l past
and done with anyway; and what I want to get at is the facts about the
wreck. I don't seem to understand it; appears to me like as there was
something underneath."

"There was nothing IN it, anyway," I said, with a forced laugh.

"That's what I want to judge of," returned Jim.

"How the mischief is it I can never keep you to that bankruptcy? It
looks as if you avoided it," said I--for a man in my situation, with
unpardonable folly.

"Don't it look a little as if you were trying to avoid the wreck?" asked
Jim.

It was my own doing; there was no retreat. "My dear fellow, if you make
a point of it, here goes!" said I, and launched with spurious gaiety
into the current of my tale. I told it with point and spirit; described
the island and the wreck, mimicked Anderson and the Chinese, maintained
the suspense.... My pen has stumbled on the fatal word. I maintained the
suspense so well that it was never relieved; and when I stopped--I dare
not say concluded, where there was no conclusion--I found Jim and Mamie
regarding me with surprise.

"Well?" said Jim.

"Well, that's all," said I.

"But how do you explain it?" he asked.

"I can't explain it," said I.

Mamie wagged her head ominously.

"But, great Caesar's ghost! the money was offered!" cried Jim. "It won't
do, Loudon; it's nonsense, on the face of it! I don't say but what you
and Nares did your best; I'm sure, of course, you did; but I do say, you
got fooled. I say the stuff is in that ship to-day, and I say I mean to
get it."

"There is nothing in the ship, I tell you, but old wood and iron!" said
I.

"You'll see," said Jim. "Next time I go myself. I'll take Mamie for the
trip; Longhurst won't refuse me the expense of a schooner. You wait till
I get the searching of her."

"But you can't search her!" cried I. "She's burned."

"Burned!" cried Mamie, starting a little from the attitude of quiescent
capacity in which she had hitherto sat to hear me, her hands folded in
her lap.

There was an appreciable pause.

"I beg your pardon, Loudon," began Jim at last, "but why in snakes did
you burn her?"

"It was an idea of Nares's," said I.

"This is certainly the strangest circumstance of all," observed Mamie.

"I must say, Loudon, it does seem kind of unexpected," added Jim. "It
seems kind of crazy even. What did you--what did Nares expect to gain by
burning her?"

"I don't know; it didn't seem to matter; we had got all there was to
get," sai