come buy."

"He's taken my lamps, though," said the skipper. He wore one leg of a
pair of trousers, and his eye wandered along the verandah. The Governor
quailed. There were cuddy camp-stools and the skipper's writing-table in
plain sight.

"They've cleaned her out, o' course," said Mr. Wardrop. "They would.
We'll go aboard and take an inventory. See!" He waved his hands over the
harbour. "We--live--there--now. Sorry?"

The Governor smiled a smile of relief.

"He's glad of that," said one of the crew, reflectively. "I shouldn't
wonder."

They flocked down to the harbour-front, the militia regiment clattering
behind, and embarked themselves in what they found--it happened to be
the Governor's boat. Then they disappeared over the bulwarks of the
Haliotis, and the Governor prayed that they might find occupation
inside.

Mr. Wardrop's first bound took him to the engine-room; and when the
others were patting the well-remembered decks, they heard him giving God
thanks that things were as he had left them. The wrecked engines stood
over his head untouched; no inexpert hand had meddled with his shores;
the steel wedges of the store-room were rusted home; and, best of all,
the hundred and sixty tons of good Australian coal in the bunkers had
not diminished.

"I don't understand it," said Mr. Wardrop. "Any Malay knows the use o'
copper. They ought to have cut away the pipes. And with Chinese junks
coming here, too. It's a special interposition o' Providence."

"You think so," said the skipper, from above. "There's only been one
thief here, and he's cleaned her out of all my things, anyhow."

Here the skipper spoke less than the truth, for under the planking of
his cabin, only to be reached by a chisel, lay a little money which
never drew any interest--his sheet-anchor to windward. It was all
in clean sovereigns that pass current the world over, and might have
amounted to more than a hundred pounds.

"He's left me alone. Let's thank God," repeated Mr. Wardrop.

"He's taken everything else; look!"

The Haliotis, except as to her engine-room, had been systematically and
scientifically gutted from one end to the other, and there was strong
evidence that an unclean guard had camped in the skipper's cabin to
regulate that plunder. She lacked glass, plate, crockery, cutlery,
mattresses, cuddy carpets and chairs, all boats, and her copper
ventilators. These things had been removed, with her sails and as much
of the wire r