ed with a desolation of mud and bleached refuse
and dead trees, free from crocodiles or water birds or sight or sound
of any living thing, and saw far off, even as Nasmyth had described, the
ruins of the deserted station, and hard by two little heaps of buff-hued
rubbish under a great rib of rock, the quap! The forest receded. The
land to the right of us fell away and became barren, and far on across
notch in its backbone was surf and the sea.

We took the ship in towards those heaps and the ruined jetty slowly and
carefully. The captain came and talked.

"This is eet?" he said.

"Yes," said I.

"Is eet for trade we have come?"

This was ironical.

"No," said I.

"Gordon-Nasmyth would haf told me long ago what it ees for we haf come."

"I'll tell you now," I said. "We are going to lay in as close as we can
to those two heaps of stuff--you see them?--under the rock. Then we are
going to chuck all our ballast overboard and take those in. Then we're
going home."

"May I presume to ask--is eet gold?"

"No," I said incivilly, "it isn't."

"Then what is it?"

"It's stuff--of some commercial value."

"We can't do eet," he said.

"We can," I answered reassuringly.

"We can't," he said as confidently. "I don't mean what you mean. You
know so liddle--But--dis is forbidden country."

I turned on him suddenly angry and met bright excited eyes. For a minute
we scrutinised one another. Then I said, "That's our risk. Trade is
forbidden. But this isn't trade.... This thing's got to be done."

His eyes glittered and he shook his head....

The brig stood in slowly through the twilight toward this strange
scorched and blistered stretch of beach, and the man at the wheel
strained his ears to listening the low-voiced angry argument that began
between myself and the captain, that was presently joined by Pollack. We
moored at last within a hundred yards of our goal, and all through our
dinner and far into the night we argued intermittently and fiercely with
the captain about our right to load just what we pleased. "I will haf
nothing to do with eet," he persisted. "I wash my hands." It seemed that
night as though we argued in vain. "If it is not trade," he said, "it
is prospecting and mining. That is worse. Any one who knows
anything--outside England--knows that is worse."

We argued and I lost my temper and swore at him. Pollack kept cooler and
chewed his pipe watchfully with that blue eye of his upon the captain's