“There was a stairs leading down from that parlour to a landing stage,
and when they’d stripped the guy of his pocket-book and loose money,
they gave him a row off to a whaler that was due out with the morning
tide and got ten dollars for the carcase. Jack Bone was the boatman
they always used, and it was Jack Bone told most of the story I’m
telling you now.
“Then they comes back and closes up the bar, and sits down to
investigate the notebook, and there, sure enough, was the indications,
the latitude and longitude, with notes such as ‘big bed to west of the
break in the reef,’ and so on.
“‘That does it,’ says Johnstone; ‘we’re made men, sure; this beats
ward politics by a mile and a half,’ says he. ‘It’s only a question of
a schooner and hands to work her and diving dresses; we don’t want no
labour; see here what the blighter says, “native labour sufficient.”
Lord love me! what a swab, writing all that down; hadn’t he no memory
to carry it in?’
“He’d struck the truth. There’s some chaps never easy unless they’re
putting things on paper. I’ve seen chaps keeping diaries, sort of
logs, and putting down every time they’d scratched their heads or
sneezed, blame fools same as Appleby.
“Well, Logan sits thinking things over, and says he: ‘We’re both in
this thing, though it’s my find. Still I’m not grumbling. What’s the
shares to be?’
“‘Half shares,’ says Johnstone, prompt. Logan does another think:
“‘Right,’ says he, ‘and we each pays our shot in the fitting out of
the expedition.’
“‘I’m agreeable,’ says the other, with a grin on his face, which maybe
wouldn’t have been there if he’d known what was going on in Logan’s
mind.
“Next morning they starts to work to look for a likely schooner;
Johnstone keeping the bar and Logan doing the prospecting. It wasn’t
an easy job, for they had to keep things secret. They knew enough of
the Law to be afraid of it, and though this island of Appleby’s was
uncharted, they weren’t going to lay no claims to it with the
Britishers popping up, maybe, or the French or the Yanks with priority
claims, and every dam liar from Vancouver to Panama swearing he’d done
the discovering of it first. No, their plan was to sneak out and grab
what they could, working double shifts and skimming the hull lagoon in
one big coop that’d take them maybe a year. Then when they’d got their
pearls and stored their shell, they reckoned to bring the pearls back
to ’Frisco, where Johnstone had the McGaffery syndicate behind him,
who’d help him to dispose of them, and after that he reckoned if
things went well, to go back and fetch the shell. Pearl shell runs
from three hundred to a thousand dollars a ton depending on quality,
and gold-tipped being second quality the stuff would be worth carting.
“Well, Logan had luck and he managed to buy Pat Ginnell’s old
schooner, the _Heart of Ireland_, for two thousand dollars, Pat having
struck it rich in the fruit business and disposing of his sea
interests; they paid twelve hundred dollars for diving gear and a
thousand for trade goods to pay the workers, stick tobacco and all
such; then they had to provision her, reckoning the island would give
them all the fish and island truck they’d want, and, to cap the
business, they had to get a crew that wouldn’t talk, Kanakas or
Chinks—they shipped Chinks. Logan knew enough navigating to take her
there, and Johnstone was used to the sea, so they were their own
afterguard.
“Then one day, when all was ready, Johnstone sold out his interest in
the saloon, and the next day, or maybe the day after, out they put.