the one small window which lighted the room, then moved noiselessly to
the centre of the floor and put up his right hand to the whitewashed
beam that crossed the low ceiling. His fingers searched delicately for a
full minute; and then he lowered his hand, holding a small square of dry
wood. The beam had been skilfully hollowed at this point. From the
cavity he took a small box bound in red leather--the same small box that
he had found among the sheets and blankets of a berth in the wreck. He
opened it and gloated over a necklace of twelve diamonds and fourteen
rubies glinting, flashing and glowing on a bed of white satin. He
fondled the wonderful stones with his blunt finger-ends. So he stood for
a long time, breathing heavily, his black eyes glowing like the rubies
and glinting like the diamonds.

"A fortune," he murmured. "Aye, houses an' ships, liquor, food an'
sarvants. Holy saint! I bes richer nor any marchant in St. John's!"

At last he closed the box, put it back in the cavity overhead, and
returned the small square of wood to its place. He looked around the
room. The fading light of the winter day was gray at the window. The
curtained bed was a mass of gloom; a white Christ on a cross of ebony
gleamed above the narrow chimney-shelf, between two candlesticks of dull
brass; the floor, with its few rough mats, was as cold as the frozen
snow outside. The skipper felt the chill of the place in his sturdy
bones. He shot a glance at the crucifix. It, too, was an offering from
the sea. His father had told him how it had come ashore in the hand of a
dead woman, thirty years ago. Now the carven image of the Saviour seemed
to gleam out from the black of the cross and the shadowy wall as if with
an inner illumination. Black Dennis Nolan made the sign with an awkward
and unaccustomed finger, and then went swiftly from the room.