MR. KEEDY evidently desired to impress on me that his hankering to
make sure of my company during the night was inspired by pure and sudden
friendship.
When he came to awaken me his mustache was lifted so high in an amiable
smile that the twin sooty wings seemed to stick out of his nostrils.
He hoped I was getting to like the West and the folks there. I returned
that up to date I had not been homesick--a conservative statement, and
true; I had had no time to be homesick.
He paid for my breakfast; further evidence of friendship. Then he called
a cab and took me and my belongings down to the berth of the _Zizania_.
The old steamer was docked in a place which, so he told me, was the
China Basin, and we wormed our way through alleys and junk-piles and got
aboard.
We hadn’t hurried that morning, and the time was well into the middle of
the forenoon.
Captain Holstrom was stubbing to and fro on the main deck. He wore a
fine air of proprietorship, and welcomed us with a flourish of his hand.
He patted his breast, and the crackle of paper sounded.
“Money paid,” he reported. “Them’s the dockyments. Come up into the
wheel-house. There’s the place to talk the rest of our business.”
Marcena Keedy did most of the talking that forenoon. He loved to lollop
the words “three million dollars’ worth of gold ingots” in his mouth. He
had wormed out of me at breakfast-time admissions enough so that he knew
I was favorably disposed. He proposed to try to take advantage of me and
I saw his game and resolved to do some bluffing on my own part. He put
a lot of verbal plush around his propositions, but I could feel the hard
nub just the same.
After all that conversational fluff he wanted me to sign a contract to
take day’s wages for the job--double pay for the days when I recovered
any gold.
I turned that wages suggestion down, flat and final. You would have
thought I had money plastered all over me.
“It has got to be on shares,” I said.
“You doggone bean-eater, have you got the nerve to talk shares on an
investment of a diving-suit against our steamer and our information
about the _Golden Gate?_” stuttered Keedy.
“That isn’t the way the thing shakes down, Mr. Keedy. You have made it
plain to me that you’re gambling in this--it isn’t a straight deal.”
He swore at me, but I didn’t mean the thing the way he cook it.
“If you were going down there,” I said, “with a big expedition, and
proposed to build coffer-dams, and all that, and go at it scientific
fashion, I would hire as a regular diver. I couldn’t demand anything
else. But I’m not merely investing a diving-suit, as it stands. I’m
playing a lone hand in the diving part of the scheme; I’m investing all
my experience, all my skill; I’m investing life itself, for, as near as
I can find out from what you say, it will be up to me to know how to get
that gold, and then go get it. I want one-third of the velvet after all
bills are paid, and I want a contract drawn before I start.”
Perhaps I wouldn’t have jabbed the thing so hard at Holstrom, but I did
not propose to be the monkey for Keedy. I looked innocent and suggested
that they’d better talk with another diver. Keedy flapped like a speared
fish for half an hour--and then he came over. Captain Holstrom walked
up and down with his hands behind his back during all the talk. I judged
from his general air that he was viewing the whole thing as more or less
of a dream, and did not want to get too wide awake about it from fear of
losing courage and interest.
“There’s one thing about it--you’ll work harder if you have a lay,” said
Keedy.
That’s usually the way with the grafter or loafer--he’s afraid the other
fellow won’t work hard enough.
Frankly, I did not have any very brilliant hopes in regard to that
expedition, for if old Ingot Ike had told the truth about the failure of
the underwriters, I figured that the diving proposition must be a tough
one. Keedy was hot about it, for he did not know enough about such work
to judge chances; as for Captain Holstrom, ever since he had won this
_Zizania_ elephant he was in a state of mind which made him ready for
any project, even to putting wings on her and starting for the moon.
I didn’t pay much attention to the outfitting, except to make a list of
such equipment in the way of lines, hose, air-pumps, and such matters as
I needed for my part of the work. Keedy and Holstrom turned around
and borrowed money on the security of the steamer, this debt to stand
against our partnership. Keedy seemed so sure of that gold that he did
not stop to ask me how I was fixed to stand my share in case of utter
failure. Therefore, with plenty of funds to work with, we were ready for
sea in short order, and to sea we went, swashing out past Point Lobos,
the sea-lions hooting at us as we passed their rocks, and started down
the coast.
I leaned over the rail and watched the shore melt in the hazy distance,
and did not blame the sea-lions for their derogatory remarks. I did not
know much about steamers, but I realized that the _Zizania_, condemned
Government tub, wasn’t anything to brag about. She was a real old
ocean-walloper, a broad-beamed duck of a thing, thrashing her
warped paddles, her rusty walking-beam groaning, her patched boilers
wheezing--a weather-worn, gray, and grunting ocean tramp.
Like all craft of the buoy-boat model, she had much deck room forward of
the bridge, and here were nested, as dories are nested on a Gloucester
trawler, four forty-foot lighters. Plenty of anchors accompanied these
scows--huge, rusty second-hand anchors which Captain Holstrom had
bought from junkmen. The _Zizania_ was naturally slow, and this load
forward now made a snail of her. Hawsers and chains encumbered her deck
space everywhere--age-blackened ropes, and iron from which rust
scales were dropping. Captain Holstrom had ransacked the wharfs for
hand-me-downs. Even the men whom he had shipped looked as though he had
secured them at a rummage sale.
“It’s a checker-board crew,” the captain had informed me as they
straggled on board. “Half black men, and half white. That’s the only way
to sort men when you’re bound on a long cruise. Keep the blacks mad with
the whites, and vitchy vici, and you’ve always got half the crew on your
side in case of trouble. There can’t any general mutinies start when
you’ve got a checker-board crew. Number-one Jones has the white men’s
watch; Number-two Jones has the black watch; and as soon as we get this
stuff stored and the rest moused on deck I’ll have Number-one sick his
bunch on to Number-two’s, and let ’em fight long enough to get good
and mad. Then they’ll sort of neutralize each other for the rest of the
cruise.”
That system of gentle diplomacy was new to me, and I loafed around and
kept an eye out, for I have always had a hearty relish for an honest
scrap. Furthermore, in explaining to me later, the captain had stated
that I was expected to jump in with himself and the mates and break up
the fight with clubs when it had progressed far enough.
“You see, we want to leave both sides mad and neither side licked,”
said Captain Holstrom. “It will be like cooking in a hot oven. The thing
mustn’t get scorched on. I know how to handle it. Jump in when I say the
word.”
He had given me these instructions leaning over the sill of the
pilot-house window soon after we had got away from the dock.
“Not that the doodah will start for some time yet,” he added. “But I’m
a great hand to have things all ready and understood. You can be looking
up your club between now and to-morrow.”
I glanced into the wheel-house as I walked on. Marcena Keedy lounged in
solitary state on the transom seat at the rear, puffing away at a cigar.
“You’re always welcome in here,” he called. But I had no appetite for
the companionship of Mr. Keedy.
It occurred to me, with just a bit of relish in the thought, that Miss
Kama Holstrom probably was of similar mind in regard to Mr. Keedy. She
had taken a seat in the wheel-house when she had come on board that day.
Now she was in her state-room, which was the cabin on the upper deck
near the bridge, planned as the captain’s apartment. Either she had
pre-empted it or Captain Holstrom had assigned her to it. I had seen
that the Joneses--Number-one and Number-two--were in berths near my
quarters below, and it was plain that partners Holstrom and Keedy had
quartered themselves in the mates’ room on the upper deck.
Miss Holstrom’s door was on the hook, and I caught a glimpse of her more
by accident than by design. She nodded without speaking, and I raised my
cap and went below to the main deck.
I got there in season to see the lighting of a fuse which exploded
Captain Holstrom’s “checker-board” plans ahead of scheduled time.
The first man I met on the deck was Ingot Ike. He was gnawing at a hunk
of gingerbread with his snags of teeth, and was grinning amiably.
“This is going to be a comfortable trip for me,” he confided. “I find
I know the cook. It’s a lucky thing if you stand in well with the
cook. Him and me was shipmates together on a Vancouver packet. He’s the
Snohomish Glutton.” He opened his eyes and looked at me as though he
expected that I would show astonishment. “I said--he’s the Snohomish
Glutton,” he repeated, more loudly.
But my face remained blank.
“You don’t mean to tell me that you never heard of the Snohomish
Glutton!”