During the course of the next few days Strokher heard the different
versions of the affair in the hut over and over again till he knew its
smallest details. He learned how the "Boomskys" fell upon Ryder's
champagne like wolves upon a wounded buck, how they drank it from
"enameled-ware" coffee-cups, from tin dippers, from the bottles
themselves; how at last they even dispensed with the tedium of removing
the corks and knocked off the heads against the table-ledge and drank
from the splintered bottoms; how they quarreled over the lees and dregs,
how ever and always fresh supplies were forthcoming, and how at last
Hardenberg, Ally Bazan and Slick Dick stood up from the table in the
midst of the seven inert bodies; how they ransacked the place for the
priceless furs; how they failed to locate them; how the conviction grew
that this was the wrong place after all, and how at length Hardenberg
discovered the trap-door that admitted to the cellar, where in the dim
light of the uplifted lanterns they saw, corded in tiny bales and
packages, the costliest furs known to commerce.
Ally Bazan had sobbed in his excitement over that vision and did not
regain the power of articulate speech till the "loot" was safely stowed
in the 'tween-decks and Hardenberg had given order to come about.
"Now," he had observed dryly, "now, lads, it's Hongkong--or bust."
The tackle had fouled aloft and the jib hung slatting over the sprit
like a collapsed balloon.
"Cast off up there, Nick!" called Hardenberg from the wheel.
Nickerson swung himself into the rigging, crying out in a mincing voice
as, holding to a rope's end, he swung around to face the receding hut:
"By-bye-skevitch. We've had _such_ a charming evening. _Do_ hope-sky
we'll be able to come again-off." And as he spoke the lurch of the
_Bertha_ twitched his grip from the rope. He fell some thirty feet to
the deck, and his head carromed against an iron cleat with a resounding
crack.
"Here's luck," observed Hardenberg, twelve hours later, when Slick Dick,
sitting on the edge of his bunk, looked stolidly and with fishy eyes
from face to face. "We wa'n't quite short-handed enough, it seems."
"Dotty for fair. Dotty for fair," exclaimed Ally Bazan; "clean off 'is
nut. I s'y, Dick-ol'-chap, wyke-up, naow. Buck up. Buck up. _'Ave_ a
drink."
But Nickerson could only nod his head and murmur: "A few
more--consequently--and a good light----" Then his voice died down to
unintelligible murmurs.
"We'll have to call at Juneau," decided Hardenberg two days later. "I
don't figure on navigating this 'ere bath-tub to no Hongkong whatsoever,
with three hands. We gotta pick up a couple o' A.B.'s in Juneau, if so
be we can."
"How about the loot?" objected Strokher. "If one of those hands gets
between decks he might smell--a sea-otter, now. I put it to you he
might."
"My son," said Hardenberg, "I've handled A.B.'s before;" and that
settled the question.
During the first part of the run down, Nickerson gloomed silently over
the schooner, looking curiously about him, now at his comrades' faces,
now at the tumbling gray-green seas, now--and this by the hour--at his
own hands. He seemed perplexed, dazed, trying very hard to get his
bearings. But by and by he appeared, little by little, to come to
himself. One day he pointed to the rigging with an unsteady forefinger,
then, laying the same finger doubtfully upon his lips, said to Strokher:
"A ship?"
"Quite so, quite so, me boy."
"Yes," muttered Nickerson absently, "a ship--of course."
Hardenberg expected to make Juneau on a Thursday. Wednesday afternoon
Slick Dick came to him. He seemed never more master of himself. "How did
I come aboard?" he asked.
Hardenberg explained.
"What have we been doing?"
"Why, don't you remember?" continued Hardenberg. He outlined the voyage
in detail. "Then you remember," he went on, "we got up there to Point
Barrow and found where the Russian fellows had their post, where they
caught sea-otters, and we went ashore and got 'em all full and lifted
all the skins they had----"
"'Lifted'? You mean _stole_ them."
"Come here," said the other. Encouraged by Nickerson's apparent
convalescence, Hardenberg decided that the concrete evidence of things
done would prove effective. He led him down into the 'tween-decks. "See
now," he said. "See this packing-case"--he pried up a board--"see these
'ere skins. Take one in y'r hand. Remember how we found 'em all in the
cellar and hyked 'em out while the beggars slept?"
"_Stole_ them? You say we got--that is _you_ did--got somebody
intoxicated and stole their property, and now you are on your way to
dispose of it."
"Oh, well, if you want to put it thataway. Sure we did."
"I understand----Well----Let's go back on deck. I want to think this
out."
The _Bertha Millner_ crept into the harbour of Juneau in a fog, with
ships' bells tolling on every side, let go her anchor at last in
desperation and lay up to wait for the lifting. When this came the Three
Crows looked at one another wide-eyed. They made out the drenched town
and the dripping hills behind it. The quays, the custom house, the one
hotel, and the few ships in the harbour. There were a couple of whalers
from 'Frisco, a white, showily painted passenger boat from the same
port, a Norwegian bark, and a freighter from Seattle grimy with
coal-dust. These, however, the _Bertha's_ company ignored. Another boat
claimed all their attention. In the fog they had let go not a
pistol-shot from her anchorage. She lay practically beside them. She was
the United States revenue cutter _Bear._
"But so long as they can't _smell_ sea-otter skin," remarked Hardenberg,
"I don't know that we're any the worse."
"All the syme," observed Ally Bazan, "I don't want to lose no bloomin'
tyme a-pecking up aour bloomin' A.B.'s."
"I'll stay aboard and tend the baby," said Hardenberg with a wink. "You
two move along ashore and get what you can--Scoovies for choice. Take
Slick Dick with you. I reckon a change o' air might buck him up."
When the three had gone, Hardenberg, after writing up the painfully
doctored log, set to work to finish a task on which the adventurers had
been engaged in their leisure moments since leaving Point Barrow. This
was the counting and sorting of the skins. The packing-case had been
broken open, and the scanty but precious contents littered an improvised
table in the hold. Pen in hand, Hardenberg counted and ciphered and
counted again. He could not forbear a chuckle when the net result was
reached. The lot of the skins--the pelt of the sea-otter is ridiculously
small in proportion to its value--was no heavy load for the average man.
But Hardenberg knew that once the "loot" was safely landed at the
Hongkong pierhead the Three Crows would share between them close upon
ten thousand dollars. Even--if they had luck, and could dispose of the
skins singly or in small lots--that figure might be doubled.
"And I call it a neat turn," observed Hardenberg. He was aroused by the
noise of hurried feet upon the deck, and there was that in their sound
that brought him upright in a second, hand on hip. Then, after a second,
he jumped out on deck to meet Ally Bazan and Strokher, who had just
scrambled over the rail.
"Bust. B-u-s-t!" remarked the Englishman.
"'Ere's 'ell to pay," cried Ally Bazan in a hoarse whisper, glancing
over at the revenue cutter.
"Where's Nickerson?" demanded Hardenberg.
"That's it," answered the colonial. "That's where it's 'ell. Listen
naow. He goes ashore along o' us, quiet and peaceable like, never
battin' a eye, we givin' him a bit o' jolly, y' know, to keep him
chirked up as ye might s'y. But so soon as ever he sets foot on shore,
abaout faice he gaoes, plumb into the Custom's orfice. I s'ys, 'Wot all
naow, messmite? Come along aout o' that.' But he turns on me like a
bloomin' babby an s'ys he: 'Hands orf, wretch!' Ay, them's just his
words. Just like that, 'Hands orf, wretch!' And then he nips into the
orfice an' marches fair up to the desk an' sy's like this--we heerd him,
havin' followed on to the door--he s'ys, just like this:
"'Orfficer, I am a min'ster o' the gospel, o' the Methodis'
denomineye-tion, an' I'm deteyined agin my will along o' a pirate ship
which has robbed certain parties o' val-able goods. Which syme I'm
pre-pared to attest afore a no'try publick, an' lodge informeye-tion o'
crime. An',' s'ys he, 'I demand the protection o' the authorities an'
arsk to be directed to the American consul.'
"S'y, we never wyted to hear no more, but hyked awye hot foot. S'y, wot
all now. Oh, mee Gord! eyen't it a rum gao for fair? S'y, let's get
aout o' here, Hardy, dear."
"Look there," said Hardenberg, jerking his head toward the cutter, "how
far'd we get before the customs would 'a' passed the tip to _her_ and
she'd started to overhaul us? That's what they feed her for--to round up
the likes o' us."
"We got to do something rather soon," put in Strokher. "Here comes the
custom house dinghy now."
As a matter of fact, a boat was putting off from the dock. At her stern
fluttered the custom house flag.
"Bitched--bitched for fair!" cried Ally Bazan.
[Illustration: "'ERE'S 'ELL TO PAY!"