Now, zoophytes, for another turn with you!"
To tell the truth, however, Tom is looking for more than zoophytes,
and has been doing so at every dead low tide since he was wrecked. He
has heard nothing yet of his belt. The notes have not been presented
at the London bank; nobody in the village has been spending more money
than usual; for cunning Tom has contrived already to know how many
pints of ale every man of whom he has the least doubt has drunk.
Perhaps, after all, the belt may have been torn off in the life
struggle; it may have been for a moment in Grace's hands, and then
have been swept into the sea. What more likely? And what more likely,
in that case, that, sinking by its weight, it is wedged away in some
cranny of the rocks?
So spring-tide after spring-tide Tom searches, and all the more
carefully because others are searching too, for waifs and strays from
the wreck. Sad relics of mortality he finds at times, as others do:
once, even, a dressing-case, full of rings and pins and chains, which
belonged, he fancied, to a gay young bride with whom he had waltzed
many a time on deck, as they slipped along before the soft trade-wind:
but no belt. He sent the dressing-case to the Lloyd's underwriters,
and searched on: but in vain. Neither could he find that any one else
had forestalled him; and that very afternoon, sulky and disheartened,
he determined to waste no more time about the matter, and strode home,
vowing signal vengeance against the thief, if he caught him.
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