THE SKELETON IN THE SAND
and tore away the covers of one or two lockers, the contents of which had all nearly rotted.
By the end of the second day it was obvious that there remained no reasonable prospect of recovering the lost platinum from the wreck.
"It's no good," said Tempest, taking a seat on one of the ship's old ribs and lighting his pipe. "We've had a run for our money, and that's about all we can say. I've no regrets, and I hope you haven't either, Dave. It was a sporting chance, and a good one at that, so far as we could judge. You don't get a good sporting chance every day of your life. Poor old Jim, here, gets the thin end of it, because we can't pay him any wages at all. I'm sorry for that, because he has been a brick."
Jim shrugged his shoulders. He did not seem to feel that the others were under any obligation to him.
"Well, we'd better make a move for Washington Island, I suppose," Dave observed lugubri-
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