Pete was now at the hauled-out boat and was peering over into her, but he had not uttered a sound. He was thinking very fast indeed. "We've got 'em!" he said to himself. "What rascals they are! Who'd ha' thought it of 'em! This is what it means to be wrecked among wild savages. Take everything you have. But then they murder a fellow, and old Kroom says some of 'em eat him. Now I wonder what they'll say when they find they're caught?"
He did not have to wait long before he found out. Here came the Elephant, her sail slipping down as she ran her nose into the sand. Out stepped Captain Pickering, and at the same moment the four bay fishermen came in a hurry to the opposite side of the cat-boat.
"My quadrant!" shouted Captain Pickering. "Those two English guns of mine, and Captain Sanders's spare chronometer! It beats all!"
"Yours, are they?" loudly responded the steersman of the cat-boat. "Well, if I ain't glad to see ye! And old Kroom, too! I was wonderin' how we'd get 'em back to their owners."
"WHAT?" THUNDERED CAPTAIN KROOM. "JUST SAY THAT OVER AGAIN!"
"What?" thundered Captain Kroom. "Just say that over again!"
"Why, Captain," replied the fisherman, "them there insurance fellers are straight enough, but the tug-boat men are no better than so many river thieves. Reg'lar wreckers! We couldn't do a thing while they were around. Some of the Goshawk's crew were just as bad."
"Ye'd not belave me," put in another of the fishermen, "but it's so. They're all foreigners, ivery mon av thim. Not an American among thim. The dirthy spalpanes! It's bad enough for a mon to foind himself wrecked, widout bein' ploondered. We got away these things from the toog-boat min, but they threw over stuff and buoyed it to coom and get it. We was gropplin' for it the day. I hope ye're no wrecker, Captain Kroom. They say most o' thim owld sailors'll sthrip ony wreck."
The bronzed face of Captain Kroom was furious with indignation for a moment, and then he burst into a very deep-chested roar of laughter.