* * * * *
THE “HEART OF IRELAND”
I THE CAPTAIN GETS A SHIP
After the _Penguin_ job, Captain Blood and Billy Harman, that simple
sailorman, had come back to Frisco, the very port of all others one
might fancy they would have avoided, but Billy had been a power in
Frisco, and, reckoning on his power, he had taken the Captain back with
him.
“There’s no call to be afraid,” said Billy; “there was more in that job
than the likes of us. Why, they’d pay us money to tuck us away. Whatser
use freezin’ round N’ York or Boston? There’s nothin’ to be done on the
Eastern side. Frisco’s warm.”
“Damn warm!” put in the Captain.
“Maybe; but there’s ropes there I can pull an’ make bells ring. Clancy
and Rafferty and all that crowd are with me, and we’ve done nothin’.
Why, we’re plaster saints to the chaps that are walkin’ round in Frisco
with cable watch chains across their weskits.”
They came back, and Billy Harman proved to be right. No one molested
them. San Francisco was heaving in the throes of an election, and
people had no time to bother about such small fry as the Captain and
his companion, while, owing to the good offices of the Clancys and
Raffertys, Billy managed to pick up a little money here and there and
to assist his friend in doing likewise.
Then things began to get slack, and to-day, as bright a morning as ever
broke on the Pacific coast, the Captain, down on his luck and without
even the price of a drink, was hanging about a wharf near the China
docks waiting for his companion.
He took his seat on a mooring bitt, and, lighting a pipe, began to
review the situation. Gulls were flitting across the blue water,
whipped by the westerly wind blowing in from the Golden Gate, a Chinese
shrimp boat with huge lugsail bellying to the breeze was blundering
along for the upper bay, crossing the bows of a Stockton river boat
and threatening it with destruction; pleasure yachts, burly tugs, and
a great four-master just coming in with the salt of Cape Horn on her
sun-blistered sides--all these made a picture bright and moving as the
morning.
It depressed the Captain.
Business and pleasure have little appeal to a man who has no business
and no money for pleasure. We all have our haunting terrors, and
the Captain, who feared nothing in an ordinary way, had his. When
in extremely low water, he was always haunted by the dread of dying
without a penny in his pocket. To be found dead with empty pockets was
the last indignity. His Irish pride revolted at the thought, and he was
turning it over in his mind now as he sat watching the shipping.
Then he caught a glimpse of a figure advancing toward him along the
quay side.
It was Mr. Harman.
“So there you are,” said he, as he drew up to the Captain. “I been
lookin’ for you all along the wharf.”
“Any news?” asked the Captain.
Mr. Harman took a pipe from his pocket, and explored the empty bowl
with his little finger; then, leaning against the mooring bitt, he cut
some tobacco up, filled the pipe, and lit it. Only when the pipe was
alight did he seem to hear the Captain’s question.
“That depends,” said he. “I don’t know how you’re feelin’, but my
feelin’ is to get out of here, and get out quick.”
“There’s not much news in that,” said Blood. “I’ve had it in my head
for days. What’s the use of talking? There’s only one way out of Frisco
for you or me, and that’s by way of a fo’c’s’le, and that’s a way I’m
not going to take.”
“Maybe,” said Harman, “you’ll let me say my say before putting your
hoof in my mouth. News--I should think I had news. Now, by any chance
did you ever sight the Channel Islands down the coast there lying off
Santa Barbara? First you come to the San Lucas Islands, then you come
to Santa Catalina, a big brute of an island she is, same longitude as
Los Angeles; then away out from Santa Catalina you have San Nicolas.”
“No, I’ve never struck them,” replied Blood. “What’s the matter with
them?”
“The Chinese go there huntin’ for abalone shells,” went on Harman,
disregarding the question. “I’m aimin’ at a teeny yellow bit of an
island away to the north of the San Lucas, a place you could cover with
your hat, a place no one ever goes to.”
“Well?”
“Well, there’s twenty thousand dollars in gold coin lyin’ there ready
to be took away. Only this morning news came in that one of the
See-Yup-See liners--you know them rotten old tubs, China owned, out
of Canton, in the chow an’ coffin trade--well, one of them things is
gone ashore on San Juan, that’s the name of the island. Swept clean,
she was, and hove on the rocks, and every man drowned but two Chinee
who got away on a raf’. I had the news from Clancy. The wreck’s to
be sold, and Clancy says the opinion is she’s not worth two dollars,
seein’ the chances are the sea’s broke her up by this. Well, now look
here, I know San Juan, intimate, and I know a vessel, once ashore
there, won’t break up to the sea in a hurry by the nature of the coast.
There’s some coasts will spew a wreck off in ten minutes, and some’ll
stick to their goods till there’s nuthin’ left but the starnpost and
the ribs. It’s shelvin’ water there and rocks that hold like shark’s
teeth. The _Yan-Shan_--that’s her name--will hold till the last trumpet
if she’s hove up proper, which, by all accounts, she is, and there’s
twenty thousand dollars aboard her.”
“Well?” said Blood.
“Well, if we could crawl down there--you an’ me--we’d put our claws on
that twenty thousand.”
“How in the nation are you going to rig out a wrecking expedition on
two cents, and suppose you could buy the wreck for two dollars--where’s
your two dollars?”
“I’m not goin’ to buy no wrecks,” replied Harman, “nor fit out
no wreckin’ expeditions. What I want is something small and easy
handled--no steam, get her out and blow down on the northwest trades,
raise San Juan and the _Yan-Shan_, lift the dollars, and blow off with
them. Why, it’s as easy as walkin’ about in your slippers!”
The Captain sighed.
“As easy as getting into the penitentiary,” said he. “First of all,
you’d have to steal a boat, and Frisco is no port to steal boats in;
second, there’s such things as telegraphs and cables. You ought to
know that after the _Penguin_ job. Then if we were caught, as we would
be, you’d have the old _Penguin_ rising like a hurricane on us. She’s
forgotten now, I know, but once a chap gets in trouble everything
that’s forgotten wakes up and shouts.”
“Maybe,” said Harman, “and maybe I’d be such a fool as to go stealin’
boats. I’m not goin’ to steal no boats. But I’m goin’ to do this thing
_somehow_, and once I set my mind on a job I does it. You mark me.
I’m fair drove crazy to get out of here and be after somethin’ with
money on the end of it, and once I’m like that and sets my think tank
boilin’, there’s fish to fry. You leave it to me. I ain’t no fool to be
gettin’ into penitentiaries. Well, let’s get a move on; there’s nothin’
like movin’ about to keep one’s ideas jumpin’.”
They walked along the wharf, stepping over mooring hawsers, and pausing
now and then to inspect the shipping. There is no port in the world to
equal San Francisco in variety and charm. Here, above all other places,
the truth is borne in on one that trade, that much abused and seemingly
prosaic word, is in reality another name for romance. Here at Frisco
all the winds of the world blow in ships whose voyages are stories.
Freighters with China mud still clinging to their anchor flukes, junks
calling up the lights and gongs of the Canton River, schooners from
the islands, whalers from the sulphur-bottom grounds, grain ships from
half the world away, the spirit of trade hauls them all in through
the Golden Gate, and, over and beyond these, the bay itself has its
romance in the ships that never leave it--junks and shrimp boats, the
boats of Greek fishermen, yachts, and all sorts of steam craft engaged
on a hundred businesses from Suisun Bay to the Guadeloupe River.
Wandering along, Blood and his companion came to Rafferty’s Wharf.
Rafferty’s Wharf is a bit of the past, a mooring place for old ships
condemned and waiting the breaking yards. It has escaped harbour boards
and fires and earthquakes, healthy trade never comes there, and very
strange deals have been completed in its dubious precincts over ships
passed as seaworthy yet held together, as Harman was explaining now to
Blood, “by the pitch in their seams mostly.”
As they came along a man who was crossing the gangway from the tank saw
Harman and hailed him.
“It’s Jack Bone,” said Harman to Blood. “Walk along and I’ll meet you
in a minute.”
Blood did as he was directed, and Harman halted at the gangway.
“You’re the man I want,” said Bone. “Who’s your friend?”
“Oh, just a chap,” replied Harman. “What’s up now?”
Bone took him by the arm, and led him along in an opposite direction
to that in which Blood was going. Bone was the landlord of the Fore
and Aft Tavern, half tavern, half sailors’ boarding house, situated
right on Rafferty’s Wharf and with a stairway down to the water from
the back premises. His face, to use Harman’s description of it, was one
grog blossom, and what he did not know of wicked wharfside ways could
scarcely be called knowledge.
“Ginnell is layin’ about, lookin’ for two hands,” said Bone. “He’s due
out this evenin’, and it’s five dollars apiece for you if you can lay
your claws on what he wants. Whites, they must be whites; you know
Ginnell.”
Harman did.
Ginnell owned a fifty-foot schooner engaged sometimes in the
shark-fishing trade, sometimes in other businesses of a more shady
description. He had a Chinese crew, and, though the customhouse laws
of San Francisco demanded only one white officer on a Chinese-manned
boat, Ginnell always made a point of carrying two men of his own colour
with him.
Being known as a hard man all along the wharfside, he sometimes found a
difficulty in supplying himself with hands.
“Yes, I know Ginnell,” replied Harman. “Him and his old shark boat by
repitation. I’ve stood near the chap in bars now and again, but I don’t
call to mind speakin’ to him. His repitation is pretty noisy.”
“Well, I can’t help that,” said Bone. “I didn’t make the chap nor his
repitation; if he had a better one, I guess ten dollars wouldn’t be
lyin’ your way.”
“Nor twenty dollars yours,” laughed Harman.
“That’s my business,” said Bone. “The question is, do you take on the
job? I’d do it all myself only there’s such a want of sailormen on the
front. It’s those durned Bands of Hope and Sailors’ Rests that sucks
’em in, fills ’em with bilge in the way of tracks and ginger beer, and
turns ’em out onfit for any job onless it’s got a silver-plated handle
to it. Mouth organs an’ the New Jerusalem is all they cares for onct
them wharf missionaries gets a holt on them. I tell you, Billy Harman,
if they don’t get up some by-law to stop these chaps propagatin’
their gospels and spoilin’ trade, the likes of me and you will be
ruined--that’s a fac’. Well, what do you say?”
All the time Mr. Bone was holding forth, Harman, who had struck an
idea, was deep in meditation. The question roused him.
“If Ginnell wants two chaps,” said he, “I believe I can fit him with
them. Anyhow, where’s he to be found?”
“He’ll be at my place at three o’clock,” said Bone, “and I’ve promised
to find the goods for him by that.”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Harman, “I’ll find the chaps and have them
at your place haff past three or so; you can leave it safe in my hands.”
“You speak as if you was certain.”
“And certain I am. I’ve got the chaps you want.”
“Now look here,” said Bone, “don’t you take on the job unless you’re
more than sure. Ginnell isn’t no boob to play up and down with; he’d
set in, mostlike, to wreck the bar if he thought I was playin’ cross
with him.”
“Don’t fret,” said Harman. “I’ll be there, and now fork out a dollar
advance, for I’ll have some treatin’ to do.”
Bone produced the money. It changed hands, and he departed, while
Harman pursued his way along the wharf toward his friend.
Blood was sitting on an empty crate.
“Well,” said he, as the other drew up, “what business?”
Harman told every word of his conversation with Bone, and, without any
addition to it, waited for the other to speak.
“Well, you’ve got the dollar,” said Blood at last, “and there’s some
satisfaction in that. I’m not the chap to take five cents off a chap
by false pretenses same’s you’ve done with Bone, but Bone’s not a man
by all accounts; he’s a crimp in man’s clothes, and if all the old
whalemen he’s filled with balloon juice and sent to perdition could
rise up and shout, I reckon his name’d be known in two hemispheres.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Harman. “What was that you were saying about
false pretenses? I haven’t used no false pretenses. They ain’t things
I’m in the habit of usin’ between man and man.”
“Well, what have you been using? You told me a moment ago you’d agreed
to furnish two hands to this chap’s order for five dollars apiece and a
dollar advance.”
“So I have.”
“And where’s your hands?”
“I’ve got them.”
“In your pocket?”
“Oh, close up!” said Harman. “I never did see such a chap as you for
wearin’ blinkers; can’t you see the end of your nose in front of you?
Well, if you can’t, I can. However, I’ll tell you the whole of the
business later when I’ve turned it round some more in my head. What
I’m after now is grub. Here’s a dollar, and I’m off to Billy Sheehan’s;
you come along with me--a dollar’s enough for two--and you can raise
your objections after you’ve got a beefsteak inside of you. Maybe
you’ll see clearer then.”
The Captain said no more, but followed Harman. Far better educated than
the latter, he had come to recognise that Harman, despite his real and
childlike simplicity in various ways, had a mind quicker than most
men’s. He would often have gone without a meal during that wandering
partnership which had lasted for nearly a year but for Harman’s
ingenuity and power of resource.
At Sheehan’s they had good beefsteak and real coffee.
“Now,” said Harman, when they had finished, “if you’re ready to listen
to reason, I’ll tell you the lay I’m on. Ginnell wants two hands. I’m
goin’ to offer myself for one, and you are goin’ to be the other.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Blood. “You mean to say I’m to sign on in
that chap’s shark boat. Is that your meaning?”
“I said nuthin’ about signin’ on in shark boats. I said we two has got
to get out of here in Ginnell’s tub. Once outside the Gate we’re all
right.”
“I see,” said Blood. “We’re to scupper Ginnell and take the boat--and
how about the penitentiary?”
“I’m blest if you haven’t got penitentiaries on the brain,” said
Harman. “If you leave this thing to me, I’ll fix it so that there’ll be
no penitentiaries in the business. Of course if we were to go into such
a fool’s job as you’re thinkin’ about, we’d lay ourselves under the
law right smart. No, the game I’m after is deeper than that, and it’s
Ginnell I’m goin’ to lay under the law. Now I’ve got to run about and
do things an’ see people. I’ll leave you here, and here’s a quarter,
and don’t you spend it till the time comes. Now you listen to me. Wait
about till haff past three, and at haff past three punctual you turn
into the Fore and Aft and walk up to the bar and lay your quarter down
and call for a drink. You’ll see me there, and if I nod to you, you
just nod to me. Then I’ll have a word in private with you.”
“Is that all?” said the Captain.
“That’s all for the present,” said Harman, rising up. “You’ll be there?”
“Yes, I’ll be there,” said Blood, “though I’m blest if I can see your
meaning.”
“You will soon,” replied the other, and, paying the score, off he went.
He turned from the wharves up an alley, and then into a fairly
respectable street of small houses. Pausing before one of these, he
knocked at the door, which was opened almost immediately by a big,
blue-eyed, sun-burned, good-natured-looking man some thirty years of
age and attired as to the upper part of him in a blue woollen jersey.
This was Captain Mike, of the Fish Patrol.
“Billy Harman!” said Captain Mike. “Come in.”
“No time,” said Harman. “I’ve just called to say a word. I wants you to
do me a favour.”
“And what’s the favour?” asked the Captain.
“Oh, nothin’ much. D’you know Ginnell?”
“Pat Ginnell?”
“That’s him.”
“Well, I should think I did know the swab. Why, he’s in with all the
Greeks, and there’s not a dog’s trick played in the bay he hasn’t his
thumb in. Him and his old shark boat. Whatcher want me to do with him?”
“Nothin’,” replied Harman, “and maybe a lot. I want you just to drop
into the Fore and Aft and sit and smoke your pipe at haff past three.
Then when I give you the wink you’ll pretend to fall asleep. I just
wants you as a witness.”
“What’s the game?” asked Captain Mike.
Harman told.
Had you been watching the two men from a distance, you might have
fancied that there was a great joke between them from the laughter of
Captain Mike and the way in which Harman was slapping his thigh. Then
the door closed, and Harman went off, steering north through a maze of
streets till he reached his lodgings.
Here he packed a few things in a bundle and had an interview with his
landlady, a motherly woman whose income was derived from a washtub and
two furnished bedrooms.
Among the other belongings which he took with him was a box of quinine
tabloids. These he placed in the pocket of his coat, and, with the
bundle under his arm, departed.
It was five minutes past three when he entered the dirty doggery
misnamed the Fore and Aft, and there before the bar behind which Bone
was serving drinks stood Ginnell.
Pat Ginnell, to give him his full name, was an Irishman of the
sure-fwhat type, who might have been a bricklayer but for his decent
clothes and sea air and the big blue anchor tattooed on the back of his
left hand. There was no one else in the bar.
“Here’s the gentleman,” said Bone, when he sighted Harman. “Up to time
and with the goods to deliver, I dare say. Harman, this is the Captain;
where’s the hands?”
“Well,” said Harman, leaning his elbows on the bar, “I believe I’ve got
them. One of them’s meself.”
“D’you mean to say you’re up to sign on with me?” asked Ginnell.
“That’s my meanin’,” said Harman.
Ginnell looked at Bone. Then he spoke.
“It won’t do,” said he. “I know you be name, Mr. Harman; you’re in with
Clancy and that crowd, and my boat’s too rough for the likes of you.”
“You needn’t fear about that,” said Harman. “I’ve done with Clancy.
What I’ve got to do is get out of Frisco and get out quick. The cops
are after me; there you have it. I’ve got to get out of here before
night--do you take me--and I’m so pressed to get out sudden I’ll take
your word for ten dollars a month without any signin’.”
Ginnell’s brow cleared.
“What are you havin’?” said he.
“I’ll take a drink of whisky,” replied Harman.
The bargain was concluded.
“And how,” said Ginnell, “what about the other chap?”
Harman wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“I’ve made an arrangement with a chap to meet me here,” said he. “He’ll
be in in a minute.”
“What’s he like?” asked Ginnell.
“Like? Why, I’ll tell you what he’s like; he wouldn’t sign on in your
tub for a hundred dollars a month.”
“Faith and you’re a nice sort of chap,” said Ginnell. “Is it playin’
the fool with me you are?”
By way of reply Harman took the box of quinine tabloids from his
pocket, opened it, showed the contents, and winked.
Bone and Ginnell understood at once.
“One of those in his drink will lay him out for an hour,” said Harman,
“without hurtin’ him. Put one in your weskit pocket, Bone--and how
about your boat?”
“She’s down below at the stairs,” replied the landlord, putting the
tabloid in his waistcoat pocket. “I’ll go and call Jim to get her
ready--a moment, gentlemen.” He vanished into a back room, and they
heard him shouting orders to Jim; then he returned, and as he passed
behind the bar who should enter but Captain Mike!
The Captain walked to the bar, called for a drink, and without as much
as a glance at the others took it to a seat in a far corner, where he
lit a pipe. Several wharf habitués loafed in, and soon the place became
hazy with tobacco smoke and horrible with the smell of rank cigars.
“Well,” said Ginnell, “where’s your man? I’m thinkin’ he’s given you
the slip, and be the powers, Mr. Harman, if he has, it’ll be the worst
for you.”
The brute in Ginnell spoke in his growl, and Harman was turning over in
his mind the fate of any unfortunate who had Ginnell for boss when the
swing door opened and Blood appeared.
“That’s him,” said Harman. “You leave him to me.”
Blood was not the sort of man to frequent a hole like the Fore and Aft,
and he frankly spat when he came in. He was in a temper, or rather the
beginning of a temper, and Harman seemed to have some difficulty in
soothing him. They had a confabulation together near the corner where
Captain Mike, his glass and pipe on the table before him, was sitting,
evidently asleep, and then Blood, seeming to agree with some matter
under discussion, allowed himself to be led to the bar.
“This is me friend, Captain Ginnell,” said Harman. “Captain, this is me
friend, Michael Blood. Looking for a ship he is.”
“I can’t offer him a ship,” said Ginnell, “but I can offer him a drink.
What are you takin’, sir?”
Blood called for a whisky.
The quinine tabloid popped into the bottom of the glass by Bone
dissolved almost immediately, nor did Blood show that he detected
the presence in his drink. He loathed quinine, and this forced dose
added to the flood of his steadily rising temper without, however,
interfering with his powers of self-control.
He was a good actor, and the way he clutched at the bar ledge shortly
after he had finished his drink left nothing to be desired.
“Let him lay down,” said Harman.
“I can’t leave the bar,” said Bone, “but if the gentleman cares to lay
down in my back room he’s welcome.”
Blood, allowing himself to be conducted to this resting place, Ginnell
followed without drawing the attention of the others in the bar.
Arrived in the back room, Blood collapsed on an old couch by the
window, and, lying there with his eyes shut, he heard the rest.
He heard the whispered consultation between Harman and the other, the
trapdoor being opened, Jim, the boatman, being called. And then he felt
a hand on his shoulder and Ginnell’s voice adjuring him to rouse up a
bit and come along for a sail.
Helped on either side by the conspirators, he allowed himself to be led
to the trapdoor.
“We’ll never get him down them steps,” said Harman, alluding to the
stairs leading down to where the boat was swaying on the green water
that was swishing and swashing against the rotten piles of the wharf.
“This is the way it’s done,” said Ginnell, and, twitching Blood’s feet
from under him, he sent him down the stairway like a bag of meal to
where Jim was waiting to receive him.
* * * * *
At half past six o’clock that day the _Heart of Ireland_--that was the
name of Ginnell’s boat--passed the tumble of the bar and took the swell
of the Pacific like a duck.
Ginnell, giving the wheel over to one of the Chinese crew, glanced
to windward, glanced back at the coast, where Tamalpais stood
cloud-wrapped and gilded by the evening sun, and then turned to the
companionway leading down to the hole of a cabin where they had
deposited their shanghaied man.
“I’m goin’ to rouse that swab up,” he said; “he ought to be recovered
by this.”
“Go easy with him,” said Harman.
“I’ll be as gentle with him as a mother,” replied the skipper of the
_Heart of Ireland_, with a ferocious grin.
Harman watched the unfortunate man descending. He had got shoulder deep
down the ladder when he suddenly vanished as if snatched below, and his
shout of astonishment and the crash of his fall came up simultaneously
to the listener at the hatch.
Then came the sounds of the fight. Harman had seen Blood fighting once,
and he had no fear at all for him. If he feared for any one, it was
Ginnell, who was crying now for mercy and apparently receiving none.
Then of a sudden came silence, and Harman slipped down the ladder.
Blood, during his incarceration, had ransacked the cabin and secured
the Captain’s revolver. He was seated now, revolver in hand, on
Ginnell’s chest, and Ginnell was lying on the cabin floor without a
kick or an ounce of fight in him.
“You haven’t killed him?” asked Harman.
“I don’t know,” replied Blood. “Speak up, you swab, and answer! Are you
dead or not?”
“Faith, I don’t know,” groaned the unfortunate. “I’m near done. What
are you up to? What game is this you’re playin’ on me? Is it murder or
what?”
“Let me talk to him,” said Harman. “Pat Ginnell, you’ve doped and
shanghaied a man--meanin’ my friend, Captain Blood--and I’ve got all
the evidence and witnesses. Captain Mike, of the Fish Patrol, is one;
he came to the Fore and Aft be request and saw the whole game. That
means the penitentiary for you if we split. You’ll say I provided the
dope. Who’s to prove it? When I told you the cops were after me I told
a lie. Who’s to prove it? I wanted you and your old tub, and I’ve got
’em. Say a word against me and see what Clancy will do to you. You
shanghaied me friend, and now you’re shanghaied yourself in your own
ship, and you’ll never dare to have the law on us because, d’you see,
we’ve got the law on you. The Captain there has got your revolver, the
coolies on deck don’t care, they never even turned a hair when they
heard you shoutin’. Now my question is, do you intend to take it quiet,
or would you sooner be hove overboard?”
“Faith and there’s no use in kicking,” replied the owner of the _Heart
of Ireland_. “I gives in.”
“Then up on your feet!” said Blood, rising and putting the revolver in
his pocket. “And up on deck with you! You’re one of the hands now, and
if you ever want to see Frisco again, you’ll take my orders and take
them smart. You’ll berth aft with us, but your rating is cabin boy, and
your pay. Up with you!”
Ginnell went up the ladder, and the others followed.
Ginnell showed to the light of day two black eyes and the marks on his
chin of the frightful uppercut that had closed the fight.
He looked like a beaten dog as Blood called the crew, in order to pick
watches with Harman.
“I take the chap that’s steering,” said Blood.
“And I takes Pat Ginnell,” said Harman.
They finished the business, and dismissed the hands, who seemed to see
nothing strange in the recent occurrence among the whites, and who
were thronging now to the fo’c’s’le for their supper, their faces all
wearing the same Chinese expression, the expression of men who know
everything, of men who know nothing.
Then, having set a course for the San Lucas Islands, and while Ginnell
was washing himself below, Blood, with his companion, leaned on the
rail and looked at the far-away coast dying out in the dusk.
“Seems strange it was only this mornin’ I projected gettin’ out like
this,” said Harman, “and here we are out, with twenty thousand dollars
ahead of us, if the _Yan-Shan_ hasn’t broke up, which she hasn’t.
’Pears to me it was worth a dose of quinine to do the job so neat with
no bones broke and no fear of the law at the end of it.”
“Maybe,” said the Captain.
He whistled softly to the accompaniment of the slashing of the bow
wash, looking over toward the almost vanished coast, above which, in
the pansy blue of the evening sky, stars were now showing like points
of silver.
II THE “YAN-SHAN”
I
The _Heart of Ireland_ was spreading her wings to the northwest trades,
making a good seven knots with the coast of California a vague line on
the horizon to port and all the blue Pacific before her.
Captain Blood was aft with his mate, leaning on the rail and
watching the foam boosting away from the stern and flowing off in
Parian-Marbaline lines on the swirl of the wake. Ginnell was forward on
the lookout, and one of the coolie crew was at the wheel.
“I’m not given to meeting trouble halfway,” said Blood, shifting his
position and leaning with his left arm on the rail, “but it ’pears to
me Pat Ginnell is taking his set-down a mighty sight too easy. He’s got
something up his sleeve.”
“So’ve we,” replied Harman. “What can he do? He laid out to shanghai
you, and, by gum, he did it. I don’t say I didn’t let him down crool,
playin’ into his hands and pretendin’ to help and gettin’ Captain Mike
as a witness, but the fac’ remains he got you aboard this hooker by
foul play, shanghaied you were, and then you turns the tables on him,
knocks the stuffin’ out of him, and turns him into a deck hand. How’s
he to complain? I’d start back to Frisco now and dare him to come
ashore with his complaints. We’ve got his ship--well, that’s his fault.
He’s no legs to stand on, that’s truth.
“Leavin’ aside this little bisness, he’s known as a crook from Benicia
right to San José. The bay reeks with him and his doin’s; settin’
Chinese sturgeon lines, Captain Mike said he was, and all but cocht,
smugglin’ and playin’ up to the Greeks, and worse. The bay side’s
hungry to catch him an’ stuff him in the penitentiary, and he hasn’t
no friends. I’m no saint, I owns it, but I’m a plaster Madonna to
Ginnell, and I’ve got friends, so have you. Well, what are you
bothering about?”
“Oh, I’m not bothering about the law,” said Blood; “only about him. I’m
going to keep my eye open and not be put asleep by his quiet ways--and
I’d advise you to do the same.”
“Trust me,” said Harman, “and more especial when we come to ’longsides
with the _Yan-Shan_.”
Now the _Yan-Shan_ had started in life somewhere early in the nineties
as a twelve-hundred-ton cargo boat in the Bullmer line; she had been
christened the _Robert Bullmer_, and her first act when the dogshores
had been knocked away was a bull charge down the launching slip,
resulting in the bursting of a hawser, the washing over of a boat, and
the drowning of two innocent spectators; her next was an attempt to
butt the Eddystone over in a fog, and, being unbreakable, she might
have succeeded only that she was going dead slow. She drifted out of
the Bullmer line on the wash of a lawsuit owing to the ramming by her
of a Cape boat in Las Palmas harbour; engaged herself in the fruit
trade in the service of the Corona Capuella Syndicate, and got on to
the Swimmer Rocks with a cargo of Jamaica oranges, a broken screw
shaft, and a blown-off cylinder cover. The ruined cargo, salvage,
and tow ruined the syndicate, and the _Robert Bullmer_ found new
occupations till the See-Yup-See Company, of Canton, picked her up,
and, rechristening, used her for conveying coffins and coolies to the
American seaboard. They had sent her to Valdivia on some business, and
on the return from the southern port to Frisco she had, true to her
instincts and helped by a gale, run on San Juan, a scrap of an island
north of the Channel Islands off the California coast. Every soul had
been lost with the exception of two Chinese coolies, who, drifting on a
raft, had been picked up and brought to San Francisco.
She had a general cargo and twenty thousand dollars in gold coin on
board, but the coolies had declared her to be a total wreck; said when
they had last sighted her she was going to pieces.
That was the yarn Harman heard through Clancy, with the intimation
that the wreck was not worth two dollars, let alone the expenses of a
salvage ship.
The story had eaten into Harman’s mind; he knew San Juan better
than any man in Frisco, and he considered that a ship once ashore
there would stick; then Ginnell turned up, and the luminous idea
of inducing Ginnell to shanghai Blood so that Blood might, with
his--Harman’s--assistance, shanghai Ginnell and use the _Heart of
Ireland_ for the picking of the _Yan-Shan’s_ pocket entered his mind.
“It’s just when we come alongside the _Yan-Shan_ we may find our worse
bother,” said Blood.
“Which way?” asked Harman.
“Well, they’re pretty sure to send some sort of a wrecking expedition
to try and salve some of the cargo, let alone those dollars.”
“See here,” said Harman, “I had the news from Clancy that morning, and
it had only just come to Frisco; it wasn’t an hour old. We put the cap
on Ginnell, and were out of the Golden Gate before sundown same day.
A wrecking ship would take all of two days to get her legs under her,
supposing any one bought the wreck, so we have two days’ start. We’ve
been makin’ seven knots and maybe a bit over; they won’t make more. So
we have two days to our good when we get there.”
“They may start a steamer out on the job,” said Blood.
“Well, now, there’s where my knowledge comes in,” said Harman. “There’s
only two salvage ships at present in Frisco, and rotten tubs they are.
One’s the _Maryland_. She’s most a divin’ and dredgin’ ship; ain’t no
good for this sort of work; sea-bottom scrapin’ is all she’s good for,
and little she makes at it. The other’s the _Port of Amsterdam_, owned
by Gunderman. She’s the ship they’d use. She’s got steam winches and
derricks ’nough to discharge the Ark, and stowage room to hold the
cargo down to the last flea, _but_ she’s no good for more than eight
knots; she steams like as if she’s a drogue behind her, because why?
She’s got beam engines--she’s that old, she’s got beam engines in her.
I’m not denyin’ there’s somethin’ to be said for them, but there you
are--there’s no speed in them.”
“Well, beam engines or no beam engines, we’ll have a pretty rough
time if she comes down and catches us within a cable’s length of the
_Yan-Shan_,” said Blood. “However, there’s no use in fetching trouble.
Let’s go and have a look at the lazaret; I want to see how we stand for
grub.”
Chopstick Charlie was the name Blood had christened the coolie who
acted as steward and cabin hand. He called him now, and out of the
opium-tinctured gloom of the fo’c’s’le Charlie appeared, received his
orders, and led them to the lazaret.
None of the crew had shown the slightest emotion on seeing Blood take
over command of the schooner and Ginnell swabbing decks. The fight that
had made Blood master of the _Heart of Ireland_ and Ginnell’s revolver
had occurred in the cabin and out of sight of the coolies, but even
had it been conducted in full view of them it is doubtful whether they
would have shown any feeling or lifted a hand in the matter.
As long as their little privileges were regarded, as long as opium
bubbled in the evening pipe, and pork, rice, and potatoes were served
out one white skipper was the same as another to them.
The overhaul of the stores took half an hour, and was fairly
satisfactory. When they came on deck, Blood, telling Charlie to take
Ginnell’s place as look-out, called the latter down into the cabin.
“We want to have a word with you,” said Blood, as Harman took his seat
on a bunk edge opposite him. “It’s time you knew our minds and what we
intend doing with the schooner and yourself.”
“Faith,” said Ginnell, “I think it is.”
“I’m glad you agree. Well, when you shanghaied me on board this old
shark boat of yours, there’s little doubt as to what you intended doing
with _me_. Harman will tell you, for we’ve talked on the matter.”
“He’d ’a’ worked you crool hard, fed you crool bad, and landed you,
after a six months’ cruise, doped or drunk, with two cents in your
pocket and an affidavit up his sleeve that you’d tried to fire his
ship,” said Harman. “I know the swab.”
Ginnell said nothing for a moment in answer to this soft impeachment;
he was cutting himself a chew of tobacco. Then at last he spoke.
“I don’t want no certifikit of character from either the pair of you,”
said he. “You’ve boned me ship, and you’ve blacked me eye, and you’ve
near stove me ribs in sittin’ on me chest and wavin’ me revolver in me
face. What I wants to know is your game. Where’s your profits to come
from on this job?”
“I’ll tell you,” replied Blood. “There’s a hooker called the _Yan-Shan_
piled on the rocks down the coast, and we’re going to leave our cards
on her--savvy?”
“O Lord!” said Ginnell.
“What’s the matter now?” asked Harman.
“What’s the matter, d’you say?” cried Ginnell. “Why, it’s the
_Yan-Shan_ I was after meself.”
Blood stared at the owner of the _Heart of Ireland_ for a moment, then
he broke into a roar of laughter.
“You don’t mean to say you bought the wreck?” he asked.
“Not me,” replied Ginnell. “Sure, where d’you think I’d be findin’ the
money to buy wrecks with? I had news that mornin’ she was lyin’ there
derelick, and I was just slippin’ down the coast to have a look at her
when you two spoiled me lay by takin’ me ship.”
It was now that Harman began to laugh.
“Well, if that don’t beat all!” said he. “And maybe, since you were so
keen on havin’ a look at her, you’ve brought wreckin’ tools with you in
case they might come in handy?”
“That’s as may be,” replied Ginnell. “What you have got to worry about
isn’t wreckin’ tools, but how to get rid of the boodle if it’s there.
Twenty thousand dollars, that’s the figure.”
“So you know of the dollars,” said Blood.
“Sure, what do you take me for?” asked Ginnell. “D’you think I’d have
bothered about the job only for the dollars? What’s the use of general
cargo to the like of me? Now what I’m thinkin’ is this, you want a
fence to help you to get rid of the stuff. Supposin’ you find it, how
are you to cart this stuff ashore and bank it? You’ll be had, sure,
but not if I’m at your back. Now, gents, I’m willin’ to wipe out all
differences and help in the salvin’ on shares, and I’ll make it easy
for you. You’ll each take seven thousand, and I’ll take the balance,
and I won’t charge nuthin’ for the loan you’ve took of the _Heart of
Ireland_. It’s a losin’ game for me, but it’s better than bein’ done
out entirely.”
Blood looked at Harman, and Harman looked at Blood. Then telling
Ginnell that they would consider the matter, they went on deck to talk
it over.
There was truth in what Ginnell said. They would want help in getting
the coin ashore in safety, and, unless they marooned or murdered
Ginnell, he, if left out, would always be a witness to make trouble.
Besides, though engaged on a somewhat shady business, neither Blood nor
Harman was a scoundrel. Ginnell up to this had been paid out in his
own coin, the slate was clean, and it pleased neither of them to take
profit from this blackguard beyond what they considered their due.
It was just this touch of finer feeling that excluded them from the
category of rogues and made their persons worth considering and their
doings worth recounting.
“We’ll give him what he asks,” said Blood, when the consultation was
over, “and, mind you, I don’t like giving it him one little bit, not
on account of the money, but because it seems to make us partners with
that swab. I tell you this, Billy Harman, I’d give half as much again
if an honest man was dealing with us in this matter instead of Pat
Ginnell.”
“And what honest man would deal with us?” asked the ingenuous Harman.
“Lord! One might think the job we was on was tryin’ to sell a laundry.
It’s _safe_ enough, for who can say we didn’t hit the wreck cruisin’
round promiscuous, but it won’t hold no frills in the way of honesty
and such. Down with you, and close the bargain with that chap and tip
him the wink that, though we’re mugs enough to give him six thousand
dollars for the loan of his old shark boat, we’re men enough to put a
pistol bullet in his gizzard if he tries any games with us. Down you
go.”
Blood went.
II
Next morning, an hour after sunrise, through the blaze of light
striking the Pacific across the far-off Californian coast, San Juan
showed like a flake of spar on the horizon to southward.
The sea there was all of an impossible blueness, the Pacific blue
deepened by the Kuro Shiwo current, that mysterious river of the sea
which floods up the coast of Japan, crosses the Pacific toward Alaska,
and sweeps down the West American seaboard to fan out and lose itself
away down somewhere off Chile.
Harman judged the island to be twenty miles away, and as they were
making six and a half knots, he reckoned to hit it in three hours if
the wind held.
They went down and had breakfast, and after the meal Ginnell, going
to the locker where he had stowed the wrecking tools, fetched them
out and laid them on deck. There were two crowbars and a jimmy, not
to mention a flogging hammer, a rip saw, some monstrous big chisels,
and a shipwright’s mallet. They looked like a collection of burglar’s
implements from the land of Brobdignag.
“There you are,” said Ginnell. “You never know what you may want on a
job like this, with bulkheads maybe to be cut through and chests broke
open. Get a spare sail, Misther Harman, and rowl the lot up in it so’s
they’ll be aisier for thransport.”
He was excited, and the Irish in him came out when he was like that;
also, as the most knowledgable man in the business, he was taking the
lead. You never could have fancied, from his cheerful manner and his
appearance of boss, that Blood was the real master of the situation,
or that Blood, only a few days ago, had nearly pounded the life out
of him, captured his revolver, and taken possession of the _Heart of
Ireland_.
The schooner carried a whaleboat, and this was now got in readiness for
lowering, with provisions and water for the landing party, and, when
that was done, the island, now only four miles distant, showed up fine,
a sheer splinter of volcanic rock standing up from the sea and creamed
about with foam.
Not a sign of a wreck was to be seen, though Ginnell’s glasses were
powerful enough to show up every detail from the rock fissures to the
roosting gulls.
Gloom fell upon the party, with the exception of Harman.
“It’ll be on the other side if it’s there at all,” said he. “She’d
have been coming up from the s’uth’ard, and if the gale was behind
her, it would have taken her right on to the rocks; she couldn’t be
on this side, anyhow, because why? There’s nuthin’ to hold her. It’s
a mile-deep water off them cliffs, but on the other side it shoals
gradual from tide marks to ten-fathom water, which holds for a quarter
of a mile. Keep her as she is; you could scrape them cliffs with a
battleship without danger of groundin’.”
After a minute or two, he took the wheel himself, and steered her,
while the fellows stood by the halyards, ready to let go at a moment’s
notice.
It was an impressive place, this north side of the island of San Juan.
The heavy swell came up, smacking right on to the sheer cliff wall,
jetting green water and foam yards high to the snore and boom of caves
and cut-outs in the rock. Gulls haunted the place. The black petrel,
the Western gull, and the black-footed albatross all were to be found
here. Long lines of white gulls marked the cliff edges, and, far above,
in the dazzling azure of the sky, a Farallon cormorant circled like the
spirit of the place, challenging the newcomers with its cry.
Harman shifted his helm, and the _Heart of Ireland_, with main boom
swinging to port, came gliding past the western rocks and opening the
sea to southward, where, far on the horizon, lovely in the morning
light like vast ships under press of sail, the San Lucas Islands lay
remote in the morning splendour.
Away to port the line of the Californian coast showed beyond the heave
of the sea from Point Arguello to Point Concepcion, and to starboard
and west of the San Lucas a dot in the sun dazzle marked the peaks of
the island of San Nicolas.
Then, as the _Heart of Ireland_ came round and the full view of the
south of San Juan burst upon them, the wreck piled on the rocks came in
sight, and anchored quarter of a mile off the shore--a Chinese junk!
Harman swore.
Ginnell, seizing his glasses, rushed forward and looked through them at
the wreck.
“It’s swarmin’ with chows,” cried he, coming aft “They seem to have
only just landed be the look of them. Keep her as she goes, and be
ready with the anchor there forrard; we’ll scupper them yet. Mr.
Harman, be plazed to fetch up that lin’th of lead pipe you’ll find on
the cabin flure be the door. Capt’in, will you see with Charlie here to
the boat while I get the anchor ready for droppin’? Them coolies is all
thumbs.”
He went forward, and the _Heart of Ireland_, with the wind spilling out
of her mainsail, came along over the heaving blue swell, satin-smooth
here in the shelter of the island.
Truly the _Yun-Shan_, late _Robert Bullmer_, had made a masterpiece of
her last business. She had come stem on, lifted by the piling sea, and
had hit the rocks, smashing every bow plate from the keel to within a
yard or two of the gunwale, then a wave had taken her under the stern
and lifted her and flung her broadside on, just as she now lay, pinned
to her position by the rock horns that had gored her side, and showing
a space of her rust-red bottom to the sun.
The water was squattering among the rocks right up to her, the
phosphor-bronze propeller showed a single blade cocked crookedly at the
end of the broken screw shaft; rudder there was none, the funnel was
gone, spar deck and bridge were in wreck and ruin, while the cowl of a
bent ventilator turned seaward seemed contemplating with a languid air
the beauty of the morning and the view of the far-distant San Lucas
Islands.
The _Heart of Ireland_ picked up a berth inside the junk, and as the
rasp and rattle of the anchor chain came back in faint echoes from the
cliff, a gong on the junk woke to life and began to snarl and roar its
warning to the fellows on the wreck.
“Down with the boat!” cried Ginnell. With the “lin’th of lead pipe,” a
most formidable weapon, sticking from his pocket, he ran to help with
the falls. The whaleboat smacked the water, the crew tumbled in, and
with Ginnell in the bow, it started for the shore.
The gong had done its work. The fellows who had been crawling like ants
over the dead body of the _Yan-Shan_ came slithering down on ropes,
appeared running and stumbling over the rocks abaft the stern, some
hauling along sacks of loot, others brandishing sticks or bits of
timber, and all shouting and clamouring with a noise like gulls whose
nests are being raided.
There was a small scrap of shingly beach off which the Chinamen’s scow
was lying anchored with a stone and with a China boy for anchor watch.
The whaleboat passed the scow, dashed nose end up the shelving beach,
and the next moment Ginnell and his lin’th of lead pipe was among the
Chinamen, while Blood, following him, was firing his revolver over
their heads. Harman, with a crowbar carried at the level, was aiming
straight at the belly of the biggest of the foe when they parted right
and left, dropping everything, beaten before they were touched, and
making for the water over the rocks.
Swimming like rats, they made for the scow, scrambled on board her,
howked up the anchor stone, and shot out the oars.
“They’re off for the junk,” cried Ginnell. “Faith, that was a clane bit
of work! Look at thim rowin’ as if the divil was after thim.”
They were literally, and now on board the junk they were hauling the
boat in, shaking out the lateen sail, and dragging up the anchor as
though a hundred pair of hands were at work instead of twenty.
Then as the huge sail bellied gently to the wind, and the junk broke
the violet breeze shadow beyond the calm of the sheltered water, a
voice came over the sea, a voice like the clamour of a hundred gulls,
thin, rending, fierce as the sound of tearing calico.
“Shout away, me boys!” said Ginnell. “You’ve got the shout and we’ve
got the boodle, and good day to ye!”
III
He turned with the others to examine the contents of the sacks
dropped by the vanquished ones and lying among the rocks. They were
old gunny bags, and they were stuffed with all sorts of rubbish and
valuables--musical instruments, bits of old metal, cabin curtains, and
even cans of bully beef; there was no sign of dollars.
“The fools were so busy picking up everything they could find lying
about they hadn’t time to search for the real stuff,” said Blood.
“Didn’t know of it.”
“Well,” said Ginnell, “stick the ould truck back in the bags with the
insthruments; we’ll sort it out when we get aboard, and fling the
rubbish over and keep what’s worth keepin’.”
Helped by the coolies, they refilled the bags, and left them in
position for carrying off, and then, led by Ginnell, they made round
the stern of the wreck to the port side.
Now on the sea side the _Yan-Shan_ presented a bad enough picture of
desolation and destruction, but here on the land side the sight was
terrific.
The great yellow funnel had crashed over onto the rocks, and lay with
lengths of the guys still adhering to it; a quarter boat, with bottom
half out, had gone the way of the funnel; crabs were crawling over
all sorts of raffle--broken spars, canvas from the bridge screen,
and woodwork of the chart house, while all forward of amidships, the
plates, beaten and twisted and ripped apart, showed cargo, held, or
in the act of escaping. One big packing case, free of the ship, had
resolved itself into staves round its once contents, a piano that
appeared perfectly uninjured.
A rope ladder hung from the bulwarks amidships, and up it Ginnell went
followed by the others, reaching a roofless passage that had once been
the port alleyway.
Here on the slanting deck one got a full picture of the ruin that
had come on the ship. The masts were gone as well as the funnel,
boats, ventilators--with the exception of the twisted cowl looking
seaward--bridge, chart house, all had vanished wholly or in part, a
picture made more impressive by the calm blue sky overhead and the
brilliancy of the sunlight.
The locking bars had been removed from the cover of the fore hatch,
and the hatch opened evidently by the Chinese in search of plunder.
Ginnell scarcely turned an eye on it before he made aft, followed by
the others, reached the saloon companionway, and dived down it.
If the confusion on deck was bad, it was worse below. The cabin doors
on either side were either open or off their hinges, bunk bedding,
mattresses, an open and rifled valise, some women’s clothes, an empty
cigar box, and a cage with a dead canary in it lay on the floor.
The place looked as if an army of pillagers had been at work for days,
and the sight struck a chill to the hearts of the beholders.
“We’re dished,” said Ginnell. “Quick, boys, if the stuffs anywhere,
it’ll be in the old man’s cabin; there’s no mail room in a packet like
this. If it’s not there, we’re done.”
They found the Captain’s cabin; they found his papers tossed about, his
cash box open and empty, and a strong box clamped to the deck by the
bunk in the same condition. They found, to complete the business, an
English sovereign on the floor in a corner.
Ginnell sat down on the edge of the bunk.
“They’ve got the dollars,” said he. “That’s why they legged it so
quick, and--we let them go. Twenty thousand dollars in gold coin, and
we let them go. Tear an ages! Afther them!” He sprang from the bunk,
and dashed through the saloon, followed by the others. On deck, they
strained their eyes seaward, toward a brown spot on the blue far, far
away to the sou’west. It was the junk making a soldier’s wind of it,
every inch of sail spread. Judging by the distance she had covered, she
must have been making at least eight knots, and the _Heart of Ireland_
under similar wind conditions was incapable of more than seven.
“No good chasing her,” said Blood.
“Not a happorth,” replied Ginnell. Then the quarrel began.
“If you hadn’t held us pokin’ over them old sacks on the rocks there,
we’d maybe have had a chance of overhaulin’ her,” said Ginnell.
“Sacks!” cried Blood. “What are you talking about? It was you who
let them go, shouting good day to them and telling them we’d got the
boodle!”
“Boodle!” cried Ginnell. “You’re a nice chap to talk about boodle. You
did me up an’ collared me boat, and now you’re let down proper, and
serve you right.”
Blood was about to reply in kind, when the dispute was cut short by a
loud yell from the engine-room hatch.
Harman, having satisfied himself with a glance that all was up with the
junk, had gone poking about, and entered the engine-room hatchway. He
now appeared, shouting like a maniac.
“The dollars!” he cried. “Two dead chinkies an’ the dollars!”
He vanished again with a shout. They rushed to the hatch, and there,
on the steel grating leading to the ladder, curled together like two
cats that had died in battle, lay the Chinamen. Harman, kneeling beside
them, his hands at work on the neck of a tied sack that clinked as he
shook it with the glorious, rich, mellow sound that gold in bulk and
gold in specie alone can give.
The lanyard came away, and Harman, plunging his big hand in, produced
it filled with British sovereigns.
Not one of them moved or said a word for a moment; then Ginnell
suddenly squatted down on the grating beside Harman, and, taking a
sovereign between finger and thumb gingerly, as though he feared it
might burn him, examined it with a laugh. Then he bit it, spun it in
the air, caught it in his left hand, and brought his great right palm
down on it with a bang.
“Hids or tails!” cried Ginnell. “Hids I win, tails you lose!” He gave a
coarse laugh as he opened his palm where the coin lay tail up.
“Hids it is,” he cried; then he tossed it back into the bag and rose to
his feet.
“Come on, boys,” said he, “let’s bring the stuff down to the saloon and
count it.”
“Better get it aboard,” said Blood.
Harman looked up. The grin on his face stamped by the finding of the
gold was still there, and in the light coming through the hatch his
forehead showed, beaded with sweat.
“I’m with Ginnell,” said he. “Let’s get down to the saloon for an
overhaul. I can’t wait whiles we row off to the schooner. I wants to
feel the stuff, and I wants to divide it right off and now. Boys, we’re
rich; we sure are. It’s the stroke of my life, and I can’t wait for no
rowin’ on board no schooners before we divide up.”
“Come on, then,” said Blood.
The sack was much bigger than its contents, so there was plenty of grip
for him as he seized one corner. Then, Harman grasping it by the neck,
they lugged it out and along the deck and down the saloon companionway,
Ginnell following.
The Chinese had opened nearly all the cabin portholes for the sake of
light to assist them in their plundering, and now, as Blood and Harman
placed the sack on the slanting saloon table, the crying of gulls
came clearly and derisively from the cliffs outside, mixed with the
hush of the sea and the boost of the swell as it broke, creaming and
squattering amid the rocks. The lackadaisical ventilator cowl, which
took an occasional movement from stray puffs of air, added its voice
now and then, whining and complaining like some lost yet inconsiderable
soul.
No other sound could be heard as the three men ranged themselves,
Ginnell on the starboard, and Blood and Harman on the port side of the
table.
The swivel seats, though all aslant, were practicable, and Harman was
in the act of taking his place in the seat he had chosen when Ginnell
interposed.
“One moment, Mr. Harman,” said the owner of the _Heart of Ireland_,
“I’ve a word to say to you and Mr. Blood--sure, I beg your pardon--I
mane Capt’in Blood.”
“Well,” said Blood, grasping a chair back, “what have you to say?”
“Only this,” replied Ginnell, with a grin. “I’ve got back me revolver.”
Blood clapped his hand to his pocket. It was empty.
“I picked your pocket of it,” said Ginnell, producing the weapon, “two
minits back. You fired three shots over the heads of them chows, and
there’s three ca’tridges left in her. I can hit a dollar at twinty long
paces. Move an inch, either the one or other of you, and I’ll lay your
brains on the table forenint you.”
They did not move, for they knew that he was in earnest. They knew that
if they moved he would begin to shoot, and if he began to shoot, he
would finish the job, leave their corpses on the floor, and sail off
with the dollars and his Chinese crew in perfect safety. There were no
witnesses.
“Now,” said Ginnell, “what the pair of you has to do is this: Misther
Harman, you’ll go into that cabin behind you, climb on the upper bunk,
stick your head through the porthole, and shout to the coolies down
below there with the boat to come up. It’ll take two men to get them
dollars on deck and down to the wather side. When you’ve done that, the
pair of you will walk into the ould man’s cabin an’ say your prayers,
thanking the saints you’ve got off so easy, whiles I puts the bolt on
you till the dollars are away. And remimber this, one word or kick
from you and I shoot; the Chinamen will never tell.”
“See here!” said Harman.
“One word!” shouted Ginnell, suddenly dropping the mask of urbanity and
leveling the pistol.
It was as though the tiger cat in his grimy soul had suddenly burst
bonds and mastered him. His finger pressed on the trigger, and the
next moment Harman’s brains, or what he had of them, might have been
literally “forenint” him on the table, when suddenly, tremendous as
the last trumpet, paralyzing as the inrush of a body of armed men,
booing and bellowing back from the cliffs in a hundred echoes came a
voice--the blast of a ship’s siren:
“Huroop! Hirrip! Hurop! Haar--haar--haar!”
Ginnell’s arm fell. Harman, forgetting everything, turned, dashed into
the cabin behind him, climbed on the upper bunk, and stuck his head
through the porthole.
Then he dashed back into the saloon.
“It’s the _Port of Amsterdam_,” cried Harman. “It’s the salvage ship;
she’s there droppin’ her anchor. We’re done, we’re dished--and we
foolin’ like this and they crawlin’ up on us.”
“And you said she’d only do eight knots!” cried Blood.
Ginnell flung the revolver on the floor. Every trace of the recent
occurrence had vanished, and the three men thought no more of one
another than a man thinks of petty matters in the face of dissolution.
Gunderman was outside; that was enough for them.
“Boys,” said Ginnell, “ain’t there no way out with them dollars? S’pose
we howk them ashore?”
“Cliffs two hundred foot high!” said Harman. “Not a chanst. We’re
dished.”
Said Blood: “There’s only one thing left. We’ll walk the dollars down
to the boat and row off with them. Of course we’ll be stopped, still
there’s the chance that Gunderman may be drunk or something. It’s one
chance in a hundred billion; it’s the only one.”
But Gunderman was not drunk, nor were his boat party, and the
court-martial he held on the beach in broken English and with the
sack of coin beside him as chief witness would form a bright page of
literature had one time to record it.
Ginnell, as owner of the _Heart of Ireland_, received the whole brunt
of the storm--there was no hearing for him when, true to himself, he
tried to cast the onus of the business on Blood and Harman. He was told
to get out and be thankful he was not brought back to Frisco in irons,
and he obeyed instructions, rowing off to the schooner, he and Harman
and Blood, a melancholy party with the exception of Blood, who was
talking to Harman with extreme animation on the subject of beam engines.
On deck, it was Blood who gave orders for hauling up the anchor and
setting sail. He had recaptured the revolver.
III A CARGO OF CHAMPAGNE
I
Billy Meersam, an old sailor friend in Frisco, told me this story as
I was sitting one day on Rafferty’s wharf, contemplating the green
water, and smoking. Billy chewed and spat between paragraphs. We were
discussing Captain Pat Ginnell and his ways; and Billy, who had served
his time on hard ships, and, as a young man, on the _Three Brothers_,
that tragedy of the sea which now lies a coal hulk in Gibraltar
harbour, had quite a lot to say on hazing captains in general and
Captain Pat Ginnell in particular.
“I had one trip with him,” said Billy, “shark catchin’ down the coast
in that old dough dish of his, the _Heart of Ireland_. Treated me crool
bad, he did; crool bad he treated me from first to last; his beef was
as hard as his fist, and bud barley he served out for coffee. He was
known all along the shore side, but he got his gruel at last, and got
it good. Now, by any chance did you ever hear of a Captain Mike Blood
and his mate, Billy Harman? Knew the parties, did you? Well, now, I’ll
tell you. Blood it were put the hood on Ginnell. Ginnell laid out to
get the better of Blood, and Blood, he got the better of Ginnell. He
and Harman signed on for a cruise in the _Heart of Ireland_; then they
rose on Ginnell, and took the ship and made him deck hand. They did
that. They made a line for a wreck they knew of on a rock be name of
San Juan, off the San Lucas Islands, and the three of them were peeling
that wreck, and they were just gettin’ twenty thousand dollars in gold
coin off her, when the party who’d bought the wreck, and his name was
Gunderman, lit down on them and collared the boodle and kicked them
back into their schooner, givin’ them the choice of makin’ an offing
or takin’ a free voyage back to Frisco, with a front seat in the
penitentiary thrown in.
“It was a crool setback for them, the dollars hot in their hands one
minit and took away the next, you may say, but they didn’t quarrel over
it; they set out on a new lay, and this is what happened with Cap’
Ginnell.”
But, with Mr. Meersam’s leave, I will take the story from his mouth
and tell it in my own way, with additions gathered from the chief
protagonists and from other sources.
When the three adventurers, dismissed with a caution by Gunderman, got
sail on the _Heart of Ireland_, they steered a sou’westerly course,
till San Juan was a speck to northward and the San Lucas Islands were
riding high on the sea on the port quarter.
Then Blood hove the schooner to for a council of war, and Ginnell,
though reduced again to deck hand, was called into it.
“Well,” said Blood, “that’s over and done with, and there’s no use
calling names. Question is what we’re to do now. We’ve missed twenty
thousand dollars through fooling and delaying, and we’ve got to make
good somehow, even on something small. If I had ten cents in my
pocket, Pat Ginnell, I’d leave you and your old shark boat for the
nearest point of land and hoof it back to Frisco; but I haven’t--worse
luck.”
“There’s no use in carryin’ on like that,” said Harman. “Frisco’s no
use to you or me, and your boots would be pretty well wore out before
you got there. What I say is this: We’ve got a schooner that’s rigged
out for shark fishin’. Well, let’s go on that lay; we’ll give Ginnell a
third share, and he’ll share with us in payin’ the coolies. Shark oil’s
fetchin’ big prices now in Frisco. It’s not twenty thousand dollars,
but it’s somethin’.”
Ginnell, leaning against the after rail and cutting himself a fill of
tobacco, laughed in a mirthless way. Then he spoke: “Shark fishin’,
begob; well, there’s a word to be said be me on that. You two thought
yourselves mighty clever, collarin’ me boat and makin’ yourselves
masthers of it. I don’t say you didn’t thrump me ace, I don’t say
you didn’t work it so that I can’t have the law on you, but I’ll say
this, Misther Harman, if you want to go shark fishin’, you can work
the business yourself, and a nice hand you’ll make of it. Why, you
don’t know the grounds, let alone the work. A third share, and me the
rightful owner of this tub! I’ll see you ham-strung before I put a hand
to it.”
“Then get forrard,” said Harman. “Don’t know the grounds? Maybe I don’t
know the grounds you used to work farther north, but I know every foot
of the grounds here-a-way, right from the big kelp beds to the coast.
Why, I been on the fish-commission ship and worked with ’em all through
this part, takin’ soundin’s and specimens--rock, weed, an’ fish. Know
the bottom here as well as I know the pa’m of me hand.”
“Well, if you know it so well, you’ve no need of me. Lay her on the
grounds yourself,” said Ginnell.
He went forward.
“Black sullen,” said Harman, looking after him. “He ain’t no use to
lead or drive. Well, let’s get her before the wind an’ crowd down
closer to Santa Catalina. I’m not sayin’ this is a good shark ground,
the sea’s too much of a blame’ fish circus just here--but it’s better
than nothin’.”
They got the _Heart_ before the wind, which had died down to a
three-knot breeze, Blood steering and Harman forward, on the lookout.
Harman was right, the sea round these coasts is a fish circus, to give
it no better name.
The San Lucas Islands and Santa Catalina seem the rendezvous of most
of the big fish inhabiting the Pacific. Beginning with San Miguel, the
islands run almost parallel to the California coast in a sou’westerly
direction, and, seen now from the schooner’s deck, they might have been
likened to vast ships under press of sail, so tall were they above the
sea shimmer and so white in the sunshine their fog-filled cañons.
Away south, miles and miles away across the blue water, the peaks of
Santa Catalina Island showed a dream of vague rose and gold.
It was for Santa Catalina that Harman was making now.
To tell the whole truth, bravely as he had talked of his knowledge
of these waters, he was not at all sure in his mind as to their
shark-bearing capacity. He did not know that for a boat whose business
was shark-liver oil, this bit of sea was not the happiest hunting
ground.
Nothing is more mysterious than the way fish make streets in the sea
and keep to them; make cities, so to say, and inhabit them at certain
seasons; make playgrounds, and play in them.
Off the north of Santa Catalina Island you will find Yellow Fin. Cruise
down on the seaward side and you will find a spot where the Yellow Fin
vanish and the Yellow Tail take their place; farther south you strike
the street of the White Sea Bass, which opens on to Halibut Square,
which, in turn, gives upon a vast area, where the Black Sea Bass, the
Swordfish, the Albacore, and the Whitefish are at home.
Steer round the south of the island and you hit the suburbs of the
great fish city of the Santa Catalina Channel. The Grouper Banks are
its purlieus, and the Sunfish keeps guard of its southern gate. You
pass Barracuda Street and Bonito Street, till the roar of the Sea Lions
from their rocks tells you that you are approaching the Washington
Square of undersea things--the great Tuna grounds.
Skirting the Tuna grounds, and right down the Santa Catalina Channel,
runs a Broadway which is also a Wall Street, where much business is
done in the way of locomotion and destruction. Here are the Killer
Whales and the Sulphur-bottom Whales and the Grey Whales, and the
Porpoises, Dolphins, Skipjacks, and Sand Dabs.
Sharks you will find nearly everywhere, _but_, and this was a fact
unknown to Harman, the sharks, as compared to the other big fish, are
few and far between.
It was getting toward sundown, when the schooner, under a freshening
wind, came along the seaward side of Santa Catalina Island. The island
on this side shows two large bays, separated by a rounded promontory.
In the northernmost of these bays they dropped anchor close in shore,
in fifteen-fathom water.
II
At dawn next morning they got the gear ready. The Chinese crew, during
the night, had caught a plentiful supply of fish for bait, and, as the
sun was looking over the coast hills, they hauled up the anchor and put
out for the kelp beds.
There are two great kelp beds off the seaward coast of Santa Catalina,
an inner and an outer. Two great submarine forests more thickly
populated than any forest on land. This is the haunt of the Black Sea
Bass that run in weight up to four hundred pounds, the Ribbon Fish,
the Frogfish, and the Kelpfish, that builds its nest just as a bird
builds, crabs innumerable, and sea creatures that have never yet been
classified or counted.
They tied up to the kelp, and the fishing began, while the sun blazed
stronger upon the water and the morning mists died out of the cañons of
the island.
The shark hooks baited and lowered were relieved of their bait, but not
by sharks; all sorts of bait snatchers inhabit these waters, and they
were now simply chewing the fish off the big shark hooks.
Getting on for eleven o’clock, Blood, who had been keeping a restless
eye seaward, left his line and went forward with Ginnell’s glass, which
he levelled at the horizon.
A sail on the sea line to the northwest had attracted his attention
an hour ago, and the fact that it had scarcely altered its position,
although there was a six-knot breeze blowing, had roused his curiosity.
“What is it?” asked Harman.
“Schooner hove to,” said Blood. “No, b’gosh, she’s not; she’s
abandoned.”
At the word “abandoned,” Ginnell, who had been fishing for want of
something better to do, raised his head like a bird of prey.
He also left his line, and came forward. Blood handed him the glass.
“Faith, you’re right,” said Ginnell; “she’s a derelick. Boys, up with
them tomfool shark lines; here’s a chanst of somethin’ decent.”
For once Blood and Harman were completely with him; the lines were
hauled in, the kelp connections broken, mainsail and jib set, and in a
moment, as it were, the _Heart of Ireland_ was bounding on the swell,
topsail and foresail shaking out now and bellying against the blue
till she heeled almost gunwale under to the merry wind, boosting the
green water from her bow, and sending the foam flooding in sheets to
starboard.
It was as though the thought of plunder had put new heart and life into
her, as it certainly had into her owner, Pat Ginnell.
As they drew nearer, they saw the condition of the schooner more
clearly. Derelict and deserted, yet with mainsail set, she hung there,
clawing at the wind and thrashing about in the mad manner of a vessel
commanded only by her tiller.
Now the mainsail would fill and burst out, the boom swaying over to the
rattle of block and cordage. For a moment she would give an exhibition
of just how a ship ought to sail herself, and then, with a shudder,
the air would spill from the sail, and, like a daft woman in a blowing
wind, she would reel about with swinging gaff and boom to the tune of
the straining rigging, the pitter-patter of the reef points, and the
whine of the rudder nearly torn from its pintles.
A couple of cable lengths away the _Heart of Ireland_ hove to, the
whaleboat was lowered, and Blood, Ginnell, and Harman, leaving
Chopstick Charlie in charge of the _Heart_, started for the derelict.
They came round the stern of the stranger, and read her name,
_Tamalpais_, done in letters that had been white, but were now a dingy
yellow.
Then they came along the port side and hooked on to the fore channels,
while Blood and the others scrambled on deck.
The deck was clean as a ballroom floor and sparkling with salt from
the dried spray; there was no raffle or disorder of any sort. Every
boat was gone, and the falls, swinging at full length from the davits,
proclaimed the fact that the crew had left the vessel in an orderly
manner, though hurriedly enough, no doubt; had abandoned her, leaving
the falls swinging and the rudder playing loose and the winds to do
what they willed with her.
There was no sign of fire, no disorder that spoke of mutiny, though in
cargo and with a low freeboard, she rode free of water, one could tell
that by the movement of her underfoot. Fire, leak, mutiny, those are
the three reasons for the abandonment of a ship at sea, and there was
no sign of any one of them.
Blood led the way aft, the saloon hatch was open, and they came down
into the tiny saloon. The sunlight through the starboard portholes
was spilling about in water shimmers on the pitch-pine panelling;
everything was in order, and a meal was set out on the table, which
showed a Maconochie jam tin, some boiled pork, and a basket of bread;
plates were laid for two, and the plates had been used.
“Beats all,” said Harman, looking round. “Boys, this is a find as good
as the dollars. Derelict and not a cat on board, and she’s all of
ninety tons. Then there’s the cargo. B’ Jiminy, but we’re in luck!”
“Let’s roust out the cabins,” said Ginnell.
They found the Captain’s cabin, easily marked by its size and its
furniture.
Some oilskins and old clothes were hanging up by the bunk, a sea chest
stood open. It had evidently been rifled of its most precious contents;
there was nothing much left in it but some clothes, a pair of sea
boots, and some worthless odds and ends. In a locker they found the
ship’s papers. Blood plunged into these, and announced his discoveries
to the others, crowding behind him and peeping over his shoulders.
“Captain Keene, master--bound from Frisco to Sydney with cargo of
champagne----. And what in thunder is she doing down here? Never
mind--we’re the finders.” He tossed the papers back in the locker and
turned to the others. “No sign of the log. Most likely he’s taken it
off with him. What I want to see now is the cargo. If it’s champagne,
and not bottled bilge water, we’re made. Come along, boys.”
He led the way on deck, and between them they got the tarpaulin cover
off the cargo hatch, undid the locking bars, and opened the hatch.