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"
"Survivors?"
"Three."
"I remember the case now," I said. "There was something about salvage----"
But at the word salvage the sunburnt man exploded into language so
extraordinarily horrible that I stopped aghast. He came down to more
ordinary swearing, and pulled himself up abruptly. "Excuse me," he said,
"but--salvage!"
He leant over towards me. "I was in that job," he said. "Tried to make
myself a rich man, and got made a god instead. I've got my feelings----
"It ain't all jam being a god," said the sunburnt man, and for some time
conversed by means of such pithy but unprogressive axioms. At last he took
up his tale again.
"There was me," said the sunburnt man, "and a seaman named Jacobs, and
Always, the mate of the _Ocean Pioneer_. And him it was that set the
whole thing going. I remember him now, when we was in the jolly-boat,
suggesting it all to our minds just by one sentence. He was a wonderful
hand at suggesting things. 'There was forty thousand pounds,' he said, 'on
that ship, and it's for me to say just where she went down.


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