“So we can keep the business to ourselves,” I mused.

“There’s one other person that might blab,” said the captain.  “Though I don’t believe she has anything left to tell.”

“And who is SHE?” I asked.

“The old girl there,” he answered, pointing to the wreck.  “I know there’s nothing in her; but somehow I’m afraid of some one else—­it’s the last thing you’d expect, so it’s just the first that’ll happen—­some one dropping into this God-forgotten island where nobody drops in, waltzing into that wreck that we’ve grown old with searching, stooping straight down, and picking right up the very thing that tells the story.  What’s that to me? you may ask, and why am I gone Soft Tommy on this Museum of Crooks?  They’ve smashed up you and Mr. Pinkerton; they’ve turned my hair grey with conundrums; they’ve been up to larks, no doubt; and that’s all I know of them—­you say.  Well, and that’s just where it is.  I don’t know enough; I don’t know what’s uppermost; it’s just such a lot of miscellaneous eventualities as I don’t care to go stirring up; and I ask you to let me deal with the old girl after a patent of my own.”

“Certainly—­what you please,” said I, scarce with attention, for a new thought now occupied my brain.  “Captain,” I broke out, “you are wrong:  we cannot hush this up.  There is one thing you have forgotten.”

“What is that?” he asked.

“A bogus Captain Trent, a bogus Goddedaal, a whole bogus crew, have all started home,” said I.  “If we are right, not one of them will reach his journey’s end.  And do you mean to say that such a circumstance as that can pass without remark?”

“Sailors,” said the captain, “only sailors!  If they were all bound for one place, in a body, I don’t say so; but they’re all going separate—­to Hull, to Sweden, to the Clyde, to the Thames.  Well, at each place, what is it?  Nothing new.  Only one sailor man missing:  got drunk, or got drowned, or got left:  the proper sailor’s end.”

Something bitter in the thought and in the speaker’s tones struck me hard.  “Here is one that has got left!” I cried, getting sharply to my feet; for we had been some time seated.  “I wish it were the other.  I don’t—­don’t relish going home to Jim with this!”

“See here,” said Nares, with ready tact, “I must be getting aboard.  Johnson’s in the brig annexing chandlery and canvas, and there’s some things in the Norah that want fixing against we go to sea.  Would you like to be left here in the chicken-ranch?  I’ll send for you to supper.”

I embraced the proposal with delight.  Solitude, in my frame of mind, was not too dearly purchased at the risk of sunstroke or sand-blindness; and soon I was alone on the ill-omened islet.  I should find it hard to tell of what I thought—­of Jim, of Mamie, of our lost fortune, of my lost hopes, of the doom before me:  to turn to at some mechanical occupation in some subaltern rank, and to toil there,