He was excited, and the Irish in him came out when he was like that; also, as the most knowledgeable man in the business, he was taking the lead.  You never could have fancied from his cheerful manner and his appearance of boss that Blood was the real master of the situation, or that Blood, only a few days ago, had nearly pounded the life out of him, captured his revolver, and taken possession of the Heart of Ireland.

The schooner carried a whale-boat, and this was now got in readiness for lowering, with provisions and water for the landing-party, and when that was done the island, now only four miles distant, showed up fine, a sheer splinter of volcanic rock standing up from the sea and creamed about with foam.

Not a sign of a wreck was to be seen, though Ginnell’s glasses were powerful enough to show up every detail from the rock fissures to the roosting gulls.

Gloom fell upon the party, with the exception of Harman.

“It’ll be on the other side if it’s there at all,” said he.  “She’d have been coming up from the s’uthard, and if the gale was behind her it would have taken her right on to the rocks; she couldn’t be on this side, anyhow, because why?—­there’s nuthin’ to hold her.  It’s a mile deep water off them cliffs, but on the other side it shoals gradual from tide marks to ten fathoms water, which holds for a quarter of a mile—­keep her as she is, you could scrape them cliffs with a battleship without danger of groundin’.”

After a minute or two, he took the wheel himself and steered her whilst the fellows stood by the halyards ready to let go at a moment’s notice.

It was an impressive place, this north side of the island of San Juan; the heavy swell came up smacking right on to the sheer cliff wall, jetting green water and foam yards high to the snore and boom of caves and cut outs in the rock.  Gulls haunted the place.  The black petrel, the Western gull and the black-footed albatross all were to be found here; long lines of white gulls marked the cliff edges, and far above, in the dazzling azure of the sky, a Farallone cormorant circled like the spirit of the place, challenging the newcomers with its cry.

Harman shifted his helm, and the Heart of Ireland with main boom swinging to port came gliding past the western rocks and opening the sea to southward where, far on the horizon, lovely in the morning light like vast ships under press of sail, the San Lucas Islands lay remote in the morning splendour.

Away to port the line of the Californian coast showed beyond the heave of the sea from Point Arguello to Point Conception, and to starboard and west of the San Lucas’s a dot in the sun-dazzle marked the peaks of the island of San Nicolas.

Then, as the Heart of Ireland came around and the full view of the south of San Juan burst upon them, the wreck piled on the rocks came in sight, and, anchored quarter of a mile off the shore—­a Chinese junk!