Lemaire savvied. He had grown sickly hued with anger, but he spread his dark hands in apology, so that the pinkish palms seemed to flash in the unnatural gloom. Then they got to business. What Elderkin had feared had happened--Lemaire's suspicions were aroused in port over the loading of the _Spirito Santo_, over the paucity of the stores taken aboard, over the many oddnesses that reveal themselves to a cunning mind when something beyond the normal is in progress. Elderkin remembered the night when Lemaire and the successfully bribed official had gone together, as he had then thought, to a rowdy house--it must have been on that occasion that the stronger man won definite confirmation from the weaker. Now there was nothing for it but to let Lemaire in on the deal--for the present. "You are not t'inking of a storm, no?" asked the mate, when both men had laid their cards upon the table. "With our boats we should not stand a chance. . . . A fire, perhaps? We are car'n some cotton, sah, and it might have been packed damp." "Too risky. I thought of all that. We can only trust our boats to takes us a little way. I must pile her up near the mainland. There's a reef I know of----" "A reef!" scoffed Lemaire, "and you de best skipper on either side! Who d'you s'pose believe dat? Not unless we first had an accident to de engines, anyway. What about Olsen? Does he--know?" "Yes. It could not be carried through without him." "Ah, I see. . . . Only poor Lemaire was to be kept out. . . . And dis reef?" "It's uncharted. I found it years ago. I had reasons for not wanting it known where I'd been and I never reported. It's a tricky place, the sea don't break true on it, sets in sideways. Beyond it's flat to the shore. No risk of salvage; it's out of the course, and a wooden ship goes to pieces at once, anyway." "Where is it, dis reef?" Elderkin drew his pencil down the chart to an indented bit of coast not a couple of degrees below the fortieth parallel. Lemaire sweated to think how near he had been to risk. "If this north-west gale holds, and we are to have an accident which made her unmanageable," went on Elderkin, "we should be driven ashore, on to that reef. Or at least we could always say so afterwards." "We might arrange so's Olsen was neber able to give us de lie . . ." suggested Lemaire, glancing sidelong at the other. "If needful."