Selden, "anyhow."

"Well, let's take counsel--I'm agreeable to have an adversary. Goodness
knows I haven't had much amusement so far--the thing's been so rotten
easy. By way of a text--Brother Seldom--and a point of departure: did
you ever hear of the _Volga_? Ever hear of the _Quetta_ or the _Mecca_;
or a dozen of other ships lost one time or another between here and Cape
Flattery?

"Pity about them too--they fell a trifle off the track. Just a few
fathom off the track among these millions of reefs that will rip the
heart out of anything afloat. Suppose for the sake of argument our
Brisbane steamer which we're both so interested in--out there at the
dock head--suppose she should happen to go wandering this trip--say,
somewhere around Tribulation Passage, two hours out. Suppose she
should--as a slant of luck." His voice lowered with obscurely evil
suggestion. "Would it occur to you we might have any chance of salvage
on those pearls?"

"I--I don't understand," stammered Selden. "The passage is lighted.
There's a light on Tribulation Shoal."

"So there is. What a helpful chap you are to work with! You keep it to
port as you turn the Blackbird Reef. It's a fourth order fixed
dioptric--unattended. The keeper lives on Horn Island. But suppose,
now--suppose that light were moved, either way?"

"Move the light!"

"In effect, merely; in effect. A man might very readily land there from
the lee and blanket that light to the westward. And if that same man,
with something like a discarded lightship lantern aboard his lugger,
should then anchor half a mile away, and show his light at the
masthead--hey? A fifty-foot elevation is visible at nearly fourteen
miles twenty-five feet up. But a twenty-five-foot elevation gives a
total of only eleven point four.... You begin to see the possibilities
for error--particularly if the pilot of the oncoming steamer should
happen to be, as you wisely suggest, a bit of a sot with a hazy eye--"

"My God! You're going to wreck her!"

"Hush!" said Wetherbee very loudly.

Selden whirled around to find a black-skinned native standing impassive
behind him. At the same instant a steel grip locked his wrists. "Not
that!" he gasped, struggling. "My God, man, you wouldn't! You daren't!"

"No? And yet you said you knew my little methods." "Honest" Wetherbee
shifted a thumb to his throat and smiled into his face. "I've a mind to
show you, deacon--shall I--how far I _have_ come and how cleverly I
_