ande. We'll have her twenty
feet longer. They build them longer now than they did. I'll buy the wood
from Dantzic and Breme. Now I have got the machinery they will give me
credit again. They'll have confidence now."

Mess Lethierry stopped, lifted his eyes with that look which sees the
heavens through the roof, and muttered, "Yes, there is a power on high!"

Then he placed the middle finger of his right hand between his two
eyebrows, and tapped with his nail there, an action which indicates a
project passing through the mind, and he continued:

"Nevertheless, to begin again, on a grand scale, a little ready money
would have been useful. Ah! if I only had my three bank-notes, the
seventy-five thousand francs that that robber Rantaine returned, and
that vagabond Clubin stole."

Gilliatt silently felt in his pocket, and drew out something which he
placed before him. It was the leathern belt that he had brought back. He
opened, and spread it out upon the table; in the inside the word
"Clubin" could be deciphered in the light of the moon. He then took out
of the pocket of the belt a box, and out of the box three pieces of
paper, which he unfolded and offered to Lethierry.

Lethierry examined them. It was light enough to read the figures "1000,"
and the word "thousand" was also perfectly visible. Mess Lethierry took
the three notes, placed them on the table one beside the other, looked
at them, looked at Gilliatt, stood for a moment dumb; and then began
again, like an eruption after an explosion:

"These too! You are a marvel. My bank-notes! all three. A thousand
pounds each. My seventy-five thousand francs. Why, you must have gone
down to the infernal regions. It is Clubin's belt. Pardieu! I can read
his vile name. Gilliatt has brought back engine and money too. There
will be something to put in the papers. I will buy some timber of the
finest quality. I guess how it was; you found his carcase; Clubin
mouldering away in some corner. We'll have some Dantzic pine and Breme
oak; we'll have a first-rate planking--oak within and pine without. In
old times they didn't build so well, but their work lasted longer; the
wood was better seasoned, because they did not build so much. We'll
build the hull perhaps of elm. Elm is good for the parts in the water.
To be dry sometimes, and sometimes wet, rots the timbers; the elm
requires to be always wet; it's a wood that feeds upon water. What a
splendid Durande we'll build. The lawyer