CHAPTER XXX

A SECRET OF THE SAND

It seemed to Ratcliffe in the days that followed that he had never known what work meant before. That he, a wealthy and respected member of the British upper, upper-middle classes, an ex-Christ Churchman, and a member of Boodles, was assisting Satan Tyler in “tearing the tripes” out of another man’s yacht, also occurred to him sometimes as a fact, a distorted sort of fact, blurred and dimmed by the blazing and brilliant atmosphere in which they were working, the absolute and shocking loneliness that hemmed them in, Satan’s personality, and Jude’s companionship.

By all the laws of the sea, according to Satan, these things were the property of the first finder. That was all very well according to Satan, and indeed according to what seemed common-sense; still, sea law was for all he could tell not quite the same thing as the laws of the sea, according to Satan. Though belonging to a great ship-owning family, he knew nothing of the rights of the matter; but the business they were engaged on seemed to him sometimes, when he cared to think, most tremendously like larceny,—larceny excused by a lot of considerations and made picturesque by environment; still, a business that in the unpicturesque surroundings of the London Sessions would undoubtedly have appealed to a judge in the voice of Larceny.

Sometimes he imagined a warship, one of those prying, officious little cruisers that do police work, closing up with the cay and sending a boat into the lagoon.

Sometimes he fell to wondering what Seligmann was like,—an American surely, one of the Gulf haunters, belonging, most probably, to one of the numerous clubs on the Florida coast, and Mrs. Seligmann—or was it Miss—or not even that?

One thing was certain, Seligmann was rich. They were not robbing a poor man.

At the end of the third day Jude gave out, not from weariness, but from distaste.

“Lord! haven’t you had enough of this old truck?” said Jude. “I don’t feel’s if I ever wanted to see a len’th of rope nor a cringle again.”

Ratcliffe felt pretty much the same.

“I’ll finish the business myself,” said Satan. “You can knock off if you like. Go’n hunt for turkles’ eggs.”

“I’m going,” said Jude.

“I’ll come along, too,” said Ratcliffe.

Satan ferried them over to the sands. It was about two hours before sundown, and an easterly breeze was blowing fresh and cool, shivering up the lagoon water and whispering among the sand-grains.

Jude walked despondently as they trudged along close to the sea edge and discovering nothing.

“D’you know,” said Ratcliffe, “we’ve never even started to hunt for a sign of the _Nombre de Dios_? I wonder if she’s sunk, really, anywhere near here?”

“I dunno,” said Jude; “don’t care, nuther. Satan’s so full of his pesky old fittings he’s no time to think of anything else.”

“Cheer up, Jude.”

“I’m all right.”

“No, you’re not. What’s wrong?”

“Lots of things.”

“When we get back to Havana—” began Ratcliffe. She cut him short.

“I don’t want to go back to Havana,” said she. “Ain’t going.”

She sat down on the sands plump, nursed her knees, and stared over the sea, casting her hat beside her. He stood for a moment, then he sat down. He knew at once, knew what had been working in her mind for days.

“You’re bothering about what Sellers said, dirty scoundrel! I’d have punched his head, only the whole thing happened so quick and you landed him with that mop—don’t worry.”

No reply.

“What’s the good?” went on Ratcliffe; then cautiously and feeling that he was treading on dangerous ground, “See here, there’s no harm in being a girl, no more than there is in being a man.”

No reply.

A laughing gull passed and jeered at them. Jude followed it with her eyes. She seemed almost unconscious of his presence and not to have heard his words. He watched her profile against the sky, noticed the eyelashes which seemed longer and more curved up than ever, the nice shape of the head, free of the old panama.

Then she turned, leaned on her elbow, and looked up at him—then she looked down.

“What made you think I was botherin’ about Sellers?” asked Jude.

“I don’t know,” said Ratcliffe, “I just thought it. I’ve been thinking a lot about you—I care for you a lot, that’s about it.”

She looked up at him again, full in the eyes, and with a new expression he had never seen before, a puzzled, half-startled look, like that of a person suddenly awakened in strange surroundings.

Then her eyes fell away from him.

She took a handful of sand and let the grains fall between her fingers.

“Just that,” said Ratcliffe.

She was still playing with the sand, letting it fall between her fingers carefully as though trying to count the grains. Then she threw the stuff away, brushed the palm of her hand clean, and sat up. Drawing a little closer to her, he put his hand round her waist, just as he had done when they were on the sandspit, and just as on the sandspit, she let it rest there—for a moment. Then, with a queer little laugh, she removed the hand and struggled to her feet.

He rose up and they went on, without a word. Then presently they began to talk about indifferent matters almost as though nothing had occurred.

They found a nest of turtles’ eggs, and Jude marked it; farther along they came upon something strange, a sort of platform half-covered with sand. Jude said it was the foretop of a ship sunk and sanded over.

“It’s the _Nombre de Dios_, maybe,” said Ratcliffe.

“Maybe,” said Jude. “It’s the foretop of an old ship, anyhow. See, where the mast’s broke off—she’s thirty or forty foot under that.”

“Not much good to us, even if she is the _Nombre de Dios_.”

“Not much.”

The gulls seemed to agree, and the little waves, falling crystal clear on the beach.

It was near the end of the spit just here, and the sands shelved out, losing themselves in the immeasurable loneliness of the sea stretching to Mariguana and the Caicos and the northern shoulder of South America.

Jude, on her knees with a bit of driftwood, was scraping away the sand from the edge of the sunk foretop, when something caught her eye.

A turtle had landed where they had marked the eggs. It was so far away that it did not look bigger than a threepenny bit.

She flung the bit of driftwood away, rose to her feet, and started running, taking the extreme sea-edge where the sand was hard. Ratcliffe followed. They were half a minute too late, the turtle turning back to the sea and leaving them spent and laughing. She got down on her knees and hived the eggs in her hat still laughing. He helped, filling his hat and his pockets, and then they started for the lagoon edge, Jude suddenly in the wildest spirits. He had never seen her in such high, good spirits. When they got aboard it was just the same. Even Satan’s maniacal passion for old junk, expressed at supper in the determination to spend two more days picking and scraping at the _Haliotis_, did not depress her, it only made her laugh.

“You’ll be cryin’ before you’ve done if you go on laughin’ like that,” said Satan. “What’s possessed you eh?”

Sure enough she was. The words acted like a pin on a bubble.

She flushed, pushed her plate away, half rose, and then sat down again.

“You’re always going on at me! Whatch’a want me to do? If I’m crying, I ought to be laughin’, an’ if I’m laughin’ I ought to be crying! I’ll laugh as much as I want—”

Then, logically, she broke into violent tears, rose, and ran on deck.

“What the hell-nation’s the matter with her?” asked Satan.

“I don’t know,” replied Ratcliffe.