“Then, Mr. Smith, will you take a look at those lashings and tell me whether in your opinion they are the work of a sailor?” asked Kent. The old hands fumbled expertly. The old face puckered. Judgment came forth presently. “The knots is well enough. The lashin’s a passable job. What gits me is the rope.” “Well, what’s wrong with the rope?” “Nothin’ in pertic’ler. Only, I don’t know what just that style of rope would be doin’ on shipboard, unless it was to hang the old man’s wash on.” “Suppose we lift this grating,” Kent suggested. At this the man with the badge interposed. “Say, who’s runnin’ this thing, anyhow? I’m sheriff here, an’ this body ain’t to be moved till a doctor has viewed it.” “Of course,” said Kent mildly; “but I thought you might be interested to see, Mr. Sheriff, whether a ship’s name was stamped somewhere on this grating.” “Well, I don’t want any amachure learning me my business,” declared the official importantly. Nevertheless, he heaved the woodwork up on edge and held it so, while eager eyes scanned the under part. Murmurs of disappointment followed. In these Kent did not join. He had inserted a finger in a crevice of the splintered wood and had extracted some small object which he held in the palm of his hand, examining it thoughtfully. “Wot ye got there?” demanded the sheriff. Professor Kent stretched out his hand, disclosing a small grayish object. “I should take it to be the cocoon of _Ephestia kuchniella_,” he announced. “An’ wot does he do for a livin’?” inquired the official, waxing humorous. “Destroys crops. It’s a species of grain-moth.” “Oh!” grunted Schlager. “You’re a bug collector, eh?” “Exactly,” answered the other, transferring his trove to his pocket. Thereafter he seemed to lose interest in the center of mystery. Withdrawing to some distance, he paced up and down the shore, whistling lively tunes, not always in perfect accord, from which a deductive mind might have inferred that his soul was not in the music. [Illustration: _Suppose we lift this grating._] Nearer and nearer to high-water mark his pacing took him. Presently, though all the time continuing his whistling, he was scanning the tangled débris that the highest tide of the year had heaped up, almost against the cliff’s foot. His whistling became slow, lugubrious, minor. It sagged. It died away. When it rose again, it was in march time, whereto the virtuoso stepped briskly toward the crowd. By this time the group had received several additions, but had suffered the loss of one of its component parts, the sheriff. Conjecture was buzzing from mouth to mouth as to the official’s sudden defection. “Whatever it was he got from the pocket,” Kent heard one of the men say, “it started him quick.” “Looked to me like an envelope,” hazarded some one. “No,” contradicted Sailor Smith; “paper would have been all pulped up by the water.” “Marked handkerchief, maybe,” suggested another.