McLagan whipped up his ponies and set out across the plateau at a steady gait.
“Now, Len,” he went on, “we got twenty good miles to make before we reach my shanty. And we can do a heap of talk between this and that lay out. It don’t seem to me that we can do better than hand each other our two yarns. Maybe you’ll be glad to hand me all you can of the things that happened after you quit here with Jim, till you got along now. Then I’ll hand you the whole story I know. But before you begin I want to say one thing. It’s this. That half a million of dust, or the bulk of it, is coming right back to you as the one partner left. It’s lying now where no harm’s likely to come to it. Jim’s gone. There’s no guess to that. So the stuff’s yours. And that’s just between you and me. You understand? Claire don’t need any. Nor Jim’s mother. Those folks are my care. Now you can start right in with your talk.”
The two men climbed out of the lazaret. They had explored the wreck from end to end. Now they passed out of the alleyway under the break of the vessel’s poop, and came to the main hatch. McLagan seated himself upon it and beckoned his companion to a seat beside him. Curiously enough the seat he invited Len Stern to was the exact spot where once Sasa Mannik had seated himself, and from which he had ultimately fled in terror.
Len sprawled himself upon the hatch which was lying over at the sharp angle of the vessel’s perilous list. And his attitude left him in full view of the litter of the deck which had resulted from the half-breed’s raids upon the vessel’s gear.
There was a tremendous change for the worse in the wreck. More than two months of every condition of weather had made desperate inroads. The vessel’s whole position had been detrimentally shifted. The seas, playing on the broken hull at high tide, had wrought havoc, and she looked to be only hanging together awaiting the final belabourings which would ultimately complete the work of her destruction. Every removable article of her gear that had appealed to the predatory instincts of Sasa Mannik had been carried away. And she looked now just what she was, a poor tattered thing awaiting her dismal end.
McLagan was scarcely concerned for the change in her. There was no sentiment about him in the matter of this ugly relic of a bad story. He would be glad enough to see the last of her—now. She had lasted sufficiently long for him to complete the work he had set his hand to. No. The oil man was concerned for other things. And now, as he sat beside his companion on the hatch, his searching gaze was turned skywards.
At the moment no sun was visible. But then the sky was full of loose cloud that came and passed under a high top wind. Just now a heavy cloud had obscured the sun. It would pass. It was passing. And then—
“It’s all like yesterday to me,” Len Stern said, as he gazed out over the litter. “You see, Mac,” he went on, with a comprehensive movement of the arm, “I lived with all this days coming up the coast from Perth. This is Caspar’s ship all right, all right. It was more than half crewed by Chinks. I wonder what’s become of ’em. There were two officers, and a third that was a promoted seaman. I doubt any of ’em having officers’ tickets. I’m surely wondering about them. Say, in that cabin there was only a meal for one.”
His dark face frowned in concentrated thought. After a moment he went on again.