A little while after Wilbur had set off for the station, while Moran
was making the last entries in the log-book, seated at the table in the
cabin, Jim appeared at the door.
“Well,” she said, looking up.
“China boy him want go asho' plenty big, seeum flen up Chinatown in um
city.”
“Shore leave, is it?” said Moran. “You deserted once before without
even saying good-by; and my hand in the fire, you'll come back this time
dotty with opium. Get away with you. We'll have men aboard here in a few
days.”
“Can go?” inquired Jim suavely.
“I said so. Report our arrival to your Six Companies.”
Hoang rowed Jim and the coolies ashore, and then returned to the
schooner with the dory and streamed her astern. As he passed the cabin
door on his way forward, Moran hailed him.
“I thought you went ashore?” she cried.
“Heap flaid,” he answered. “Him other boy go up Chinatown; him tell Sam
Yup; I tink Sam Yup alla same killee me. I no leaveum ship two, thlee
day; bimeby I go Olegon. I stay topside ship. You wantum cook. I cook
plenty fine; standum watch for you.”
Indeed, ever since leaving Coronado the ex-beach-comber had made himself
very useful about the schooner; had been, in fact, obsequiousness
itself, and seemed to be particularly desirous of gaining the good-will
of the “Bertha's” officers. He understood pigeon English better than
Jim, and spoke it even better than Charlie had done. He acted the part
of interpreter between Wilbur and the hands; even turned to in the
galley upon occasion; and of his own accord offered to give the vessel
a coat of paint above the water-line. Moran turned back to her log, and
Hoang went forward. Standing on the forward deck, he looked after the
“Bertha's” coolies until they disappeared behind a row of pine-trees on
the Presidio Reservation, going cityward. Wilbur was nowhere in sight.
For a longtime Hoang studied the Lifeboat Station narrowly, while he
made a great show of coiling a length of rope. The station was just out
of hailing distance. Nobody seemed stirring. The whole shore and back
land thereabout was deserted; the edge of the city was four miles
distant. Hoang returned to the forecastle-hatch and went below, groping
under his bunk in his ditty-box.
“Well, what is it?” exclaimed Moran a moment later, as the beach-comber
entered the cabin, and shut the door behind him.
Hoang did not answer; but she did not need to repeat the question. In an
instant Moran knew very well what he had come for.
“God!” she exclaimed under her breath, springing to her feet. “Why
didn't we think of this!”
Hoang slipped his knife from the sleeve of his blouse. For an instant
the old imperiousness, the old savage pride and anger, leaped again in
Moran's breast--then died away forever. She was no longer the same Moran
of that first fight on board the schooner, when the beach-combers had
plundered her of her “loot.” Only a few weeks ago, and she would have
fought with Hoang without hesitation and without mercy; would have
wrenched a leg from the table and brained him where he stood. But she
had learned since to know what it meant to be dependent; to rely
for protection upon some one who was stronger than she; to know her
weakness; to know that she was at last a woman, and to be proud of it.
She did not fight; she had no thought of fighting. Instinctively she
cried aloud, “Mate--mate!--Oh, mate, where are you? Help me!” and
Hoang's knife nailed the words within her throat.
The “loot” was in a brass-bound chest under one of the cabin's bunks,
stowed in two gunny-bags. Hoang drew them out, knotted the two together,
and, slinging them over his shoulder, regained the deck.
He looked carefully at the angry sky and swelling seas, noting the
direction of the wind and set of the tide; then went forward and cast
the anchor-chains from the windlass in such a manner that the schooner
must inevitably wrench free with the first heavy strain. The dory was
still tugging at the line astern. Hoang dropped the sacks in the boat,
swung himself over the side, and rowed calmly toward the station's
wharf. If any notion of putting to sea with the schooner had entered the
obscure, perverted cunning of his mind, he had almost instantly rejected
it. Chinatown was his aim; once there and under the protection of his
Tong, Hoang knew that he was safe. He knew the hiding-places that the
See Yup Association provided for its members--hiding places whose very
existence was unknown to the police of the White Devil.
No one interrupted--no one even noticed--his passage to the station. At
best, it was nothing more than a coolie carrying a couple of gunny-sacks
across his shoulder. Two hours later, Hoang was lost in San Francisco's
Chinatown.
*****
At the sight of the schooner sweeping out to sea, Wilbur was for an
instant smitten rigid. What had happened? Where was Moran? Why was there
nobody on board? A swift, sharp sense of some unnamed calamity leaped
suddenly at his throat. Then he was aware of a crattering of hoofs along
the road that led to the fort. Hodgson threw himself from one of the
horses that were used in handling the surf-boat, and ran to him hatless
and panting.
“My God!” he shouted. “Look, your schooner, do you see her? She broke
away after I'd started to tell you--to tell you--to tell you--your girl
there on board--It was horrible!”
“Is she all right?” cried Wilbur, at top voice, for the clamor of the
gale was increasing every second.
“All right! No; they've killed her--somebody--the coolies, I
think--knifed her! I went out to ask you people to come into the station
to have supper with me--”
“Killed her--killed her! Who? I don't believe you--”
“Wait--to have supper with me, and I found her there on the cabin floor.
She was still breathing. I carried her up on deck--there was nobody else
aboard. I carried her up and laid her on the deck--and she died there.
Just now I came after you to tell you, and--”
“Good God Almighty, man! who killed her? Where is she? Oh--but of course
it isn't true! How did you know? Moran killed! Moran killed!”
“And the schooner broke away after I started!”
“Moran killed! But--but--she's not dead yet; we'll have to see--”
“She died on the deck; I brought her up and laid her on--”
“How do you know she's dead? Where is she? Come on, we'll go right back
to her--to the station!”
“She's on board--out there!”
“Where--where is she? My God, man, tell me where she is!”
“Out there aboard the schooner. I brought her up on deck--I left her on
the schooner--on the deck--she was stabbed in the throat--and then came
after you to tell you. Then the schooner broke away while I was coming;
she's drifting out to sea now!”
“Where is she? Where is she?”
“Who--the girl--the schooner--which one? The girl is on the
schooner--and the schooner--that's her, right there--she's drifting out
to sea!”
Wilbur put both hands to his temples, closing his eyes.
“I'll go back!” exclaimed Hodgson. “We'll have the surf-boat out and get
after her; we'll bring the body back!”
“No, no!” cried Wilbur, “it's better--this way. Leave her, let her
go--she's going out to sea again!”
“But the schooner won't live two hours outside in this weather; she'll
go down!”
“It's better--that way--let her go. I want it so!”
“I can't stay!” cried the other again. “If the patrol should sig-storm
coming up, and I've got to be at my station.”
Wilbur did not answer; he was watching the schooner.
“I can't stay!” cried the other again. “If the patrol should signal--I
can't stop here, I must be on duty. Come back, you can't do anything!”
“No!”
“I have got to go!” Hodgson ran back, swung himself on the horse, and
rode away at a furious gallop, inclining his head against the gusts.
And the schooner in a world of flying spray, white scud, and driving
spoondrift, her cordage humming, her forefoot churning, the flag at her
peak straining stiff in the gale, came up into the narrow passage of the
Golden Gate, riding high upon the outgoing tide. On she came, swinging
from crest to crest of the waves that kept her company and that ran to
meet the ocean, shouting and calling out beyond there under the low,
scudding clouds.
Wilbur had climbed to the top of the old fort. Erect upon its granite
ledge he stood, and watched and waited.
Not once did the “Bertha Millner” falter in her race. Like an unbitted
horse, all restraint shaken off, she ran free toward the ocean as to her
pasture-land. She came nearer, nearer, rising and rolling with the seas,
her bowsprit held due west, pointing like a finger out to sea, to the
west--out to the world of romance. And then at last, as the little
vessel drew opposite the old fort and passed not one hundred yards away,
Wilbur, watching from the rampart, saw Moran lying upon the deck with
outstretched arms and calm, upturned face; lying upon the deck of that
lonely fleeing schooner as upon a bed of honor, still and calm, her
great braids smooth upon her breast, her arms wide; alone with the sea;
alone in death as she had been in life. She passed out of his life as
she had come into it--alone, upon a derelict ship, abandoned to the sea.
She went out with the tide, out with the storms; out, out, out to the
great gray Pacific that knew her and loved her, and that shouted and
called for her, and thundered in the joy of her as she came to meet him
like a bride to meet a bridegroom.
“Good-by, Moran!” shouted Wilbur as she passed. “Good-by, good-by,
Moran! You were not for me--not for me! The ocean is calling for
you, dear; don't you hear him? Don't you hear him? Good-by, good-by,
good-by!”
The schooner swept by, shot like an arrow through the swirling currents
of the Golden Gate, and dipped and bowed and courtesied to the Pacific
that reached toward her his myriad curling fingers. They infolded her,
held her close, and drew her swiftly, swiftly out to the great heaving
bosom, tumultuous and beating in its mighty joy, its savage exultation
of possession.
Wilbur stood watching. The little schooner lessened in the
distance--became a shadow in mist and flying spray--a shadow moving
upon the face of the great waste of water. Fainter and fainter she grew,
vanished, reappeared, was heaved up again--a mere speck upon the western
sky--a speck that dwindled and dwindled, then slowly melted away into
the gray of the horizon.