IV WRECKAGE 203 



'Poor fellows! Poor fellows, where this come'd 

 from. Shlpwrack, that's what that is, unless some 

 fool throwed 'em overboard. Here's another. 

 Lookse! An' another too.' Fourteen or fifteen 

 of them he picked up and put carefully in his 

 pocket; for he still reads in the old-fashioned 

 way, the book, like a folio, spread flat on the table 

 in front of him, and by his side a candle which he 

 snuffs between forefinger and thumb each time 

 his long-sighted eyes begin to smart. 



Shortly afterwards he fell a-cussing. One 0' 

 they there — and so forth — had taken some wood 

 of his from a hole up in the cliff, to which he had 

 only been able to climb with diflSculty. By long- 

 shore custom anything below high-water mark 

 belongs to the man who finds it, but what is above 

 and in the cliff should be left for whoever placed 

 it there. (Wreckage of any value, marked. In 

 which government and various other people claim 

 a share, belongs, wherever it is, to the man who 

 can show his mark upon it.) 'Wouldn't I like 

 to catch they thieves at it!' exclaims Benjie with 

 the short-lived fury of a squall. But he never 

 does. He never lies in wait. He has, I think, 

 too great a contempt for those who gather his 

 leavings, and feels so certain that in the long run 



