Beneath his open shirt you
saw the quick rise and fall of his hairy chest. His lips, drawn
back wolfishly, displayed yellow, fang-like teeth. Under the
raw crude greed of the man you seemed to glimpse something
indescribably vulpine and ferocious.
The face of Dugald Shaw was controlled, but there was a slight
rigidity in its quiet. A pulse beat rapidly in his cheek. All
worldly good, all hope of place, power, independence, hung for him
on the contents of the small flat package, wrapped in oil-silk,
which Miss Browne was at this moment withdrawing from her pocket.
Only Cuthbert Vane, seated next to me, maintained without effort
his serenity. For him the whole affair belonged in the category
known as sporting, where a gentleman played his stake and accepted
with equanimity the issue.
As Miss Browne undid the oil-silk package everybody held his
breath, except poor Aunt Jane, who most inopportunely swallowed a
gnat and choked.
The dead sailor's legacy consisted of a single sheet of
time-stained paper. Two-thirds of the sheet was covered by a
roughly-drawn sketch in faded ink, giving the outline of the island
shores as we had seen them from the _Rufus Smith_. Here was the
cove, with the name it bears in the Admiralty charts--Lantern
Bay--written in, and a dotted line indicating the channel. North
of the bay the shore line was carried for only a little distance.
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