“From the cave, I suppose?  I thought you said antimony was not very valuable?”

“That is not antimony.  It is gold.  By chance I have hit upon an extremely rich lode of gold.  At the most modest computation it is worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.  You and I are quite wealthy people, Miss Deane.”

Iris opened her blue eyes very wide at this intelligence.  It took her breath away.  But her first words betokened her innate sense of fair dealing.

“You and I!  Wealthy!” she gasped.  “I am so glad for your sake, but tell me, pray, Mr. Jenks, what have I got to do with it?”

“You!” he repeated.  “Are we not partners in this island?  By squatter’s right, if by no better title, we own land, minerals, wood, game, and even such weird belongings as ancient lights and fishing privileges.”

“I don’t see that at all.  You find a gold mine, and coolly tell me that I am a half owner of it because you dragged me out of the sea, fed me, housed me, saved my life from pirates, and generally acted like a devoted nursemaid in charge of a baby.  Really, Mr. Jenks—­”

“Really, Miss Deane, you will annoy me seriously if you say another word.  I absolutely refuse to listen to such an argument.”

Her outrageously unbusiness-like utterances, treading fast on the heels of his own melodramatic and written views concerning their property, nettled him greatly.  Each downright syllable was a sting to his conscience, but of this Iris was blissfully unaware, else she would not have applied caustic to the rankling wound caused by his momentary distrust of her.

For some time they stood in silence, until the sailor commenced to reproach himself for his rough protest.  Perhaps he had hurt her sensitive feelings.  What a brute he was, to be sure!  She was only a child in ordinary affairs, and he ought to have explained things more lucidly and with greater command over his temper.  And all this time Iris’s face was dimpling with amusement, for she understood him so well that had he threatened to kill her she would have laughed at him.

“Would you mind getting the lamp?” he said softly, surprised to catch her expression of saucy humor.

“Oh, please may I speak?” she inquired.  “I don’t want to annoy you, but I am simply dying to talk.”

He had forgotten his own injunction.

“Let us first examine our mine,” he said.  “If you bring the lamp we can have a good look at it.”

Close scrutiny of the work already done merely confirmed the accuracy of his first impressions.  Whilst Iris held the light he opened up the seam with a few strokes of the pick.  Each few inches it broadened into a noteworthy volcanic dyke, now yellow in its absolute purity, at times a bluish black when fused with other metals.  The additional labor involved caused him to follow up the line of the fault.  Suddenly the flame of the lamp began to flicker in a draught.  There was an air-passage between cave and ledge.