Page:Weird Tales Volume 10 Number 2 (1927-08).djvu/67

 minds were that moment expecting. For human skulls are neither gracious in themselves nor indigenous to uninhabited islands.

"Well, I'm damned!—a skull!" said Manton slowly and with profound conviction, as though he voiced a prolonged and expert investigation.

"Sure it's, a skull. But what is it—white or nigger?" queried his partner impatiently.

"White and no error!" announced Manton, stepping up and turning over the grimy globular thing with his foot. "Never a nigger with a head and jaw like that," he added, stating a simple fact, for the yellowed bone when clothed in flesh must have possessed markedly Caucasian features of uncommon virility.

"Yes, he's white all right—look here!" said Haynes, who on his knees was raking amid the litter and had quickly exposed a raffle of mold-encrusted bones and as he spoke held out a small, curiously hollowed object that shone with a dull glow of unmistakable nature. He rubbed it and held it up to his partner. It was gold, a replica of the human jaw done in gold, with teeth so even and perfect that art had but rendered itself nauseating.

"False teeth—a plate—well, I'm damned!" exclaimed Manton, eyeing the thing with surprize and dislike. 4 4 But what the devil was a lone white man doing here? I suppose he was alone," he added.

"Likely—guess some poor guy wrecked like ourselves—took sick maybe," said Haynes slowly and not unfeelingly; and without further discussion they set to rummaging again.

But here the soil was damp and sticky, for it was a little hollow into Which moisture percolated from the near-by tiny creek. So whatever the garments of the unknown had been, now they were rotted into the encasing mire and all they garnered was the horn handle of a sheath-knife, a belt buckle, some silver coins and two flat strips of rubber—shoe soles—and that was all, until Manton made the great discovery. Kicked the stuff from its rotting bed as he shuffled his feet some paces away and some small oval lumps appeared and rolled sluggishly to one side. Picking up one of these he examined it, but with no great interest, until suddenly his face grew startled and alert and rapidly he cleansed the thing—by the simple process of wiping it across his stained pants. Then with a hand that slightly trembled he raised it to his nose and sniffed with intent deliberation, while Haynes, catching the action, watched him curiously.

"It's O. K.! It's the real stuff!" he announced solemnly, though his suppressed emotion was very obvious.

"What's the noise about?" queried Haynes blankly.

"Take a squint at it—there's something for sore eyes!" announced Manton almost in a shout.

What Haynes saw as his partner thrust the grimy object upon him was a rough rounded lump rather larger than a hen's egg, gray-white in hue and soaplike in texture, and entirely uninteresting, though certainly curious.

"Looks like the soap we used as kids back home," remarked Haynes, quite unimpressed and plainly disappointed.

"Soap! a damned high-priced soap. Well, lots of guys never handled this stuff in all their sailing. But I lifted a chunk off the beach at Timor and got four hundred for it, so you needn't have no doubts when I tell you to take a sniff of a lump of real ambergrease," said Manton with prideful certainty.

"What! ambergris!" exclaimed Haynes. "Are you sure?" he added, as holding it close to his face he caught the peculiar sickly odor which in minute quantities renders it indispensable to the perfume trade.