“Why didn’t you tell me that before?” he asked.

“I’ve known you some time,” Bethune answered with a grin. “There are people to whom you can’t show the easiest way until they’ve tried the hardest one and found it won’t do. It’s not their fault; I hold you can’t make a man responsible for his temperament—and it’s a point on which I speak feelingly, because my temperament has been my bane.”

“How d’you know these things, anyway? I mean about bending planks. You never allowed you’d been a boatbuilder.”

“Do you expect a man to exhibit all his talents? Here’s another tip. Don’t nail that plank home now. Leave it shored up until morning, and you’ll get it dead close then with a wedge or two. And now, if Jimmy hasn’t burned the grub, I think we’ll have supper.”

The meal might have been better, but Moran admitted that he had often eaten worse, and afterward they lay about on the shingle and lighted their pipes. Bethune, as usual, was the first to speak.

“The lumber, and the canvas Jimmy gets to work upon to-morrow, have emptied the treasury,” he remarked. “If we incur any further liabilities, there’s a strong probability of their not being met; but that gives the job an interest. Prudence is a cold-blooded quality, which no man of spirit has much use for. To help yourself may be good, but doing so consistently often makes it harder to help the other fellow.”

“When you have finished moralizing we’ll get to business,” Jimmy rejoined. “Though I’m a partner in the scheme, I know very little yet about the wreck you’re taking us up to look for. Try to be practical.”

“Moran is practical enough for all three of us. I’ll let him tell the tale; but I’ll premise by saying that when he found the halibut fishing much less remunerative than it was cracked up to be, he sailed up the northwest coast with another fellow to trade with the Indians for furs. It was then he found the vessel.”

“The reef,” said Moran, “lies open to the south-west, and I got seven fathoms close alongside it at low water. A mile off, and near a low island, a bank runs out into the stream, and the after-half of the wreck lies on the edge of it, worked well down in the sand. At low ebb you can see the end of one or two timbers sticking up out of the broken water.”

“Is it always broken water?” Jimmy interrupted.

“Pretty near, I 

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