As he felt her go down, Tom turned to the yacht, and waved his hand. “Heave us a rope, Mr. Caruth,” he called. “I can’t swim!” Caruth did not hesitate. He had read the plainsman’s purpose and had given orders accordingly. In less than a minute Tom Wilkins, dripping but unhurt, stood on the deck beside his brother Bill, while aft, in the water churned into foam by the screws of the yacht, a white sail fluttered for a moment; then was gone. Caruth looked at the spot where the sloop had disappeared; then at the plainsman; then at the hurrying Russians. “That was a child’s trick, Wilkins,” he said severely. “The water isn’t fifty feet deep here, and Demidroff can fish the gold up easy. Meanwhile, you’ve put us all in a hole.” “Not much I ain’t. Look!” Caruth looked again. The yacht was drawing rapidly away, and the Russians were making no effort to follow her. Clustered around the spot where the sloop sank, they seemed to be throwing out buoys to mark the spot. And the yacht swept westward. * * * * * Six months later, five of the chief participants in the contest for the _Orkney’s_ gold were gathered at a home dinner given by the Caruths to mark their departure from the apartment in the Chimneystack Building to the splendid new house Caruth had bought for his bride. Until then, Marie had insisted on remaining in the rooms where she had first met her husband. Inevitably, as always when these five met, the talk turned on the trip of the _Sea Spume_ and those connected with the quest for the _Orkney’s_ gold. Caruth opened the subject. Said he: “I got a letter from Colorado from the Wilkinses to-day. They’ve struck a gold mine that Tom Wilkins says is going to make them all rich if they can get the money to develop it. He offers to sell me a share on easy terms. He certainly has more assurance than anybody I ever knew.” “Oh, I don’t know.” It was Bristow who spoke. “He was within his rights, you know, in that matter of the _Orkney_. Irrespective of his part in sinking the _Orkney_, Bill Wilkins saved that gold from the abandoned wreck, and thereby got a perfect title to about nine-tenths of it by the laws of pretty nearly every country in the world. Russia had no right to take it from him, and he would have had a good claim against her at the end if Tom Wilkins hadn’t wrecked and abandoned it again. That gave the second salvors their claim and wiped out his.” Caruth growled. “He’d have had a hard time making good,” he observed. “Demidroff didn’t fish that gold up from the bottom of the gulf to surrender it to the Wilkinses.”