Pagina 7 de 416

The revelation was hardly a pleasure. Nothing had been a pleasure

to him since that day six months ago when his old schooner,

dismasted and leaking in a gale, had foundered near the Wolves,

two sharp-toothed islands near Grande Mignon. Four islanders had

been lost that day, and he alone had lived through the surf.

"What else did old Jed Martin say, Elsa?" he asked suddenly.

She knitted her brows and stared into the fire. Why would he

always go back to that?

"He said that the May Schofield should have been able to live out

that gale easily if she had been handled right, old as she was.

She was pretty old, wasn't she?"

"Fifty years. She was twenty when dad got her--he sailed her

twenty-eight and I had her for two."

"You got a good deal of insurance out of her, didn't you, Code?"

"Ten thousand dollars--her full value."

"And you bought the Charming Lass with that, didn't you?"

"Yes--that and two thousand that dad had saved. Why?"

"Old Jed Martin said something about that, too."