik undertook. Then there were heavy cable chains, and ship’s buckets. There was a great store of tumbled ship’s canvas. There were pots and pans and tools of every description. There were an array of lumber, too, and blankets, and plates, and knives and forks and dishes. It was an amazing collection of sheer loot which only the undisciplined mind of the half-breed could have prompted. And it had been amassed in the two months and more that McLagan had been away on his trip up into the hills.
For some moments the white man regarded the collection with frowning eyes. Then his gaze came back to the sturdy figure of his servant whose dark features were screwed up into that which the other interpreted as a grin of sublime predatory satisfaction. His own eyes were deadly serious for all the smile lurking behind them.
“Sasa,” he said quietly, “you always were a rogue and a thief and a liar, but I never guessed you were a bigger rogue than coward. The temptation of all this loot was too much even for your scare, eh? You’ve been aboard that wreck, and you’ve looted it from end to end. I guess I ought to beat you. I surely ought. But I’m not going to. No. It kind of seems to me your low-down thieving nature’s knocked something that’s even worse out of you—your rotten scare of that ship. And that’s surely to the good. For me you can keep your junk. But I don’t know what’ll happen when the big Commissioner knows the thief you are. Maybe he’ll have you hanged by your neck. You helped save my life when that guy wanted it bad. But I don’t see how I’m going to butt in when the big Commissioner gets busy on you.”
The half-breed was undisturbed by the threat. The creases on his ugly face only deepened and he shook his head.
“The big man, Commissioner, not say nothing, boss,” he said. “He come by ship. I tak him by ’em. Oh, yes. An’ I say him: ‘Dis junk. It not nothing bimeby. The sea all have ’em. Why not Sasa have ’em?’ An’ him big man say: ‘Sasa have him all much plenty what he darn please.’ So I tak ’em all dis thing much. An’ bimeby plenty much more. Maybe bimeby I mak ’em good trade. Oh, yes.”
“I see. Boss Goodchurch has been around?”
“Sure, boss. He come with him mans two. Him look an’ look. Him see all thing plenty, but not the devil spirit. Oh, no.” The man’s eyes widened at the mere memory of the terrible shadow he still feared so dreadfully. “Him no sun when big man come. Him not see. No. Then Sasa think big much. Sasa say: ‘No sun, no devil spirit.’ It good. Sasa go by ship when no sun. He wait. The sun him go down in sea. It good. Bimeby Sasa get all thing that way. Yes.”
McLagan laughed, and the half-breed grinned back at him.
“You’re all sorts of a scoundrel, anyway, Sasa.”
“Sasa much wise man.”