THE next morning Captain Holstrom ordered the checker-board crew
assembled on the main deck, forward. He appeared on the bridge and
leaned over the rail like a candidate ready to make a stump speech. But,
unlike a candidate, he had two revolvers strapped to his waist and in
plain sight.
“I have a few words to say to you critters down there,” he began. “I
know all about what you have been planning to do. I have watched you
peeking and spying around this morning for them boxes. Well, you won’t
find them. Them boxes are a good way off.” He pointed a stubby finger
down at the Russian Finn. “You come up here!” he commanded. The Finn
turned pale and shook his head.
“You come up here and I’ll promise that you won’t be hurt. I want you to
take back a report to that gang of yours. If you don’t obey a master’s
orders and come up here,” continued the captain, pulling a gun, “it will
be mutiny--and I know how to deal with mutiny. I’ll shoot you where you
stand.”
After a little hesitation the Finn climbed the ladder. The captain led
him into the wheel-house, into all the state-rooms, and took him on a
genera! tour of inspection of the upper deck.
“Now you can see with your own eyes that there isn’t any gold up here
to mutiny about. You go back and tell that gang what you have seen--or,
rather, what you didn’t see.” He pushed the Finn to the ladder.
“I give you all liberty to hunt over the lower part of the steamer from
forepeak to rudder,” declared the captain over the rail. “You can help
yourselves to all the gold you find. But I can tell you that there ain’t
an ounce aboard here. That gold is stored where you can’t get it.” He
swept his hand in a gesture which embraced the horizon. “If you act like
men from now on until this cruise is over, you’ll be paid like lords.
If you hanker for mutiny, start in and mutiny. Them who live through
it will never get a cent; them who are killed can’t use gold where they
will fetch up; it will be too hot to handle!” The men fell to muttering
among themselves, but I could see that they had been cowed. The report
of the leader made them still more melancholy. They divided at last--the
blacks from the whites--and went about their tasks.
“I want to say, Sidney, that you showed good judgment,” said the
captain, as he went to his state-room. “But I don’t feel like giving
three cheers--not while that gold is back on the bottom of the Pacific
Ocean.”
Well, there was gold to the value of about a million yonder on the
bottom in that wreck of the _Golden Gate_, but I had no appetite for
more gold just then. I knew that I had reached the limit of my strength
and courage. I had won more than two millions from the greed of that
miserly ocean, and had given it back again in order to make another
fight against the greed of men.
I sat on deck and endured the pains of my tortured body, and waited for
the inevitable when it should come down over the horizon from the north.
Half a dozen anxious days dragged past--and then it came!
A trail of blacksmoke signaled it--they were using lots of coal and
were in a hurry, as that banner of black indicated. Framed in Captain
Holstrom’s long telescope, it took form as a big ocean tug. She seemed
to leap angrily across the sea as the surges rolled under her, and the
bows churned up white yeast.
There was no hesitation in the manner in which she came on. She bore
down on us with a speed which seemed to say, “Here we come to take our
own!”
We counted at least a score of men aboard, using our glass. And when the
tug slowed off our quarter we saw that most of the men held rifles in
the hook of their arms.
“It’s what I have been expecting,” I told the captain. “They have come
down here proposing to treat us as pirates. How would you feel right now
with gold aboard here?”
Captain Holstrom wagged his head mournfully, and seemed to lack words
with which to express his feelings.
“We are going to make fast to you,” bawled a man, with a voice like a
fog-horn. “Mind how you perform.”
That was a reckless performance even for a tug in that sea, but they
rigged a row of fenders and put her alongside with much clanging of
bell. A dozen men leaped on board the _Zizania_. Some were guards who
carried rifles. There were three men who seemed of importance. I spied
Marcena Keedy on the upper deck of the tug, holding to the funnel stays.
He did not venture to come on board us with the others.
“Let them do the talking,” I whispered to Captain Holstrom as the three
were climbing the ladder. “Just stand on your dignity as master of this
steamer.” And the captain did so in a way that highly satisfied me. He
chewed a toothpick and displayed much indifference.
“I bid you welcome, gents!” he informed them, stiffly. “And you can see
that I ain’t looking for trouble--otherwise I might have a few words to
say about your way of boarding this steamer. If it’s ignorance of rules
and etiquette, I’ll overlook it.”
“It’s business, Captain Holstrom,” snapped the spokesman, a chap who
wore a hard hat and looked as though he had just closed a desk in an
office. “We are from San Francisco, and represent the underwriters in
the matter of the _Golden Gate_.”
“Step into the wheel-house--it’s my office,” stated the captain. He
pointed to the muzzle of the first rifle, rising over the edge of the
upper deck. “If those fellows come up here I shall consider it an insult
to me as a peaceful man and master of this vessel.”
The man hesitated.
“We’re no pirates,” remarked Captain Holstrom.
The man gave orders to the gunmen to remain below.
“If you are not pirates,” he said, when we were assembled in the
wheel-house, “you can show it by turning over to us the gold you’ve dug
out of the wreck over yonder.”
The spokesman was a rather excitable fellow. He began to tap his finger
on the captain’s breast. He showed documents with seals and all the
other law-shark trimmings.
“You have no right to come here and operate. Have you got attorney’s
powers? Have you got anything in the way of permits? No, you haven’t.
That gold belongs to other people. Give it up and save trouble.”
Captain Holstrom threw a sort of helpless look at me, stifling some
emotion. I realized that he was at the end of his dignity and that
in about ten seconds he would begin to use his talents in the line of
profanity.
“Excuse me if I say a word here,” I broke in. “I am a partner in this
enterprise.”
“You’re using a polite word for this kind of a job,” sneered the man.
“You may represent the underwriters,” I said, “but to all intents and
purposes the underwriters had abandoned the treasure.”
“We shall take our gold, my friend!”
“Rights or no rights?”
“You have made it a grab game, and we’re in on the grab!” He was mighty
overbearing and offensive. Law was behind him, a fortune was concerned,
and he was showing the usual spirit of the greedy world.
“You have full powers in this matter so far as the underwriters are
concerned, have you?” I asked.
“Absolute.” He waved his papers under my nose. “Issued due and regular
by the court and the United States.”
“But don’t you realize that you are not in the United States, sir?”
“There’s got to be more or less dog eat dog in this game. We happen to
have the cards. If you don’t hand over that gold, we shall put a crew on
board this steamer, guard it with rifles, and set this boat into waters
where we have jurisdiction. I’ll be frank to say that then we can beat
you in court in the lying game, because we start with law behind us, and
you’re handicapped. I say this to show you that you’d better fork over.”
I was holding my temper. For the sake of my own conscience in this
affair, I wanted the other side to lay all their cards on the table; in
their insolence and confidence, they seemed inclined to do so, for their
plain intent was to intimidate us.
“What do we get out of it for ourselves?” I inquired, meekly.
“Remember that you came down here on the sly, thinking you were going
to get away with the whole thing. It hasn’t been your fault that you
haven’t. I think that we can promise to keep you out of the penitentiary
if you act sensible. I’m not making any rash promises.”
There we had it! Contemptuous disregard of all our rights because they
thought they had the upper hand on us!
I have hinted before this that men become monsters in the presence of
much gold. From my own experience I knew the insanity which gold stirs
in a man. I had foreseen some such attitude as this on the part of the
men who would come to claim the treasure. A grab game, eh? And success
to the best man!
I looked at that fellow--at his white hands and his flabbiness--a man
who had never done an honest day’s labor with grit and muscles. He had
given me his code. I told him as much.
“And I thank you for giving me that code,” I went on.
I stripped the bandages off my hands. I tore the wrappings off my feet.
I showed them sights which made their faces turn white. I ripped the
shirt from my back and exhibited that spectacle of ragged flesh.
“You have given me your code, I say! It’s going to be a grab game. All
right! Have it your way. Go hunt this steamer from top to bottom. You’re
welcome! Prove that we have any of your damned gold! Go ahead!”
I hobbled out of the wheel-house and went into my state-room, and they
began to hunt the _Zizania_ over. And I heard what Captain Holstrom said
to them after they had finished.
“Now, gents, you have made sure that there’s nothing on my _Zizania_
that belongs to you. You’re aboard here without any rights. I just want
to remark that I’ll give you five minutes to get aboard your own boat
and cast off, and stay cast off’m here, yourselves. I’ve got some men
who can fight--and I’ve got a two-pounder in my junk-heap. I’ll put a
ball through that tug that will disturb her innards seriously.”
They went silently and grudgingly--but they went. I enjoyed the
expression on Marcena Keedy’s face as the tug backed off. I came out
on the upper deck and gloated down on him. They anchored their craft a
little distance from us, and I could readily imagine the council of
war that started among them as soon as their mud-hook bit the
holding-ground.
A boat put off from the tug next day, and the three important-looking
men were in it. But Captain Holstrom warned them away from us. The
spokesman shouted his message. He was angry, and he still dealt in
threats. In order to impress upon those gentlemen that we were not at
all interested in their threats, the captain and I turned our backs on
them, and after a time they bawled themselves out of breath and returned
to the tug.
They kept up those tactics for most of a week. They were certainly
stubborn and insolent persons, and they were fighting for big money. But
the more they raved and threatened, the more at peace with myself and
my conscience I felt. We were fighting for our own now, and they had
established the code.
Then at last the boat came with a white flag. The spokesman politely
stated that they had come to talk some business in private, and begged
to be allowed to come on board.
Miss Kama was with me on deck when they climbed up the ladder. She had
resumed her woman’s garb, and they stared at her in frank astonishment
and admiration. She did look particularly sweet, her little cap on her
curls, her sweater displaying her winsome curves of beauty.
She seemed to astonish them, I say. The next moment she astonished _me_.
She walked into the wheel-house by my side, and was the first to speak.
“Gentlemen,” she said to the three, “you have seen with your own eyes
how this poor boy has suffered. You can’t see how I have suffered as I
have watched him do what he has done, but the marks are on my soul, I
know. There is law in the world, and all that, and men are too apt to
get angry in law when there is much money concerned. Can’t you all keep
from being angry to-day, and be wise, and decide on what is right?”
They looked at one another and the spokesman stammered something about
being over there to have a heart-to-heart talk.
“May I not stay?” she asked, wistfully. “I won’t say a word to bother
you--I won’t move unless you start to quarrel--and then I’ll only remind
you that there’s a lady present.” The queer little smile she gave them
started the grins on their faces. The ice was broken.
Those men were human once more. The girl had given the magic touch to
the conference.
We had not been getting anywhere at all, in the past, and we woke up and
realized it as we stood there with the girl’s presence toning us down.
It had been man’s bluff and bluster; they had arrived ready mad and I
felt that I knew what ailed them outside of the mere money part of the
thing.
“Gentlemen,” I said, “if it hadn’t been for Marcena Keedy’s tongue you
would have shown a better side to us when you arrived here.” Nobody
seemed ready to say anything for a moment and I went on. “I reckon he
told, you that he was our partner and that we have cheated him.”
“He had quite a story to tell when he reported the matter to the
underwriters,” admitted the lawyer.
“After you sized him up, you naturally decided that men who could cheat
Keedy must be the champion renegades of the Pacific coast! I can’t blame
you much for the way you came banging up against us. I don’t know what
else he has said to our prejudice, and I don’t care. Now that you are
here with us, face to face, and we’re down on a real man-basis, we don’t
need to paw over what a liar has said. I want you to call that man Keedy
on to the _Zizania_, even though he poisons the air. What I have to say
I’ll say in his hearing.”
I’m pretty sure that Keedy did not relish making that call, but the men
who went after him brought him. He had a gambler’s face and nerve and
he put on his best front; he even disregarded Miss Kama’s presence and
lighted a cigar to appear more at ease, and I plucked it from between
his jaws and flung it out of the window.
“I want the floor for only a few moments, gentlemen,”
I told the group. “I’m going to tell you how this expedition was
organized, how this person Keedy fitted in; and what happened.” And I
did tell them.
It was necessary for the lawyer to appoint Capt. Rask Holstrom as
special guard to keep Keedy’s mouth shut while I talked, but the rules
of a court-room prevailed after that.
“I’ll admit, gentlemen,” I said when I had finished my little story,
“that we have acted like children so far as the legal side of this thing
goes. But it seemed only a crazy scheme at best when we started out--I
couldn’t feel that I was dealing with any reality. After we arrived here
we did the best we could, and we have been too busy to study up law.
But I want to say that Captain Holstrom and I are not thieves by nature.
I’ll show you a thief, however. There he stands!” I pointed to Keedy.
“He stole from us a box of bullion worth twenty thousand dollars. I know
that he recovered two more boxes. Now that you are proposing to handle
this matter man-fashion, Captain Holstrom and I stand ready to give
to owners what is fairly their own. I advise you to ask Keedy what he
proposes to do!” The lawyer asked him in mighty prompt fashion.
“Up to date nobody seems to be making any showdown except in talk,” said
Mr. Keedy. “I’ll cash in conversation just as far as anybody.”
“But how does it happen, Keedy, that when you gave us your other
information you did not say that you had any of the gold in your hands?”
asked the lawyer.
He scowled and did not answer.
“If these men turn their bullion over on a square lay, are you prepared
to do the same?”
“I’ll talk business after I have seen them turn it over.”
“That’s a rather queer attitude for you to take, Keedy, after your talk
to the underwriters and to me.”
But the renegade did not show any inclination to come across with
anything definite.
I knew well enough that he could not. His try with those divers had cost
high and it was safe to presume that he had realized on every ounce of
the bullion his men had recovered and had planted the money. My rancor
was deep and I walked up to him and declared my belief.
“You understand, Keedy, that you must produce the bullion or its value
in money or our bargain doesn’t stand,” said the lawyer.
I did not need that declaration to be assured that the villain had sold
us without regard to our rights or our safety. And sudden fervor and
determination thrilled through and through me. I proposed to show those
men from San Francisco the difference between Marcena Keedy and the
partners on whom he had pasted his dirty label. Mere talk was not as
convincing proof as I desired. I had already made an investment of my
best strength and all my courage and I had much to show. But I felt
that if those men could see with their own eyes what that investment
signified in the way of human endurance, they would meet me in more
generous spirit when we came to make our bargain.
Up to then the legal papers had only been waved under my nose in
threatening manner. I asked permission to examine them, and the lawyer
was very obliging. They were all-embracing, even to granting powers of
attorney to the underwriters’ agents to handle the matter in all its
aspects.
“Gentlemen,” I said, “I’m going down after the rest of that gold, and
every box will be put into your hands as it comes up.”
I got a glimpse at the girl’s face, but I did not dare to look into her
eyes. Her cheeks were white, and she was gasping protests which nobody
heeded, for those men were listening to something which filled their
ears just then:
“And after you see how I am bucking hell for your sakes, well, then we
shall see what you have to say to me--man to man!”