He fetched the night glass from its sling and looked.
Through the glass it was like watching a moving carpet, a carpet broken here and tufted there. Here and there, lifted against the sand background, great pincers showed, only to vanish again as the host from the sea flowed up and on, breaking as they went into skirmishing parties that spread with a trickling movement north and south as though running in channels.
The sight of this horrible, sudden, silent eruption of life, like the swarming of vermin, made the glass tremble in his hand. Then, closing it, he put it back in its sling and went below.
CHAPTER XXVII.
“HARD LABOR.”
THEY were up at dawn, a dawn where the sky turned from flamingo red to flaming yellow, that passed, becoming pure light as the brow of the sun broke from the sea; the sea that stretched without a break to the African coast and the Sahara Desert.
Sheila, coming on deck, forgot everything for a moment as she stood facing that heavenly morning, sea scented, filled with the warmth of summer and the breath of the tepid wind. Then she found that all her worries had vanished; the worry about leaving the gold, the worry as to how they would ever dispose of it. The warmth and splendor, the feeling of newness in the air and the breath of the wind from Florida destroyed doubt and filled her soul with the gayety of adventure.
It was the same with Dicky and in a way with James. Even Larry seemed to move with younger limbs as he helped to get the boat over—they had brought it on board overnight—and to bring up the sacks for the sand ballast.
Then, while Longley was making coffee and preparing breakfast they set to. They had determined to bring all the stuff ashore and leave it above high water mark; then, digging midway between the palm trees, to fill the sacks with sand and cart them on board; lastly, after nightfall and when Longley was asleep, to land, carry the gold up to the sand hole and to cover it over.
Larry stood in the boat below to receive the blocks while the others lowered them one by one in a rope sling. Four made a sufficient cargo, and when they were in, Larry and James rowed them off, beached the boat, lugged them out and returned for more. There were twenty-one of them—five boat journeys—and knocking off for breakfast it took them till ten in the morning before the boat was ashore and the whole heap lay on the beach, the sun lighting it and the fine sand whispering about it in the wind.
Sheila, who had come over with the last load, sat down beside them, and Dicky, tired but happy, lit a cigarette.
James was on board. Lifting and hauling these heavy weights had reduced James to a condition calling for a whisky and a sparklet soda and rest under the awning which they had rigged.
“Well,” said Sheila, “that much is done. We have only now to get the sacks filled, and make the hole, and get it into it, and cover it up—oh, yes, and get the sacks on board and stow them and then the whole business will be half done—or will it? No, it won't, for we have to come and dig it up again when we've been to Havana and got our permit. Oh, dear, the whole of this thing gets sometimes like a nightmare.”
“Anyhow, it's lucky for us,” said Dicky, “that this bit of sand is the only bit of the Bahamas that isn't British.”
“Yes, and it was clever of James to pitch on it,” said the girl. “He is clever if he wasn't so stupid at times. Have you noticed anything about him lately?”
“No.”
“Well, it seems to me sometimes that the whole of this business is getting on his nerves; anyhow that his mind is troubled about something. I think he'd like to be out of it if the truth was told—only he's too good a sort to let us down.”
“He'd never do that.”
“No, I don't think he would,” Sheila laughed. “If I tell you something awfully secret you'll forget it at once?”
“Yes,” said Dicky.
Sheila looked at him. Their life and intimacy had bound them together as though they were brother and sister. She would say to Dicky things she would never have said to another man.
“Well, there was a time when I thought James was going to turn sentimental—you know what I mean. At Teneriffe there were moments when it seemed to me he was going to ask me to accept his heart and his yacht. Imagine the horror of guitar busi-
