ranged side by side, within touching distance of the hatch opening, and
the brands on the boxes answering to the wording of the manifest.
Before doing anything more, Blood got the sail off the schooner, and
then, having cast an eye round the horizon, more for weather than
shipping, he came to the hatch edge and took his seat, with his feet
dangling and his toes touching the cases. The others stood while he
talked to them.
“There’s some chaps,” said Blood, “who’d be for running crooked on this
game, taking the schooner off to some easy port and selling her and the
cargo, but I’m not going to go in for any such mug’s business as that.
Frisco and salvage money is my idea.”
“And what about the _Yan-Shan_?” asked Ginnell. “Frisco will be
reekin’ with the story of how Gunderman found us pickin’ her bones and
how he caught us with the dollars in our hands. Don’t you think the
underwriters will put that up against us? Maybe they won’t say we’ve
murdered the crew of this hooker for the sake of the salvage! Our
characters are none too bright to be goin’ about with schooners and
cargoes of fizz, askin’ for salvage money.”
“_Your_ character ain’t,” said Harman. “Speak for yourself when you’re
talkin’ of characters, and leave us out. I’m with Blood. I’ve had
enough of this shady business, and I ain’t goin’ to run crooked no
more. Frisco and salvage moneys--my game, b’sides, you needn’t come
into Frisco harbour. Lend us a couple of your hands to take her in,
and we’ll do the business and share equal with you in the takin’s. I
ain’t a man to go back on a pal for a few dirty dollars, and my word’s
as good as my bond all along the water side with pals. I ain’t sayin’
nothin’ about owners or companies; I say with pals, and you’ll find
your share banked for you in the Bank of California, safe as if you’d
put it there yourself.”
Ginnell for a moment seemed about to dissent violently from this
proposition; then, of a sudden, he fell calm.
“Well,” said he, “maybe I’m wrong and maybe you’re right, but I ain’t
goin’ to hang behind. If you’ve fixed on taking her into Frisco, I’ll
follow you in and help in the swearin’. You two chaps can navigate her
with a couple of the coolies I’ll lend you, and, mind you, it’s equal
shares I’m askin’.”
“Right,” said Harman. “What do you say, Blood?”
“I’m agreeable,” said Blood; “though it’s more than he deserves,
considering all things.”
“Well, I’m not goin’ to put up no arguments,” said Ginnell. “I states
me terms, and, now that’s fixed, I proposes we takes stock of the
cargo. Rig a tackle and get one of them cases on deck and let’s see if
the manifest holds when the wrappin’s is off.”
The others agreed. With the help of a couple of the Chinamen from the
boat alongside, they rigged a tackle and got out a case. Harman, poking
about, produced a chisel and mallet from the hole where the schooner’s
carpenter had kept his tools, a strip of boarding was removed from
the top of the case, and next moment a champagne bottle, in its straw
jacket, was in the hands of Ginnell.
“Packed careful,” said he.
He removed the jacket and the pink tissue paper from the bottle, whose
gold capsule glittered delightfully in the sunlight.
Then he knocked the bottle’s head off, and the amber wine creamed out
over his hands and onto the deck.
Harman ran to the galley and fetched a pannikin, and they sampled the
stuff, and then Blood, taking the half-empty bottle, threw it overboard.
“We don’t want any drinking,” said he; “and we’ll have to account
for every bottle. Now, then, get the lid fixed again and the case
back in the hold, and let’s see what’s in the lazaret in the way of
provisions.”
They got the case back, closed the hatch, and then started on an
inspection of the stores, finding plenty of stuff in the way of pork
and rice and flour, but no delicacies. There was not an ounce of tea or
coffee, no sugar, no tobacco.
“They must have took it all with them when they made off,” said Harman.
“That’s easy mended,” replied Ginnell. “We can get some stores from the
_Heart_; s’pose I go off to her and fetch what’s wanted and leave you
two chaps here?”
“Not on your life,” said Blood; “we all stick together, Pat Ginnell,
and so there’ll be no monkey tricks played. That’s straight. Get your
fellers into the boat and let’s shove off, then Harman and I can come
back with the stores and the hands you can lend us to work her.”
“Faith, you’re all suspicious,” said Ginnell, with a grin. “Well, over
with you, and we’ll all go back together. I’m gettin’ to feel as if I
was married to you two chaps. However, there’s no use in grumblin’.”
“Not a bit,” said Blood.
He followed Ginnell into the whaleboat, and, leaving the _Tamalpais_ to
rock alone on the swell, they made back for the _Heart of Ireland_.
Now, Ginnell, although he had agreed to go back to Frisco, had no
inclination to do so, the fact of the matter being that the place had
become too hot for him.
He had played with smuggling, and had been friendly with the Greeks of
the Upper Bay and the Chinese of Petaluma. He had fished with Chinese
sturgeon lines, foul inventions of Satan, as all Chinese sporting,
hunting, and fishing contraptions are, and had fallen foul of the
patrol men; he had lit his path with blazing drunks as with bonfires,
mishandled his fellow creatures, robbed them, cheated them, and lied to
them. He had talked big in bars, and the wharf side of San Francisco
was sick of him; so, if you understand the strength of the wharf-side
stomach, you can form some estimate of the character of Captain
Ginnell. He knew quite well the feeling of the harbour side against
him, and he knew quite well how that feeling would be inflated at the
sight of him coming back triumphant, with a salved schooner in tow.
Then there was Gunderman. He feared Gunderman more than he feared the
devil, and he feared the story that Gunderman would have to tell even
more than he feared Gunderman.
No, he had done with Frisco; he never would go back there again; he
had done with the _Heart of Ireland_. He would strike out again in
life with a new name and a new schooner and a cargo of champagne, sell
schooner and cargo, and make another start with still another name.
Revolving this decision in his mind, he winked at the backs of Blood
and Harman as they went up the little companion ladder before him and
gained the deck of the _Heart of Ireland_.
Blood led the way down to the cabin. The lazaret was situated under the
cabin floor, and, while Harman opened it, Blood, with a pencil and a
bit of paper, figured out their requirements.
“We want a couple of tins of coffee,” said he, “and half a dozen of
condensed milk--sugar, biscuits--tobacco--beef.”
“It’s sorry I am I haven’t any cigars to offer you,” said Ginnell, with
a half laugh, “but there’s some tins of sardines; be sure an’ take the
sardines, Mr. Harman, for me heart wouldn’t be aisy if I didn’t think
you were well supplied with comforts.”
“I can’t find any sardines,” said the delving Harman, “but here’s baccy
enough, and eight tins of beef will be more than enough to get us to
Frisco.”
“Take a dozen,” said Ginnell; “there ain’t more than a dozen all told;
but, sure, I’ll manage to do without, and never grumble so long as
you’re well supplied.”
Blood glanced at him with an angry spark in his eye.
“We’ve no wish to crowd you, Pat Ginnell,” said he, “and what we take
we pay for, or we will pay for it when we get to port. You’ll please
remember you’re talking to an Irishman.”
“Irishman!” cried Ginnell. “You’ll be plazed to remember I’m an
Irishman, too.”
“Well I know it,” replied the other.
This remark, for some unaccountable reason, seemed to incense Ginnell.
He clenched his fists, stuck out his jaw, glanced Blood up and down,
and then, as if remembering something, brought himself under control
with a mighty effort.
“There’s no use in talk,” said he; “we’d better be gettin’ on with our
business. You’ll want somethin’ in the way of a sack to cart all that
stuff off to the schooner. I’ll fetch you one.”
He turned to the companion ladder and climbed it in a leisurely
fashion. On deck he took a deep breath and stood for a moment scanning
the horizon from north to south. Then he turned and cast his eyes over
Santa Catalina and the distant coast line.
Not a sail was visible, nor the faintest indication of smoke in all
that stainless blue, sweeping in a great arc from the northern to the
southern limits of visibility.
No one was present to watch Ginnell and what he was about to do. No one
save God and the sea gulls--for Chinese don’t count.
He stepped to the cabin hatch.
“Misther Harman!” cried he.
“Hello!” answered Harman, from below. “Whacher want?”
“It’s about the Bank of California I want to speak to you,” replied
Ginnell.
Harman’s round and astonished face appeared at the foot of the ladder.
“Bank of California?” said he. “What the blazes do you mean, Pat
Ginnell?”
“Why, you said you’d put me share of the salvage in the Bank of
California, didn’t you?” replied Ginnell. “Well, I just want to say I’m
agreeable to your proposal--and will you be plazed to give the manager
me love when you see him?”
With that he shut the hatch, fastening it securely and prisoning the
two men below, whose voices came now bearing indications of language
enough, one might fancy, to lift the deck. He knew it would take them a
day’s hard work to break out, and maybe two. Bad as Ginnell might be,
he was not a murderer, and he reckoned their chances were excellent
considering the provisions and water they had, their own energies,
and the drift of the current, which would take them close up to Santa
Catalina.
He also reckoned that they would give him no trouble in the way of
pursuit, for he had literally made them a present of the _Heart of
Ireland_.
Having satisfied himself that they were well and securely held, he sent
the whaleboat off to the _Tamalpais_, laden with the crew’s belongings,
consisting of all sorts of quaint boxes and mats. This was managed in
one journey; the boat came back for him, and, in less than an hour from
the start of the business, he found himself standing on the deck of
the _Tamalpais_, all the crew transferred, the fellows hauling on the
halyards, Chopstick Charlie at the helm, and a good schooner, with a
cargo worth many thousands of dollars, underfoot.
He turned to have a look at the compass and a word with the steersman
before going below.
Down below he had a complete turnout of the Captain’s cabin, and found
the log for which Harman had hunted in vain; it had got down between
the bunk bedding and the panelling, and he brought it into the main
cabin, and there, seated at the table, he pored over it, breathing hard
and following the passages with his horny thumb.
The thing had been faked most obviously, and the faking had begun
two days out from Frisco. A gale that had never blown had driven the
_Tamalpais_ out of her course, et cetera; and Ginnell, with the eye of
a sailor and with his knowledge of the condition of the _Tamalpais_
when found, saw at once that there was something here darker even than
the darkness that Blood and Harman had perceived. Why had the log been
faked? Why had the schooner been abandoned? If it were a question of
insurance, Captain Keene would have scuttled her or fired her.
Then, again, everything spoke of haste amounting to panic. Why should a
vessel, in perfect condition and in good weather, be deserted as though
some visible plague had suddenly appeared on board of her?
Ginnell closed the book and tossed it back in the bunk.
“What’s the meaning of it?”
Unhappy man, he was soon to find out.
At eight o’clock next morning, in perfect weather, Ginnell, standing
by the steersman and casting his eyes around, saw across the heaving
blueness of the sea a smudge of smoke on the western horizon. A few
minutes later, as the smoke cleared, he made out the form of the vessel
that had been firing up.
Captain Keene had left an old pair of binoculars among the other truck
in his cabin. Ginnell went down and fetched them on deck, then he
looked.
The stranger was a torpedo boat; she was making due south, and, like
all torpedo boats, she seemed in a hurry.
Then, all at once, and even as he looked, her form began to alter, she
shortened mysteriously, and her two funnels became gradually one.
She had altered her course; she had evidently sighted, and was making
direct for, the _Tamalpais_. Not exactly direct, perhaps, but directly
enough to make Ginnell’s lips dry as sandstone.
“Bad cess to her,” said Ginnell to himself; “there’s no use in doin’
anythin’ but pretendin’ to be deaf and dumb. And, sure, aren’t I an
honest trader, with all me credentials, Capt’in Keene, of Frisco, blown
out of me course, me mate washed overboard? Let her come.”
She came without any letting. Shearing along through the water,
across which the hubbub of her engines could be distinctly heard, and
within signalling distance, now, she let fly a string of bunting to
the breeze, an order to heave to, which the _Tamalpais_, that honest
trader, disregarded.
Then came a puff of white smoke, the boom of a gun, and a practice
shell that raised a plume of spray a cable length in front of the
schooner, and went off, making ducks and drakes for miles across the
blue sea.
Ginnell rushed to the halyards himself. Chopstick Charlie, at the
wheel, required no orders, and the _Tamalpais_ came round, with all
her canvas spilling the wind and slatting, while the warship, stealing
along now with just a ripple at her stern, came gliding past the stem
of the schooner.
They were taking her name, just as a policeman takes the number of a
motor car.
It was a ghastly business. No cheery voice, with the inquiry: “What’s
your name and where are you bound for?” Just a silent inspection, and
then a dropped boat.
Next moment a lieutenant of the American navy was coming over the side
of the _Tamalpais_, to be received by Ginnell.
“Captain Keene?” asked the lieutenant.
“That’s me name,” answered the unfortunate, who had determined on the
rôle of the blustering innocent; “and who are you, to be boardin’ me
like this and firing guns at me?”
“Well, of all the----cheek!” said the other, with a laugh. “A nice
dance you’ve led us since we lost you in that fog.”
“Which fog?” asked the astonished Ginnell. “Fog! It’s some other ship
you’re after, for I haven’t sighted a fog since leavin’ port.”
“Oh, close up!” said the other.
His men, who had come on board, were busy with the covering of the main
hatch, and he walked forward, to superintend.
The hatch cover off, they rigged a tackle and hauled out a case of
champagne; four cases of champagne they brought on deck, and then,
attacking the next layer, they brought out a case of a different
description. It contained a machine gun.
Under the champagne layer, the _Tamalpais_ was crammed right down to
the garboard strakes with contraband of war in the form of arms and
ammunition for the small South American republic that was just then
kicking up a dust around its murdered president.
Ginnell saw his own position at a glance. The _Heart of Ireland_ given
away to Blood and Harman for the captaincy of a gun runner, and a
seized gun runner at that.
He saw now why Keene and his crew had deserted in a hurry. Chased by
the warship, and running into a fog, they had slipped away in the
boats, making for the coast, while the pursuer had made a dead-west run
of it to clear herself of the dangerous coast waters and their rocks
and shoals.
That was plain enough to Ginnell, but the prospect ahead of him was not
clear at all.
He could never confess the truth about the _Heart of Ireland_, and,
when they took him back to Frisco, it would at once be discovered that
he was not Keene, but Ginnell. What would happen to him?
What did happen to him? I don’t know. Billy Meersam could throw no
light on the matter. He said that he believed the thing was “hushed up
somehow or ’nother,” finishing with the opinion that a good many things
are hushed up somehow or ’nother in Frisco.
IV AVALON BAY
I
Avalon Bay, on the east of Santa Catalina Island, clips between its
two horns a little seaside town unique of its kind. Billy Harman had
described it to Captain Blood as a place where you saw girls bathing in
Paris hats. However that may be, you see stranger things than this at
Avalon.
It is the head centre of the big-game fisheries of the California
coast. Men come here from all parts of America and Europe to kill
tarpon and yellow-tail and black sea bass, to say nothing of shark,
which is reckoned now as a game fish. Trippers come from Los Angeles to
go round in glass-bottomed boats and inspect the sea gardens, and bank
presidents, Steel Trust men, and millionaires of every brand come for
their health.
You will see monstrous shark gallowsed on the beach and
three-hundred-pound bass being photographed side by side with their
captors, and you will have the fact borne in on you that the biggest
fish that haunt the sea can be caught and held and brought to gaff with
a rod weighing only a few ounces and a twenty-strand line that a child
could snap.
Every one talks fish at Avalon, from the boatmen who run the gasoline
launches to the latest-arrived man with a nerve breakdown who has come
from the wheat pit or Wall Street to rest himself by killing sharks or
fighting tuna, every one. Here you are estimated not by the size of
your bank balance, but by the size of your catch. Not by your social
position, but by your position in sport, and here the magic blue or red
button of the Tuna Club is a decoration more prized than any foreign
order done in diamonds.
Colonel Culpepper and his daughter, Rose, were staying at Avalon just
at the time the _Yan-Shan_ business occurred on San Juan. The colonel
hailed from the Middle West and had a wide reputation on account of
his luck and his millions. Rose had a reputation of her own; she was
reckoned the prettiest girl wherever she went, and just now she was the
prettiest girl in Avalon.
This morning, just after dawn, Miss Culpepper was standing on the
veranda of the Metropole Hotel, where the darkies were dusting mats and
putting the cane chairs in order. Avalon was still half in shadows,
but a gorgeous morning hinted of itself in the blue sky overhead and
the touch of dusk-blue sea visible from the veranda. The girl had come
down undecided as to whether she would go on the water or for a ramble
inland, but the peep of blue sea decided her. It was irresistible, and,
leaving the hotel, she came toward the beach.
No one was out yet. In half an hour or less the place would be alive
with boatmen, but in this moment of enchantment not a soul was to be
seen either on the premises of the Tuna Club or on the little _plage_
or on the shingle, where the small waves were breaking, crystal clear,
in the first rays of the sun.
She came to a balk of timber lying close to the water’s edge, stood by
it for a moment, and then sat down, nursing her knees and contemplating
the scene before her--the sun-smitten sea looking fresh, as though this
were the first morning that had ever shone on the world, the white
gulls flying against the blue of the sky, the gasoline launches and
sailing boats anchored out from the shore and only waiting the boatmen,
the gaffers, the men with rods, and the resumption of the eternal
business--Fish.
The sight of them raised no desire in the mind of the gazer; she was
tired of fish. A lover of the sea, a fearless sailor and able to handle
a boat as well as a man, she was still weary of the eternal subject
of weights and measures; she had lived in an atmosphere of fish for a
month, and, not being much of a fisherwoman, she was beginning to want
a change, or, at all events, some new excitement. She was to get it.
A crunching of the shingle behind her made her turn. It was Aransas
Joe, the first boatman out that morning, moving like a seal to the sea
and laden with a huge can of bait, a spare spar, two sculls, and a gaff.
Anything more unlovely than Aransas Joe in contrast with the fair
morning and the fresh figure of the girl, it would be hard to imagine.
Wall-eyed, weather-stained, fish-scaled, and moving like a plantigrade,
he was a living epitome of longshore life and an object lesson in what
it can do for a man.
Joe never went fishing; the beach was his home, and sculling fishermen
to their yawls his business. The Culpeppers were well known to him.
“Joe,” said the girl, “you’re just the person I want. Come and row me
out to our yawl.”
“Where’s your gaffer an’ your engine man?” asked Joe.
“I don’t want them. I can look after the engine myself. I’m not going
fishing.”
“Not goin’ fishin’,” said Joe, putting down his can of bait and
shifting the spar to his left shoulder; “not goin’ fishin’! Then what
d’you want doin’ with the yawl?”
“I want to go for a sail--I mean a spin. Go on, hurry up and get the
dinghy down.”
Joe relieved himself of the spar, dropped the gaff by the bait tin, and
scratched his head. It was his method of thinking.
Unable to scratch up any formulable objection to the idea of a person
taking a fishing yawl out for pleasure and not for fish, yet realising
the absurdity of it, he was dumb. Then, with the sculls under his arm,
he made for a dinghy beached near the water edge, threw the sculls in,
and dragged the little boat down till she was half afloat. The girl got
in, and he pushed off.
The _Sunfish_ was the name of the Culpeppers’ yawl, a handy little
craft rigged with a Buffalo engine so fixed that one could attend to it
and steer at the same time.
“Mind you, and keep clear of the kelp,” said Joe, as the girl stepped
from the dinghy to the larger craft, “if you don’t want your propeller
tangled up.” He helped her to haul the anchor in, got into the dinghy,
and shoved off.
“I’ll be back about eight or nine,” she called after him.
“I’ll be on the lookout for you,” replied he.
Then Miss Culpepper found herself in the delightful position of being
absolutely alone and her own mistress, captain and crew of a craft that
moved at the turning of a lever, and able to go where she pleased. She
had often been out with her father, but never alone like this, and the
responsible-irresponsible sensation was a new delight in life which,
until now, she had never even imagined.
She started the engine, and the _Sunfish_ began to glide ahead,
clearing the fleet of little boats anchored out and rocking them with
her wash; then, in a grand curve, she came round the south horn of
the bay opening the coast of the island and the southern sea blue as
lazulite and speckless to the far horizon.
“This is good,” said Miss Culpepper to herself; “almost as good as
being a sea gull.”
Sea gulls raced her, jeered at her, showed themselves to her, now
honey yellow against the sun, now snowflake white with the sun against
them, and then left her, quarrelling away down the wind in search of
something more profitable.
She passed little bays where the sea sang on beaches of pebble, and
deep-cut cañons rose-tinted and showing the green of fern and the ash
green of snake cactus and prickly pear. Sea lions sunning themselves on
a rock held her eye for a moment, and then, rounding the south end of
the island, a puff of westerly wind all the way from China blew in her
face, and the vision of the great Pacific opened before her, with the
peaks of San Clemente showing on the horizon twenty-four miles away to
the southwest.
Not a ship was to be seen, with the exception of a little schooner to
southward. She showed bare sticks, and Miss Culpepper, not knowing the
depth of the water just there, judged her to be at anchor.
Here, clear of the island barrier, the vast and endless swell of the
Pacific made itself felt, lifting the _Sunfish_ with a buoyant and
balloonlike motion. Steering the swift-running boat across these gentle
vales and meadows of ocean was yet another delight, and the flying
fish, bright like frosted silver, with black, sightless eyes, chased
her now, flittering into the water ahead of the boat like shaftless
arrowheads shot after her by some invisible marksman.
The great kelp beds oiled the sea to the northward, and, remembering
Joe’s advice, but not wishing to return yet a while, the girl shifted
the helm slightly, heading more for the southward and making a beam sea
of the swell. This brought the schooner in sight.
It was now a little after seven, and the appetite that waits upon good
digestion, youth, and perfect health began to remind Miss Culpepper
of the breakfast room at the Metropole, the snow-white tables, the
attentive waiters. She glanced at her gold wrist watch, glanced round
at Santa Catalina, that seemed a tremendous distance away, and put the
helm hard astarboard.
She had not noticed during the last half minute or so that the engine
seemed tired and irritable. The sudden shift of helm seemed to upset
its temper still more, and then, all of a sudden, its noise stopped and
the propeller ceased to revolve.
Miss Culpepper, perhaps for the first time in her life, knew the
meaning of the word “silence.” The silence that spreads from the Horn
to the Yukon, from Mexico to Hongkong, held off up to this by the beat
of the propeller and the purr of the engine, closed in on her, broken
only by the faint ripple of the bow wash as the way fell off the boat.
She guessed at once what was the matter, and confirmed her suspicions
by examining the gasoline gauge. The tank was empty. Aransas Joe, whose
duty it was, had forgotten to fill it up the night before.
Of all breakdowns this was the worst, but she did not grumble; the
spirit that had raised Million Dollar Culpepper from nothing to
affluence was not wanting in his daughter.
She said, “Bother!” glanced at Santa Catalina, glanced at the
schooner, and then, stepping the mast of the yawl, shook out her sail
to the wind. She was steering for the schooner. It was near, the island
was far, and she reckoned on getting something to eat to stay her on
the long sail back; also, somehow, the sudden longing for the sight of
a human face and the sound of a human voice in that awful loneliness
on whose fringe she had intruded had fallen upon her. There were sure
to be sailormen of some sort upon the schooner, and where there were
sailormen there was sure to be food of some sort.
But there was no one to be seen upon the deck, and, as she drew closer,
the atmosphere of forsakenness around the little craft became ever
apparent. As she drew closer still she let go the sheet and furled the
sail. So cleverly had she judged the distance that the boat had just
way enough on to bring it rubbing against the schooner’s starboard
side. She had cast out the port fenders, and, standing at the bow with
the boat hook, she clutched onto the after channels, tied up, and then,
standing on the yawl’s gunwale, and, with an agility none the less
marked because nobody was looking, scrambled on board. She had not time
to more than glance at the empty and desolate deck, for scarcely had
her foot touched the planking when noises came from below. There were
people evidently in the cabin and they were shouting.
Then she saw that the cabin hatch was closed, and, not pausing to
consider what she might be letting out, the girl mastered the working
of the hatch fastening, undid it, and stepped aside.
The fore end of a sailorman emerged, a broad-faced, blue-eyed
individual blinking against the sunlight. He scrambled on deck, and was
followed by another, dark, better looking, and younger.
Not a word did these people utter as they stood taking in everything
round them from the horizon to the girl.
Then the first described brought his eyes to rest on the girl.
“Well, I’m darned!” said he.
II
Let me interpolate now Mr. Harman’s part of the story in his own words.
“When Cap Ginnell bottled me and Blood in the cabin of the _Heart of
Ireland_,” said he, “we did a bit of shoutin’ and then fell quiet.
There ain’t no use in shoutin’ against a two-inch thick cabin hatch
overlaid with iron platin’. He’d made that hatch on purpose for the
bottling of parties; must have, by the way it worked and by the
armamints on it.
“You may say we were mugs to let ourselves be bottled like that. We
were. Y’ see, we hadn’t thought it over. We hadn’t thought it would pay
Ginnell to abandon the _Heart_ for a derelick schooner better found and
up to her hatches with a cargo of champagne, or we wouldn’t have let
him fool us down into the cabin like we did and then clap the hatch
on us. Leavin’ alone the better exchange, we hadn’t thought it would
be nuts to him to do us in the eye. Mugs we were, and mugs we found
ourselves, sittin’ on the cabin table and listenin’ to the blighter
clearin’ the crew off. There weren’t no chance of any help from them.
Chows they were, carin’ for nothin’ s’long as their chests an’ opium
pipes was safe.
“The skylight overhead was no use for more’n a cat to crawl through, if
it’d been open, which it wasn’t, more’n an inch, and fastened from the
deck side. Portholes! God bless you, them scuttles wasn’t big enough
for a cat’s face to fit in.
“I says to Blood: ‘Listen to the blighters! Oh, say, can’t we do
nuthin’, sittin’ here on our beam ends? Ain’t you got nuthin’ in your
head? Ain’t you got a match in your pocket to fire the tub and be done
with it?’
“‘It’ll be lucky for us,’ says Blood, ‘if Cap Ginnell doesn’t fire her
before he leaves her.’ With that, I didn’t think anythin’ more about
matches. No, sir! For ha’f an hour after the last boatload of Chows
and their dunnage was off the ship and away I was sniffin’ like a dog
at the hatch cover for the smell of smoke, and prayin’ to the A’mighty
between sniffs.
“After that we rousted round to see how we were fixed up for
provisions and water. We found grub enough for a month, and in one of
the bunks a breaker ha’f filled with water. Now that breaker must have
been put there for us by Ginnell before we left the _Heart_ to ’xamine
the derelick schooner. He must have fixed in his mind to do us in and
change ship right from the first. I remarks on this to Blood, and
then we starts a hunt for tools to cut our way out of there, findin’
nuthin’ serviceable but cutlery ware an’ a corkscrew. Two prong forks
and knives wore thin with usin’ weren’t what we were searchin’ for; a
burglar’s jimmy, blastin’ powder, and a drill was more in our line,
but there weren’t any, so we just set to with the knives, cuttin’ and
scrubbin’ at the tender parts of the hatch, more like tryin’ to tickle
a girl with iron stays on her than any useful work, for the plates on
that hatch would ’a’ given sniff to the plates on a battleship, till
I give over and just sat down on the floor cursin’ Schwab and the
Steel Trusts and Carnegie and Ginnell and the chap that had forged
them plates from the tip of his hammer to the toe of his boots. ‘Oh,
why the blazes,’ says I, ‘weren’t we born rats! There’s some sense in
rats; rats would be out and on deck, while here’s two chaps with five
fingers on each fist and men’s brains in their heads bottled and done
for, scratchin’ like blind kittens shet up in a box, and all along of
puttin’ their trust in a swab they ought to have scragged when they had
the chanst.’
“‘Oh, shet your head!’ says Blood.
“‘Shet yours,’ says I. ‘I’m speakin’ for both of us; it’s joining in
with that skrimshanker’s done us. Bad comp’ny, neither more nor neither
less, and I’m blowed if I don’t quit such and their likes and turn
Baptis’ minister if I ever lay leg ashore again.’ Yes, that’s what I
says to Cap Blood; I was that het up I laid for everythin’ in sight.
Then I goes on at him for the little we’d done, forgettin’ it was the
tools were at fault. ‘What’s the use,’ says I, ‘tinkerin’ away at that
hatch? You might as well be puttin’ a blister on a bald head, hopin’ to
raise hair. Here we are, and here we stick,’ I says, ‘till Providence
lets us out.’
“The words were scarce out of my head when he whips out Ginnell’s gun,
which he was carryin’ in his pocket and hadn’t remembered till then. I
thought he was goin’ to lay for me, till he points the mouth of it at
the hatch and lets blaze. There were three ca’tridges in the thing, and
he fires the three, and when I’d got back my hearing and the smoke had
cleared a bit there was the hatch starin’ at us unrattled, with three
spelters of lead markin’ it like beauty spots over the three dimples
left by the bullets.
“All the same, the firin’ done us good--sort of cleared the air like
a thunder-storm--and I began to remember I’d got a mouth on me and a
pipe in my pocket. We lit up and sat down, him on the last step of the
companionway and me on the table side, and then we began to figure on
what hand Providence was like to take in the business.
“I says to him: ‘There’s nothin’ _but_ Providence left, barrin’ them
old knives and that corkscrew, and they’re out of count. We’re driftin’
on the _Kuro Shiwo_ current, aimin’ right for the Horn, you may say,
but there’s the kelp beds, and they’re pretty sure to hold us a bit.
They’re south of us, and Santa Catalina’s east of them, with lots of
fishin’ boats sure to be out, and it’s on the cards that some of them
jays will spot us. “Derelick” is writ all over us--bare sticks and
nothin’ on deck, and sluin’ about to the current like a drunk goin’
home in the mornin’.’
“The Cap he cocks his eye up at the telltale compass fixed on the beam
overhead of him. It cheered him up a bit with its deviations, and he
allowed there might be somethin’ in the Providence business if the kelp
beds only held good.
“‘Failin’ them,’ he says, ‘it’s the Horn and a clear sea all the way to
it, with the chance of bein’ passed be day or rammed at night by some
rotten freighter. I don’t know much about Providence,’ he says, ‘but if
you give me the choice between the two, I’ll take the kelp beds.’
“Blood hadn’t no more feelin’s for religion in him than a turkey.
He was a book-read man, and I’ve took notice that nothin’ shakes a
sailorman in his foundations s’ much as messin’ with books.
“I don’t say my own religious feelin’s run equal, but they gets me by
the scruff after a jag and rubs me nose in it, and they lays for me
when I’m lonely, times, with no money or the chanst of it in sight;
times, they’ve near caught me and made good on the clutch, so’s that if
I’m not bangin’ a drum in the Sa’vation Army at this present minit it’s
only be the mercy of Providence. I’ve had close shaves, bein’ a man of
natural feelin’s, of all the traps laid for such, but Blood he held his
own course, and not bein’ able to see that the kelp beds might have
been put there by Providence to hold us a bit--which they were--and
give us a chanst of bein’ overhauled before makin’ a long board for the
Horn and sure damnation, I didn’t set out to ’lighten him.
“Well, folks, that day passed somehow or nuther, us takin’ spells at
the hatch to put in the time. Blood he found a spare ca’tridge of
Ginnell’s, and the thought came to him to scrape a hole at the foot
of the hatch cover and use the ca’tridge for a blastin’ charge. The
corkscrew came in handy for this, and toward night he’d got the thing
fixed. ‘Now,’ says he, ‘you’ll see somethin’!’ And he up with the
revolver and hit the ca’tridge a belt with the butt end, and the durned
thing backfires and near blew his head off.
“After that we lit the cabin lamp and had supper and went asleep, and
early next mornin’ I was woke by the noise of a boat comin’ alongside.
I sat up and shook Blood, and we listened.
“Then we began to shout and bang on the hatch, and all at once the
fastening went, and all at once the sun blazed on us, and next minit
I was on deck, with Blood after me. Now what d’you think had let us
out? I’ll give you twenty shots and lay you a dollar you don’t hit the
bull’s-eye. A girl! That’s what had let us out. Dressed in white, she
were, with a panama on her head and a gold watch on her wrist and white
shoes on her feet and a smile on her face like the sun dazzle on water.
And pretty! Well, I guess I’m no beauty-show judge, and my eyes had
lit on nothin’ prettier than Ginnell since leavin’ Frisco, so I may
have been out of my reckonin’ on points of beauty, but she were pretty.
Lord love me, I never want to see nothin’ prettier! I let out an oath,
I was that shook up at the sight of her, and Blood he hit me a drive in
the back that nigh sent me into her arms, and then we settled down and
explained matters.
“She was out from Avalon in a motor boat, and she’d run short of spirit
and sailed up to us, thinkin’ we were at anchor. Providence! I should
think so! Providence and the kelp beds, for only for them we’d have
been twenty miles to the s’uth’ard, driftin’ to Hades like hutched
badgers on a mill stream. We told her how Ginnell had fixed us, and she
told us how the gasoline had fixed her. ‘And now,’ says she, ‘will you
give me a biskit, for I’m hungry and I wants to get back to Avalon,
where my poppa is waitin’ for me, and he’ll be gettin’ narvous,’ she
says.
“‘Lord love you,’ says I, ‘and how do you propose to get back?’
“For the wind had fallen a dead ca’m, and right to Catalina and over
to San Clemente the sea lay like plate glass, with the _Kuro Shiwo_
flowin’ under like a blue satin snake.
“She bit on her lip, but she was all sand, that girl--Culpepper were
her name--and not a word did she say for a minit. Then she says, aimin’
to be cheerful: ‘Well, I suppose,’ says she, ‘we’ll just have to stay
at anchor here till they fetch me or the wind comes.’
“‘Anchor!’ said I. ‘Why, Lord bless you, there’s a mile-deep water
under us! We’re driftin’.’
“‘Driftin’!’ she cries. ‘And where are we driftin’ to?’
“That fetched me, and I was hangin’ in irons when Blood chipped in and
cheered her up with lies and told me to stay with her whiles he went
down below and got some breakfast ready, and then I was left alone with
her, trustin’ in Providence she wouldn’t ask no more questions as to
where we were driftin’ to.
“She sat on the cargo hatch whiles I filled a pipe, lookin’ round about
her like a cat in a new house, and then she got mighty chummy. I don’t
know how she worked it, but in ten minits she’d got all about myself
out of me and all about Ginnell and Blood and the _Yan-Shan_ and the
dollars we’d missed; she’d learned that I never was married and who
was me father and why I went to sea at first start. Right down to the
colour of me first pair of pants she had it all out of me. She was a
sure-enough lady, but I reckon she missed her vocation in not bein’
a bilge pump. Then she heaves a sigh at the sound of ham frying down
below, and hoped that breakfast was near ready, and right on her words
Blood hailed us from below.
“He’d opened the skylight wide and knocked the stuffiness out of the
cabin, and down we sat at the table with fried ham and ship’s bread and
coffee before us.
“I’d never set at table with the likes of her before, but if every real
lady’s cut on her bias, I wouldn’t mind settin’ at table with one
every day in me life. There was only two knives left whole after our
practice on the hatch with them. Blood and she had the whole ones, and
I made out with a stump, but she didn’t mind nor take notice. She was
talkin’ away all the time she was stuffin’ herself, pitchin’ into Cap
Ginnell just like one of us. Oh, I guess if she’d been a man she’d have
swore worth listenin’ to; she had the turn of the tongue for the work,
and what she said about Ginnell might have been said in chapel without
makin’ parties raise a hair, but I reckon it’d have raised blisters on
the soul of Pat Ginnell if he’d been by to hear and if he’d a soul to
blister, which he hasn’t.”
Mr. Harman relit his pipe, and seemed for a moment absorbed in
contemplation of Miss Culpepper and her possibilities as a plain
speaker; then he resumed:
“She made us tell her all over again about the _Yan-Shan_ business and
the dollars, and she allowed we were down on our luck, and she put
her finger on the spot. Said she: ‘You fell through by not goin’ on
treatin’ Ginnell as you begun treatin’ him. If he was bad enough to
be used that way, he wasn’t even good enough for you to make friends
with.’ Them wasn’t her words, but it was her meanin’.
“Then we left her to make her t’ilet with Blood’s comb and brush,
tellin’ her she could have the cabin to herself as long as she was
aboard, and, ten minutes after, she was on deck again, bright as a new
pin, and scarce had she stuck her head into the sun than Blood, who was
aft, dealin’ with some old truck, shouts: ‘Here’s the wind!’
“It was coming up from s’uth’ard like a field of blue barley, and I
took the wheel, and Blood and her ran to the halyards. She hauled
like a good un, and the old _Heart_ sniffed and shook at the breeze,
and I tell you it livened me up again to feel the kick of the wheel.
We’d got the motor boat streamed astern on a line, and then I gave the
old _Heart_ the helm, and round she came, so that in a minit we were
headin’ for Santa Catalina hull down on the horizon and only her spars
showin’, so to speak. I thought that girl would ’a’ gone mad. Not at
the chanst of gettin’ back, but just from the pleasure of feelin’
herself on a live ship and helpin’ to handle her. I let her have the
wheel, and she steered good, and all the time Santa Catalina was
liftin’, and now we could see with the glass that the water all round
the south end was thick with boats.
“‘They’re huntin’ for me,’ said she. ‘I guess poppa is in one of them
boats,’ she says, ‘and won’t he be surprised when he finds I ain’t
drowned? Your fortunes is made,’ says she, ‘for pop owns the ha’f of
Minneapolis, and I guess he’ll give you ha’f of what he owns. _You_
wait till you hear the yarn I’ll sling him----. Here they come!’
“They sighted us, and ha’f a hundred gasoline launches were nose end on
for us, fanning out like a regatta, and in the leadin’ launch sat an
old chap with white whiskers and a fifty-dollar panama on his head.
“‘That’s pop,’ she said.
“He were, and we hove to, whiles he came climbin’ on board like a
turtle, one leg over the bulwarks and one arm round her neck, and then
up went a hallelujah chorus from that crowd of craft round us, women
wavin’ handkerchiefs and blowin’ their noses and blubbing nuff to make
a camel sick.
“Then he and she went down to the cabin to make explanashions, and the
parties in the boats tried to board us, till I threatened them with a
boat hook and made them fend off while we got way on the _Heart_.
“When we were near into Avalon Bay, the Culps came on deck, and old man
Culpepper took off his hat to me and Blood and made us a speech, sayin’
we’d lifted weights off his heart, and all such.
“‘Never mind,’ says Blood, ‘we haven’t done nuthin’. Put it all down to
Providence,’ says he, ‘for if we saved her she saved us, and I ain’t
used to bein’ thanked for nothin’.’
“But, Lord bless you, you might as well have tried to stop the
Mississippi in flood as that old party when he’d got his thank gates
up. He said we were an honour to merchant seamen, which we weren’t,
and the great American nation--and Blood black Irish and me Welsh, with
an uncle that was a Dutchman--and then I’m blest if he didn’t burst
into po’try about the flag that waves over us all.
“It began to look like ten thousand dollars in gold coin for each of
us, and more than like it when we’d dropped anchor in the bay and he
told us to come ashore with him.
“Now I don’t know how longshore folk[1] have such sharp noses, but I do
know them longshore boatmen on Avalon Beach seemed to know by the cut
of the _Heart_ and us we weren’t no simple seamen, with flags wavin’
over us and an honour to our what-you-call-it navy. They sniffed at us
by some instinct or other, more special a wall-eyed kangaroo by the
name of Aransas Jim, I think it were.
“Said nothin’ much, seein’ old man Culp was disembarkin’ us with an arm
round each of our necks, so to say, but we took up their looks, and I’d
to lay pretty strong holts on myself or I’d have biffed the blighters,
lot o’ screw-neck mongrels, so’s their mothers wouldn’t have known
which was which when sortin’ the manglin’.
“Now you listen to what happened then. Culp he took us up to a big
hotel, where niggers served us with a feed in a room by ourselves.
Champagne they give us, and all sorts of truck _I’d_ never set eyes on
before. And when it was over in came old man Culp with an envelope in
his hand, which he gives to Blood.
“‘Just a few dollars for you and your mate,’ says he, ‘and you have my
regards always.’
“The girl she came in and near kissed us, and off we went with big
cigars in our mouths, feelin’ we were made men. The longshoremen were
still on the beach scratchin’ the fleas off themselves and talkin’,
I expec’, of the next millionaire they could rob by pretendin’ to be
fishermen. Blood he picked up a pebble on the shingle and put it in his
pocket, and when the longshore louts saw us comin’, smokin’ cigars
and walkin’ arrogant, they made sure old man Culp had given us ha’f a
million, and they looked it. All them noses of theirs weren’t turned up
just now. They saw dollars comin’ and hoped for a share.
“‘Here, you chap,’ says Blood to Aransas Jim or Aransas Joe or
whichever was his name, ‘help us to push our boat off and I’ll make
it worth your while.’ The chap does, and wades after us, when we were
afloat, for his dues. He held out his hand, and Blood he clapped the
pebble into it, and off we shot with them helaballoing after us.
“Much we cared.
“On board the _Heart_, we tumbled down to the cabin to ’xamine our
luck. Blood takes the envelope from his pocket, slits it open, and
takes out a little check that was in it. How much for, d’you think?
Five thousand dollars? No, it weren’t.
“Twenty dollars was writ on it. Twenty dollars, no cents.
“‘Say, Blood,’ says I to him, ‘you’ve got the pebble this time.’
“Blood he folded the check up and lit his pipe with it. Then he says,
talkin’ in a satisfied manner ’s if to himself:
“‘It were worth it.’
“That’s all he said. And, comin’ to think of it now meself, it were.”
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Allow me to assure the “longshore boatmen” on Avalon Beach that my
opinion of them is not that expressed hereafter by Mr. Harman.--AUTHOR.
V THE BIG HAUL
I
Captain Michael Blood and Billy Harman, having received ten thousand
dollars for services rendered to Henry Clay Armbruster, and having
cashed the check, held a consultation as to what they should do with it.
Harman was for filling up their schooner, the _Heart of Ireland_, with
trade and starting off for the islands in search of copra. Blood, tired
of the sea, for a while demurred. He said he wanted to enjoy life a bit.
“And who’s to stop you?” replied the open-minded Harman. “A thousand
dollars is all we want for a bust, and a week to do it in. I’ve took
notice that the heart is mostly out of a bust by the end of a week,
after that it’s a fair wind and followin’ sea for the jimjams with
an empty hold when you fetches them. Let’s lay our plans and work
cautious, for, when all’s said and done, it’s no great shakes to wake
jailed with empty pockets, robbed of your boots by the bar drummers
you’ve been fillin’ with booze.
“Booze ain’t no use,” continued Mr. Harman, finishing his glass--they
were celebrating the occasion in a bar near the China docks. “Look at
the chaps that sell it, and look at the chaps that swallow it--one lot
covered with di’monds and the other lot with their toes stickin’ out
of their boots. We’ve got to work cautious and keep takin’ soundings
all the time, for riches is rocks, as I heard a chap once sayin’ in a
temp’rance meetin’ on the Sand Lot. Twenty year ago it was, but the
sayin’ stuck in my head--have another?”
They failed to “work cautious” that night. Flushed with prosperity
and unaccustomed drinks, they found themselves playing cards with
professional gamblers, who relieved them of five thousand dollars in an
hour and twenty-five minutes.
“Riches is rocks.” There was never a truer saying; and next morning,
not being altogether fools, they determined to thank God the whole of
their little fortune was not gone and to set to work to retrieve their
losses.
Now, it had become known all about the waterside that the _Heart of
Ireland_ was back. The fate of Ginnell, her original owner, who had
been jugged for gun running, was still fresh and pleasant in the mind
of the public; and the authorities, who boarded the _Heart_ on the
morning after the gambling adventures of Blood and Harman, would have
had a lot of things to say to those two had not Harman already made
things straight with the “Clancy crowd,” that amiable political ring
whose freemasonic friendship and protection was never invoked in vain
by even the least of its members. So it came about that after friendly
conversation and cigars the authorities rowed off, and scarcely had
they gone when a boat with a big, fat man in the stern came sculling up.
“That’s Mike Rafferty,” said Harman to his companion. “He’s a cousin
of Ginnell’s. Now what in the nation does he want with us?”
Rafferty hailed Harman by name and came aboard. Rafferty knew
everything about them, from the fact that they were flush of coin to
the fact that they were in a kind of lawful-unlawful possession of his
cousin’s schooner.
He talked quite openly on these matters, but of the fate of his Cousin
Ginnell he said nothing, with the exception of a dark hint that wires
were being pulled in his favour.
Harman was equally explicit.
“He jugged us in the cabin of this ship,” said Harman, “and made off on
the derelick we struck down the coast there; he gave us a present of
her. That we stick to, and if I ever lay hands on Pat Ginnell I’ll give
him a present that’ll stick to him for the rest of his nacheral.”
“Aisy, now,” said Rafferty; “don’t be losin’ your hair. I know the
swab, and, though I’m workin’ in his favour, bein’ cousins, I’ve me
own down on him. He sold me a pup over the last cargo of oil he brought
in, and if it wasn’t for the disgrace of the family I’d l’ave him
lie without raisin’ a finger to better him. What I’ve come about is
bizness. I hear you’ve been talkin’ of copra.”
Harman had, in various bars, and he made no trouble about admitting the
soft impeachment.
“Well,” said Rafferty, “it’s become a poor business, what with them
Germans and missionaries and such. You go to any of the islands with
trade, and see what you’ll get. I’ve worked the Pacific since I was
a boy the height of me knee, and I know it. There’s not an island,
nearly, I’m not acqueented with, not a reef, begob; you ask any one,
and they’ll tell you.”
Harman knew this to be a fact. Rafferty, who was no good age, had been
engaged in blackbirding, in copra, in opium smuggling, in all the
in-and-out ways of life that the blue Pacific held or holds open to man.
“Heave ahead,” said he.
“Well,” said Rafferty, “this is me bizness with you. Pay me fifty
dollars down and ten per cent of the takin’s, and I’ll put you on to
an island where you’ll fill up with copra for a few old beads and
baccy pipes. It’s a vargin island out of trade tracks; you won’t find
any Dutchman there, and the Kanaka girls come dancin’ round you with
nuthin’ on them but flowers. You won’t find any Bibles nor crinolines
sp’ilin’ the people there. I marked it down last year when I was comin’
up from south of the line, with a never-mind cargo. But I left the sea
last spring, as maybe you know, else I’d have taken a ship down there
meself. Fifty dollars down and ten per cint on the takin’s, and I’ll
put you on the spot.”
Harman begged time to consider the matter, and Rafferty, after drinks
and conversation of a political nature, took his departure, leaving his
address behind.
“Now, you see how crookedness don’t pay,” said Harman, as he watched
the boat row off. “Pat Ginnell was so good at bestin’ he bested his
own relations. I remember that bizness about the shark oil; Rafferty
was givin’ Ginnell his name over it in every bar in Frisco, and now
Rafferty’s spoilin’ to get his own back by usin’ the _Heart_. Funny
them Irish are, for he’s tryin’ with the other hand to get him clear
of jail for the sake of the family. Jail’s hell to an Irishman. I’ve
always took notice of that--no offence to you.”
Blood looked away over the blue waters of the bay. “It is,” said he,
“and, bad as I hate Ginnell, if I could turn the lock to let him out,
I’d do it to-morrow--and scrag him the moment after. Jail’s not natural
to a man. If a man’s not fit to live loose, kill him, if you want to;
if you want to make him afraid of the law, cut the skin off him with a
cat-o’-nine-tails, but to stick him in a cage--and what’s jail but a
cage?--is to turn him into a brute beast. And it never betters him.”
Harman concurred. Sailors have a way of getting at the truth of things
because they are always so close to them; and these two, discussing
penal matters on the deck of the _Heart of Ireland_, might have been
listened to with advantage by some of the law officers of the nations.
Then they had drinks, and later in the day they called on Rafferty at
his office in Ginnis Street.
They had come to the decision to take his offer. A soft island was well
worth paying for. Cayzer, the owner of the great Clan line of steamers,
made his fortune by knowing where to send his ships for cargo, and,
though Harman knew nothing of the owner of the Clan line, he was keenly
alive to the truth of this matter.
“So you’ve come to agree with me,” said Rafferty. “Well, you won’t be
sorry. Now, how will you take it--fifty dollars down and a ten-per-cent
royalty to me on the takin’s, or would you sooner make a clean deal and
pay me a hundred and fifty down and no royalties? For between you and
me there’s a lot of sea chances to be taken and the old _Heart_ is not
as young as she used to be.”
Blood and Harman took a walk outside to consult, and determined to
make a “clean deal.”
“I don’t want to be payin’ no royalties,” said Harman; “let’s cut clear
of the chap and pay him a hundred down; he’ll take it.”
He did, after an hour’s bargaining and wrangling and calling the saints
to observe how he was being cheated.
Then, the hundred dollars haring been paid, he gave them the location
of the island on the chart which Harman had brought.
To be almost precise, the island was situated in the great
quadrilateral of empty sea southwest of Honolulu, bounded by the
International Date Line to westward, latitude 10° north to southward,
longitude 165° to eastward, and the Tropic of Cancer to northward.
Having paid a hundred dollars for the information, Blood and Harman
left Rafferty’s office and that very afternoon began to purchase the
trade for their new venture.
II
A fortnight later, with a full Chinese crew and Harman at the helm, the
_Heart_ shook out her old sails, and, picking her anchor out of the
mud, lay over on a tack that would take her midway between Alcatras
and Bird Rock. It was a bright and lovely morning, with a west wind
blowing, and Harman whistled softly to himself as he shifted the helm
under Alcatras and the slatting sails filled on the tack for Black
Point. She was catching the full breath of the sea here and heeled with
the green water a foot from the starboard gunwale as she made the reach
for Lime Point, then on the port tack she felt the first Pacific sea,
taking the middle channel.
After fighting the tumble of the thirty-six-foot water of the bar,
Harman, having set their course, relinquished the wheel to one of the
Chinamen and joined Blood.
In buying the trade, they had received some tips from Rafferty.
“Now,” said that gentleman, “there’s no use in takin’ hats to Paris
or coals to Newcastle. If you’re going to trade with a place, you
must take the things that’s wanted there. I was sayin’ you could get
all the copra you wanted for baccy pipes and beads--that was only me
figure of speech. Them chaps on Matao--the name of the island--want
stuff different from that, I took note when I was there, thinkin’
to trade some time with them. They’re no end keen on diggin’ the
land and growin’ things, and they traded me a lot of fish and shells
for a packet of onion seed. They want stuff that’s not grown there
natural--onions, potatoes, and garden seed in general. You might take
some spades and wheelbarras and not be amiss; and tinware, pots, and
pans, and so on.”
Harman took this useful tip, and the _Heart_ was well provisioned
with things useful in the way of agriculture. He was talking now with
Blood on the stowage; the wheelbarrows were exercising his mind, for
there is nothing more awkward to stow, or, in its way, more likely to
be damaged, and they had seven of them. It was a feature of Harman’s
make-up that he sometimes didn’t begin to bother about things till it
was impossible to put them right, and Blood hinted so in plain language.
“What’s the good of talkin’ about it now?” said he. “We worked the
thing out ashore, and what’s done is done. You got them cheap, and if
the Kanakas don’t take to them they’ll always fetch their price in any
port.”
“That’s what’s bothering me,” said Harman; “for if the Kanakas don’t
want them and we fill up with copra, we’ll have to dump the durned
things, for we won’t have stowage room for them.”
“Wait till we’ve got the copra,” replied Blood.
Then they stood watching the Californian coast getting low down on the
port quarter and a big tank steamer pounding along half a mile away
making to enter the gates.
“Wheelbarrows or no wheelbarrows, you may thank your God you’re not
second mate on _that_,” said Blood.
Harman concurred.
III
They had favourable winds to south of Bird Island, which is situated
north of Nilihau and Kaula in the Hawaiian group, then came a calm that
lasted three days, leaving the old _Heart_ groaning and whining to the
lift of the swell and the grumbling of Harman, hungry for copra.
“There’s somethin’ about this tub that gets me,” said he. “Somethin’
always happens just as we’re about to make good. I believe Pat
Ginnell’s put a curse on her.”
“Oh, close up!” said Blood. “How about Armbruster? I reckon she’s lucky
enough; it’s the fools that are in her that have brought any bad luck
there’s been going.”
“Well, we’ll see,” replied the other.
As if to disprove his words, an hour later the wind came; and three
days later, nosing through the great desolation of blue water between
Sejetman Reef and Johnston Island, the _Heart of Ireland_ raised the
island. It was midday when the sea-birdlike cry of one of the Chinamen
on the lookout brought Blood and Harman tumbling up from the cabin.
Yes, it was the island, right enough, and Harman through his glass
could make out the tops of palm trees where the sea shimmered.
He held the glass glued to his eye for a moment, and then handed it to
Harman.
“I reckon,” said he, “the pa’ms is as plentiful there as the hairs on a
bald man’s head. Why, there ain’t any pa’ms!”
Blood swore and closed the glass with a snap.
Even at that distance the poverty of the place in copra shouted across
the sea, but it was not till they had drawn in within sound of the
reefs that the true desolation of this fortunate island became apparent.
The place was horrible. A mile and a half, or maybe two miles, long by
a mile broad, protected by broken reefs, the island showed just one
grove of maybe a hundred trees; the rest was scrub vegetation and sea
birds.
Strangest and perhaps most desolate of all the features was a line of
shanties, half protected by the trees, shanties that seemed gone to
decay.
Then, as the _Heart_ hove to and lay sniffing at the place, appeared a
figure. A man was coming down the little strip of beach leading from
the shanties to the lagoon.
“Look!” said Harman. “He’s pushin’ off to us in a boat. Say, Blood,
d’you see any naked Kanaka girls crowned with flowers waitin’ to dance
round us?”
“Rafferty’s sold us a pup,” said Blood.
“It’s easy to be seen. We’ll wait. Let’s see.”
The boat, a small one, was clearing the reef, opening and making toward
them, the man sculling her looking over his shoulder now and then to
correct his course.
Close up, she revealed herself as an old fishing dinghy, battered with
wear.
Alongside, the man in her laid in his oars, caught the rope flung to
him by Harman, and made fast.
He was a pale-faced, lantern-jawed, dyspeptic-looking person, and he
was chewing, for the first thing he did after scrambling on deck was
to spit overboard. The next was to ask a question.
“What’s your name?” said he, saluting the afterguard with a nod, and
sweeping the deck with his eyes--eyes like the wine-coloured, large,
soulless eyes of a hare.
“_Heart of Ireland_, out of Frisco--what’s yours?” replied Harman.
“Gadgett,” replied the hare-eyed man. “I came out thinking maybe you
were bringing news of my schooner, the _Bertha Mason_. She’s overdue
from Sydney. I’m owner here. This island’s mine, leased from the
Australian government.” Then, with another look round the deck: “What
in the nation are you doing down here anyway?”
“Makin’ fools of ourselves,” replied Harman, “unless we’ve mistook your
place for a big copra island that ought to lay in your position. You
haven’t heard tell of such an island hereabouts?”
“Look at your charts,” said Gadgett. “This place is only marked on the
last British Admiralty charts. There’s nothing round here but water
from the Change Time Line to Johnston Island. You’ve come a thousand
miles out for copra.”
“What’s your venture here, may I ask?” put in Blood.
“Shell,” replied Gadgett, leaning now against the starboard rail and
cutting himself a new plug of tobacco. “I’ve been working this island
six years, and had her nearly stripped of shell last spring, but I’ve
hung on to clear the last of it. There isn’t much, but I thought I’d
take the last squeeze. My schooner is overdue, and when it comes I’m
going to clear out for good.”
“Say,” said Harman, “did a chap called Rafferty call here last spring?”
Gadgett turned his eyes to Harman.
“Yes, a chap by that name was here in a schooner. I’ve forgot her name.
Blown out of his course by weather, he was, and called for water.”
“Well, now, listen,” said Harman. Then he told the whole story we know.
Gadgett was a good listener. You could feel him putting his hands
into the pockets of the yarn, so to speak, and weighing the contents,
nodding his head the while, but not saying a word. When it was
finished, he took from his pocket the knife with which he had cut the
tobacco, opened it, and began cutting gently at his left thumb nail.
“Well,” said he, “it’s pretty clear you two gentlemen have been sold.
Brought wheelbarrows here and onion seed and pots and pans; might as
well have brought an empty hold for all the trade to be done in this
place, for when I’m gone, with the few Kanakas I have with me--they
are fishing over on the other side just now--there’ll be nobody here
but sea gulls. Rafferty--I see him clear--a big-featured man he was, a
questioning chap, too. Well, there’s no doubt about it; he slung you a
yarn. But what made him do it?”
“What made him do it!” said Blood. “Why, to guy us all over Frisco and
to get right with us over a deal we had with a cousin of his by the
name of Pat Ginnell. I’m Irish myself, and I ought to have known how
they stick together. No matter, there’s no use in crying over spilt
milk. Can we come into your lagoon for a brush-up?”
Gadgett assented. There was a broad fairway, and he steered the _Heart_
himself, the boat following streamed on a line. When the anchor was
down, he asked them ashore, and as they were rowing across to the beach
said Gadgett: “Do you gentlemen know anything of oyster fishing--shell?”
“No,” said Harman.
“That’s a pity,” said Gadgett, “for if you’d been disposed and knew
the business you might have cared to stick here. I put down spat
this spring on the whole floor of this lagoon, and the place will be
thick with oysters by Christmas. I’d have sold you the remains of the
lease--over forty years to run--for a trifle. There’s money to be made
here--if you cared to take the thing on.”
“No,” said Harman, rather shortly. “We’re not open to any trade of that
sort.”
“Well, there was no harm in mentioning it,” said Gadgett.
He took them up to the frame house in the cocoanut grove, where he
lived, and stood drinks. Then he showed them the godown where shell was
stored and the Kanakas’ shanties.
Then Blood and Harman went off for a walk by themselves to explore the
horrible desolation of the place.
Said Harman, when they were alone: “Skunk--he’s been tryin’ to do us,
him and his spat! I know all about oysters, shell and pearl. Why,
this place won’t be no use for another fifty years after the way he’s
scraped it. He looks on us as a pair of mugs, wanderin’ about with a
cargo of wheelbarrows--which we are. But we ain’t such mugs as to pay
him good money for lyin’ yarns.”
They walked to the only eminence on the island, a rise of ground some
hundred feet above the sea level, and there they stood breathing the
sea air and watching the gulls and listening to the eternal song of
the surf on the reef.
Then they came back to the beach and hailed the schooner for a boat,
which presently put off and took them on board.
Once on deck, Mr. Harman made a dive below into the cabin, and Blood,
following him, found him in the act of uncorking a bottle of whisky.
“I’m fair let down,” said Harman, mixing his drink. “It’s not Rafferty,
nor the dog’s trick he’s played us, nor the sight of this blasted place
that’s enough to give a dromedary the collywobbles. It’s that chap with
the yalla eyes. I heard him laffin’ to himself when he went into the
house, laffin’ at us. I’ve never been laffed at like that, but it’s not
so much that as the chap. He’s onnatural.”
“I want to get back to Frisco and scrag Rafferty,” said Blood, taking
hold of the bottle. “That’s all _I_ want.”
“You’ll have to scrag the whole of Frisco, then,” said Harman, “for the
place is rockin’ with laughter now, from the China docks to Meiggs’.
It’s the wheelbarrows that have done us; they’ll be had against us
everywhere, and not a bar you’ll go into but you’ll be asked: Is your
wheelbarrow outside? I don’t want to go back to Frisco, I tell you I
don’t. I want to get to some place where I can sit down and cuss quiet.
Lord, but that chap has had us lively!”
There was no doubt of that fact. Rafferty, with that fatal sense of
humour for which he had a reputation of a sort, had well avenged his
kinsman, Ginnell, put a hundred dollars into his own pocket, and made
Blood and Harman forever ridiculous to a certain order of minds. And
his whole working material had been just the recollection of this
forsaken island--nothing more than that.
IV
Gadgett’s schooner, the _Bertha Mason_, came into the lagoon that
night under a full moon lifting in the east. Blood and Harman had not
gone to bed, and they were treated to a lovely sight which left them
unimpressed.
Nothing could be more perfect in the way of a sea picture than the
schooner fresh from the sea spilling her amber light on her water
shadows to the slatting of curves and the sounds of block and cordage,
moving like a vision with just way enough on her to take her to her
anchorage.
Then the lagoon surface reeled to the splash of the anchor, the shore
echoes answered to the rumble-tum-tum-tum of the chain, and the _Bertha
Mason_ swung to her moorings, presenting her bow to the outward-going
current and her broadside to that of the _Heart_.
“Blast the blighters!” said Harman. Then the two went below to their
bunks.
Next morning there were salutations across the water from one schooner
to the other. The fellows on the _Bertha Mason_ were at work early
getting the shell on board, and the Chinese crew of the _Heart_ were
busy fishing. During the day there was little communication between the
two vessels, and at night there was no offer of the Bertha Masonites to
come aboard, yet it was their duty to pay first call as the _Heart_
was a visitor.
“They’re a stand-off lot,” said Harman. “They’re turnin’ up their
noses. I s’pose, because we have a crew of chinkies. Well, they can
keep to themselves, for all I care. When’re we goin’ to put out?”
“I don’t want to leave before them,” said Blood. “Besides, there are
repairs to be done, and we want to fill up with water. They won’t keep
us long.”
Harman said nothing. He wanted to be off, but he felt as Blood did; his
enmity against the Gadgett crowd made him want to hold on, pretending
to care nothing, and that enmity was increased next morning. The
_Bertha Mason_, dragging her anchor a bit on the strong incoming
current, came near to foul the _Heart_. Hartman used language to which
came a polite inquiry as to how he was off for wheelbarrows.
“Gadgett’s told,” said he to Blood, after making suitable answer to
the query. “They’re laffin at us. The yarn will be all over Sydney
now; they’ll be tellin’ it in N’ York before they’ve done with it.
We’ll have to change our names and sink the _Heart_ to clear ourselves.
Well, I’m goin’ off fishin’. Gadgett said there was good fishin’ from
the rocks on the other side of the island. I can’t stick here doin’
nuthin’. The deck’s burnin’ my feet.”
He rowed ashore with lines and fish that the Chinese had caught for
bait. It was five o’clock in the evening, and the _Bertha Mason_, her
cargo stowed, was preparing to leave when he returned.
Blood was down below when Harman came tumbling down the companionway.
He was flushed, and looked as though he had been drinking, though his
legs were steady enough, and there was no smell of alcohol.
“Blood!” shouted Harman. “We’re made! Where’s your pocketbook? Gimme
it! Come on, haste yourself; come with me and try to look like a fool.
Gimme the pocketbook, I tell you, and don’t ask no questions; I’m fit
to burst, and there’s no time. They’re handlin’ the sails on that
bathtub. Up with you and after me!”
He seized the pocketbook, which had fifteen hundred dollars in it, the
remains of their money, and rushed on deck, followed by Blood.
The boat was still by the side, with two Chinamen in her. They got in
and rowed to the _Bertha Mason_.
Next moment they were on the deck of the _Bertha_, facing Gadgett.
“Mr. Gadgett,” said Harman, “when you talked of having put down oyster
spat in the lagoon, did you mean pearl-oyster spat?”
“Of course,” said Gadgett, scenting vaguely what was coming.
“And will them oysters have pearls in them by next Christmas?”
“Of course they will,” replied the other. “Not every oyster, but most
of them will.”
“You talked of selling the remains of the lease of the place,” said
Harman. “Well, we’ve come to buy. What would you want for it?”
“Two thousand dollars,” said Gadgett. They went below to bargain,
and in five minutes, anxious to be done with the fools and get away,
Gadgett came down to five hundred dollars.
He knew well that not only was the place stripped by him, but that
lately it had been giving out. Oysters are among the most mysterious
denizens of the sea, and shell lagoons “give out” for no known reason.
The oysters cease to breed--that is all. Gadgett would have sold the
remains of his lease for five dollars, for five cents, for a cent. He
would have given it away--to an enemy.
He got five hundred dollars for it and reckoned that he had crowned his
luck.
Harman went below and examined the lease. It included all rights on
the island above and underground, and all rights to sea approaches and
reefs.
Gadgett had a government stamp for the new contract. He was a man who
always foresaw, and in five minutes Harman and Blood found themselves
in possession of Matao for a term of forty-four years, with an option
of renewal for another twenty years on a year’s notice.
Then Harman, with this in his pocket, came on deck, followed by Blood,
and as they stood saying good-bye to Gadgett the fellow in command
began giving the order to handle the throat and peak halyards.
As they rowed off, the jib was being set, and when they reached the
_Heart_, the sound of the windlass pawls reached them, and the rasp of
the anchor chain being hove short.
“What is it?” said Blood, who knew Harman too well to doubt that they
had got the weather gauge on Gadgett.
“Wait till they’ve cleared the lagoon--wait till they’ve cleared the
lagoon!” said the other. “I’m afraid of thinkin’ of it lest that chap
should smell the idea and come back and murder us. Oh, Lord, oh, Lord!
Will they never get out?”
The anchor of the _Bertha Mason_ was now rising to the catheads; she
was moving. As she passed the reef opening, she ran up her flag and
dipped it, then the Pacific took her.
“Come down below,” said Harman.
Down below, not a word would he say till he had poured out two
whiskies, one for himself and one for Blood.
Then he burst out:
“It’s a guano island. Yesterday, when I went fishin’, I took notice
of signs, then I prospected. All the top part is one solid block of
guano--nuff to manure the continent of the States. That chap has been
sittin’ five years on millions of dollars and playin’ with oyster
shells. Oh, think of Rafferty--and the wheelbarrows! Think of his long,
yellow face when he knows!”
“Are you sure?” said Blood.
“Sure--why, I’ve a workin’ knowledge of guano. Sure--o’ course I’m
sure! Come ashore with me, and I’ll show you.”
They went ashore, and before sunset Harman had demonstrated that even
on this side, where the deposit was thinnest, the store was vast.
“Think of the size of the place,” said he, “and remember from this to
the other side it gets thicker. Fifty years won’t empty it.”
The sea gulls of a thousand years had presented them with a fortune
beyond estimation, and Blood for the first time in his life saw himself
a rich man--honestly rich.
Their joy was so great that the first thing they did on returning to
the _Heart_ was to fling the whisky bottle into the lagoon.
“We don’t want any more of that hell stuff ever,” said Blood. “I want
to enjoy life, and that spoils everything.”
“I’m with you,” said Harman, “not to say I’m goin’ to turn teetotal,
for I’ve took notice that them mugs gets so full of themselves
they haven’t cargo room for nuthin’ else. But I don’t want no more
drunks--not me.”
During the next fortnight, with the help of the wheelbarrows and
agricultural implements, they took in a cargo of guano. Then they
sailed for Frisco.
I never heard exactly the amount of money they made over their last sea
adventure, but I do know for a fact that Rafferty nearly died from
“mortification” and that Blood and Harman are exceedingly rich men.
Blood turned gentleman and married; but Billy Harman is just the same,
preferring sailormen as company and taking voyages to his island to
sniff the source of his wealth and for the good of his health.
Billy is the only man I have ever known unspoiled by money.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
The one footnote has been moved to the end of its chapter and relabeled.
Punctuation has been made consistent.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in
the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have
been corrected.
The following change was made:
p. 43: Sime changed to Lime (passed Lime Point)
p. 292: Line changed to Lime (for Lime Point)