I lay back idly in the stern as the boat skimmed over the smooth water beneath the strokes of my splendid oarsman. More than ever he looked like the island god. Every day he grew more brown and brawny, more superb in his physical vigor. But his hands, once so beautiful, were getting rough and hard with toil. There was a great raw bruise on his arm. I exclaimed pityingly. "Oh, it's nothing. We get knocked about a bit by the sea in the cave now and then." "You mean you are risking your lives every day for the sake of this legendary treasure that you have no _reasonable_ reason to suppose is there." "Perhaps not," he admitted, "but then it's such good fun looking, you know." "That's according to one's idea of fun," I said ironically. "Oh, well, a chap can't spend his days on flowery beds of ease, of course. Really, I find this story-book kind of thing we're doing is _warm stuff_, as you Americans say. And then there's Shaw--think of the difference it will make to the dear old chap if we find the gold--buy a ship of his own and snap his fingers at the P. & O." "And you'll go along as cabin-boy or something?" "'Fraid not," he said quite simply. "A chap has his bit to do at home, you know." The cliffs on the north shore of the cove were considerably higher than on the other side. The wreck lay close in, driven high upon the narrow shelf of rocks and sand at the base of the sheer ascent. Sand had heaped up around her hull and flung itself across her deck like a white winding-sheet. Surprisingly, the vessel was a very small one, a little sloop, indeed, much like the fragile pleasure-boats that cluster under the Sausalito shore at home. The single mast had been broken off short, and the stump of the bowsprit was visible, like a finger beckoning for rescue from the crawling sand. She was embedded most deeply at the stem, and forward of the sand-heaped cockpit the roof of the small cabin was still clear. "Poor forlorn little boat!" I said. "What in the world do you suppose brought such a mite of a thing to this unheard-of spot?" "Perhaps she belonged to the copra chap. One man could handle her." "What would he want with her? A small boat like this is better for fishing and rowing about the cove." "Perhaps she brought him here from Panama, though he couldn't have counted on taking back a very bulky cargo." "Then why leave her strewn about on the rocks? And besides"--here the puzzle of Crusoe recurred to me and seemed to link itself with this--"then how did he get away himself?" But my oarsman was much more at home on the solid ground of fact than on the uncharted waters of the hypothetical. "Don't know, I'm sure," he returned uninterestedly. Evidently the hermit had got away, so why concern one's self about the method? I am sure the Light Brigade must have been made up of Cuthbert Vanes. "Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do or die--"