ST. NICOLAS
The Kuro Shiwo current drives northward up the coast of Japan, crosses
the Pacific and comes down the Pacific Coast of America, bathing the
Channel Islands and giving them their equable temperature. This great
current is a world of its own; it has its kelp forests, where the shark
hides, like a tiger, and its own peculiar people, led by the great
swordfish of Japan. Japan not only sends her swordsmen of the sea to
keep this moving street-like world, she lends her colours, in blues
vivid and surprising as the skies and waters of her shadowless pictures.
One morning, shortly after sunrise, George, fast asleep in his bunk,
was hauled out by Hank to “see the Islands.” He tumbled out and, just
as he was, in his pyjamas, followed on deck.
Between the Kuro Shiwo and the wind the _Wear Jack_ was making a good
ten knots. Pont Concepcion on the mainland lay almost astern, and the
sun, with his feet still on the mountains beyond Santa Barbara, was
chasing to death a fog whose last banners were fluttering amidst the
foot hills.
Away ahead, like vast ships under press of sail, rode the San Lucas
Islands, San Miguel, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, their fog-filled cañons
white in the sunlight.
Later in the morning, with the San Lucas Islands far astern, San
Nicolas showed up like a flake of spar on the horizon to the south; to
the sou’-east appeared a trace of the mountains of Santa Catalina.
Candon, who was on deck talking to George, pointed towards Santa
Catalina. “Looks pretty lonely, don’t it?” said he. “Well, that place
is simply swarming with millionaires. Say, you’re something in that way
yourself, aren’t you? So I ought to keep my head muzzled, but you’ll
understand. I’m not going against you, but things in general. I reckon
if you’d ever roomed in Tallis Street, ’Frisco, you’d know what I mean.
I’ve seen big poverty and when I see millionaires sunning themselves,
it gets my goat—now you know what I’m gettin’ at.”
“Look here, B. C.,” said George, “cut it out. Most of the millionaires
I know live on pap and pills and work like gun mules—”
“Do you?” asked Candon laughing.
“No, I don’t, but I expect I will some time; anyhow, one fool exception
doesn’t count. What I’m getting at is this, chaps like you and Hank get
it in your heads that the bigger a man’s pile is, the more he enjoys
himself. It’s the other way about, seems to me; also that the rich man
lives in a world of his own with laws of his own—”
“So he does,” said the other. “Now you listen to me. When Prohibition
started, how did the poor man stand? Dry, that’s how he stood, looking
at the other people with their cellars full of drink. They knew the law
was coming and they laid in.”
“That’s true,” said George.
“It is,” said Candon, “and some day, maybe, I’ll tell you a yarn about
how it hit me once.”
Hank came on deck and stood with eyes shaded, looking at the ghost of
Santa Catalina on the sky line. “There she is,” said Hank. “You can
almost see the flags waving and hear the bands playing. Bud, didn’t
you ever go fishing down that way? I reckon it was that place gave
Vanderdecken his first pull towards thievery, seeing the water is thick
with Bank Presidents and Wheat Cornerers only waiting to be collected
for ransom. Say, B. C., if you know anything about old Vanderdecken,
tell us why he didn’t hold the folks he caught to ransom as well as
picking the diamonds and money off them. That’s what I’d have done. I
would sure. Hullo!”
A leaping tuna, as long as a man and curved like a sword, left the sea
on the starboard bow, showed its colours to the sun, and vanished with
a splash.
“Tuna,” said Candon.
“Well, what’s he doing here?” asked Hank, “he’s out of his waters,
this ain’t the tuna grounds.”
“How do you know?” asked George.
“Lord, oughtn’t I to know,” replied Hank. “Why I was on the fish
commission ship on this section of the Pacific Coast, sounding and
dredging and taking specimens of the fish and the weeds and Lord knows
what all. That was five years ago, but I reckon the tuna grounds
haven’t altered since then.”
“They lie south of San Clemente, don’t they?” said Candon.
“They do not, you’re thinking of albacore. The tuna grounds are east of
Santa Catalina mostly, close to Avalon. Why, I know all that place’s
well as I know my own office. I’ve got a hellnation memory for facts
and I could reel off to you the lie of the fishing grounds most all
along the coast. Right from Rocky Point on the mainland the fish begin
running in shoals. Benito you get mostly at Rocky Point, then albacore;
but if you strike out for the Islands you’ll begin to get big things.”
“Whales?” asked George.
“Whales mostly stick to the Santa Barbara channel, there aren’t many
now, but you get killers and sulphur bottoms and gray whales—sharks,
too.”
Hank lit a cigarette and leaning on the port rail looked across the
water to the east. Then he came forward a bit and looked ahead.
Away ahead and a bit to westward something showed. It was San Nicolas,
San Nicolas no longer sharply defined like a flame of spar, but with
its head in a turban of new-formed cloud. This island, eight or
nine miles long, forms the western outpost of the Channel Islands.
Unprotected, like them, by Port Concepcion, it receives the full force
of wind and weather.
The others came close to Hank.
“That’s her,” said Hank, “that’s San Nicolas. Ever been ashore there,
B. C.?”
“Not such a fool,” said Candon. “I’ve cruised about these waters a good
bit, but I’ve never met a man who wanted to put his foot there. It’s
all wind and sand for one thing.”
“Well,” said Hank, “I’ve been thinking, from what I know of the place,
that Vanderdecken may have used San Nicolas for one of his ports of
call. What do you say, B. C.?”
“Who knows?” said Candon.
“Did you land on San Nicolas?” asked George.
“Oh yes; we were hanging off the kelp beds three or four days.”
“I’d like to land there,” said George.
“Well, it’s easily done,” said Hank. “We could tie up the kelp for
the matter of that, only I’m afraid the _Wear Jack’s_ a bit too big.
She might drag out. Away down, further south, the kelp vines run to a
thousand foot long and you could most moor a battleship to them, but
it’s different here. However, we can anchor if you want to. What do
you say, B. C.?”
“I’m with you,” said Candon. “We have plenty of time and a day won’t
matter.”
“Not a cent,” said George.
Candon went and leaned on the starboard rail. For the last two days, in
fact, ever since he had given away the whereabouts of Vanderdecken’s
cache, he had seemed at times depressed. Sometimes he would be in high
good spirits and sometimes moping and silent. Hank had noticed it first
and he spoke of it now as he and George went forward to the bow, where
they hung watching the boost of the water and the foam gouts like
marble shavings on lazalite.
“Notice B. C. has the dumps again,” said Hank. “I wonder what’s working
on him? Maybe he feels himself a skunk leading us on to old man
Vanderdecken.”
“He said that was all right,” said George, “said he was acting
perfectly straight and that the man was his enemy. Y’know, I believe in
B. C.”
“So do I,” said Hank, “but what in the nation’s he moulting about,
that’s what I want to know. I take it it’s just sensitiveness; even
though the Dutchman is his enemy, he don’t like giving him away. I can
understand it.”
“I can’t quite make him out,” said George, “he’s intelligent and has
fine ideas about things, yet he always seems to have lived pretty
rough—”
“And what’s the harm of that,” cut in Hank. “Why, it’s the guys that
have lived pretty rough as you call it that are the only educated
citizens as far as I can make out. They’ve had their noses rubbed into
the world. Why look at me—I’m not saying I’m much, but all I’ve learned
of any good to me hasn’t come out of class-rooms or colleges. Mind you,
I’m not against them, I don’t say they’re no use, but I do say what
makes a man is what he rubs against.”
“He seems to have been rubbing against some pretty queer characters to
judge by the _Heart of Ireland_ lot,” said George.
“That’s my point,” said Hank. “They’ve turned him respectable. There’s
many a man would have gone to the bad only he’s been frightened off
it by the toughs he’s met. They’re better than Sunday school books. I
know, for I’ve been there.”
An hour later, San Nicolas was plain before them and an hour before
sunset Beggs Rock was on the starboard bow and only a mile away. San
Nicolas, itself close to them, now showed its peak, nine hundred feet
high with its changeless turban of cloud, rosy gold in the evening
glow. From the peak the island spilled away showing cleft and cañon and
high ground treeless and devoid of life.
They cast anchor just outside the kelp ring. The sun was just leaving
the sea. Nothing showed but the brown lateen sails of a Chinese junk,
standing in shore about two miles away. She rounded a promontory and
vanished from sight.
“That’s a Chow fishing boat,” said Hank. “They go scraping along all
down this coast, hunting for abalones and turtle and whatever they can
lay their hands on.”
“That’s so,” said Candon, “I’ve met in with them right down to the Gulf
of California and beyond. It’s against the law to take abalones in most
places round here, but much they care.”
“They’d lay hands on any old thing,” said Hank. “Wonder what that crowd
is doing here?”
The morrow was to tell him.