“It makes me feel good,” he went on quickly, “standing around out here, perched right up on this darn rock breathing good sea air an’ soaking in elegant sunshine with our play coming right. Makes the world seem right someway. Makes me sort of feel I want to holler like a school kid on Thanksgiving Day. Oil? It’s the most crazily wonderful thing in the world—when you strike it.”
“Yes.”
McLagan’s response was without a shadow of the other’s enthusiasm and Peter turned questioningly. Instantly he realised the direction of his chief’s gaze and the meaning of his preoccupation. He chuckled.
“I’d forgot that crazy barge,” he said. Then he added: “You handed Goodchurch the dope?”
The difference in the attitude of these men was profoundly marked. The lean, practical oil man was alert and thrilling with the prospect lying ahead of the work they were both engaged upon. The wreck and the atmosphere of mystery which it had originally impressed upon him had entirely passed out of his concern. He had witnessed the wreck. He had explored it. He had shared in the risk of that first approach. But none of these things, not even the vision of the deserting rats, had been sufficient to persist in a mind absorbed in his lifetime’s pursuit of oil. The affairs of the oil prospect were paramount with him, first, last and all the time. And the report he had just perused represented something approaching the crowning of his life’s work. But at that moment, oil and coal were the two things farthest from McLagan’s mind.
The latter moved away and approached the edge of the wide ledge upon which his hut was set. Peter moved up beside him and bit a chew of tobacco from the disreputable fragment of plug tobacco which he carried in his hip-pocket.
As McLagan nodded his gaze was still upon the wreck below.
“Surely,” he said. “I handed it the best I could, and Goodchurch guessed things would need looking into. He took down the name of the ship and its port of registration. He’s wiring right away to the proper authority and promised to get it broadcast by wireless. I asked him for that. You see, I kind of got a hunch the folks who quit that vessel might be glad to locate her—if they’re alive. He reckons we’ll likely get word from the owners. You know, Peter, I feel ther’s a mighty queer story lying back of that wreck.”
“You mean—the boats—and——”