“I suppose, under the circumstances, you were not a rich man, Mr. Jenks,” said Iris, timidly.

“I possess a wealthy bachelor uncle, who made me his heir and allowed me four hundred a year; so I was a sort of Croesus among Staff Corps officers.  When the smash came he disowned me by cable.  By selling my ponies and my other belongings I was able to walk out of my quarters penniless but free from debt.”

“And all through a deceitful woman!”

“Yes.”

Iris peeped at him from under the brim of her sou’wester.  He seemed to be absurdly contented, so different was his tone in discussing a necessarily painful topic to the attitude he adopted during the attack on the pitcher-plant.

She was puzzled, but ventured a further step.

“Was she very bad to you, Mr. Jenks?”

He stopped and laughed—­actually roared at the suggestion.

“Bad to me!” he repeated.  “I had nothing to do with her.  She was humbugging her husband, not me.  Fool that I was, I could not mind my own business.”

So Mrs. Costobell was not flirting with the man who suffered on her account.  It is a regrettable but true statement that Iris would willingly have hugged Mrs. Costobell at that moment.  She walked on air during the next half-hour of golden silence, and Jenks did not remind her that they were passing the gruesome Valley of Death.

Rounding Europa Point, the sailor’s eyes were fixed on their immediate surroundings, but Iris gazed dreamily ahead.  Hence it was that she was the first to cry in amazement—­

“A boat!  See, there!  On the rocks!”

There was no mistake.  A ship’s boat was perched high and dry on the north side of the cape.  Even as they scrambled towards it Jenks understood how it had come there.

When the Sirdar parted amidships the after section fell back into the depths beyond the reef, and this boat must have broken loose from its davits and been driven ashore here by the force of the western current.

Was it intact?  Could they escape?  Was this ark stranded on the island for their benefit?  If it were seaworthy, whither should they steer—­to those islands whose blue outlines were visible on the horizon?

These and a hundred other questions coursed through his brain during the race over the rocks, but all such wild speculations were promptly settled when they reached the craft, for the keel and the whole of the lower timbers were smashed into matchwood.

But there were stores on board.  Jenks remembered that Captain Ross’s foresight had secured the provisioning of all the ship’s boats soon after the first wild rush to steady the vessel after the propeller was lost.  Masts, sails, oars, seats—­all save two water-casks—­had gone; but Jenks, with eager hands, unfastened the lockers, and here he found a good supply of tinned meats and biscuits.  They had barely recovered from the excitement of this find when the sailor noticed that behind the rocks on which the craft was firmly lodged lay a small natural basin full of salt water, replenished and freshened by the spray of every gale, and completely shut off from all seaward access.