The lamps were lit, and then Manuel repeated his experiment by burning a piece, amid breathless excitement. No further doubt could exist, and then Manuel, taking a spring balance (weighing up to 50 lbs.) from the wall, hung it to a rafter, whilst the men put the lot into three separate bags and suspended them to the hook in turn.
"Forty-five pounds," cried the mate of the Dolphin, as the first bag was hooked on. "Come on with the next one."
"_And_ thirty-four pounds makes a hundred and eighteen," said Lester, bending down and eagerly examining the dial.
"How much is it worth, skipper?" asked the tug's engineer.
"No, sah," cried Manuel, with an _ex cathedra_ air, "twenty-two shillings, sah. Dat's what the captain of de _Fanny Long_ Hobart Town whaleship got fo' a piece eleven poun' weight in Sydney last June. And I hear de boys sayin' dat he would hab got £1 5s. only dat dere was a power of squids' beaks in it--and dere's not many in dis lot, so it's gwine to bring more."
He explained that the pieces of black shell, which looked like broken mussel shells, were in reality the beaks of the squid, upon which the sperm whale feeds. Then, for the benefit of those of the party, he and the two other ex-whalemen described the cause of the formation of this peculiar substance in the body of the sperm whale.
Lester took pencil and paper and made a rapid calculation.
"Boys, we'll say that this greasy-looking staff is worth only a pound an ounce--though I don't doubt that Manuel is right. Well, at £1 an ounce, it comes to eighteen hundred and eighty-eight pounds."
"Hurrah for Mrs. Lester!" cried Lindley, the mate.
"She has brought us luck from the first, and now she has luck herself."
The men cheered her again and again, for there was not one of them that had not a rough affection for their captain's violet-eyed wife. They had admired her for her pluck even in making the voyage to this desolate spot, and her constant cheerfulness and her kindness and attention in nursing three of them who had been seriously ill cemented their feelings of devotion to her. There was a happy supper party in "Wreck House"---as Lucy had named her strangely-built abode--that night, and it was not until the small hours of the morning that the men went off to sleep on the tug, and left Lucy and her husband to themselves.