DOWN BELOW
George and Hank went forward to superintend the work of the Chinks on
the bowsprit; Candon, at the wheel and well content with the work of
the night, felt thirsty. There was no one to fetch him a drink, tea was
what he fancied and thinking of tea made him think of the tea things
which were in the cabin. Then he remembered what Hank had said about
the cabin door being closed.
It occurred to him now that the girl had bolted the door. No doubt the
poor creature was half crazy with fright. It had not occurred before to
the ingenuous and benevolent B. C. that the girl must look on her new
captors as more terrible than even the white slavers. The yelling and
the shooting, the stampeding of the camp, the way she had been seized,
caught up and carried off—why, what must she think of them! Up to this
he had been too busy to think himself. It was only now, as Hank would
have said, that the thing suddenly hit him on the head like an orange.
“Hank!” shouted B. C.
“Coming,” replied Hank. He came aft.
“I’m thinking of the girl down below, it’s she that’s most likely
fastened the door, she’s most likely scared out of her life the way
we’ve took her off and not knowing who we are.”
“Sure,” said Hank.
“She nearly tore my head off as I was carrying her—I remember getting a
cat out of a trap once, it acted just the same—scared—”
“Listen,” said Hank, who was standing close to the cabin skylight.
The skylight was a bit open and fastened from inside; through the
opening came sounds as of someone moving about.
“She’s moving,” said B. C. “She’s got over her fright. Down with you,
Hank, and get her story, tell her I’ll be down when George comes aft,
tell her she’s as safe with us as she’d be with her gran’mother.”
Hank descended.
Candon heard him knock—then his voice.
“Halloo there.”
Silence.
“Halloo there.”
Then came a determined little voice.
“Clear off—I’ve got a pistol—”
Candon, listening, remembered the Lugger pistol he had left on the
cabin table.
Then Hank’s voice.
“Don’t be scared, com’n’ open the door, don’t be scared.”
The voice: “I’m not a person to be scared—you ought to know that.”
Down below the perplexed Hank, standing before the closed door, was at
pause for a moment. Why ought he to have known that? Was she mad after
all?
“Well, open the door anyhow,” said he. “Don’t you know we’re your
friends. Good Lord, don’t you know what we’ve risked getting you away
from that lot? Come on—all the food and stuff’s in the lockers and
lazarette and we’re clean perishing for something to eat.”
“That’s good,” said the voice, “you’ll have to perish till morning,
then we’ll talk. Now go away, please.”
“Whach you say?”
“Scatter.”
A long pause. Then Hank’s voice, angry. “I tell you what—I wish to the
Lord we’d left you there.”
And the voice: “You’ll be wishing it more when you’re in the
penitentiary.”
Then Candon could almost hear the perplexed Hank scratching his head. A
long pause. Then Hank:
“But for the Lord’s sake, you don’t think we want to do you any harm?”
The voice: “Then what did you want to do?”
Hank: “Get you away from that lot.”
The voice: “What for?”
Hank: “What _for_—why to save you from them—to save you body and
soul—didn’t you _know_ they were taking you to perdition,—clean
perdition.”
Then the voice, after a moment’s pause: “I don’t know whether you’re
toughs or religious cranks. It doesn’t matter. Anyhow this door doesn’t
open s’long as it’s dark. Now clear, come again in the morning and, if
you take my advice, steer straight for Santa Barbara. If you put me
ashore safe by morning maybe I’ll try and help you with the police, but
I don’t promise—now clear.”
Hank cleared.
On deck he found George who had come aft. “She’s gone bughouse,” said
Hank, “or else she was one of them, helping in the contraband.”
He recounted the dialogue. “She’s got that Lugger pistol and seems to
me, boys, she’s got the game. It’s worse than Pittsburg. Called me a
religious crank. Anyhow she’s got us, got the grub under her thumb
unless we make out with the rice and truck the Chinks feed on.”
“I can’t make it out,” said George. “I’d have sworn by the look we got
at her, through the glass, that she was a prisoner with those scamps.
D’y’ remember the way she carried on, went and threw herself down on
the ground with her face hidden in her arm?”
“Seems to me,” said Hank, “we’ve been reading into the situation more
than was in it. She was no prisoner. She was one of them—daughter most
likely of that Jew woman I hauled off you—well, I wish we’d left her
alone—and to think of the size of her sitting up and crowing like that.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” said George, “it’s the day of the flapper. She most
likely was running that show. It’s part of the new world—the millennium
that was to come after the war!”
Candon alone said nothing. The thing had hit him even harder than Hank.
The knight errant in him was flattened out, at least for the moment.
He remembered the cat he had released from the trap and how it had
clawed him—but it had taken milk from his hand immediately after and
become his friend, whereas this creature—! Then it came to him out of
his own mind—for Hank’s words had produced little effect on him—that
the truth was he had released her from no trap. She was part and parcel
with those scoundrels, a vicious girl made vicious no doubt from bad
association. This conviction suddenly coming to his mind produced an
uplift.
“Boys,” said B. C. suddenly, “we’ll tame her. There’s something moving
in this more than we can see. Anyhow, we’ve got her away from those
ginks to start with.”
“That’s true,” said Hank, his mind taking suddenly the colour of
Candon’s. But George was of rougher stuff than these idealists. He went
to the skylight and cautiously tried to peep, but could see nothing,
then he listened but could hear nothing. He came back to the others.
“She’s lying down, most likely, can’t see her or hear her—it’s all very
well talking of taming—what do you think this show is? I didn’t start
out to tame girls, don’t know how to begin, either,—I know, it’s as
much my fault as yours—we shouldn’t have mixed up in the business—and
I tell you we are in a tight place. That crowd will swear anything
against us and she’ll back them. She talked of the police. That’s just
so, all these white slavers and dope sellers and contrabanders are hand
in glove with the police. They couldn’t do their business else; we
should have left them alone.”
“Now that’s clean wrong,” said Hank. “Doesn’t matter a rap if the
girl’s a tough, we saved her, anyhow. We did the right thing and she
can’t make it wrong by being wrong herself.”
“That’s a fact,” said Candon.
“Maybe,” replied George. “All the same she’s done us out of our bunks,
and what are you going to do with her, anyway? Here you are tied up
with a girl, you’ve taken her from her mother, if that old Jew woman
was her mother, ripped her clean out of her environment, she’s on our
hands. If she doesn’t go back to that lot, what are we to do with her?”
Hank got peppery. “Why in the nation didn’t you think of that before we
took her,” asked he.
“Why you know well enough,” answered the other, “we thought that lot
had stolen her away from her people, naturally I thought we’d put her
back again with her people, whereas, now, look where we are. Suppose
even we do tame her, as you call it, and she goes straight, who’s to
feed her and keep her?”
“Why, Bud,” said Hank, “we’ll manage somehow. Look at you with all your
dollars, what better use could you make of a few of them, and we’ll
help.”
“Yes, we’ll help,” said Candon, forgetting the fact that he was due for
either the penitentiary or hoofing it to Callao from the Bay of Whales.
“We’ll help and the three of us will make out somehow.”
The millionaire said nothing for a moment. He was about to fly out at
the cool way these benefactors of humanity were disposing of his credit
and coin. Then he calmed down and said nothing and went forward to get
some of the “rice and truck the Chinks feed on” for his companions,
also a beaker of water.
The weather was warm, so warm that sleeping on deck was no penance and
Charley being called to the wheel the _Wear Jack_ and her strange cargo
snored on south—ever south—under the night of stars.