lue about the battered shell. She lay in her last berth, in the final
stage of naval decay, stripped to the shreds of rigging, her masts
broken short and bare as bleached bones; and from her whitened rail rose
up a flight of boobies that cried like shrill, mournful ghosts and
vanished....

"Aye--that's the end of their pearlin' cruise," said Peters grimly.
"That's Mullhall's craft, sure enough. The southwest gales would drive
her there. She must ha' been anchored just about where we're passin'
now, and I shouldn't wonder."

"On the shell bank?" sniffed Jeckol, leaning to squint down into the
sparkling blue.

"Fair under our keel, I'd say."

At a signal the leadsman had flown his pigeon again, though we were well
past all reefs.

"Eleven fathom!" Harris echoed the cry. "That's diving! I heard it was a
deep-water bed. D'you suppose they were at it when the niggers jumped
'em?"

"I figger they were," said Peters. "See that scrubby bit of island?--the
point's not a hundred yards away. A dozen canoes could mass up there and
never be noticed. By Joe, it's plain as paint. The ship snugged down for
business--the diver below, like as not--pumps and tackle goin'--all
hands busy on board and the watch calculatin' profits to three decimals
behind the windlass. Aye, there's your treasure hunter, every time! Then
perhaps a slant of wind settin' around that point to give the raid a
runnin' start--and--"

"Him finish," concluded Harris briefly. "All over in ten minutes. They'd
hardly know what hit 'em. A black cloud--that's all. A black cloud."

And Peters was right--it was all too plain. None of us but had heard
tales enough, and stark history enough, of these blood-stained barriers
that hedge the true unknown continent. To our waiting minds his few
phrases threw a sharp picture of the careless ship, the stalking death,
and the swift horror that must have followed. There lay the wreck and
there the empty bay. The rest we could fill in for ourselves, or just
about.

"Then what are we doing here?" asked Jeckol at last.

Peters was already dealing out rifles and ammunition by the deck house,
and Bartlet, looking drawn and old, did not seem to hear, but Harris
jerked an answer over his shoulder with the flippancy of emotion. "Oh,
you can't tell--we might find some smoked heads to bring away."...

* * * * *

A few minutes later the cap'n was giving his last instructions, while we
of the shore