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“That’s the trouble, Len. It’s too big.”

Len flung his head back in a boisterous laugh.

“Too big?” he cried scornfully. “It just couldn’t be!”

“It could. It is.”

Jim’s unyielding tone promptly brought the other to seriousness.

“How?” he asked soberly. “Maybe I’ve got some of your notion. But let’s talk it out.”

Jim knocked out his pipe and refilled it. He lit it thoughtfully. Then he turned smilingly to his friend.

“Say, I’m as crazy for this thing as you, boy,” he said in his quiet way. “But I don’t figger to let it snow my senses under. You’re right. It’s been two years an’ more of hell gettin’ it, and we want it all, after that. But I seem to see something of what was back of Charlie’s mind quittin’ the game an’ never returning to it. Get a look down there.” He pointed at a rough sheltered landing with a tubby, cutter-rigged fishing smack lying moored there. “That’s our link with the world outside. An’ we got to get out not pounds, but tons of metal if I’m a judge. We got to market it an’ keep it quiet, or we’ll have the Australian Government jumping in on us, to say nothing of all the rest of the world.” He shook his head. “How’s it to be done? It can’t.”