Another moment, and he knew how Alderly had died. The water in which he swam towards him tasted salter than sea-water as it touched his lips, and its clearness was discoloured--crimson! And even as Reginald seized the head of the now limbless trunk and towed it to the bank, striking out with all his power for fear of a similar dreadful fate befalling him--which was probable enough, since the shark is, like the tiger, eager for more when once its taste is whetted--he thought to himself: "Out of the depths, out of the depths the past rises again and again." Then, sweating with fear, he gave one last masterful side-stroke and landed safely on the shingle, dragging his gory burden after him. CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE OWNER OF THE TREASURE. The white shark--for such it is which is the most terrible in these regions--that had taken both Alderly's legs off above the knee, so that he must have soon bled to death, had doubtless done so while his intended victim was escaping from the trap he had set for Reginald. Each bite--for the brute must have given two--was as clean as though the limbs had been snipped-off by a pair of blunt scissors, and, as Reginald regarded the mangled trunk in the moonlight, he could not but thank his Maker that he had not been the next victim, for he recognised how narrow his own escape was. His experience as a sailor told him that where the sharks have found one prey they will, sometimes for weeks, hover about in expectation of another, and he could only wonder--while his wonder was tinged with devout gratitude--why he should not also by now be torn in half. As he dragged the body up the slope of the shingle, meaning to cover it over with palm leaves until Barbara had seen the face--the lower part she must not be allowed to see--and then to bury it, a bundle of papers fell out of the pocket of the dead man's rough shirt, which he picked up and put in his own. It must be handed to Barbara, he reflected, who was now the last of the Alderlys, and consequently the heiress to all the wealth of the Key! "Which is," reflected Reginald, "the very best thing that could possibly have happened. She will now be able to lead the life so beautiful a woman ought to lead, a life which she by her education and womanly ideas is fitted to lead. For her, nothing could be better than Alderly's death." Yet, when he thought of her inexperience--had she not believed that Trinidad was the world!--and of how she was all alone now without kith or kin, he could not but wonder what would become of her.