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_Title:_ In Blue Waters
_Date of first publication:_ 1917
_Author:_ Henry de Vere Stacpoole (1863-1951)
_Date first posted:_ June 9, 2026
_Date last updated:_ June 9, 2026
Faded Page eBook #20260619

This eBook was produced by: Al Haines, John Routh & the online
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                          [Cover Illustration]

                             In Blue Waters

                                   By

                          H. de Vere Stacpoole

        Author of “The Pearl Fishers,” “The Reef of Stars,” etc.


                        LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO.
                            PATERNOSTER ROW
                                  1917




                                CONTENTS


                             IN BLUE WATERS

               I. THE CAPTAIN GETS A SHIP
              II. THE SALVING OF THE “YAN-SHAN”
             III. A CARGO OF CHAMPAGNE
              IV. AVALON BAY
               V. THE GREAT WHITE PEARL
              VI. THE BIG HAUL


                       THE LUCK OF CAPTAIN SLOCUM

               I. THE FORTUNATE ISLAND
              II. THE ENCOUNTER WITH KELLER
             III. A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE
              IV. THE BEAZLEYS
               V. ABKELLER
              VI. MARU


                            THE BIRTH OF LOVE

               I. PLUNDER FROM THE SEA
              II. THE VALLEY OF THE LITTLE HORSES
             III. THE HOME OF THE DYING PTERODACTYLS
              IV. THE ATTACK
               V. THE LAST HALT


                              SHORT STORIES

               1. THE MOUND OF DARKNESS
               2. THE HERO
               3. THE SATIN SHOE
               4. THE VALLEY OF THE SWORD
               5. THE “CORMORANT”
               6. PEARL ISLAND
               7. THE BLOODSTONE
               8. BLACK BASS




                             IN BLUE WATERS


                                   I
                        THE CAPTAIN GETS A SHIP


                                   I

Captain Blood was an Irishman of the black-haired, blue-eyed type, a
presentable man and a great favourite with the ladies, with scarcely a
trace of the Irish accent, but a voice that would soothe the devil to
sleep, and a temper that when roused carried all before it. This
gentleman had lost several ships, he had lost several small fortunes
gotten more or less illegitimately, he had lost caste in several ports
of the world, but somehow or another he had never lost a friend. He had
run guns, and he had run gin, his name had been whispered coupled with
the word Barratry. In earlier and freer times, privateering and grand
smuggling would without any manner of doubt have claimed him, and held
him by their charms. In these flat times he was just a free-lance.

After the _Penguin_ job, he and Billy Harman, that simple sailor man,
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 this fact 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, whilst, 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 lug sail 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 towards him along the
quay side.

It was Mr. Harman.

Billy Harman was an innocent-looking sailor man, with an open,
weather-beaten face and blue eyes that gazed at you direct. A copy-book
moralist would have made nothing of Billy, for he was full of guile and
yet possessed of a strange sort of innocence. His morals would have
shocked a Sunday school, yet he would have been the life and soul of a
Sunday school treat had he ever been invited to one. This gentleman, who
could scarcely read and who managed with difficulty to write the words
“Billy Harman,” had yet been endowed by nature with a mind active as a
squirrel. Ward politicians knew Mr. Harman as a useful man and used him
occasionally. Crimps knew him, and tavern keepers; had he been more of a
scamp and less of a dreamer, he might have risen high in life. His dream
was of a big fortune to be “got sudden and easy,” and this dream,
stimulated at times by alcohol, managed somehow to keep him poor.

“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’sle, 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 latitude 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, “and there’s pearls got there and
_bêche-de-mer_; then off Santa Catalina you get chaps going for the
fishing, tarpon and such-like. Avalon is their port of call, a swell
place with hotels that beat Pa’m Beach, and bands playin’ on the front,
and girls bathin’ in Paris hats, and chaps in white clothes smokin’
cigars as long as your leg. I tell you, that’s a place. However, it’s
not Avalon I’m aimin’ at, but a teeny yellow bit of an island away to
the north of the San Lucas’s, 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’
snuthin’ left but the starnpost and the ribs. It’s shelvin’ water there
and rocks that hold like sharks’ 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.”

“I’ll tell you a better dodge,” said the Captain brightly, and as if
seized by an inspiration; “if we could crawl into the Bank of
California, you and me, with a sack apiece, we could put our claws on a
million dollars, we could that, my son, but since we can’t—why, we
can’t. 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 North-west 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 mind 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.”

Moored, to-day, to the rotting piles, lay an old sea-green, two-hundred
ton barque that had started life as a grain carrier in the ’80’s, a
condemned tank steamer, and a tug out of commission.

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 wharf-side 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 Custom House 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 wharf-side, 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 sailor men on the
front, it’s those durned Bands of Hope and Sailors’ Rests that suck ’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 onc’t them
wharf missionaries gets a holt on them. Why, there’s a chap called
Gaffery, Black Sam, as used to get so blind drunk in my place that he’s
been twice shanghaied without knowin’ in which house the dope was give
him. Well, the Salvation Army got hold of that chap, and last I saw of
him was the other day, and he in a mate’s rig-out, blind sober, with a
gold ring on his finger and shoutin’ in a chorus at one of them meetin’s
at the foot of Tallis Street. I tell you this, Billy Harman, if they
don’t get up some bye-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, most like, 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, whilst
Harman pursued his way along the wharf towards 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 pretences 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 pretences? I haven’t used no false pretences. 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 recognize that Harman, despite his real and
child-like 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.

The tablecloths at Sheehan’s were of the roughest, but they were
tablecloths; other eating houses along the front might content
themselves with bare boards or oilcloth, but Sheehan said his house was
no engineers’ mess, and he provided tablecloths. This, coupled with the
fact that the food at his place was better than the food to be got
anywhere else for the same price, brought him a big clientele. Sheehan,
in fact, was a genius who had discovered the truth that there is quite a
lot of money to be made by Honesty, that the reputation of a good
beefsteak spreads like prairie fire, and that coffee beans are
infinitely better as advertising agents than bud barley.

“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-burnt, 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. Whacher 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 wash-tub and
two furnished bedrooms.

Harman was always perfectly honest with lodging-house keepers and such
folk, more, he was generous in his dealings with them when he had money,
and Mrs. Rourke, though he owed her a matter of five dollars or so, made
no objection to his taking his things; she was sure of being repaid
sooner or later, with interest.

Amongst 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.


                                   II

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, 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 elbow on the bar and contemplating the
coloured bottles, mostly filled with coloured water and arranged
artistically for the beatific contemplation of half-fuddled sailor men,
“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.”

Harman took him at once. Ginnell had a wholesome fear of the Clancy
faction, and if he took Harman on board his shark-boat, that fear would
prevent him from acting as he always acted when blue water was under his
keel. You can’t haze a man who has powerful friends ready to avenge him.

“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 now,” 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 worse 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.

“Feeling queer?” asked Bone.

“Nothing,” replied the other, pulling himself together. “Nothing, just a
bit swimmy in the head. Lord, there it is again!”

“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
trap-door 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 trap-door.

“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 companion-way
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 anyone, 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 upper cut 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 amongst the whites, and who
were thronging now to the fo’c’sle 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 whilst 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 towards the almost vanished coast, above which, in the
pansy blue of the evening sky, stars were now showing like points of
silver.


                                   II
                     THE SALVING OF THE “YAN-SHAN”


                                   I

The _Heart of Ireland_ was spreading her wings to the north-west 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, Billy Harman, leaning on the rail
and watching the foam boosting away from the stern and flowing off in
creamy lines on the swirl of the wake. Ginnell, owner and captain of the
_Heart of Ireland_, shanghaied and reduced to deck hand, was forward on
the look-out, and one of the coolie crew was at the wheel.

“I’m not given to meeting trouble half-way,” 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 Jose. The bay stinks with him and his doin’s; settin’
Chinese sturgeon lines, Captain Mike said he was, and all but nailed,
smugglin’ and playin’ up to the Greeks, and worse. The Bayside’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 John the Baptis’ 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 dog-shores
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 smashed 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
of 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, in
fact, 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 worst
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 anyone 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 quick ship 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’d 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.”

Chop-stick 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’sle 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, and, 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, whilst 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 houldin’ 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?”

“Oh, 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
were scoundrels. 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 all there is 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 towards 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 crow-bars and a jemmy, 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 Brobdingnag.

“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 knowledgeable 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 whale-boat, 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’uthard, 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
battle-ship without danger of groundin’.”

After a minute or two, he took the wheel himself and steered her whilst
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 Farallone cormorant circled like the spirit
of the place, challenging the new-comers 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’s 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!

“Well, I’m damned,” said Harman.

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 linth 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 _Yan-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 gunnel, 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 wrack and ruin, whilst 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 “linth of lead pipe,” a
most formidable weapon, sticking from his pocket, he ran to help with
the falls; the whale-boat 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 whale-boat passed the scow, dashed nose end up the shelving beach,
and the next moment Ginnell and his linth of lead pipe was amongst the
Chinamen, whilst 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 amongst 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 on to 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, whilst 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 alley-way.

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,
he reached the saloon companion-way 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 stuff’s 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 towards 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, b’g-d!” cried Ginnell. “You’re a nice chap to talk about
boodle. You did me in 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 chinked 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, b’g-d, 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 companion-way,
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
among 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
levelling 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, paralysing 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 syren.

“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 corfee. 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_, thin 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 back 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 set back 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 d——d 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 further north, but I know every foot
of the grounds hereaway, 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 look-out.

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; further 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
Sword Fish, the Albacore and the White Fish 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 _Sun-Fish_ 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
under-sea 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, Skip Jacks, 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 towards 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
Frog Fish, and the Kelp Fish 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 whilst 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 north-west 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 tom-fool 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 gunnel 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 sail 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 steer 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
whale-boat was lowered, and Blood, Ginnell and Harman, leaving
Chop-Stick 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,
whilst Blood and the others scrambled on deck.

The deck was clean as a ball-room 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 pitchpine 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 ninety
tons. Then there’s the cargo. B’Jimminy: 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.

The cargo was perfectly stowed, the cases of California champagne 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 whilst 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
stinkin’ 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 money’s 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 lousy dollars, and my word’s as good as my bond
all along the waterside 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 on to 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
fellows 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 suspicions,” 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 whale-boat, 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. For the past six months he had felt the
increasing temperature and had come to recognize that he wanted a
change.

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 whilst 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.”

“Maybe,” said Blood, “but you never can tell what’s more than enough at
sea, one never knows the weather.”

“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. The petrol launches fishing on the Bass grounds
ought to have been visible from here, like white specks upon the water,
but even they were absent.

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.

“Hullo,” 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 whale-boat 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, Chop-Stick Charlie at the helm, and a good schooner with a
cargo worth many thousands of dollars under foot.

As the _Tamalpais_ with all sail set drew off to the southward, he
looked back at the _Heart of Ireland_, lying deserted on the water. She
had been his partner in many a shady transaction, and whether he felt a
regret for her or not, who can say? but he gave her a wave of the hand
as he turned to have a look at the compass and a word with the steersman
before going below.

Down below he had a complete turn out 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, etc., etc., 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. Then he went on
deck. He told himself it did not matter, that everything would be all
right once he struck the port he was making for, a port where palm trees
grow and where yellow men without morals and speaking the Spanish tongue
are port officers. All the same, the question would not be silenced, and
half a dozen times that day he found it recurring always in the
self-same words.

“What the ——’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 eye 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 amongst 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.

He felt as the thief feels when he sees the policeman crossing the road
towards him, and for a moment the thief’s instinct for flight came upon
him, only to be instantly dismissed. A twenty-five knot torpedo boat
offers little chance to anything that uses the sea, and a shift of helm
would be simply an invitation to be chased.

“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, Captin 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. Chop-Stick Charlie at the wheel
required no orders, and the _Tamalpais_ came round with all her canvas
spilling the wind and slatting, whilst the warship, stealing along now
with just a ripple at her stem, came gliding past the stern 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 d——d 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,” replied the Lieutenant.

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 strake 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, whilst 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 Californian
coast; men come here from all parts of America and Europe to kill tuna
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.

Everyone talks fish at Avalon, from the boatmen who run the gasoline
launches to the latest arrived man with a nerve break-down who has come
from the Wheat Pit or Wall Street to rest himself by killing sharks or
fighting tuna—everyone. 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 in the
veranda of the Metropole Hotel, where the darkies were dusting mats and
putting the cane chairs in order. Avalon was still half in shadow, 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 towards 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 long-shore 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 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 yowl?”

“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 realizing
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 _Sun-Fish_ 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 look out 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 _Sun-Fish_ 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 south-west.

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 _Sun-Fish_ with a buoyant and
balloon-like 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 arrow-heads
shot after her by some invisible marksman.

The great kelp beds oiled the sea to the northwards, and, remembering
Joe’s advice but not wishing to return yet awhile, 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 a-starboard.

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 America to Hong-Kong, 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 break-downs 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 sailor men
of some sort upon the schooner, and where there were sailor men 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 very
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 on to the after channels, tied up, and then,
standing on the yawl’s gunnel 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 sailor man 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 d——d!” 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 on the outside 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 boat-load 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
jemmy, 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 battle-ship, 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 d——d 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 holes left
by the bullets.

“All the same, the firin’ done us good, sort of cleared the air like a
thunderstorm, 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
companion-way 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 slewin’ about to the current like a drunk goin’ home in the
mornin’.’

“The Cap’ he cocks his eye up at the tell-tale 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
lousy 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 sailor man
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 towards 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 back fires 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
fastenin’s 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 h—l 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,’ said 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 my 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, lettin’ 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 ever 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’d 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 turkle,
one leg over the bulwarks and one arm round her neck, and then up went a
halalujah 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 whiles 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 nothin’. 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 long-shore folk have such sharp noses, but I do
know them long-shore boatmen on Avalon beach[1] 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 instinck 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 b——y
blighters, lot o’ d——d 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 long-shore men 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 long-shore 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 cheque 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 cheque up and lit his pipe with it. Then he says,
talkin’ in a satisfied manner ’sif to himself:

“‘It were worth it.’

“That’s all he said. And, comin’ to think of it now, meself, it were.”

-----

[1] Allow me to assure the “long-shore boatmen” on Avalon beach that my
opinion of them is not that expressed hereafter by Mr. Harman.


                                   V
                         THE GREAT WHITE PEARL


                                   I

The _Heart of Ireland_ was lying in Avalon Bay and looking as much out
of place as a washerwoman at a garden fête.

Sun-blistered, with the barnacles on her copper shining through the
green water and wafting traces of old shark oil perfume to the wind, she
lay a cable-length away from Colonel Morgan’s yacht the _Dream_. Astern
and all to starboard of her was riding an anchored fleet of spruce
white-painted gasoline launches, sailing craft and a couple of
glass-bottomed “power boats,” whilst to westward, flying flags to the
merry wind, Avalon town and Avalon beach formed a strange background for
the schooner accustomed to rubbing her old sides against the rotting
piles of Rafferty’s Wharf.

The morning was beautiful, blazing, blue and warm; all round lay
loveliness, wealth, and the evidence of wealth in the pleasure boats,
small yachts, big hotels and busy plage. The _Heart_ was the only blot
on the scene, and Mr. Harman felt it.

He was seated on the hatch cover talking to his companion, Captain
Michael Blood, and his language was free.

Said Mr. Harman: “I don’t care, whichever way you put it, the thing we
want is a maskit—somethin’ to bring us luck. _Look_ at our luck. We
starts from ’Frisco in this tub with Ginnell, and the first thing
happens to us is we’re diddled over the _Yan-Shan_. Then Ginnell bottles
us in the cabin and we drifts about in this old Noah’s Ark till a girl
boards us and lets us out; we save her life, so to say, and fetches her
in here, and who’s her father? A blistered millionaire, rotten with
money, and what does he give us? Twenty dollars, and you lights your
pipe with the cheque and we without the price of a drink. Then, somehow
or ’nuther, we’ve put all that long-shore crowd of boat tenders and
fisher chaps against us. I wouldn’t care to land on that beach, not if I
had fifty dollars in me pocket and barrels of booze waitin’ for me in
one of them big hotels. I reckon I’d have me head broke by one of them
louts before I’d got ha’f way up that shingle. Well, what’re we to do?
How’re we to get out of here? How’n the nation are we to make out
supposin’ we do get clear of this regatta?”

“We’ve got provisions enough for two months, anyway,” said Blood, who
was leaning against the rail cleaning an old pipe, “and if the worst
comes to the worst we’ll just stick here till we stink them out and they
pay us to go.”

“Dollars won’t get that anchor up nor help us to work her when she’s
out,” said Harman. He rose up, leaned over the rail and spat into the
water alongside. Then, as he stood leaning on the rail, a passing boat
drew his attention; four of the long-shore men were in her, and as they
drew close to the _Heart_ they shouted out uncomplimentary remarks.

“Why don’t you clean yourselves?” cried the Avalonites.

Harman’s unprintable retort followed them across the water. He was a
master at that sort of thing, and what he said included criticism of
their ancestry on the distaff side, personal criticism, and a reflection
on their sobriety and methods of life, all in ten words. It was the
reply of a battle-ship’s fifteen-inch gun to a third-class cruiser’s
batteries, and the victorious Harman was watching the retreat of the
enemy when another boat came along with a gentleman in white clothes and
wearing a panama in the stern of her. She was making evidently for one
of the launches anchored to starboard. Then, when she was half a
cable-length or so from the _Heart_, she altered her course. The
gentleman in the stern sheets had said something to the rowers.

She came right under the stern of the schooner, then along the starboard
side, rounded the bow and came drifting along the port side.

“Now if that guy has come to sass us, look out,” said Harman to Blood.

But the guy in the stern of the shore boat showed no such intention. He
was a hatchet-faced, melancholy-looking young man. To look at him you
would never have fancied him a victor, yet he was. A few weeks ago he
had cornered wheat and escaped without the wheat smothering him. He was
worth a good many million dollars, for which he had paid with his
health. Ordered a change, he had drifted from palatial hotel to palatial
hotel and from place to place without finding anything to interest him;
craving and sick for something he knew not what, the sight of the old
schooner, weather-beaten and disreputable-looking, roused in his mind a
vague interest. It was the antithesis of everything that was boring him,
a hill amidst the flat plain of money. Free to do whatever he liked, he
was, still, a prisoner; the prisoner of jaded nerves and a mind that
cared to do nothing.

The old _Heart_ somehow carried to him a glimpse of something that he
fancied to be Freedom. She had a sniff of the real work of the sea about
her, and more so by contrast with the white-painted flummery anchored
round her. He was hailing her now, asking to come aboard and have a look
round. Harman, recognizing friendly intentions, nodded and dropped the
little rope ladder, and the next minute the stranger was on deck.

He stood for a moment literally looking round, then he gave his name,
which was Armbruster, talked for a minute with Blood and Harman as
though they were equals and old friends, and then, taking his seat on
the hatch and nursing his knee, he sniffed and sniffed like a person
inhaling the fragrance of roses; his eyes wandered from the old stained
deck planking to the spars, and from them to the raffle forward of the
galley. The touch of the sea was on everything, the stain of the sea
everywhere, and the sniffing stranger, as he inhaled the
tar-oakum-shark-oil perfume of the _Heart_, seemed literally to be
inhaling youth. He suddenly broke silence.

“This is what _I_ want,” said he. “This is good enough for me.
Gentlemen, which of you two is the captain of this boat, and where’s
your crew?”

Harman laughed. “We’re not bothering with no crew,” said he, “just at
present. I’m Billy Harman, and me friend here’s Captain Michael Blood,
well known in ’Frisco. We had a crew, chinkies they were, and we had a
mate, Ginnell was his name, and he bottled us in the cabin and made off
with the crew aboard a derelick schooner away up north yander. Left us
driftin’. Followin’ that we managed to get out and worked her in here.”

The new-comer produced a cigar-case and handed it round, after which the
talk became freer, so that in half an hour he had the whole story of the
wonderful voyage from ’Frisco, including the _Yan-Shan_ business, and a
soul portrait of Ginnell, painted by Harman, and a masterpiece at that.

Armbruster listened attentively. Then, without getting up, he flung his
cigar stump over the rail and sat for a minute brooding in silence.
Then, without a word, he got up and walked to the bow, leaned over,
contemplated the water for a moment and came back.

“Well, gentlemen,” said he, “I’m a man that makes up his mind quick. I
want to get right out of here in a hurry for a cruise, anywhere. I
reckon we’ll go and fish for sharks, or go and see what China’s like, or
push out west for the islands. I’m a free man, and I’ve only just found
that out.” He paused, and then suddenly Tragedy spoke. “I haven’t slept
scarcely for two nights, an egg turns into a brick-bat directly I
swallow it, the New York papers come to this beastly place, and there’s
a brass band somewhere that follows me like a hornet. I want to get away
somewhere with nothing but a tooth-brush. I want to get right out _now_.
Name your price, gentlemen, and I’ll get a crew aboard right off.”

“And where’ll you get your crew from?” asked Harman.

Armbruster waved his hand to the beach.

“That lot,” replied the other; “not likely. I don’t objec’ to a couple
of Italians, there’s some about, but none of your dollar-huntin’
lop-sided land-crabs; you and me and the cap’ here and a couple of
Italians is all we want to work her. Fetch some extra grub for yourself
and two Italians and we’ll put out, you payin’ the Italians for their
cruise.”

“Now you’re talking,” said Armbruster, “but you haven’t named your
figure—not that it matters.”

“There’s no charges,” replied Harman. “We aren’t a ferry boat, you’ll
help to work her. We’re out for pickin’s and our time’s our own.” Blood
nodded. He and Harman had done a good many things, but they had never
taken people for pleasure cruises for money, and they weren’t going to.

Armbruster took him.

“I’m yours,” said he; “wait, and I’ll be back in a jiff.” He got over
the side and rowed off for shore.

Harman rushed to the taffrail. “Bring some coffee,” he bellowed; “I’d
forgot it—we’re short of coffee.”

Armbruster nodded.

“Now, I’d have toed that chap off the ship,” said Harman to the other,
“only I took to him a bit, besides, he looks broke down, he’s et up with
money. I’ve seen such in ’Frisco, chaps with gold teeth and able to eat
nothin’ but pap and pills; he’ll do nothin’ but laze on deck in the sun,
and it’s God’s mercy to let him. Did you hear him about the brass bands
and the hornets, and the eggs turnin’ to bricks in him? He’s on the way
to the jim-jams that chap—sure.”

“Oh, he’s all right,” said Blood.

“Right! I reckon he’s a maskit, droppin’ aboard like that—anyhow, he’s
gettin’ us out of here.”

It was two hours later that the mascot reappeared, rowing off in a shore
boat followed by a scow holding luggage, provision cases, and two
uneasy-looking Italians who had sacrificed themselves on the altar of
money. The dunnage being handed on deck, Harman made the shore men stow
it down below. Armbruster looked at his watch, it pointed to twenty
minutes past two; he had no reason to complain of unnecessary delays,
for no sooner had the shore boat shoved off than Blood, who had taken
command, began to give his orders. The mainsail, slatting as it rose to
the wind, was set, Armbruster helping to haul on the halyards, then the
foresail, the old _Heart_ moving like a restive horse on the slight
swell of the bay and trying to break from her moorings; then the gaskets
were cast from the jib, and the Italians hauling on the jib halyards
rousted up the disreputable-looking old sail with its two patches, a
passing shore boat hailing them at the sight with kind inquiries as to
washing-day. Armbruster replied in language that raised Harman’s opinion
of him twenty per cent., and on top of that came Blood’s order to man
the windlass.

The anchor came home dripping, the sails filled, and the tinkle and slap
of the bow-wash came like music as Avalon and the craft in the anchorage
began to slip and slide away.

Harman was at the wheel, and Armbruster, standing beside him, watched,
as, clearing the south horn of the bay, they opened the great blue
southward running sea which broadened as they went, till, with Bonito
point on their starboard quarter, the vision of the whole vast Pacific
broke upon them with San Clemente, the outpost island, a dream on the
western horizon.

“One can breathe out here,” said Armbruster, inhaling the ozone. His
eyes, big pupilled with nerve exhaustion and want of sleep, roamed far
and wide, then as they swept to the north he suddenly exclaimed aloud as
though he had remembered something and struck his hand on his breast
pocket.

“What’s up?” asked Harman.

“I’ve forgot the most important thing I went ashore for,” replied
Armbruster, “a wire I ought to have sent; it’s about railway stock and
may mean thousands—we’ve got to put back.”

“Not much,” replied the steersman; “you don’t get me putting my nose
into that doggery again. Here you are and here you stay. I tell you this
ain’t a ferry boat.”

The speculator tried to argue the point. It was Reading stock, he had
received the tip that morning, a dead sure thing, they were going to
soar; but he might just as well have tried to argue with Death or Fate.

Then, like a child headed off from the jam cupboard, he gave in and went
forward to the galley to peel potatoes, that job being allotted to him
by Blood.


                                   II

In a fortnight’s time they had tried three new shark grounds without
much success. Armbruster was able to eat canned kippered herrings and
digest them, and he slept at nights, to use Harman’s expression, like a
dead policeman.

They had landed at San Clemente and climbed a peak two thousand feet
high; they had nearly smashed themselves on Santa Barbara rock, north of
Catalina, and they had hunted for traces of the lost woman of San
Nicolas, that tiny island away out west, lonely as Juan Fernandez and
with a history even more romantic.

Armbruster found himself sometimes caught in wonder at the whole of this
strange business he had thrown himself into. This was no pleasure
cruise, yet they took pleasure wherever they could find it, lazed as
much as they chose, anchored where fancy dictated. He came to know Blood
and Harman for what they were, hoboes of the ocean, ready to handle
anything with a profit in it that turned up, but just as ready to amuse
themselves and do nothing. Money could not have bought Armbruster any
marvel greater than this intimacy with the sea which the old _Heart_ and
her strange owners enabled him to obtain for nothing. He saw the kelp as
few have seen it, and the creatures that live in this mysterious forest
of the sea. Harman, to whom the coves and beaches of the islands were as
well known as the sea soundings, showed him the homes of the devil fish,
the sea-hare and the great crab, strands desolate and haunted by the
fume and song of the sea where lay cast up starfish the size of
footstools, cuttle-fish bones, ships’ timbers, and empty shells of the
_haliotis_, to say nothing of the bones of whales. They fished for food
as well as for the sport of the thing, and though, since the last
shark-hook was hauled in they seemed to be doing nothing in the way of
business, they were ever on the look out for pickings. A derelict, a
dead whale, a lump of ambergris, a wreck, a junk engaged in contraband,
all these were possibilities, failing which there was nothing left but
to push further north for the true shark grounds, a bad enough prospect
considering how they were under-handed for the work.

They were talking over it one morning as the _Heart_ was just opening a
reef-protected bay of one of the San Lucas islands, when Harman, whose
eyes were skimming the shore, gave the old whale man’s cry and called on
the others to look.

A junk was anchored in the bay.

More than that, the reef-sown approach to the land-locked water was
buoyed, showing a passage; the buoys were only black-painted bladders,
still they were good enough for all practical purposes.

Now, a Chinaman does not waste time laying down buoys for nothing, nor
does he anchor without reason. Harman, having stated these facts, took
the helm from the Italian whose trick it was, and the wind being
favourable from the west, he put the wheel hard down.

The _Heart_ came round, and with main boom swinging out before the wind
boldly followed the buoy track.

As they drew in they saw that several boats were out round the junk with
fellows stripped naked diving from them; then, as the anchor fell in
shallow water, a cable-length from the junk, Harman, looking over the
side into the crystalline green, pointed out the solution of the mystery
of the buoys, the junk, and the divers.

The floor of the tiny bay was packed with _haliotis_ shells, humpy, ugly
things seen in their native state, yet beautiful and not without value
when polished.

“Abalones,” said Harman, “dead loads of them with pearls in them, maybe;
here’s a bit of luck. Why, I thought the Japs had stripped the islands
clean of them.”

“It’s this bay,” said Blood. “There’s not many craft would put in here
with those ripsaw reefs all to seaward. It’s good luck. The chinkies
must have smelt it out nosing around and they’ve led us to it. They
should have taken up those buoys.”

“But how are we to fish for them?” asked Armbruster.

“Dive for them,” replied Harman, “and chisel them off the rock; there’s
chisels in the carpenter’s hole forward there. Come, boys, let’s out and
with the boat and set to.”

The Chinese engaged in fishing, after the first glance, seemed to take
no notice of the new-comers, maintaining that deceptive appearance of
indifference to all things so peculiar to the Chinese.


                                  III

The _Heart of Ireland_ possessed now only one boat, an old ship’s
quarter-boat that rowed heavy but was in fairly good repair. They
lowered this and used it for the fishing, anchoring close to the Chinese
and trying to get in talk with them. But the Chinamen were dumb beyond
the words: “No sabe,” dumb, and, to use Harman’s expression, “wishful to
keep to themselves,” so the new-comers, rebuffed, but cheerful enough,
stripped and set to work. Herman was used to diving, and he had done
_haliotis_ fishing before, so he was able to set the others in the way
of it.

To dive fifteen feet, scrabble about on a rocky bottom and chisel big
shells the size of half one’s head from their tight rock hold, that is
_haliotis_ fishing, and hard work it is, as Armbruster found after the
first ten minutes of it. But the water was warm in those shallows, sun
filled, clearer than crystal, and haunted by flights of the strangest
fish. Life between sun and sea in that emerald bay was the nearest
approach to a mortal’s dream of paradise, and working without a
taskmaster less work than sport.

To sit naked in the sun and smoke after a fair spell of work, and dabble
one’s feet in the water and watch the fish and the crabs, the sea-hares,
the floating fuci and the jewelled jelly-fish was a condition of things
that sometimes by the hand of contrast brought up Chicago before
Armbruster as a weird vision of some past life led by another man.

The take of shells was not big, owing to their primitive methods of
fishing; with a diving dress and proper chisels they could have cleared
the bay in a week, but they did not grumble, time was no object.

They brought the shells on deck and extracted the meat, searching
carefully for pearls and finding a few quite inconsiderable in size and
value, then the empty shells were spread on the deck to dry in the sun
before being stowed below, the pearls were stored in a matchbox, and
Harman calculated that their value was not more than twenty dollars. He
was the only member of the party dissatisfied with the work, and he was
making propositions to clear out and push north for the shark grounds on
the very afternoon that luck came to them.

It was four o’clock, one of the Italians had just come up with a huge
shell, and Harman had taken it from him and was laying it on the others
when something caught his eye, something that looked like a white bubble
between the shell and the flesh of the abalone. It was a pearl, a large
and perfect white pearl, lustrous, lovely, and worth, maybe, two
thousand dollars or more. The shout he gave drew even the attention of
the Chinese, who, for once in their lives, seemed moved to interest;
they pulled their anchor and crowded up to look, whilst Harman, standing
up in the boat, exhibited his treasure in derision to them, shouting out
his luck at the same time to Blood and Armbruster, who were on board the
schooner.

Armbruster had brought a few bottles of champagne on board with the
provisions, and they opened a bottle that night to celebrate the
occasion. Sitting on deck in the moonlight, against which the lamps of
the silent junk burned dim like half-closed greedy eyes, they talked and
talked, discussing the find, laughing uproariously at the remembrance of
the faces of the Chinamen beaten at their own game, and making plans for
the future. Armbruster was for returning to Avalon, obtaining diving
outfits and rooting up the floor of the bay—forming a company to
exploit the whole _haliotis_ industry of the islands, to say nothing of
the fisheries. Blood allowed that the thing seemed a likely proposition,
but Harman, who knew better, was less enthusiastic.

“There’s not one in a million abalones with a pearl in it like that,”
said he, “and we’ve got the one. I’m for pushing off to ’Frisco and
selling it. It’s worth, maybe, three thousand dollars, that’s a thousand
apiece for the three of us, and we can give the Italian a couple of
hundred for the find. We’ll have some fun in ’Frisco and swap the
Italians for a crew of chinkies and load up with some trade. I know a
man’ll give me credit for a bit, and that and a couple of thousand
dollars will furnish us, then we’ll push for the islands and fill up
with copra.”

Armbruster, the millionaire, played with this idea and seemed to find it
pleasing. He could have bought the _Heart of Ireland_ a hundred times
over and filled her a hundred times with trade, but he never thought of
his money; he had put himself outside his fortune, the new interest of
scrubbing about and making a few dollars over abalones, trade, or any
other form of sea scrubbing and plundering was soul-absorbing. He was
exhibiting the fact that it is not the dollar but the hunt for the
dollar that appeals to the average man.

He went to bed that night filled with dreams of copra trading, and he
was awakened at sun up by the hand of Harman on his shoulder.

“The boat’s gone,” said Harman.

“Boat’s _what_?” cried the other, tumbling out of his bunk.

“Gone, come on deck and see—it’s them d——d chinkies.”

He followed Harman on deck, where Blood was standing with the morning
sun on his face and rage in his heart.

They had not taken the boat on board last night, they had kept no anchor
watch, and now, as a punishment for their laziness and stupidity, they
were rewarded with the sight of a cut painter—sign of boat there was
none. The Chinese must have crept up in the night and taken it off, sunk
it most probably somewhere in the bay.

“And that’s not all,” said Harman, “the buoys are gone.”

Armbruster looked. There was not a sign of the black bladder-buoys that
had marked the passage through the reefs yesterday.

The whole thing was plain. They were trapped. With a boat they might
have taken soundings and rebuoyed the passage, without one, even with a
favourable wind, it would be impossible to take the _Heart_ outside
without, almost surely, piling her on the rocks.

The rise and fall of the swell, even in fine weather, would dunch the
bottom out of her on those razor-backed reefs.

It was not so much the trapping as the trappers that enraged our party,
for the Chinese were already at work, not showing the slightest sign or
symptom that they knew anything of the foul business of the night
before.

Harman was the first to express his opinions on the situation fully and
coherently; his _naïf_ mind refused to consider anything except the fact
that he had been outwitted by chinkies. One might have thought,
listening to him, that he was the only aggrieved party, and the
vocabulary of constructive and destructive curses that he called upon
was a revelation in literature.

Blood suddenly put an extinguisher on him.

“Oh, close up,” said he. “Whose fault is it? Yours; you went showing
them that pearl, and it’s thanking the Almighty you ought to be that we
weren’t murdered in our bunks last night. We kept no watch, parcel of
sapheads, and now we’ll have to pay.”

“Let’s swim and fight them,” said Armbruster. “I’m game.”

“We have no armaments,” said Blood, “only your shot-gun and Ginnell’s
old revolver without any cartridges; they’d do us in in two minutes and
sink our corpses same as they sank the boat. Who’d know? There’s nothing
to be done but hang on and wait. Our one chance is some boat putting in,
failing that we’ll have to pay harbour dues, to say nothing of a tow
out. Come on, I’m going to have some breakfast.”

After breakfast they fished and smoked and tried to pretend that they
did not mind the situation, but the bay had suddenly changed from a
pleasure ground to a prison, and the sight of the Chinese calmly
pursuing their avocations was a thorn in their flesh. There was humour
in the business, but they did not appreciate it.

“This comes of taking a d——d millionaire on board,” said Harman to
Blood privately that evening as they lounged by the after-rail in the
light of sunset colours more gorgeous than the flowers of Diaz. “We were
served dirty by the Culps, and now this ’Bruster man’s brought down a
shower-bath on us; the next thing I’ll take aboard this dough-dish ’ll
be a nigger.”

“You said he was a mascot when he came on board,” said Blood.

“Maybe I did, and maybe he is, but if he is I reckon somethin’ has
turned him inside out. Maybe it’s somethin’ wrong with the old _Heart_,
for have you took notice how the luck comes and sniffs at us and makes
off? Four times we ought to have made good since leaving ’Frisco, and
four times we’ve missed fire. Well, there’s no use in grumbling, best
see what’s to be done. I’m goin’ after those chinkies to-night.”

“To-night—and where’s your boat?”

“Boat? I don’t want no boat, I’m goin’ to swim. I’ve made it up in my
mind. They don’t haul their boats in at night, and two of us has got to
swim over and collar them, cut the painters and shove off quiet, one
chap in each boat. I’ve been thinking it out in my head. I thought first
that the whole crowd of us ought to take to the water, but I’ve come to
look at it different; a crowd is sure to make a noise, some blame fool’s
sure to sneeze or make too big a splash. I reckon you and me will be
best for the job.”

Blood, having turned the matter over in his mind, concurred, the others
were informed, and the cutting-out expedition was fixed for midnight.

At the appointed hour the two adventurers, each with a knife between his
teeth, slipped down the ladder into the water. The junk lamps had been
long put out, and the moon flooding the bay with her light showed
Armbruster, who was watching from deck, the heads of the swimmers and
their trail. They looked like water rats and swam as noiselessly.
Armbruster as he watched them felt that checking of the heart which
comes to one as the horses are closing on the winning-post with one’s
fortune attached to the tail of the leader.

“They’ll do it,” he muttered beneath his breath, “they’ll do it. It’s a
sure thing—Damn!”

The swimmers had just covered half the distance to the junk when the
boom of a gong broke out, filling the little bay and coming back in
throaty echoes from the cliffs, lights sprang alive like points of gold
in the moonlight, and Armbruster, watching, saw the trail of the
swimmers disappear and then reappear fanning out in a reverse direction.
They were coming back. The chinkies had done them again.


                                   IV

Mr. Harman, explaining things afterwards, said:

“We stood it three days, maybe four, till the very tobacco got foul in
our mouths and grub was cooked in the galley only to be hove overboard.
We tried to play cards, but the pips turned into Chinese faces, the
riggin’ turned to pigtails taut or loose, and every day the smell of
that junk got louder. If they’d guyed us it wouldn’t have been near so
bad, it was the not noticin’ us that struck home and kept strikin’ every
hour till we were near drove crazy with the grip they’d managed to get
on us just by doin’ nuthin’ and sayin’ nuthin’. Times we almost wondered
if we was dead.

“On the mornin’ of the fourth day, maybe it was, we flew a flag an’
called a parley.

“They came alongside, and they were quick enough able to talk now. They
wanted the pearl, said it was their fishing ground—their fishing
ground—Good God A’mighty, a parcel of slit-eyed chinkies talkin’ of
_their_ fishing ground in United States waters!

“A’mbruster got so wild he began to talk back to them, and they were
pushing off when Blood chipped in and hauled down the flag.

“Then we handed the pearl over and they towed us out. They say a
Chinaman always sticks to his bargain, anyhow these chaps stuck to their
contrac’ and havin’ buoyed the passage out they took us.

“A’mbruster was for heading back to Avalon and gettin’ a revenge party
aboard with guns and such, but we weren’t havin’ any. We reckoned the
chinks would have took their hook by the time we got back, and we were
gettin’ hungry for ’Frisco.

“The _Heart_ was ours, for Ginnell had, so to say, handed her to us, and
he was under the law, anyhow, for tryin’ to murder us, and to leave that
aside we’d both swore to scrag him on sight first time of meetin’, so we
didn’t give no heed to Cap’ Ginnell.

“Then we found that A’mbruster, for all his talk, was hungry to get back
to his speculations and his dyspeptic way of life and them eggs that
used to be always turnin’ to bricks in him, so each lendin’ a hand to
the halyards, so to speak, we shoved north, and one evenin’ a bit later
we were at anchor in the bay, and A’mbruster collectin’ his traps, went
ashore, wishin’ us long life and prosperity.

“‘He told me he was worth ten millions,’ says I to Blood when he was
gone; ‘seems to me the only difference between a one millionaire and a
ten millionaire is that the ten millionaire is ten times meaner.’

“Well, you wait. Next day comes a chap with a letter from old man
A’mbruster. There was a doctor’s bill in it a yard long for the drugs he
might have gobbled, if he hadn’t fell in with us and got his health
bumming round the islands. Ten thousand dollars was the bill, and there
was a cheque made out to us for ten thousand dollars’s true as I’m
sittin’ in this bar handlin’ this drink, and a note askin’ us to receipt
the bill, which he wanted to keep as a nacheral curiosity.

“Blood was near shyin’ the thing back in his face at that, takin’ it
personal, till I pointed out that A’mbruster wasn’t meanin’ him, and
that, seein’ we’d saved the chap from the jim-jams, we’d earned our
money, and I’m thinkin’ if some of the rich folk in ’Frisco and N’York
would drop their stummicks and take to the sea, honest—not foolin’ in
power-boats and yachts, eatin’ frogs hashed up by French cooks and lyin’
soft at night in down blankets, but honest, they’d maybe be willin’ to
pay as much for what A’mbruster got.

“But he was a sure enough maskit; that ten thousand was only the first
catspaw bringin’ the wind, and I lays it to him that I’m here smokin’ a
half-dollar Henry Clay in a boiled shirt with a band playin’ down the
passidge instead of hoggin’ in some doggery on the harbour-side.

“Have another?”


                                   VI
                              THE BIG HAUL


                                   I

Captain Michael Blood and Billy Harman, having received ten thousand
dollars for services rendered to John Morgan Armbruster, and having
cashed the cheque, 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 jim-jams, with a
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 gaoled with
empty pockets, robbed of your boots by the bar-bummers 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 on board. 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 lave 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 anyone and they’ll tell you.”

Harman knew this to be a fact. Rafferty, who was a 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 business 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 spilin’
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 cent. 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 gaol
for the sake of the family. Gaol’s h——l 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. Gaol’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 gaol 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 having 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 south-west of Honolulu, bounded by the International Date
Line to westward, latitude 10° N. 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 gunnel as she made the reach for Lime
Point, then on the port tack she felt the first Pacific sea, taking the
middle channel.

Having fought 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
stuff in general—you might take some spades and wheel-barras and not be
amiss, and tin-ware, 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 wheel-barrows 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 Gate.

“Wheel-barrows or no wheel-barrows, 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 that great desolation of blue water between
Sejetman Reef and Johnston Island, the _Heart of Ireland_ raised the
island. It was midday when the seabird-like cry of one of the Chinamen
on the look-out 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 above the sea shimmer.

He held the glass glued to his eye for a moment, and then handed it to
Blood.

“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.”

“Damn!” said Blood.

He 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 towards
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 after-guard with a nod and
sweeping the deck with his eyes, eyes like the sherry-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 hereaway?”

“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 was 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
the knife with which he had cut the tobacco from his pocket, opened it,
and began cutting gently at his left thumbnail.

“Well,” said he, “it’s pretty clear you two gentlemen have been done.
Brought wheel-barrows 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 go-down 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
wheel-barrows—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 wheel-barrows 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
wheel-barrow 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 lovely.”

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 for ever 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 coming in fresh from the sea, spilling her amber light on the
water shadows to the slatting of canvas 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_.

“—— 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_. Harman used language, to which came a polite
inquiry as to how he was off for wheel-barrows.

“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 companion-way.
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 pocket-book, gimme
it, come on, haste yourself, come with me and try to look like a fool.
Gimme the pocket-book, 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 bath
tub. Up with you and after me.”

He seized the pocket-book, 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 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 under ground, 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 cathead, 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 wheel-barrows—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 wheel-barrows 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 sailor men 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.




                       THE LUCK OF CAPTAIN SLOCUM


                                   I
                          THE FORTUNATE ISLAND

The steadily breathing trade wind was giving the _Contra Costa_ a good
ten knots, and Captain Slocum, who had just come up from below, stood
with one huge mahogany-coloured fist grasping the weather-rail of the
schooner and his eyes scanning the sea.

It was just after sunrise, the morning bank had vanished, and the
Pacific, all beautiful with the blue and gold of early day, stretched to
the far horizon unbroken by sail or wing of sea-bird.

Slocum might have been fifty. A hard man in appearance and a harder man
to deal with, he had gone through life without making a fortune, and he
had set out in life to find one.

He had poached seals in the Yellow Sea, he had fished for trepang and
bêche-de-mer on the New Guinea coast, he had tried cocoanut growing in
Portuguese Timor, he had swapped guns and ammunition for gold dust in
murky mangrove-shadowed Bornean rivers with a Dutch gunboat feeling for
him in the lower reaches. Dealings with Chinese hatchet men had left him
a scar that ran from his left ear to his chin, and had you stripped him
you would have found the makings of half a dozen romances in the shot
holes and knife wounds marking his epidermis.

Always or nearly always on the crooked, he had been followed through
life by appalling bad luck as far as the making of money was concerned;
time and again he had grasped Fortune, and time and again she had eluded
him.

And the strange thing about this pirate lay in the fact that his ideal
in life was Peace. Some men’s dreams of fortune show palaces and yachts;
Slocum’s, nowadays, showed a farm: a great big farm where he could drive
about in his own buggy and grow pigs and corn and watch the cows coming
home to be milked. Nothing appeals to a sailor so much as the vision of
a farm, especially to a sailor of a certain age; it was the temperament
of the Captain that made the idea strange in him—and yet the strangest
thing in the world is temperament, with its surprises and
contradictions.

Now, Slocum some months ago had netted five thousand dollars in a
questionable deal in San Francisco. It was just enough money to be of no
use to him, so he said, and he was looking about for some new form of
crookedness to invest it in when Captain Rogers of the schooner _Contra
Costa_ made him a proposal. Rogers, who was owner of the schooner,
suggested that the Captain should invest his money in a cargo of trade
goods, canned salmon, tobacco, trade gin, knives, printed cottons, and
so forth, and, with Rogers for skipper, take the schooner down to the
Islands and try his luck; the profits were to be equally divided, Rogers
providing the crew and victualling them, the food and drink of the
after-guard to be paid for equally by Rogers and Slocum.

The Captain mused on this proposition for a while, and, attracted,
maybe, by its unaccustomed flavour of honesty, fell in with it.

Said Rogers: “It’s a dead sure thing with my knowledge of the Islands.
I’ve got the mark to go for and the man, Byford’s his name, and his
island is Christopher Island, and it ain’t a million miles from the
Marquesas. I’ve known him since a boy, he’s doing big business down on
Christopher and he’s not tagged on to no firm, he plays a lone hand,
there’s dead loads of copra on that island and Byford buys it from the
natives; there’s islands all round about and he’s got the pull of those,
we’ll most likely sell him the trade, half for copra and half for cash.
We’re not goin’ to make a fortune on this one shot, but we’re goin’,
maybe, to lay the foundations of a big business. You with some money
behind you and me with the _Contra Costa_, and the knowledge of the
pitch, ought to hit it off.”

Slocum showing interest, they visited the schooner, which was lying at
the wharves unloading a cargo of copra, and the sight of her sealed the
business as far as Slocum was concerned.

She was a beauty, designed by Daniels, her lines were an exhibition of
the genius of that master shipwright. Ships of beauty and of worth are
not built, they are born; created from the genius of their designers
they are things truly alive, and Slocum saw the life in the _Contra
Costa_ even as she lay moored to the wharf and fell in love with her.
She had drawn him into this venture as much as the arguments of Rogers,
who was now coming on deck rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

Fully on deck now, the owner and master of the _Contra Costa_ nodded at
Setchell, the first mate, who was keeping the watch, swept the deck with
a glance, taking in the figure of Slocum, the steersman, and the fellows
forward hanging round the galley, from which was coming a faint scent of
breakfast in preparation. Then, having glanced at the binnacle card, he
swept the horizon.

He was a lean, sick-looking man, with a face that all the sun and salt
air of the Pacific could not bronze, and as he stood looking about him,
Slocum, feeling his presence, turned.

The two captains gave each other good morning and Rogers came to the
weather-rail.

“If this wind holds steady we ought to raise Christopher before long,”
said he. “We’re doing all ten knots. Ba’my, ain’t it?”

He sniffed the warm wind and filled his lungs with it.

“It’s flyin’ fish weather,” said Slocum; “we can’t grumble at the
weather, hope the tradin’ will be as good.”

Setchell drew up to the two others. He was undersized and his face was
one mass of freckles, his teeth were black with chewing, and he was the
other self of Rogers; the two, to use Slocum’s expression, were as thick
as treacle, and this glutinous attachment between the master and the
mate did not please our ex-pirate. He was Rogers’ partner, and he did
not care for the idea that Setchell was Rogers’ right hand and
confidant. They would parade the deck together talking, and they would
take their grog together in the cabin talking, always talking—what
about he could not tell. He only knew that when he came on them suddenly
their talk checked, and if he caught their renewed conversation it was
always about the weather or the working of the schooner. The thing was
getting on his nerves.

“If this weather holds,” said Setchell, “we’ll have made a record run.
I’ve never had better luck in the way of weather than this trip.”

“Oh, d——n the weather,” said Slocum; “you never can count on Pacific
weather, and while you’re rubbin’ your hands over it a squall will maybe
have the sticks out of her, and don’t talk of Luck, there ain’t no such
thing.”

Setchell’s good grammar and fine words were part of his present burden.

“No such thing as Luck!” said Rogers. “Well, there I’m not with you;
there ain’t nothing else but luck in this blessed world. You ought to
know that.”

This implication of his bad luck through life, a fact about which he was
quite open and on which he was garrulous at times, fired Slocum.

“Luck!” said he. “_I_ ought to know! Why, all me life and time I’ve
_seen_ there’s no such thing. It’s only old women that talk of luck,
it’s not man’s talk. I’ve no use for such bilge. What has luck to do
with wind or weather? D’ye s’pose Gor’ A’mighty fans up a wind to help
such skrimshankers as you an’ me to diddle Kanakas outer copra with
trade gin and condemned ammunition? My sam! More like He’d sink us if He
took notice of your chatter.”

“Well, well, well,” said Rogers, “there’s no use in arguin’ over
questions like that; there’s some that believe and some that
doesn’t—and here’s breakfast, anyway.”

A Kanaka was coming aft from the galley with a big dish of fried bacon
and tomatoes, and another was following him with the coffee-pot. The
whole crew of the _Contra Costa_ were Kanakas, Slocum, Rogers, Setchell
and Ambrose, the second mate, being the only whites on board, and whilst
the after-guard were at breakfast in the cabin, and before Ambrose, the
second mate, a perfectly fatuous individual, could be rousted out, a
Kanaka stood watch. He was Sirloin Jim,[2] a capable navigator when
supervised and a trustworthy when not in the near presence of drink.

Down below Setchell was holding out his cup for a second helping of
coffee, when a far-away voice like the voice of a sea-gull came on the
warm wind blowing down the open saloon hatch.

It was the look-out hailing land.

Then the fatuous face of Ambrose appeared at the hatch.

“We’re raising the island, sir.”

“Good,” said Rogers. “I’ll be on deck in a minute, I guess she’ll keep.”

He continued what he was saying to Slocum, and the latter, though he was
now burning to be on deck, would not show his impatience, but sat
listening and making answer till Setchell heaved himself up and led the
way.

Yes, there was the island, sure enough, and to be seen without the aid
of glasses when they reached the deck, making little enough show amid
all that waste of water, but steadily growing, as though the wind that
was driving them towards it were spreading it open as one spreads apart
the petals of a flower with one’s breath.

An hour later and it was quite well defined, a mountainous island,
green—green as the greenest emerald with the recent rains, and showing
the smoke of a torrent like a white plume amidst the cliff foliage.

A broken reef protected it from the full force of the sea.

It was a beautiful spot, and as they drew closer the beauty of it
steadily grew before their eyes. The blazing light of morning lay hazy
about those high cliffs, where above the ceiba and giant convolvulus,
the hibiscus and mammee-apple, and the earth still moist with the rains
of a week ago, rose a vague luminous haze, wrapping the island like a
scarf.

“It ain’t bad to look at,” said Slocum; “if one could tow it up to
’Frisco blest if one couldn’t sell it for an oleograph. But it seems to
me it’s too durned pretty to make money out of—what’s that you say? I’m
not makin’ no dispariging remarks, but I always mistrusts a smiling mug.
I always mistrusts too much civility. You know the sort of chap that
keeps washin’ his hands as though he was born in a lav’tory, and smilin’
as if his mother was a Cheshire cat, well, that sort of chap I’ve never
met without bein’ diddled. I’m not sayin’ nothin’ against this place,
on’y that it seems to me too blame civil.”

“I guess you’ve never seen it in a gale,” said Rogers, “with the sea
rearin’ over that reef and the cocoanut trees threshin’ like whips;
there, you can see Byford’s house beyond the beach and built up against
the cliff; there’s some native houses by it, but most of the natives
live inland; did you ever see the like of the cocoanut trees, and
they’re only a sample, beyond on the other side where the slope is it’s
one mass of them. Dead loads of copra.”

He went forward to con the schooner in. There was a fellow in the bows
swinging the lead, and every now and then his high-pitched voice mixed
with the voices of the gulls clamouring on the reef.

The wind was fair for the reef opening, and Rogers seemed to know the
passage by heart, and his directions came aft sure and certain and swift
whilst the fellows stood ready by the halyards.

Slocum, who had come forward, stood by watching, as, with the wind
spilling out of the sails, the schooner, like a stricken gull rising to
the heave of the opening, came with the helm hard a-starboard in a great
curve over the glassy water of the lagoon.

Underneath them lay a garden of coral clearly visible as though seen
through air, but Slocum had no eyes for its beauty. He was gazing
shoreward at the white beach, desolate and burning in the sun, at the
frame house of the trader that lay beyond the beach and the native
houses that lay near the main building, at the flagstaff from which no
flag fluttered, at the canoes on the beach, so long drawn up that the
wind had banked the sand against them.

The place seemed deserted. More than that, an indefinable atmosphere of
desolation hung over it.

Like the little town on Keats’ Greek Urn, one felt that here the
inhabitants would never come back; but there was no suggestion that,
like the urn folk, they were held from returning by some pious festival.
The scene suggested nothing of piety or festivity; blank Desolation
wandered on that beach. Desolation made all the more striking by the
brilliancy of the sunshine, the whiteness of the sands, and the gay
green of the cliff foliage, where the torrent, audible now, raced
downwards in a mist of spray.

The rumble-tumble of the anchor chain came back in faint echoes from the
cliffs, and the _Contra Costa_, swinging to her moorings, nosed round a
bit as if to inspect the shore towards which she had been driven through
so many days of azure and nights of stars.

“Well!” said Slocum, with a sort of gloomy triumph in his tones,
“where’s your copra and where’s your trader? Is this Christopher Island
or is it the bloomin’ Garden of Eden? What price is fig leaves gettin’
in the ’Frisco market? Or do you reckon to speculate on snakes? An
Oleograph, that’s what it is, and that’s what I said it was.”

“Don’t crowd me,” said Rogers. “It ain’t my fault if the blinds are
down, b’sides, where’s the _sense_ in it; look at them trees, what’s
wrong with the trees? Stacks an’ tons of copra to be had. The island’s
here, what’s wrong with it? You take my word, the thing’s sound, they’ve
most likely changed over to live on the other side; look at the canoes,
they haven’t left, wouldn’t be such fools as to leave the canoes behind
’em.”

“No,” said Setchell, who had come up to them. “The natives are here all
right; besides, they couldn’t have got away without the canoes, unless
the place has been raided, and these are not the days for that sort of
work. Bully Hayes has been in his coffin too long. My opinion is that
they are all off copra-gathering; it’s inconceivable they have left, and
it’s equally inconceivable that they have suffered from some
catastrophe.”

“Well, let’s cat-astrophy ashore and find out,” said Slocum. “Lookin’
and talkin’ won’t bring them—what boat are you taking?”

The _Contra Costa_ carried a whale-boat and a ship’s quarter-boat; the
latter was now lowered, a couple of Kanakas got in to row, and Slocum,
Rogers and Setchell crowded into the stern sheets. Ambrose, the second
mate, remained to look after the schooner, and his vacuous face as he
leaned over the rail gaped after them as they put off.

“That chap’s enough to kibosh any show,” said Slocum, “onnatural, I call
him; what’s he want stickin’ his calf’s head over the rail to put a
blight on us for? Blank ijit!”

They beached the boat, and the precious trio crowded out. Slocum stamped
on the hot, salt-white sand as if to make sure that he was truly on
shore again, then he took a glance at the canoes lying warping in the
sun, and then he led the way up the beach towards the house.

They had not gone twenty paces when a figure appeared at the open door
of the house, came out on the veranda and stood holding on to one of the
main posts.

“Here’s the sleepin’ beauty,” said Slocum, “and sick he looks.”

“It’s Byford,” said Rogers, catching his breath back, as well he might.

Byford was not pleasant to behold; dressed in an old dirty drill suit
that had once been white, he stood contemplating the oncomers with a
look of serene detachment, like some Pagan god standing at the door of
its temple. His face was white, fish-belly white, his eyes were
red-rimmed, and, though originally a stout man, he had fallen away from
his stoutness.

“Stop,” said Rogers, “it’s maybe some illness; better be careful. Hi,
Byford! don’t you know me? I’m Rogers—what ails you, is it anythin’
’fectious?”

“Hullo, hullo!” replied the figure, “come along up, no call to be
afraid. Gin—gin, nothing but gin, that’s all that ails me.” Then, as
they got on the veranda, “I’ve been a bit on the razzle. Who’s these
gentlemen? Glad to see them. Come in, all of you; the place is a bit put
about, but you’ll find seats.”

He led the way in to the main room of the building. Once it had been a
pleasant enough place. The floor was covered with matting, and there
were half a dozen cane chairs standing about, a table stood in the
centre, the walls were adorned with canoe paddles and island
headdresses, and, for the rest, it was a wilderness. Dust and dirt and
cigarette ends lay about, a tomato-tin had been cast in one corner, and
there was a soul-searching, all-pervading smell of gin and paraffin
lamps combined, enough to turn a man for ever from drink and all that
drink implies.

But Slocum, Rogers and Setchell were, to use an expression of the
former, “tough stuff,” and when Byford fished a demi-john of square-face
out of a corner, glasses from a locker, and water from somewhere in the
back premises, they did not refuse the invitation.

“This is better than better,” said Byford, as he paddled about getting
the things. “I did think I’d never have the chance of a drink with a
Christian again. You’ve come just in the nick of time to save me from
myself; not a soul in the blest place but Rakatupea and his wife and her
baby, and they aren’t cheerful people, not by a long chalk. Rakatupea is
the chief, the only one left of the whole caboodle.”

“Look here,” said Rogers, filling his glass. “That’s what I want to get
at. What’s the matter, anyway? What’s gone with the natives?”

“What’s gone with the natives?” said Byford, holding out a glass for
Rogers to fill. “Why, didn’t I tell you? The place has been swept by
small-pox. Two months and more ago it came, and took the lot. You
needn’t be afraid of infection, this house is all right, nothing came
here; it was the natives that got it all, every one of them gone but
Rakatupea, his wife and the baby.”

“_Jumping_ Moses!” said Slocum.

He was not afraid of small-pox, he had been through several epidemics
unscathed; he was thinking of the trade goods lying in the hold of the
_Contra Costa_ and the time they had lost coming to this place to drink
bad gin with a drink-soddened scalliwag whose appearance was enough to
frighten the Barbary coast into sobriety.

“You needn’t be a bit afraid,” said Byford, gulping down his drink.

“Who’s afraid?” said Slocum. “I’m thinkin’ of the fool-asses we’ve made
of ourselves howking a shipload of trade all the way from ’Frisco to
dump it on these blessed sands. I’m thinkin’ of lost money.”

“Well, ain’t I standin’ in with you?” cried Rogers, “and am I
complaining? Besides, is this the only island in the Pacific, ain’t
there other places where business is to be done?” Then, turning to
Byford, “You have no copra, have you?”

“Not a pound,” said Byford, almost cheerfully. “Cleaned the whole lot
out before the epidemic came.”

“Well,” said Rogers, “see here, you’ll be gettin’ labour here presently
and you’ll be wantin’ goods, why not take our stuff?”

Byford began to laugh at this in a crazy sort of way. Then he rose to
his feet and asked them to come out and see something. Chuckling all the
time, he led them into the sunlight and along the beach to a go-down
close to the cliff wall. He opened the door of the store-house. The
place was crammed with goods—bales of cloth, stacks of tinned salmon,
boxes of stick tobacco, cases of gin.

“The chaps hadn’t been paid for their copra when the epidemic took
them,” said Byford, “but Saunderson, the chap that took the copra off,
had paid me all right, in cash. And to think of you coming with a full
cargo and me with a full store-house, why, it was like taking anthracite
coal to Philadelphia.”

“Or gin to a grog-shop where the lan’lord’s on’y fit for a drunken
’sylum,” put in Slocum, furious that this gin-soddened rascal should
have the laugh of them. “Well, if that’s all that’s to be done here, I
vote we up stick for somewhere that smells sweeter than this fortunit
isle; let’s get aboard.”

But Rogers had other views. Walking beside Slocum on their way back to
the house he explained them.

“I saw an old pack of cards on the table in there,” said he, “and since
this chap has the money, why shouldn’t he part with some of it? He’s got
the bulge on us, and I propose to have the bulge on him, if I’ve any
luck.”

“Luck,” said Slocum, “there you go again with your luck. If there was
such a thing, would this be the time to try it? Luck your granny; you
take my advice and let’s put out before we’re done worse. I don’t like
the look of this place and didn’t from the first. There was too much of
the happy, smilin’ angel about this place to suit yours trooly, too much
of the hat and feathers and the happy face. Spoofed, that’s what we’ve
been, _and_ to turn up such a guy as this chap Byford; he seems straight
come out of that hymn the Salvation blighters used to sing down Tallis
Street, ‘whose every aspect pleases and on’y man is vile.’ ’Strewth,
he’s vile, an’ with a backin’ of cocoanut trees an’ smilin’ verdure he’d
draw the crowd at a missionary show—he’d beat cannibals.”

“He’s gone to pieces with the drink, that’s all,” said Rogers. “Shocked
I was to see him, an old friend rejuiced like that and me expectin’ to
trade with him. Well, if I can’t diddle him one ways I’ll do it another;
it’s not to be trade, it seems, well, let it be gamblin’.”

They entered the house again, Slocum grumbling. Now, the Captain was not
a drinking man under ordinary circumstances, but when his nerves were
put about, or, to use his own expression, when he had something on his
spine, drink became a dangerous temptation to him, and now, as he
entered the house of Byford, seeing the gin on the table he helped
himself to a glass as though the place were his own. This was his second
glass of gin in the course of half an hour, and he had eaten nothing
since breakfast.

Rogers picked up the cards from the table, toyed with them lightly, took
his seat and laid them out in a pattern on the table with his horny
thumb, and then, in the most natural way in the world, suggested a game
of poker to Setchell.

These two scamps seemed telepathic in their understanding with one
another, for Setchell, falling in with the idea, addressed Byford,
asking him to join them.

But Byford, despite his condition of mind and body, was much too
cautious a bird to be caught by such amateur fowlers. He excused himself
on account of the state of his health; he was not in a fit state to play
cards, he had eaten nothing since yesterday, nothing but two nabisco
wafers and a tomato. “If I had a beefsteak inside me I wouldn’t stand
out,” said Mr. Byford, “but I’ve made it the rule of my life never to
play cards on an empty stomach—and there it stands.”

He rolled himself a cigarette, and Slocum, bursting into a laugh,
clapped his great thigh with his palm. “He’s got you again,” said he;
“won’t trade, won’t play, unless it’s with the gin bottle. There, get
into the corner with your tomarter tin, you lousy good-for-nuthin’, and
gi’mme the cards.” He came to the table. Anger with Byford, anger with
Setchell, anger with Rogers, all were mixed in his mind with the fumes
of gin and the lust of play. He wanted to make money out of someone, to
get back something of the time and energy he had lost in coming to this
outrageous place. In his cool moments he did not play cards; a dozen
times on the voyage down here Rogers or Setchell had proposed a game
with him, but he had always refused, now, however, Circumstance had him
in her grip, and, pouring out another glass of gin, he set him down
before the spoilers.

Byford, looking injured at being called a lousy good-for-nothing, sat
back in his cane chair, blowing smoke at the ceiling.

As the game began, two figures darkened the doorway, the figure of
Rakatupea and his dark-skinned wife, who with their baby constituted the
sole remainder of the population of this once fortunate island. The baby
was not with them, they had left it outside.

Rakatupea and his wife, an exceedingly gloomy-looking brace of Kanakas,
took their seats in cane chairs near Byford without one single word. It
was more like the entry of a pair of dogs than of a pair of human
beings, and Byford, who had now fallen into a mused state, after the
first glance took no notice of them.

The chief and his wife smoked cigarettes of their own making, and over
the card-players now the air was hazy with smoke made blue by the
brilliant light from the outside world through the open doorway.

Slocum was winning. In a moment his bad temper had vanished and his
gloomy view of things. Inflated by gin and success, his mind began to
soar, his language to take a jubilant tone.

They were playing for comparatively small stakes, and they continued so
for a while, Slocum always winning, then, feeling Fortune at his back,
he proposed an increase. Rogers and Setchell at once took him, the game
was resumed, and then the luck began to wobble.

Slocum lost, won, lost, and then lost again. He grew angry, grew cool,
swore frightfully when he lost and produced some of the newest and most
curious and quaintest oaths when he won.

At the end of an hour and a half he had lost two thousand dollars.

Had you told him in the morning that such a thing was possible he would
have laughed at you, but there it was, two thousand precious dollars
gone, swept clean away and nothing to show for it.

They were not, of course, playing now with coin on the table. They made
notes of their winnings and losings, using chips made of torn-up paper
for counters.

“Well, there’s no gainsaying your luck is out, Captain,” said Setchell.
“I think you said this morning there was no such thing as luck—well,
what do you say to this?”

“If you’ll close your head and hand me the cards I’ll show you,” said
the other. “My deal.”

To give up, to make no attempt to recapture his losses, to take defeat
lying down, would have been a violation of his nature.

Very grim and breathing heavily through his nose, the redoubtable
Captain dealt the cards and the game proceeded.

Outside now, from the beach blazing in the hot afternoon sun a sound
came insistent, monotonous and teasing. It was the Chief Rakatupea’s
baby beating on an empty tomato-tin with a lump of coral.

Byford was asleep with his mouth open and the flies were promenading on
his face without exciting a twitch, just as they might have promenaded
on the face of a marble statue, the Chief Rakatupea and his wife
continued smoking, moving, whenever they moved, like automatic figures,
and Slocum continued losing.

The tide would turn for a few minutes, and then, when just beginning to
flood, would ebb again, leaving him more stranded than before.

At the end of another hour his total losses amounted to four thousand
five hundred dollars.

“I reckon I’ll stop,” said the Captain. “I’ve lost the worth of all the
trade in the hold of that blessed schooner, all but five hundred
dollars; I reckon I’ll keep that to pay my way back to ’Frisco and take
a cab to the nearest lunatic ’sylum. I ain’t grumbling; Sam Slocum’s not
the man to take his losses grumbling—not him.”

He was trying to conceal his break-down. He would not help himself to
more gin for fear that the shaking of his hand might be noticed. He took
it well, for the loss meant everything to him, but he wanted to get out
of that place and be by himself for a moment, and this opportunity was
given to him by the Chief Rakatupea’s baby.

That lusty infant, having paused for a while to naturalize over a stray
crab, had resumed operations with the tomato-tin and the lump of coral.

“Durn that child,” said the Captain. “I’ll go out and stop its row—no
sense in a row like that. I’ll be back in a minute.”

He went out, and as he cleared the veranda he heard Setchell laughing.
It only wanted that to make his fury blaze out, and the sight of the
baby before him like a chocolate-coloured football on the sands did not
help to soothe him. He came towards it as if he were going to kick it
into the sea.

The baby, seeing the man approach, dropped the lump of coral and held up
the tomato-tin to show it to him. It was a gorgeous tin, the very latest
product of American Publicity Art and commercial endeavour, but it did
not appease Captain Slocum.

“Shut your noise,” cried he; “wha’cher want makin’ that row for,
wha’cher——”

A roar like the roar of a hundred thousand lions cut him short, a huge
boulder the size of a hardware crate skipped past him playfully in a
shower of sand, and an artu tree, roots over leaves, came flying after
the boulder.

The Captain swung round. The whole cliff face had fallen. Eighty feet of
raw red earth stood clean cut above a mound forty feet high, a mound of
rock and earth and rubble, broken trees and torn-up bushes. The recent
rains had undermined the cliff face; under the pile of débris lay the
house of Byford and all that it contained, flattened, smashed to
matchwood, and covered thirty feet deep by rocks, trees, earth and
rubble.

Captain Slocum, unconscious of the baby screaming at his feet, stood
staring at the ruin before him. Then he ran towards it, shouting, and,
to use the words of Ambrose, who was watching from the schooner,
carrying on like a lunatic.

He seized a tree trunk and tried to lift it. Then he came to his senses;
as well try to assist the unfortunates buried under the ruins of
Herculaneum. Byford and his crew were beyond the reach of man, part,
now, of the foundations of the island, and destined to remain so till
the sounding of the last trump.

“My God!” said the Captain.

His own salvation was rushing in on him; by two minutes he had been
saved from all that, by two minutes, and the baby of the Chief
Rakatupea.

He walked back along the sands in a dazed way, picked up the child and
came down to the sea edge with it, holding it in his arms. It had ceased
crying, and lay still as a frightened rabbit whilst he stood waiting for
the boat that had put off from the _Contra Costa_.

It was the quarter-boat, which had put back to the schooner after
landing them that morning, and Ambrose was steering. When the boat’s
nose touched the sand Ambrose scrambled out and came wading ashore.

“What’s up with the cliff?” said Ambrose.

“Up with the cliff!” cried the Captain. “What’s down with it, you mean.
Can’t you see! Where’s your eyes! The whole caboodle of them’s under
there, Rogers and Setchell and Byford and two Kanakas, the whole
population of the blessed island.”

Ambrose tilted his cap and scratched his head.

“And who’s captain of the schooner now?” said he.

“Captin?” replied Slocum. “I guess I’m captin and owner too, since
Rogers hasn’t kith or kin; and he’d cleaned me out of the trade on board
over a game of cards—I reckon that’s mine too. I guess I’ve fallen on
luck. Never did believe in it, but there’s no goin’ against facts.”

“What are you doing with that thing?” asked Ambrose, his eyes turning to
the child.

“Oh, _get_ aboard and close your questions—whach you expect me to do,
leave it behind or fling it into the sea? and fling me luck after it?
Why, you double-dashed imige, d’you know what’s in front of you right
there, untouched by the cliff fall—there’s a store-house full of
trade.”

Ambrose glanced at the go-down, which, in fact, was still standing,
untouched, to westward of the fall, without quite comprehending its
connection with the baby.

“We’ll put it aboard and then come back for as much of the trade as we
can find room for,” said the Captain.

They rowed off to the schooner, the child on Slocum’s knee. It was plump
and attractive, like most Kanaka babies of a year old, but paler in
colour, as if from a mixture of European blood; unlike them, too, it
wore a serious expression that seemed the natural habit of its
countenance.

“It’s like a blessed Billikin,” said Ambrose, “only it’s wanting the
grin.”

“And you’re like a blessed monkey only you’re wanting the tail,” replied
Slocum. “It’s my luck, and I’d thank you to make no observations about
it.”

“I thought you said you didn’t believe in luck,” replied the other, hurt
in his feelings and wishing to make a retort.

“Just so, me son,” replied the Captain, clutching his prize under one
arm whilst he prepared to climb the companion-way, “but you see I hadn’t
a hold of it then. Touchin’ is believin’, and don’t you forget that.”

-----

[2] Sea-lion Jim.


                                   II
                       THE ENCOUNTER WITH KELLER

Mr. Ambrose, second mate of the _Contra Costa_, was a person whose face
value was low enough, yet who yielded surprisingly when you came to cash
him in an emergency. He was a first-class schooner sailor, a gaff and
boom man entirely, and utterly useless when fronted with yards. In his
own special work, and especially in a crisis, he was all there; in the
ordinary business of the world he was often very much abroad.

God-fearing, and proper as an old maid in all that related to the sexes,
he had married early in life and had a wife and small family somewhere
down in the Tillotson Street quarter of San Francisco, not a mile from
the China docks. He carried her portrait about with him all over the
seas, the picture of a stout woman with an enormous cameo brooch, and at
odd times he would sit in his cabin and smoke and gaze on it, conjuring
up his home and family from a thousand miles away.

The one amazing occurrence in this gentleman’s life, the only one thing
that had really fetched him—to use his own expression—was the
occurrence at Christopher Island when he put in there with the _Contra
Costa_ under Captain Rogers. He had been shipwrecked on a Patagonian
beach, chased by Solomon Islanders for the sake of his head at Ysabel,
all but shanghaied at ’Frisco; he had been through an earthquake, and at
least half a dozen times had been saved from horrible and imminent
destruction in the midst of threshing canvas and flying foam, yet
nothing of all this had remained in the mind of Mr. Ambrose to stir it
to the act of speech as when in a reminiscent mood he would say: “But
what you was telling me is nothing in the way of a coincidence to what
happened under my eyes on the _Contra Costa_. Rogers was her master and
owner, and Captain Slocum owned the trade aboard; we put into
Christopher Island, anchored, and went ashore, at least Rogers and
Slocum did, and a chap named Setchell, who was first mate. Well, sir,
they went to visit a trader by name of Byford, his house was under the
cliff, and whiles they were in the house down came the cliff a’ top of
it. I was in my cabin smoking and thinking of ’Frisco, I remember, when
the noise came; I thought it was the stem end of a tornado hitting the
island, I did so, and up I came and there was the house with a mountain
of rubbish a’ top of it, and every man Jack in it dead—but Slocum. And
there was Slocum on the beach with a Kanaka baby on his arm, as cool as
a cucumber.

“‘This is my luck,’ says he, ‘saved my life,’ says he, ‘and Rogers and
Setchell and Byford being defunct,’ he says, ‘I take the schooner as
well as the trade, and there’s all Byford’s trade in that go-down that
the cliff hasn’t touched. Luck!’ he said. ‘I never believed in it till
now;’ with that he made me row him off to the schooner with the baby.
You see, small-pox had struck that island some months before, and every
native had been swept away but the mother and father of the child, and
they were in the house with Byford and the rest when the cliff fell on
it. The baby was outside with Slocum. I never could get to the rights of
that, for when I questioned him all he’d say was to tell me to shut my
head and not be a d——d fool. Anyhow, we got it
aboard—extraordinary—it was that.”

So much for Ambrose’s yarn.

When the Captain boarded the _Contra Costa_ with his Luck under his arm,
he placed it on the deck in the sun, where the Kanaka crew surrounded
it, solemn-eyed and speculative, and calling Sea-lion Jim—known for
short as Sirloin Jim—their bo’sun, he gave him charge of it. Then,
taking Ambrose by the arm, he walked him to the after-rail, and, leaning
on it, spoke:

“There’s some who’d call up their consciences in a traverse of this
sort,” said Captain Slocum, “and see a jedgment on those chaps lyin’
there under all that rubbadge; there’s some would say your duty is to go
an’ hunt for the sons and airs or the widow of that chap Byford; there’s
some who’d say Rogers hasn’t kith nor kin, but it’s your duty to hand
over the schooner to the United States Gover’ment. Well, I haven’t got
no conscience of that sort. If I started to hunt for that chap Byford’s
widow I guess I’d strike half a dozen, and every one glad to be shut of
him and his drinkin’ ways. And the United States Gover’ment isn’t goin’
to get no schooners out of me.

“It _was_ a jedgment on those chaps. They got me in there into that
house and fetched out an old greasy pack o’ cards and choused me. Four
thousan’ five hundred dollars they choused me out of, and I’d have paid,
couldn’t have helped it, seein’ I have five thousan’ dollars’ worth of
trade under the hatches of this schooner, and the schooner Rogers’.

“Then the house fell on them—and me saved. What do you call that but a
jedgment? Why, it clean beats all the jedgments I’ve ever heard
of—beats Dan’l in the lions’ den. Makes a body feel as if he’d jest
stepped outer the Scripturs.”

“Well,” said Ambrose, “what do you propose to do about the schooner?”

“What do I propose to do? Why, sail her to the nearest port where I can
sell the trade. What else?”

“And the stuff in the store-house over there?”

“Well, I reckon we’ve room for some more cargo under the hatches,” said
the Captain, “and we can stow some stuff in the cabins, and there’s room
for some on deck.”

“I suppose,” said Ambrose, “they can’t have the Law of you?”

“Law of me! and who’s to have the law of me? Wha’cher talkin’ about,
who’s doin’ anythin’ unlawful? My aunt, if you ain’t enough to make a
man turn superstitious! Who’s to say Rogers didn’t give me the schooner
before he died and the house fell on him, and what man in his five
senses would leave that cargo of trade rotting on the beach, shoutin’ to
be took away? What you’ve got to do is to keep your head shut. You’re
first mate now, and thankful you ought to be for the rise; or would you
sooner be bo’sun and see Sirloin Jim in your place? You’ve got a wife
an’ family to look after, don’t you forget that, and you’ll have a share
in this venture if I pull it off, and don’t you forget that. Now, then,
_histe_ yourself and get the hatches off and see what spare room you can
make; and Jim!—where’s that chap? Hi, you, Jim, leave off foolin’ with
that baby and get the whale-boat down with haff a dozen fellows to row.
Grease yourself.”

Jim did as he was told, and the Kanaka baby, put down on the hot deck,
sprawled about, clutched at a thole-pin of one of the boats that was
lying near the scupper on the starboard side, and began to hammer on the
deck with it.

Plump, with black-brown eyes and not a rag of clothing, it seemed
perfectly content.

“Blest if it ain’t as solemn as a parson,” said Ambrose, who was
standing by as the fellows were undoing the locking bars of the main
hatch. He referred to the infant’s expression, a solemn and contented
expression, almost serious and most certainly quaint.

“It’s a female,” he went on, as though he were talking of a pup. “Pore
thing, to be left in the cold world without a mother at its age.”

“Cold world be blistered,” said Slocum, “with the th’mometer at ninety
in the shade. Blest if you ain’t like the chaps that write po’try in the
corners of the papers. _Get_ the hatch off—and see here, fetch up a tin
o’ milk and give it a feed. Mix it half an’ half with water and it will
take it on a spoon—and see here, keep an eye on it or it’ll be, maybe,
tumblin’ down the cabin companion-way—it’s that sort.”

As he was going down the side to the whale-boat he shouted back, “You
can make some biskit pap if it won’t take milk—but I guess it will take
the milk all right.”

“Thinks he knows all about babies,” said Ambrose to himself when the
other was gone. “Half and half with water—biscuit pap. Why, any fool
who’s ever had to do with children knows that you want to put four times
as much water as condensed. Wish he had my wife listenin’ to him. Now,
then, go easy there with that bar—what you think you’re doing?”

He was a more literate man than Slocum, and he was the father of three
children, and though he had a great deal of respect for the Captain in
many ways, he had none at all as regards the treatment of infants.

Ambrose, besides being a father of a family, fancied himself for his
medical knowledge. He carried Painkiller and Pound’s stomach mixture and
Frost’s antibilious pills with him, and was constantly dosing himself
and others; he had also a copy of Wright’s Shipmasters’ Vade Mecum,
which gives all sorts of instruction in the art of medical plain-sailing
and the sounding of old sailors’ constitutions and the healing of their
wounds and injuries.

Slocum, when he had beached the whale-boat, brought his men up to the
door of the go-down. He was by no means a thin-skinned man, still, he
felt some faint qualms at realizing on a catastrophe so recent—little
more than an hour old—and he salved his conscience by going to the huge
mound of débris, under which lay the house and its contents, and
standing before it for a moment with folded arms.

Not that he felt the slightest pity for the victims. Rogers, Setchell
and Byford had been a right-down bad lot. He felt sure in his mind that
Setchell and Rogers had conspired to skin him; they had won four
thousand five hundred dollars of his money, and when he had stepped out
to recover himself he had heard Setchell laughing. No, he had no pity
for that lot, and as for the Chief Rakatupea and his wife, also consumed
by the catastrophe, why, they were Kanakas.

He kicked a fallen tree trunk with the toe of his boot, as if to make
sure that the contents of the mound were beyond response or assistance,
then he glanced at the showering mass of convolvulus and hibiscus
blossom that the fall had brought with it, and which lay strewn upon the
red earth and rubble of the tomb.

“No use in those chaps writin’ ‘No flowers, by request’ on their
’bituary notices,” muttered he to himself, “same as they do in the
English papers—_Je_-rusalem, what a tumble!” He contemplated it for a
moment more and then turned away to the store-house. Byford had laughed
at the idea of their bringing a cargo of trade here, and he had good
reason for his mirth. Here were cases of tobacco, cases of canned
salmon, clay pipes, ammunition. Here were bales of cloth and prints,
knives, boxes of fishing tackle, cases of gin—everything conceivable to
make glad the heart of a Kanaka; and as Slocum looked, the mournful fact
was borne in on him that the treasure was beyond his lifting capacity.
It would not be possible to carry away more than half of the things
exposed here, and recognizing this he set the fellows to sorting out the
most valuable of the goods.

He took off a boat-load, hoisting the stuff on board with a tackle.
Ambrose, having removed the hatch, had redistributed some of the cargo,
and now began the work of lading the new goods.

Meanwhile, the sun had set and a gorgeous moon had risen over the sea, a
great, triumphant full moon, flooding the anchorage and the beach and
the island with its light.

“Where’s the kid?” suddenly asked the Captain, pausing to wipe his brow,
for he was working with the others whilst directing them.

“Down in my lower bunk,” said Ambrose. “It’s full up with milk, had a
pannikin and a half, five-sixths water and one milk.”

“Five which?” asked Slocum.

“Sixths—five-sixths water and one milk.”

“I don’t know what you mean by sixths—I told you haff an’ haff—what
you mean by sixths?”

“Well, it’s this way,” said Ambrose, instructively. “Taking it in
pannikins, it’d mean five pannikins of water to one of milk—condensed.”

“Condensed—and what else would you have? We don’t carry a cow. I tell
you”—suddenly blazing out—“I said haff an’ haff, and you’ve been
fillin’ that kid up with water. When I lays down sailin’ directions, I
expex to have them carried through. I ain’t goin’ to have it now, I tell
you that; I ain’t goin’ to have my orders messed in that way, scrimpin’
and savin’ on a ha’porth of milk.”

“Why, God bless my soul,” said Ambrose, “it wasn’t with the idea of
saving the stuff. I tell you, your half and half is too strong for an
infant’s stomach. I ought to know, that’s brought up three of them. Who
ought to know better than me? Three of them, and never a day’s illness.”

“Well, you ain’t goin’ to bring up this kid,” grumbled Slocum. “I know
you; give you a free hand and you’ll be fillin’ it next with patent
medicine. I ain’t brought up no children, but Gor’ A’mighty has given me
sense in me head, and He’s rigged me with eyes, not deadlights.”

A contribution to Slocum’s irritability was the fact that Ambrose had
put the object of dispute in his own lower bunk. He felt as a man might
feel who, possessing a mascot, finds another man wearing it. He did not
want the luck watered like the milk. Besides this, he resented Ambrose’s
vague air of proprietorship in the thing, and his air of knowledge as
though he were the only person in the world who knew anything about
babies; also he believed Ambrose to be wrong. Slocum was a person who
put his faith in good solid food, and no kickshaws or adulterations.
However, he chewed on his irritation now, turning from Ambrose and
letting fly at the Kanakas, who had stopped work during the dispute and
were standing round open-mouthed to listen.

An hour after moonrise they knocked off and retired for the night,
leaving the bo’sun in charge of the anchor watch.

The relationship between the two men was rather strained. All seemed
quiet in Ambrose’s cabin, and the Captain, tired with his day’s work,
made no reference to the new-comer as he finished a tot of whisky and
went to his bunk. Then Ambrose retired; he peeped into the lower bunk
and saw the baby curled up and asleep with the blanket still over it
just as he had placed it some hours before, undressed, got into a suit
of striped pyjamas, said his prayers, clambered into the upper bunk,
and, having popped out the light, turned on his right side. It was a fad
of his that he could only go to sleep when on his right side. Then he
turned his thoughts to San Francisco, and was walking down Tillotson
Street, in his imagination, and nearing his own front door, when a sound
from the lower bunk made him open his eyes.

The baby was stretching itself and moving uneasily, making the sounds of
a pup or some small animal restless in its kennel. Ambrose, who had some
knowledge of what to expect, lay still as death, hoping that it would
recompose itself to slumber. A minute passed, and then the wailing
began.

Slocum in his cabin heard it. It was just like the noise that the
_Contra Costa_ made rolling in a beam sea, only that noise allowed one
to sleep—this did not.

Ambrose put one leg over the bunk edge, then he dropped on to the floor,
lit the lamp, and tried to soothe the occupant of the lower bunk with
his hand and voice.

Then he fetched it out rolled in the blanket, and holding it in his arms
walked up and down the cabin with it. The cabin allowed only six or
eight steps either way, and he was making this short promenade when the
door opened and Slocum, in canary-coloured pyjamas, appeared.

The irritation of having his rest disturbed and his past irritation
against Ambrose, which had come to life again, joined hands.

There is nothing so strange as the human mind, and the mind of Captain
Slocum was eminently human. He felt no animosity towards the disturber
of his rest; Ambrose was the object of his wrath, Ambrose entirely. And
the sight of Ambrose helped to blow the flame. Ambrose was never an
heroic figure—few of us are. Ambrose, despite his undoubted courage,
his daring in difficulty, and his coolness in disaster, had about him a
touch of the maiden aunt. Dressed in striped pyjamas, with his hair
tousled, a lugubrious expression on his face, and a baby in his arms, he
looked for all the world like the comic man waiting his turn to go on in
a badly-written music-hall sketch.

“Well, I’m dashed!” said Slocum. “Ain’t there no peace to be had on this
ship when a body turns in dead beat with work? What are you startin’?—a
kindergarten? Haven’t you better sense in your head than to be standin’
there in your pyjamas lap-nursin’ that baby an’ keepin’ it awake an’
squallin’ this hour of the night? Where’s your _sense_?”

Ambrose, one hand flapping rhythmically on the body of the infant, stood
without speaking under this unjust attack. Then he revolted. It was rank
mutiny, and had it occurred during the working of the schooner or the
cargo would have had bad results for Ambrose, but circumstances alter
cases.

“Look here,” said he, “you’ve no call to interfere in what you don’t
understand. This is my business, which I am used to; ought to be, seein’
I’ve brought up three of them. This is my cabin and you go out of it,
either that or take the thing and nurse it yourself. I’m not no
maidservant to be stood and abused at; d’you think I’m standing here for
fun? It’s cryin’ for its dead mother, pore infant, and you standing
there abusing me and talking through your blessed hat about things you
know nothin’ about. You just leave me alone. I’m right fed up with
people poking their noses into my business.”

“I’ll talk to you about this in the morning when you come to your
senses,” said Slocum, and out he went.

After a while the wailing died away to silence, and next morning the
Captain said nothing. Ambrose had triumphed. When he came on deck with
the Kid, for that was the name by which it was now referred to, and
placed it on the deck in the sun, he did so with the air of
proprietorship of a nurse in her charge. Slocum, superintending the
cargo workers, noted this, and vaguely resented it, but he could do
nothing. Ambrose had the “bulge” on him. He, Slocum, was quite at sea in
this business. Whilst he had been pirating on Chinese rivers and selling
opium to Malays or arms to Chile revolutionaries, Ambrose had been
quietly potting about as a schooner man and raising a family in ’Frisco.
Slocum had never had to do with babies at close quarters in his life;
Ambrose had paid for and helped in the rearing of three. It was just
like growing potatoes, or planting asparagus or raising corn—the man
who does not know has to give place to the man who does, and play second
fiddle until such time as he can learn; and Slocum, for all his
pig-headedness, and he was a most pig-headed man in the ordinary way,
had sense enough to perceive that where the Kid was concerned he was
nowhere.

However, he had not much time to think about the matter this morning. He
had fixed in his mind to get all the stuff he could on board and sail
that evening if the wind held. He was anxious to get away from the
island. There was always the chance of a ship coming in, and then there
would be explanations and bothers. Here was an island depopulated,
without a soul to be seen on it, coloured or white. No trader, and no
trader’s house, yet a schooner filling up with stores out of a
store-house belonging evidently to a once trading station. To strangers
the thing would seem more than quaint, but should the visiting ship
contain people who knew the place or friends of Byford, it would seem
highly suspicious.

The best thing was to get clean away and as quickly as possible, so he
worked the hands without sparing them, neither did he spare Ambrose or
himself. The consequence was that the Kid had to be left to its own
devices, and played about on the hot deck near the galley-door. Ambrose
had found the thole-pin for it, and it had found a coil of rope for
itself, and engaged with them it played and sprawled, knocking off
sometimes to gaze with dark, beady eyes at the work in progress or the
men at work. The Captain, helping in the business like any stevedore,
would pause now and then to see what “that Kid” was after, and Ambrose,
returning from the shore now and then with a boat-load of stuff, would
have an eye in the same direction, but they had no cause to find
fault—open hatches and other patent ways to destruction had no
attraction for the Kid; it seemed cautious by nature and unadventurous
and content with small things, and, though desperately serious and
self-contained, happy enough.

When they knocked off for dinner it was asleep, curled up in the shadow
on the port side of the galley.

“What I can’t make out,” said the Captain, with a look at it before he
went down, “is the way it was squallin’ last night for nothin’, and all
this mornin’ not a sound out of it, sittin’ there solemn as a jedge
playin’ with its things, and all the time with one eye on the cargo
work, sort o’ superintendin’. I’m blest if that Kid’s right.”

“Oh, it’s right enough,” said Ambrose. “Kids always squall at nights.
_I_ don’t know why. I expect it’s the way they’re made. I expect this
kid’s mother let it play about pretty loose by itself in the daytime and
then had it to sleep with her at night; that’s what made it yell, most
likely, the wanting of her, for when I took it into my bunk——”

“You slep’ with it in your bunk?” said the Captain.

“Slept—if you can call it sleeping with it digging its claws into my
back and kicking with its heels—but it stopped yelling.”

The Captain mused on this matter as they went below, then, as they took
their seats at table, he said:

“I’ve heard tell of children smothered by bein’ laid on—laid over they
call it. Eustiss, that chap that was goin’ to sign on for this voyage,
and didn’t, Setchell takin’ his place, told me he had a own brother laid
over when an infant; his mother had taken too much gin or some’at, and
when she woke up in the mornin’ the kid was a deader. So I’m just
tellin’ you so’s you may be on your guard, for I don’t want anythin’ to
happen to that kid.”

“Who’s going to overlay it?” cried Ambrose, flying out suddenly. “What
have I to do with Eustiss’s gin-drinking mother—overlay’s the word, not
lay over. Here’m I put to all sorts of inconveniences, and all I get for
my trouble is being abused and set on.” He got up from the table and
walked about, a most unusual proceeding for a sailor man. “Here’m I with
my eyes bulging out of my head from hard work and want of sleep, and you
sitting there and jawin’ me.”

Slocum was astonished for a moment. His long experience of life,
however, had made him somewhat acquainted with the oddity of mankind; he
knew that some men would get put out over trifles, or what seemed to be
trifles, whilst retaining their composure over serious matters. He had
seen a man in a mining camp deaf to all insults, yet drawing a knife to
defend his reputation from the charge of having overboiled the potatoes
for dinner. Instead, therefore, of losing his temper, he soothed the
other.

“Sit you down,” said he. “There’s no manner of use in losin’ your hair
over sich rubbige. I only spoke as a warnin’ to be careful. Well,
where’s the harm done? Sit you down.”

They sailed that night under the full moon and with a favourable wind
for Neukohee. The Captain had chosen this port of call as being the
nearest and the most likely. “There’s a big tradin’ station there,” he
said, as he stood talking to Ambrose the next morning, “with a man
called Keller head of it, and there’s another station back of the
island.”

“I know it,” said Ambrose; “been there twice, and Keller’s hot stuff.
You look out in your dealings with him.”

He went off to wash the Kid. The cook kept potatoes and things in a
small tin bath, and he had this out and half filled it with water. One
of the hands had given the grubby one treacle out of a spoon, much to
Ambrose’s indignation, and it was one mass of stickiness. He had to
kneel to the job, and with his shirt-sleeves rolled up he looked like a
man washing a dog, and all the time he was washing it he was swearing at
the crew and the unknown who had administered the treacle.

Slocum stood by looking on and joining in.

“Passel of fools—sailors is the biggest passel of fools the A’mighty
ever packidged; last trip I made a chap brought a parrit aboard, and a
greaser gave it a chunk of Ruby twist soaked in rum, and there was the
parrit on his back with his claws in the air deader’n Solomon. If I
catch that chap I’ll give him m’lasses.”

The weather still held perfect, and the wind steadily breathing bowled
them along across the blue and perfect sea.

It was a happy ship, infinitely happier than when under the mastership
of Rogers, who, without being exactly a hard man, had proved himself
mean and that worst thing of all, a nagger; things went well in the
fo’c’sle and in the cabin. Slocum and Ambrose, though they had tiffs
about the little things that were created to make tiffs, still, had now
a bond of common interest; but though Slocum allowed the other a free
hand in the management and feeding of the Kid, he never for a moment
abdicated from the position of proprietor. The Captain, without knowing
it, had a new interest in life, and had come under a very potent
influence. This thing that Fate had given him power over and possession
of told upon his mind in quite an extraordinary way. He had never even
owned a dog, he had never had charge of anything entirely depending on
him; had he married and had children, the wife would have looked after
them. This was an entirely new proposition that no sailor man, however
prescient, could have foreseen or dreamed of, and the Captain,
sometimes, in meditation, allowed to himself that it “knocked him.” He
firmly believed that this thing had brought him luck; all that talk of
his about the nonsense of believing in luck had been talk and nothing
more. In his heart of hearts he believed in luck as firmly as anyone
else.

There were some bales of cotton cloth amongst the trade on board, and
Ambrose fetched some out, and with the help of the bo’sun rigged the Kid
out in a dress of sorts. Slocum demurred at this, but he held off and
let the other have his way, only throwing in such remarks as, “Well, I
don’t know, I may be in the wrong of it, but I’ve heard say that these
missionary blighters started c’nsumption on the islands when they rigged
the natives out in stays an’ petticoats ’n’ top-hats.”

“Well, I’m not troubling the Kid with stays nor top-hats,” said Ambrose.
“I’m just making it look like a Christian.” But when, two days from
Neukohee, the Kid went off its food, Slocum came back to the attack.

“I tell you it’s nothing to do with such rubbish,” said Ambrose. “It’s
the grub on board. Fresh milk is what it wants, goat’s milk for choice.
There’s sure to be goats at Neukohee, and the first thing you have to do
is to get one aboard.”

Two days later, three hours after sun up, they cast anchor in the lagoon
of Neukohee, and scarcely had the cliffs finished answering to the
anchor chain than a boat put off with a stout man sitting in the stern
sheets and steering. It was Keller.

He knew Ambrose of old, was introduced to Slocum and came down to
breakfast; at breakfast Slocum introduced the question of trade.

“Well, gentlemen,” said Keller. “I’m sorry you haven’t struck a better
port than Neukohee. I’m full up with trade, and that’s the truth.”

The faces of Slocum and Ambrose at this gloomy piece of news were a
study; the only other island where business might be done lay seven
hundred miles away, and it was German.

“It’s unfortunate,” went on the big man; “still, maybe I can relieve you
of your stuff at a price. Better for you than carting it round the
Pacific. Goods are goods anyhow, s’long as they’re not perishables.
Let’s see.”

He studied the manifest which was lying by his coffee-cup, and the
inventory of the Byford trade that Ambrose had made out. Then with a
pencil he made calculations on a piece of paper, and then he announced
his price.

Slocum, after a rapid mental calculation, estimated that when all was
said and done, including the money for Byford’s lot, he would not get
his outlay back. He had brought a cargo across the Pacific to sell it
for less than he had given for it. He was furious.

“Well,” he said, rising from the table, “I can’t say offhand. It’s a
loss to me. It’s flingin’ stuff away, it’s makin’ you a present of it.”

“Look here,” said Ambrose, who had accepted the situation calmly, “how
about those goats?”

“D—— the goats,” said Slocum. Then he checked himself, and leaving the
cabin went on deck.

When they came up they found him ordering a boat to be lowered.

Keller interposed. “See here,” said he, “you have no call to be doing
that. I’ll row you ashore if you want to go.”

“You leave me alone,” said Slocum. “I’m goin’ ashore as I want to. I’ve
a cargo to bring back.” He got into the boat which had been lowered and
started for the shore.

“Don’t mind him,” said Ambrose. “He’s put out a bit, but he’ll be all
right when he’s cooled down. Have a cigar.”

Keller took one and they smoked for half an hour, and then Keller,
looking at his watch, took his departure.

“I may see him ashore,” said he, “but if I don’t, tell him my offer
holds good till to-night—not after.” He rowed away.

An hour later Ambrose saw Slocum’s boat coming off. Slocum was steering
and there was a goat in the stern sheets beside him, but Ambrose forgot
the goat when he saw Slocum’s face. The Captain looked as though he had
been drinking, but it was not drink that had him in its grip, it was
excitement, the excitement that is half-brother to Triumph.

“What’s up?” said Ambrose, as he came aboard.

“Luck,” replied the other, “Big luck. Get that goat in with a tackle and
be swift. I want the boat to take me back—can’t ’xplain now.”

He dashed below and in a few minutes returned with the manifest and
inventory; the goat had been got on deck, but without even a glance at
it and with scarcely a word to Ambrose, he got into the boat and started
for the shore.

“Seems gone crazy,” said Ambrose to himself; “hope it isn’t the sun’s
got hold of him.” He watched the shore-going boat for a moment and then
turned to the new arrival, to which the Kid was making advances.

One of the pleasantest and most fascinating facts in the world is the
love of children, even quite small children, for animals. The Kid,
though young enough to be called a baby, was old enough to be able to
recognize the charm of a goat, and to crawl towards it and make advances
of friendship.

Ambrose mused on these facts, and then, whilst the goat was being milked
by the bo’sun, he cast an eye shorewards. There was nothing to be seen
of Slocum. Having landed, he had gone up towards the village half
visible among the cocoanut trees, and was doubtless now engaged with
Keller. What did he mean by great luck, and what had occurred to alter
the complexion of things so? There could be no answer to that question
till Slocum returned, and Slocum did not return for four hours.

It was half-past three when he put off, and when he boarded the _Contra
Costa_ it was no longer excitement that blazed in his eyes, but Victory.

He dragged Ambrose down below, closed the cabin door, sat down at the
table, banged it with his fist and shouted, “Done him!”

“Done him!” he went on in a raving voice. “Done him brown. Said he was
full up with trade, didn’t he? Said he would take our stuff for next to
nothin’ to save us from cartin’ it about the Pacific, didn’t he? Well,
he was starvin’ for the stuff all the time—he had nothin’, his
store-houses were empty. His ship’s been wrecked and there’s the whole
of the copra of the island waitin’ to be bought and he without a stick
of tobacco to buy it with, and the trader on the other side of the
island with his ship due to arrive to-morrow with a full cargo of
trade.”

“But how did you find out?” asked Ambrose, excited as the other.

“It was the Kid that did it. When I went for those goats a Kanaka chap
offered to sell me one; his house is close by one of Keller’s
store-houses an’ the store-house door happened to be open. I looked in,
and the place was empty. Then I begins to smell rats. I questions the
Kanaka, and for four dollars he unloaded the whole story. I rushes back
here, gets the papers, goes back and tackles Keller—for mor’n three
hours we’ve been at it hammer an’ tongs—and there’s the upshot, there’s
the price he’s payin’ for the stuff.”

He put a paper on the table and Ambrose glanced at it.

“Three thousand dollars profit,” said Slocum, “and we expectin’ to make
a loss—three thousand dollars. Come on deck—if I don’t get some air
I’ll bust.”

They went on deck, where Keller’s men were already arrived to break
cargo.

The goat was wagging its scut near the galley-door and the Luck was
playing near it, trying to lift a marlin-spike so as to hammer the deck
with it.

“I guess that’s some kid,” said the Captain, looking proudly at the
prodigy. “Three thousand dollars—by _Gosh_!”

Ambrose, looking on, was thinking the same.


                                  III
                        A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE

The schooner _Contra Costa_ was making for Navahoe, west of the
Marquesas. Sirloin Jim, the Kanaka bo’sun, was at the wheel, and Captain
Slocum, owner and master, was talking to Ambrose the mate, leaning his
broad back against the weather-rail and squirting tobacco juice at the
dowels in the deck planking between remarks.

A goat tethered to a staple in the wall of the caboose was wagging its
scut and chewing a bunch of dried grass, whilst near the goat was
playing the redoubtable Kid, the Chief Rakatupea’s baby, last of an
ancient line and mascot-in-chief to the _Contra Costa_ and her captain.

“It’s took to the goat,” said the Captain. “I never could abide goats,
and if I ever gets deliriums trimins, I’d sooner be chased be snakes
than goats. Onnatural, I call them, with their eyes slit crooked and
their beards and all, not to say nothing of the smell of them, but it’s
bucked the Kid, it and its milk.”

Said Ambrose: “I was thinking only this morning of what you were saying,
that the Kid had brought you luck. There you were at Neukohee with a
cargo of trade and Keller offering you dirt prices for it, saying that
his store-houses were full; in the middle of your disappointment you go
ashore, thinkin’ more of the Kid than your loss, to hunt for a goat to
give it milk, and you find by accident that Keller has all his
store-houses empty and that he’s just starvin’ for trade, and you
squeeze him for all you’re worth, and instead of a loss you pull off a
big profit—all through the Kid.”

“That’s so,” said the Captain, hitting a dowel fair in the centre with a
squirt of tobacco juice.

“Well,” said Ambrose, who was a Baptist and given to flights of
enthusiasm of a religious sort at times. “I’m thinkin’ it was less the
Kid than your own conscience that brought you that deal. You weren’t
thinkin’ of profit; you were set on doin’ right by the Kid, and the
Almighty had His eye on you as sure as I have my eye on that goat’s
scut. It was your better nature that pulled off that deal as sure as I’m
a living sinner.”

“Oh, rubbidge,” said Slocum, tickled all the same by the soft
impeachment. “What’s the A’mighty got to do with a trade deal? What’s
workin’ in my mind now is the business ahead of us when we get to
Navahoe, which ought to be to-morrow. What I’ve fixed on is this.
Navahoe is a big place, and lots o’ business to be done there. I’m goin’
to cast me anchor in Navahoe and give you command of the _Counter
Costa_—shet your head till I finish—I’m goin’ to turn trader. I’ve had
enough of the sea business; I’ll open a tradin’ station, and you and the
_Counter Costa_ can take the copra to Valdivia or some Chile port; we
mustn’t use ’Frisco. The schooner is mine by all rights, all the same
she was Rogers’ before the A’mighty let down that cliff on him, and
there’s no knowing but that friends of Rogers will be makin’ trouble.
Wherever there’s property left by a diseased there’s friends ready to
make trouble, and be durned to them.”

“Well, I don’t mind bein’ skipper,” said Ambrose, “if you feel you can
keep your end up against those sharks ashore. I know Navahoe; there’s
two traders there, and they’re a brown lot, those two, and they hunt
together. Lewin and Sakers is the names they go by.”

“I guess I’ll try,” said the Captain. He went forward to superintend
some of the hands who were at work scraping down a spare boom. The
Captain’s mind, which was at once slow and quick, was wrestling in a
vague sort of manner with the new proposition set for it by Ambrose. The
right and wrong of things constituted a simple enough matter to the mind
of Captain Slocum. Anything was right that pleased him or assisted him
forward in any purpose; anything that displeased or foiled him was
wrong. It was a new sensation to be told that he possessed a conscience
and that he had been “set on doin’ right by the Kid,” and it was a
distinctly pleasurable idea that the Almighty had recognized his act and
had rewarded him by giving him the weather gauge on Keller. Slocum,
despite his past piracies and gun-runnings and general crookedness, had
a vague sort of belief in an Almighty. He did not believe in religion,
but he had the feeling that there was a power up in the sky somewhere
that ruled the elements and was antagonistic to his enemies. He did not
pray to it, but he swore by it.

He had never recognized till now that there was a power in himself
capable of making him forget his own affairs for the interests of
another, and even now he recognized that fact very vaguely indeed.

He superintended the men for a while, said a word to the Kid, scratched
the goat behind the ears and then went aft to take the sun.

Navahoe broke before them next morning at dawn, a semi-mountainous
island with the little town of Niniea stretched before the white beach
of coral sand, and the anchorage protected by the barrier reef and
studded by small craft of the inter-island trade.

The pilot came aboard and brought them in under sail, the wind being
favourable. He made a good many inquiries as he stood conning the
schooner and talking to Slocum, who, revealing little, made the pilot
talk.

Said that individual, whose name was Sellers: “There’s copra here, yes;
there’s copra here in plenty, _and_ Kanakas, yes, there’s Kanakas here
in tons, bone lazy lot; fed up with missionaries we are; the Kanakas
water the copra and the missionaries water the inishiative of the
Kanakas. Place is like a blame Sunday school. Say, was you thinkin’ of
startin’ here in trade?”

“Maybe I was,” replied the Captain.

“But you’ve got nothin’ on board, you told me.”

“I’ve got dollars; what’s wrong with dollars?”

“Nothin’ that I know of,” said the pilot. He whistled and said no more
for a minute, whilst Slocum ruminated.

They came to anchor opposite the little town and half a cable’s length
from a frousty old brigantine that was presenting her stern to them with
the legend _Mary and Martha_ painted in sun-blistered yellow letters on
her counter. The port authorities, such as they were, came on board, and
Slocum, taking them below, brought them up in half an hour satisfied,
slightly flushed, talkative and smoking cigars. When they were off the
ship he had the quarter-boat lowered, and, leaving Ambrose in charge,
got in and ordered the men to take him ashore.

As he was passing under the stern of the _Mary and Martha_ a sailor man
who was leaning over the after-rail hailed him.

“Good G—d!” cried Slocum, “why, if it ain’t Billy Blithers. Hold a
shake, Bill, till I come aboard of you; back water, you sculpins, steady
so.”

He scrambled on board with the help of a ladder flung down for him by
Captain Blithers, whose real name was Smith, all but embraced him, and
then the two worthies went below to the dingy, fusty cabin for drinks.

Blithers had trade on board which he had not got rid of. Lewin and
Sakers, the two traders of the place, would not come to his figure,
which was reasonable enough, and he bemoaned the fact.

“You tell me,” said Slocum, “is there a decent house ashore to be had
cheap an’ a store-house convenient to it?”

The mournful Blithers replied that there was.

“As good a house as a trader could want. Applejohn’s it was, an English
trader too soft for these parts; done out by them two sharks Lewin and
Sakers he were. He quitted three months ago, and the place belongs to a
Frenchman, a chap by the name of Martell. You can see his house through
the port there, that frame house to the left by the three cokernut
trees.”

“Well, if I can get the house and the store-house, I’ll take your trade
at the figure you name,” said Slocum. “You leave Sakers and Lewin to me.
I guess they’ll find a hard-shelled Yankee on their backs before they’re
much older. I guess they’ll be wishin’ they was Applejohns before I’m
through with them.”

Blithers, visibly cheered by this statement, offered to pilot the
Captain ashore and show him the ropes, and the Captain assenting, they
put off in the _Contra Costa’s_ boat.

There was a fair sprinkling of folk on the beach to watch them landing,
half a dozen beach-combers, lazing in any patch of shadow they could
find, smoking, not sure of where they would find their next meal, and
settling the affairs of the Pacific and the world in general amongst
them; some natives, and a sailor or two from the shipping in the
anchorage.

It is the happiest place in the world, the beach of Niniea, the laziest
and perhaps the prettiest; the white coral sand, the blue water of the
anchorage, the palms on the reef and the tune of the surf on the reef
itself, all combine to form a charm which holds the memory for ever. And
this charm is not broken by the town with its fragile houses set in
verdure, white as limewash of coral can make them, and backed by a
wonderland of vegetation such as is found nowhere but in the fortunate
islands of the Pacific.

They called at the tiny “club,” in reality a drinking-bar, where any
stranger could go and obtain as much drink as he wanted, having first
inscribed his name in the club book. Two pale-faced men were standing at
the counter imbibing cocktails, and Blithers, having installed himself
and his companion in the verandah, pointed them out. “Them’s the chaps,”
said he, “Sakers and Lewin, _drinkin’_ together; white about the gills
they look this morning; they sits here boozing of nights and their drink
don’t do ’em no good. It’s my opinion it turns to limon juice in them.”

“They ain’t beauties,” said Slocum, “an’ they won’t be any the prettier
before I’ve done with ’em.”

When they had sat for a while, they went on to the Frenchman’s house.
Old Monsieur Martell was in, and he received them attired in pyjamas, a
coloured handkerchief tied round his head, and a cigarette between his
lips.

He was only too pleased to let the house for a very moderate sum indeed,
and Slocum, who was a man of quick action, having paid the first
instalment of the rent, put the place in commission at once.

You can furnish a house in Niniea in twenty minutes or so. You don’t
want much furniture. A few mats and chairs, a table, and a hammock to
sleep in are enough if you are a simple sailor man without artistic
tastes.

The Captain bought a Primus stove and hired a native woman to do the
cooking and marketing; then he arranged for the trade on board the _Mary
and Martha_ to be brought to his store-house, and having completed all
these arrangements by three o’clock in the afternoon, he returned to the
_Contra Costa_, where he found Ambrose on deck.

Ambrose was on his hands and knees playing with the Kid. He rose up, and
Slocum, without going below, went into details of what he had done.

“Well, that’s quick work,” said Ambrose, “and you’ve taken a house and
all. What are you goin’ to do with the Kid?”

“What am I goin’ to do with the Kid? Well, what d’you s’pose? Won’t the
house be big enough for it to play round in? It and the goat goes ashore
t’morrer. There’s a Kanaka woman I’ve hired to look after the place and
do the cookin’; she’ll look after the Kid too when I’m not about.”

“Well, I hope it won’t come to no harm,” said Ambrose. “I reckon it’ll
be all right, but I’ve got used to it, and havin’ kids of my own makes
me think more of it. And what am I to do with the schooner?”

“We’ll give her a week or two for fillin’ up,” said Slocum, “and then
you’ll be off to Sydney for a cargo of trade, with a cargo of copra. I’m
goin’ to buy all the copra I can lay hands on, if it costs me a cent a
pound more than Sakers and that other chap are givin’. I’m goin’ to
begin dealin’ to-morrow.” And he did.

Wind of the arrival of a new trader went over the island like a voice,
and Slocum, seated in his verandah, had the pleasure of receiving large
contingents of solemn and curious natives, some from the beach districts
and some from far inland. He had found out the price that copra was
fetching, and despite his boast to Ambrose, he was not such a fool as to
go better than Sakers or Lewin; but he gave the natives sweet biscuits
of a new kind, and he made a present of a seven-bladed knife to a chief
whom he detected at once to be _the_ person to get on his side.

Slocum, though he could scarcely write, and though his syntax was an
affront to the gods, was in reality a good business man, and but for his
roving disposition might have been a rich one.

He knew men. The Kid, or as he preferred to call it in private, the
Luck, played about on the verandah and was an added attraction. News of
it had also gone about the place. A strange white man was a very
ordinary phenomenon on the island, but a strange Kanaka—and a baby at
that—was a matter for talk and speculation over the poi-pot and on the
fishing grounds. Women came to look at it, and, from where heaven knows,
but maybe from the talking of Slocum himself, word got about that the
new-comer was not as ordinary children are.

Sakers and Lewin, you may be sure, were not without interest in this
business. These gentlemen, as may have been gathered from the words of
Captain Blithers and Ambrose, were not at all inclined to welcome a new
trader to the place. Though the copra was more than they could handle,
and though there was plenty of trade for three, they feared competition.
Competition tended to raise prices, and there was always the chance of
some business octopus arriving who would manage to swallow the whole
trade of the island and freeze them out. Their weakness lay in the fact
that they were very small men financially, bluffers who made a great
show, and conspirators ready to play any mean trick on a rival—as in
the case of the unfortunate Applejohn. Though trading separately, they
were, in reality, a ring surrounding a common interest that threatened
to be disturbed by this new arrival on what they chose to consider as
their premises.

But they said nothing, nor did they seem to resent the presence of the
intruder. On the contrary, they assumed affability, called on the
Captain, imbibed his drinks and even stood him drinks at the club when
he met them there.

Meanwhile Slocum was buying copra and the _Contra Costa_ was loading up.
It took a month in that lazy land before her full cargo, brought down
from the interior, was stowed on board; and during this time Slocum was
so busy between buying and superintending the loading that he had little
time for amusement or making acquaintances. Still, he came to know
several people more or less intimately: the old Frenchman Martell, the
two traders, and the missionary, an American by name of Arnold, who
lived up beyond the town in a house pleasantly situated amidst a grove
of pandanus and tree-fern.

Arnold was a big, serious man. A right-down good man with a great hold
upon the natives. Despite this hold, the strange fact remained that he
did not understand their interior mechanism in the least. The mind of
the Kanaka is the mind of the Kanaka, and nothing will ever make it the
mind of the white man; all kinds of superstitions and dark streaks are
there ingrained. Arnold fancied that he had made these people Christians
just like himself, and looking at the world just as he looked at it. As
a matter of fact, he had Christianized them, but he had not made them
like himself. They were streaky Christians as far as their theological
basis was concerned, though admirable enough in their everyday affairs
and lives.

The _Contra Costa_, having filled up with copra, took her departure,
leaving Slocum and the Luck alone in their glory; Slocum as a
householder and trader, the Luck as a mystery child much discussed still
by the natives.

Slocum had given it out that he had “picked it up” in an island up
north, that its life had been saved by a miracle and that it had saved
his life by a miracle. Incidentally, it had got about from his mouth
that he looked upon it as a fetish and that he would not exchange
it—were such an exchange possible—for all the copra in the world.

Now that the _Contra Costa_ was away, the Captain found himself with
nothing to do and in a place where it was an exceedingly difficult
matter to kill time—at least for a sailor man. He occupied himself for
some days in repairing his house, repainting the front railings with his
own hands and rethatching the roof in parts where a storm of some months
ago had left a weak spot. There was a little tropical garden around the
house, and when the repairs and painting were finished he had a turn at
that. He planted sweet potatoes and other vegetables, and finding the
remains of an old hen run in a corner, he reconstructed it and bought
some hens. The goat roamed at will except in the fenced-off places of
the garden, and the Kid, or the Luck as he frequently called it, had a
fine playground.

It was by now just able to walk in an uncertain manner, and like a dog
it was never far from his heels when he was pottering about the house or
grounds. He would talk to it as he worked just as a man talks to a
domestic animal, and when he went into the town or to the club, he would
leave it with the native woman who looked after the house, always with
strict injunctions to “take care of it.”

There was good fishing to be had on the anchorage and from the reef, and
the Captain killed his time in this way, nearly always taking the Luck
with him. He fancied that the fishing was better when she accompanied
him; he told the native woman so, and this fancy also got about amongst
the Kanakas, increasing the reputation of the child as a fetish.

The evenings would have hung heavy on the captain’s hands but for the
club. Here he would sit at night drinking and smoking and chatting with
whoever was there; the native barman, or old Monsieur Martell or some
stray captain or mate of a sailing ship put in for water or fresh
vegetables. Lewin and Sakers were often there of a night, and always
friendly and wanting to stand drinks; so friendly that the Captain
forgot his animosity towards them, took their drinks, stood others in
return, but refused their suggestion, once or twice made, of a friendly
game of poker.

“No, I ain’t no card player,” the Captain would say. “I lost nigh on
five thousand dollars onc’t at cards, and be d——d to them. Fitchered I
was, and never will be again over that game;” but the more dangerous
game of drinking with and talking to these ruffians he did not refuse,
and as there is nothing that grows on one so quickly in certain
circumstances as the habit of drink, the Captain little by little
extended his séances at the club and deepened his potations, often
returning home now through the starlit and vanilla-scented night
hiccuping, singing and unsteady on his legs.

Sometimes he drank in the afternoon, and once, returning from fishing,
he tethered the Kid like a dog to the verandah-post, whilst he went in
to swop news and imbibe liquor with the mate of an inter-island schooner
just arrived.

Arnold, the missionary, chanced to pass that afternoon, and saw the
child playing in the sun—the Kid always found something to play
with—and tethered by half a fathom of fishing line to the verandah-post
of the godless place—the club was the sore spot in Arnold’s life—and
the silhouette of Slocum inside tipping off a glass of grog.

Next day the missionary descended on the sinner. Slocum was weeding his
garden when Arnold arrived at the fence and asked for a word with him.

“I’ve come to talk to you about the child,” said Arnold.

“About the Kid,” said the Captain, straightening up and wiping his
forehead with his sleeve. “It’s over there, ’sleep on the v’randah.
Won’t you come in?”

“No, thanks,” said the astute Arnold. “I’d sooner stay here and admire
your garden. Well, you have improved it and no mistake. You haven’t any
pepper plants, I see. I can give you some when you come round to my
place—I haven’t seen much of you.”

“Well, I ain’t a visitin’ man,” said Slocum. “I never went in much for
that sort of thing, but I’m always glad to see folk when they call and
stand ’em a—but you don’t drink?”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t,” said Arnold. “I like a glass of whisky
just as much as any man, but I can’t take it.”

“Some is that way,” said Slocum, as though he were referring to an
infirmity.

“Oh, my head stands it all right, and my body likes it, but I can’t
drink, simply because I have a lot of poor folk to look after who would
be ruined if they drank, and I can’t tell them drink is bad for them and
take it myself. That’s where missionary work gets us, Captain; we have
to stop doing a lot of things we want to, and that’s about the hardest
work in the world.—Those potatoes of yours seem getting on very well,
it’s a good soil for them here. But I was forgetting. I want to ask you
to let me baptize that child of yours, if it hasn’t been baptized
already.”

Slocum put his hoe against the fence. He disliked missionaries but he
rather liked Arnold, a man whom no one could help liking—all the same,
he resented the idea suddenly put before him. No one had any right to
interfere between him and the Kid. What call had anyone to come making
suggestions like that! If you can imagine the feelings of the owner of a
cherished dog on the suggestion that its tail should be docked to
improve its appearance, you can imagine something of the feelings of
Slocum—besides, he did not want the luck tampered with. The Kid was a
heathen that had brought him luck, and if he were to allow it to be
turned into a Christian, maybe it would lose its power as a mascot. He
did not think this, but he felt it in a vague sort of way.

“I don’t hold with them sort of things,” said he. “Mind you, I ain’t
saying nothing aginst you and I ain’t denying you do your job all right,
but I ain’t goin’ to have anything done to the Kid and it knowin’
nothing about it. I guess it’ll get on all right as it is.”

“Well, but your duty——” said Arnold.

The Captain took him at once.

“I guess I know my dooty and I reckon I’ve done it. Yes, b’ gosh! You
ask Ambrose when he comes back. Now, see here, raisin’ kids is like
raisin’ taters, some does it one way, some anuther, some uses patent
fertilizer, some don’t. I’m goin’ to bring this kid along natural;
that’s my idea and I won’t hear any more said on it.”

“But surely, surely there is nothing unnatural in baptism,” said Arnold.
“You can’t surely imply that it would hurt the child, and think of your
responsibility.”

“I’m not sayin’ anything about that,” said the Captain. “I’m only sayin’
I want the Kid left alone, and what I says I sticks to.”

Arnold had a fiery temper of his own, kept well under control, but
always liable to spurt a bit.

“Well,” said he, “if I cannot influence your mind on this matter, I can
at least say what is in _my_ mind; and that is, you are not doing well
by the child. You lead it about by a string like a dog, and yesterday I
was passing that wretched drink-shop they call the club, and I saw it
tied up to the verandah-post whilst you were inside drinking. There, you
have it. That’s my opinion of you. Good-day.” He walked off, and Slocum,
paralyzed in his speech by anger, caught up his hoe. Then he dug the
spade end of it in the ground.

“Yah!—missionary!” he shouted after Arnold. It was the only retort or
expletive he could find, for even in his anger something held him back
from swearing at the “cloth.” Arnold, pretending not to hear, walked on;
and the Captain, too disturbed in mind to go on with his gardening,
returned to the house. He was in a white-hot rage at not having been
able to swear at this man who had dared to criticize his conduct and
dictate to him.

He took a glass of lime-juice to cool himself, and then went out for a
walk to work the lime-juice off. He told himself that he ought to have
sworn at Arnold, that he ought to have stood up to him like a man. He
walked a bit in the direction of Arnold’s house, and then, thinking
better of the business, walked back.

“Those chaps are the same as wimmen,” said he to himself. “Jaw’s their
trade, an’ there’s no use in tryin’ to beat ’em at it. Well, he can jaw,
for all I care.” Then he put the matter from his mind and avoided
Arnold, the one really straight man on the island, whilst, at the same
time, he grew more friendly than ever with Lewin and Sakers.

Time went on, and the new copra crop was gathered; the day was not far
distant when the _Contra Costa_ was due to return with a cargo of trade
to be exchanged for copra, when one morning Captain Slocum on coming
down found that the native woman who looked after the house and cooked
the food was nowhere to be found. He called for her through the house
and garden, received no answer, swore, and then started to milk the
goat. Having given the Kid its breakfast he proceeded to make his own,
burning his fingers over the stove during the business and using
language that almost surprised himself.

Then he went off through the town to hunt for the native woman. On the
way he met the Chief Malietoa, one of his most important clients in the
copra business, and that personage avoided him. Native children, seeing
him coming, ran away scared, and a native woman made way for him to pass
as though, to use his own expression, he had been “forty foot broad.”

He reached the beach, took off his hat and wiped his brow.

“Tobogganed, by G—d,” said he, staring round him at the blazing white
sand, the fishing canoes and the small craft in the anchorage.

He knew enough of the Islands to appreciate to the full what had
happened. He was tabooed, or to put it in his own words, “tobogganed.”

“Boycotted” expresses the situation admirably—a most unpleasant
situation for a man whose prosperity depends on the goodwill of the
Boycotters.

He went to the club, and the native bar-keeper served him with a drink
in a frightened manner, then the bar-keeper went off and left the bar to
look after itself. He finished his drink and went out, and the first
person he met was Sakers; he said nothing to Sakers of what was in his
mind, though he saw at once by that person’s manner that he knew all
about it.

Then, having passed the time of day with Sakers, he went home and sat
down on the verandah step.

“Tobogganed,” said he. “Fitchered by a lot o’ blankety Kanakas; but
where’s the _sense_ in it, where’s the meanin’ in it? What have I done
to the blighters? _Jumping_ Moses! ain’t it enough to turn a chap’s head
backways front; there’s no tradin’ with this crowd now—who’s done it on
me?”

At first he thought of Arnold, but he was far too quick-witted a man to
entertain suspicion long against the missionary. Then he put to himself
the question, to whose advantage would it be if his trading facilities
were stopped, and common-sense at once answered, Sakers and Lewin. Then
he remembered Applejohn.

“Them’s the chaps,” said he. “_Them’s_ the blighters. Well, I’ll let
them see; they can’t make small of me. I’ll fix ’em. They hain’t got no
Applejohns to deal with this time.”

He started off to have it out with Lewin and Sakers, met the pair in
front of the club, stormed at them, abused them, told them they were “no
men” and failed to raise a fight. They simply stared at him, denied all
knowledge of the “tobogganing” business and walked off arm in arm with a
fine simulation of virtuous pain on their countenances. The Captain went
home defeated. He could not fight this sort of thing.

And now began a long period of tribulation. Completely cut off from the
club and the community, he spent most of his time fishing, taking the
Kid with him; he also was condemned to sobriety, for he was a man who
could not drink alone. He had never been a drinking man, but the
idleness and atmosphere and society of the island had undermined his
straight habits in this respect. He had also to look after the Kid
entirely now, wash it and dress it and feed it. It was his only
companion, and though it could scarcely talk, only having command of one
or two small native words, the companionship was real, and much better
for him than the companionship of Lewin and Sakers.

He thought a lot about the Kid whilst he was fishing and at night time,
and the seed which Arnold had managed somehow to drop in his mind began
to sprout.

What did Arnold want to baptize it for? Was he wrong to stop Arnold from
baptizing it? Ought it to be baptized? Had he been baptized himself? He
could not tell.

He brooded on these thoughts a good deal, and he began to make
playthings for the Kid to while away the time, and also to ease his own
mind on the score of not having looked after it properly. With his jack
knife he whittled out wonderful animals from soft wood, goats and horses
and dogs, and he would watch the child playing with them, feeling in his
heart a new sensation that had never been there before.

Then one day his long loneliness was broken. The _Contra Costa_ arrived
with a cargo of trade, and Ambrose, jubilant at the good deal he had
made in Sydney. The Captain received him gloomily, told him the story of
the _tabu_ and ordered the cargo to be brought ashore.

“I ain’t goin’ to give in,” said he. “It looks like as if the stuff’ll
be no use, but ashore it comes, if I have to burn it and fat the fire up
with the karkises of them two scundrils. Sam Slocum’s not the man to
give in to no Lewins nor Sakers, blight them—and there’s always the
Luck; the Luck’s not goin’ back on me. There she is playin’ in the
v’randah; looked after her meself, I have, she an’ the goat, fat as
butter she is; and, maybe, you’ll tell me I don’t know nothin’ about
children now.”

The trade was brought ashore by the crew of the _Contra Costa_, native
labour refusing to stir a hand. It was placed in the store-house, and
some of the more seductive of it was placed by the Captain in the
verandah of his house; but the bait failed, not a native would approach
the place.

Meanwhile, the question that had long been troubling Slocum’s mind found
itself an answer.

“Arnold, that missionary chap,” said he to Ambrose one night, “anchored
hisself one day at the fence there an’ let out at me for not havin’ the
Kid baptized. I said straight out I wouldn’t; then, I’ve been thinkin’
maybe it wouldn’t do it no harm. That chap Arnold’s pretty white, I
guess, and it’s his bisiness, same’s a ship’s carpenter’s bisiness is to
look after spars an’ sich. Now, if chips come to me an’ says that there
topm’st’s sprung, I takes his word; same with Arnold. He comes to me and
says the Kid oughter be rigged out with a baptismal certificit—well,
maybe she ought. I don’t want to stand in her lights. I reckon, maybe,
it’s like a ship’s papers; boys don’t matter so much, but girls is
different.”

“You’ll have to give her a name,” said Ambrose.

“You bet I will,” said the Captain, “and I’m goin’ right to Arnold now
to commisshon the job.”

He did, and the ceremony was arranged for the following day at noon in
the little frame church near the club.

Slocum, walking with Ambrose, carried the Kid. Ambrose stood godfather;
and when Arnold asked, “What name do you give this child?” the Captain
answered:

“Luck—you bet I don’t name her nothin’ else—Luck Slocum, and may she
follow her name—Amen.”

The Captain did not know what “Amen” meant, but it had to do with church
ceremonies and it seemed the correct thing to finish up with.

Then they came out, the Captain carrying Luck in his arms, to find a
little crowd of natives collected and looking on.

“Well, that’s done,” said he, when he was back at the house, “and a good
job over, I reckon. I’ll have a smoke and a glass o’ limonade.”

He made the lemonade, and Ambrose opened himself a bottle of tonic
water. Then they drank success to the Kid.

“It’s a rum sort of christenin’,” said Ambrose. “A christenin’ without
womenfolk doesn’t seem natural somehow.”

“Well, natch’r’l or onnatch’ral, I’ve done me best,” said Slocum, “and a
man can’t do more than his best.”

“Sure,” said Ambrose.

Then after a moment: “And what are you going to do now? There’s no trade
to be had here. I’m for haulin’ off; we might try some of the French
islands.”

“And leave them two chaps top dog! Not if I knows it, not on your life.
Here I stick and here I stays, and I’ve a feelin’ that now the Kid’s
anchored, so to speak, it means I’m to stay.”

Next morning, on going out upon the verandah of his house, he saw the
Chief, Malietoa, seated there. He had come to trade. The _tabu_ had been
removed. Several other natives came to the house that morning, and the
woman who had looked after the house and who had run away returned like
a homing pigeon and asked to be taken on again.

Slocum could not understand it, but Arnold, whom he met in the street,
explained matters.

“It seems,” said Arnold, “that some people had put it about that the
child was an evil spirit or some nonsense of that sort; then, yesterday,
when they saw it baptized without our little church catching fire they
knew that the story was false and the _tabu_ was taken off you. I
honestly cannot understand all of the native mind. Here we have
Christians who yet are imbued with the old superstitions of the past.
However, the _tabu_ has been taken off you, and a good honest boycott
has been put on the evil men who started the story.”

“Meaning Lewin and Sakers?” said the Captain.

“Just so,” replied Arnold, “but don’t say I told you.”

It was so; and Lewin and Sakers did not stay in that island more than
three months after the event. Triumph and prosperity were with Slocum,
and he mused much on the matter, and especially on the words of Ambrose,
spoken on the day when the _tabu_ was taken off.

“You did the right thing, same as you did the day you fetched the goat.
That Kid’s lucky to you ’cos it makes you do the right thing—that’s so.
You can’t get away from that. I don’t believe in no mascots, but I do
believe if a man has somethin’ to look after more than himself _and_
does his best, he’s lucky.”

“Maybe so,” said the Captain.


                                   IV
                              THE BEAZLEYS

Life, when you have lived in the world for a good many years, is a most
extraordinary spectacle to look back upon if you have vision and a
certain amount of philosophy. You will see men who were tottering twenty
years ago firm and successful to-day; you will see to-day wrecks that
twenty years ago were men of promise, and if you have knowledge as well
as vision and philosophy, you will know that the three things that
affect men most deeply for good or ill are Circumstance, a woman or a
child.

The story of many a man’s success is simply the story of a tug-of-war
between a woman and Drink, the man being the rope; and the power of a
child, who can appraise it? Circumstance is a different matter; it is
the great Boyg that envelops and contends with all of us, and it is
never more dangerous than when it appears under the guise of success.

                 *        *        *        *        *

One blue and gold morning, whilst the palm trees were bending to the
warm trade wind, and the Pacific, creaming against the outer reef,
filled the air with its slumber song, a topsail schooner of some ninety
tons, and with the name _Tamalpais_ painted in fair white letters on her
counter, passed through the reef opening and came to anchor opposite the
beach of Niniea.

A new arrival was always an event at Navahoe, and scarcely had the
rumble-tumble of the anchor chain ceased echoing from the woods and
cliffs than the beach became alive. From the pretty little town, bowered
and half hidden by pandanus and cocoanut groves, idlers began to trickle
down to the waterside, natives stood on the blazing white sands shading
their eyes, the inevitable beach-comber, scratching himself awake, sat
up to smoke and criticize the new-comers, whoever they might be, whilst
from the mole, half mole, half boat-slip, the port officer put off in a
big white scow.

Beazley, the new trader who had come to live at Niniea, stood on the
deck of the _Tamalpais_ watching all this, wondering at the beauty of
the place, and talking to the captain.

Beazley was a nice-looking young fellow of about twenty-eight; his wife,
down below getting things together for landing, was a woman slightly
older than him, a little woman with brown eyes, a practical but kindly
disposition, and endowed with the most valuable _dot_ that woman ever
brought to husband—plenty of common-sense.

It was a love match, and this was their first great venture in life; all
their money was in the trade on board the _Tamalpais_, and all their
hopes. Beazley had bought the goodwill of a trading station, and he had
the _Tamalpais_, which belonged to his father, or, at least, the use of
her for trading purposes.

“That’s MacAdam,” said the captain of the _Tamalpais_ as the port
officer’s boat rowed towards them. “It’s four years since I’ve been to
this island, but I haven’t forgot him. He’s port officer and doctor and
all, there ain’t no doctor here. Good morning, Mr. MacAdam, and how’s
yourself?”

As MacAdam came on board, Mrs. Beazley appeared from the saloon hatch.

“Good morning,” said MacAdam. “Why, it’s Captain Towler. No, Cap’, I
haven’t forgot you; thought I knew the schooner too, sort of sensed her
as she passed the reef, but couldn’t clap a name on her.”

“This is Mr. Beazley,” said Towler, “come to take up a tradin’
station—and Mrs. Beazley. Here’s the lady just come on deck.”

MacAdam scraped up his best bow.

“Glad to see you, sir,” said he to Beazley; “but which trading station
have you come to take, for there’s only one here, and that belongs to
Captain Slocum.”

“I’ve got a letter of introduction to him,” said Beazley. “The station
I’m after belongs to Mr. Will Lewin, or belonged to him before he sold
me the goodwill of the place and the house; that was three months ago.”

There was a hen-coop fastened to the port bulwark, and MacAdam sat down
on it as though afflicted by some sudden weakness of the legs.

“Will Lewin sold you a house here and the goodwill of a trading
station,” said he, “_three_ months ago? Why, it’s two and a half years
since Lewin left this island, he and Sakers—pair of scamps—and he had
no house to sell then, only one he rented, and as for his trading
station, why, there’s none—you’ve been done, sir.”

“Oh, George!” said Mrs. Beazley.

She was just going to say, “I _told_ you to beware of Lewin,” but she
checked herself. Beazley flushed.

It is a hard thing for a man to be told to his face that he has been
done, harder still if his wife is present, and hardest of all under the
conditions in which Beazley received the news.

For here he was in a strange place, at the end of a long voyage, with
all his future prospects at stake and the well-being of his wife.

Beazley, despite his pleasant appearance, was a fighting man. There was
Welsh blood in his veins and a spice of ferocity derived from red-headed
heathen who had clubbed and stabbed one another around the hills of
Margam in days long forgotten.

“Well,” said he, “it seems I am—from what you say. But the price I paid
for house and goodwill wasn’t much, and it was worth it to bring us to
such a pretty place as this.”

“More than worth it,” said the plucky little wife, looking over the
water at Niniea with a cold chill at her heart. Perhaps it was the
set-back, but it seemed to her that all that beauty was inimical to
them. Yet not for a moment was she daunted; she had American blood in
her veins as well as Scotch, and that combination is hard to beat.

“Well,” said MacAdam, “it’s pretty enough and healthy enough too, and
that reminds me, Cap, I’ve come to inquire after your bill of health.”

“You’ll find it clean enough,” said the Captain; “come on down below and
have a glass of somethin’.”

Down they went, and Beazley, taking his seat on the hen-coop, talked to
his wife.

“You told me you didn’t trust that chap Lewin,” said he. “Well, you were
right—and that’s a comfort. It might have been worse, too. He didn’t
chisel me out of much, and as for the house, if we can’t get one here
I’ll make a tent. I’m going to carry this thing through.”

“And you will,” said Mrs. Beazley.

They waited, he seated on the hen-coop and she leaning on the rail
watching the brilliant shore and the happy-looking little town that held
their fate and their chance of prosperity in this world. Then the
Captain and MacAdam appeared from below, and MacAdam, who seemed to take
a friendly sort of interest in the deluded ones, offered to row them
ashore in his boat.

“It will be quicker than lowering one of the ship’s boats,” said he,
“and I can put you up to things maybe, and show you the way to a man who
may be able to let you a house. Martell is his name, an old Frenchman,
honest enough, too, but a bit cantankerous.”

He showed Mrs. Beazley over the side and followed with her husband, the
rowers gave way and they approached the beach.

It was Mrs. Beazley’s first acquaintanceship with the wonderland of the
Pacific Islands; they had touched at no port since leaving Sydney, and
now, as she landed at the boat-slip and walked on to the white sand of
the beach, she forgot Lewin and MacAdam and all things disagreeable and
practical in the enchantment that suddenly seized her.

It was like walking into heaven. She could scarcely believe that all
this was real, that everyday people worked and lived here and made money
here, and married and had children—and died.

Here, on the beach, the slight tang of sea and ozone mixed and mingled
with the faint perfume of the earth and a million growing things, the
blazing white sands shouted back at the blazing blue of the sea and sky,
little brown children ran naked, laughing and happy, the wind bowed the
palms and blew the leaves of the artu and the fronds of the tree-fern.

“I’ll show you the road to Martell’s house,” said MacAdam, “and when you
have done with him you can make use of mine till you are fixed, and if
you’ll come and have luncheon with me to-day I’ll be very pleased.
There’s no hotel here.”

They found the old Frenchman in and fairly friendly. He sent a Kanaka
with them to show them the only place he had to let. It was Lewin’s
house of old time, and rather gone to pieces, but the go-down Lewin had
used for storing his trade was in good repair.

“It will do us finely,” said Mrs. Beazley, “and I’ll make it lovely with
those curtains and things we have brought—and oh! what a sweet little
garden! Wait till you see it when I have been over it with a spud and
hoe. Take the place, Jack, don’t be put off by the tumble-down look of
the house; a hundred dollars will make it a little palace.”

Beazley took the house that afternoon, and with the help of MacAdam
secured native labour to help in repairing it. The go-down was in much
better condition. A day’s airing and another day’s fumigating with a
bonfire of dry hibiscus sticks to drive out insects and other
undesirable tenants made it fit to receive the trade goods from the
_Tamalpais_.

Meanwhile the Beazleys lived on board the schooner, sleeping there at
night, breakfasting on board and bringing provisions with them on shore.

After superintending the Kanakas working on the house or in the garden
or those engaged in bringing the trade on shore, they would have
luncheon or dinner picnic fashion on the beach or in the woods.

It was the time of the full moon, which rose early these nights and lit
their return to the schooner.

Navahoe by day was beautiful, but on warm nights like this, with the
moon upon the palm trees and the fireflies dancing on the fringe of the
woods, stars and moon making a mirror of the anchorage and the reef
singing its drowsy song, Navahoe was more than beautiful.

At least so little Mrs. Beazley thought as she leaned on the rail of the
_Tamalpais_ whilst Beazley, smoking a cigar, leaned beside her whilst
they talked and plotted and planned for the future.

Mrs. Beazley felt herself absolutely outside the world that she knew. In
this place there was no post; letters came occasionally by a “mail
brigantine” or a stray warship, and letters placed in the pillar-box by
the club would be collected and stored by MacAdam and dispatched by a
stray warship or the mail brigantine, but you could not be sure in your
own mind that anything you posted would ever reach the person you posted
it to. As a matter of fact, the sense of uncertainty was entirely an
illusion. Nothing in the world travels more surely to its mark than a
letter, whether you post it at Niniea, in the sea letter-box at the
Straits of Magellan, or in the General Post-office of Chicago; still,
Mrs. Beazley did not know this, she only knew the illusion, and it fed
her sense of isolation.

MacAdam had shown her the latest newspaper on the day of their first
arrival. It was four months old. He had shown it to her as a joke, for
the news of the world brought by the _Tamalpais_ was months fresher than
that.

The feeling of loneliness begotten of these things made the little woman
cling closer to her husband. They were rarely apart, and, indeed, the
social life at Niniea held out few inducements to draw him away from
her.

There was the “club,” a drink-shop and little more; there was MacAdam
and old Monsieur Martell, both of whom had their limitations, and
lastly, but not leastly, there was Captain Slocum, known to all men as
“The Captain.”

Slocum was, in fact, the chief man at Niniea.

“Landed here two and a half years ago and more,” said MacAdam to
Beazley. “He brought a Kanaka baby ashore with him he’d picked up in one
of the islands, set great store by it and called it his ‘Luck.’ Well, it
certainly was that, in a way, for he’s been extraordinary lucky in
business here. He’s got a schooner, the _Contra Costa_, which does all
his trading; he owns it, and he’s got a fellow called Ambrose who’s her
captain and a sort of partner, good business man, too, he is. Slocum
wasn’t a bad sort of old chap when he came here first and had to fight
his way against Lewin and Sakers, but since he knocked them out and grew
prosperous he’s got swelled head.”

Beazley, it will be remembered, had a letter of introduction to the
Captain from Lewin. He had mentioned the fact to MacAdam, who had
forgotten to warn him not to present it. The innocent Beazley, though he
knew that Slocum and Lewin had been trade rivals, little guessed the
depth of hatred that had lain between them. He knew nothing of the
contents of the letter, which was sealed.

One day, as he was drinking a glass of lemonade at the club, the Captain
came in and ordered a cocktail.

The two men had not yet met, but they knew one another by sight. The
Captain, cock of the walk at Niniea, violently resented the coming of
another trader. He had heard of the Lewin business and of how Lewin had
let Beazley down, and that knowledge did not increase his respect for
the new man.

He was lifting his cocktail to his lips when Beazley spoke.

“Captain Slocum, I believe?” said Beazley.

The Captain sipped his drink and placed it on the counter.

“Slocum’s my name,” said he, “and what, may I ask, might yours be?”

“Beazley,” replied the other, “and, by the way, I have a letter of
introduction to you from a man called Lewin. He served me a dirty trick
and I don’t think he’s a particular friend of yours, still, it may amuse
you to read it.”

He took the letter from his pocket-book and handed it to Slocum.

The Captain took it, put on a pair of old spectacles which he used on
the rare occasions when he had to read or write, opened the envelope and
began to spell over the contents, reading aloud paragraphs here and
there to himself, utterly forgetful of the presence of Beazley and the
Kanaka behind the bar.

“Hope you and your nigger baby are well—keep off the drink, old
grog-blossom, for the bottle will be your rewin—if the Lord hadn’t
spoilt you in the bakin’ you might ’a’ been half a man.”

A nice sort of letter of introduction!

“Why, blister it!” cried the Captain suddenly, dashing the letter and
spectacles down on the counter, “you’ve got the face to bring me a
letter like this here and sit laffin’ at it. Don’t tell me, I saw
y’——”

“I swear I did not know what was in it,” said Beazley. “Yes, I was
laughing, but not at you. I was laughing at myself for having carted
that thing about in my pocket for the last three months. Tear it up and
forget about it.”

The Captain put the letter back in his pocket, then he put his
spectacles in their case, then he finished his cocktail, wiped his mouth
on the back of his hand and moved to the door.

“I’ll larn them as has no manners,” said he, addressing no one in
particular.

Beazley went home and told his wife the joke.

It was no joke in reality, for he had hit the Captain on his swelled
head, and that is always a dangerous thing to do, especially in the case
of a man like Slocum.

Mrs. Beazley did not look on the thing as a joke, however, especially
when she heard how Slocum had taken it.

“George,” said she, “you ought to go and apologize.”

“I—why, what have I done?”

“Apologize for laughing at him.”

“I did. I explained that I was laughing at myself for having howked the
thing round so long.”

“Well, I wish it had not occurred,” said Mrs. Beazley.

There was no use in wishing, however, and indeed the matter did not make
things much worse for the Beazleys, for the reason that Captain Slocum
had “taken a down” on Beazley from the first. MacAdam was right. Slocum
was suffering from that most detestable of all mental complaints, the
swelled head that comes from success. I do not know anything that makes
men more brutal, selfish and unfit for the Kingdom of Heaven than this
disease.

Slocum, after two years and a half in Navahoe, was doing big business.
His schooner, the _Contra Costa_, came and went between the island and
Sydney always with full cargoes; the island, little known, was
untroubled for him by competition, so much so that, as a matter of fact,
he could not handle the whole of the copra it produced.

He had thought of extending his business and buying another schooner or
chartering one. His difficulty lay in the fact that long experience had
taught him not to trust men too much. Ambrose, the captain of the
_Contra Costa_, he could trust implicitly, and he chose to leave it at
that. Besides, a second schooner would mean endless outlay and expense.

The arrival of the Beazleys altered all this. Here was competition, and
competition, moreover, sent against him by the hated Lewin. The letter
of introduction finished and sealed the business.

“I ain’t a particular man,” said the Captain to MacAdam; “but there’s
things no man can swaller, and I can’t swaller them Beazleys nohow. What
did the chap want bringin’ his wife here for?—there ain’t no wimmen
here for her to consort with; and he thinks he’s goin’ to do business:
well, he thinks wrong.”

“Look here, Cap’,” said MacAdam, “there’s no harm in the Beazleys, and
you know jolly well you can’t handle all the stuff here yourself.”

“Who says I can’t?” asked Slocum.

“I do. The island could produce nearly half as much again, or maybe
more, in copra, and it doesn’t simply because there’s no incentive to
the Kanakas to put in more labour and time over their work. If you want
to keep the place to yourself why not get another schooner?”

“And who says I won’t?” replied the Captain. “I’ve been thinkin’ of it
for months, and when Ambrose is back with the _Contra Costa_ I’ll see it
done. They can’t make small of me. I’ll larn ’em.”

Meanwhile the Beazleys were getting in. All the trade stuff on board the
_Tamalpais_ was transferred to the go-down, and Mrs. Beazley,
superintending the Kanaka workmen, was putting blinds up in the new
house and spreading matting on the floors.

It was a pleasant house, situated just outside the town and beyond
Captain Slocum’s, and Mrs. Beazley sometimes, on passing the Captain’s
house, would see the Captain’s chief treasure, the Luck, as everyone in
the island called it, playing in the garden, digging or dragging a
little toy cart.

She had heard the story of it from MacAdam, how it was the baby of a
Kanaka chief who had died with all his tribe of small-pox—so the story
went; how Slocum had saved it, how it had brought him good fortune, and
how, when Arnold the missionary had christened it, the Captain had
insisted on naming it Luck.

It seemed to her much lighter in colour than the natives she had
hitherto seen; it was a most engaging child to look at, and her woman’s
heart went out to it. One day in passing she had spoken to it and it had
come up to the railings nothing loth, and begun some lisping remarks
when a gruff voice from the house called it in.

Mrs. Beazley passed on, half laughing.

She had seen the Captain several times in the town and she was not in
the least afraid of him, and, despite his open hostility, she felt no
animosity towards him.

“I don’t think he’s as bad as he seems,” said she to her husband; “you
know I have feelings about people—and dogs. I can’t stand slithering
sort of people—you remember Lewin, he was all smiles and he used to
speak in such a soft voice, and his hands, the palms of them, were cold
and damp—it was like shaking hands with a fish. I’m sure the old
Captain’s hands are not cold and damp.”

Beazley laughed.

The house was now in order and it was time to think of opening up
business with the natives.

“The fellow for you to go to,” said MacAdam, “is Malietoa, he’s chief
over there on the north side of the island and his people own a lot of
trees. Slocum takes part of his copra, but not all, in fact Malietoa has
been grumbling to me some time ago, saying it was a pity there wasn’t
another trader here to do business with. Don’t say I told you this,
though.”

Beazley thanked him for his advice.

“How do you get there?” he asked.

“You can easily walk, and for a few cents you can get a Kanaka to guide
you.”

Next day the Beazleys, having hired a dusky individual for guide, packed
some lunch in a basket and started off for the village of the chief.

There was a fairly good road, the day was glorious, and a wind from the
sea followed them, cooling the air and waving the palm fronds and ferns
that lined the way. They passed groves and groves of palm, great tracts
of mammee-apple and dark dells of fern. Huge trees of centuries’ growth
and unknown name shaded the way here and there, coloured birds flew
overhead and coloured butterflies led them, and all the time, as far as
they went on, far as they might go, the song of the reef beyond the
anchorage followed them on the wind.

The way led up and up till they reached the plateau that formed the
summit of the island. It was clear of foliage with the exception of one
or two trees that looked like screw-pines. Looking around, one could see
the Pacific on every side, blue, desolate and beautiful. Here they sat
down and had luncheon, the Dusky One vanishing and returning with some
bananas, and after the meal Beazley smoked and they talked of the
future, happy and careless as children.

Then they resumed their way, going downhill through groves of banana and
fields of taro till they reached the village, which was situated on a
cliff edge.

There was no reef on this side of the island, and the sea, unbroken,
came blue and thundering up to the cliffs. The whole place was filled
with the drone and boom of the water on cliff side or in cave. The
village was almost deserted, the folk being away at work, but the Chief
Malietoa was at home and exceedingly friendly in his reception of the
Beazleys. But he could sell them no copra, he had none, in fact, to
sell; he had concluded a contract with Captain Slocum under which he was
bound to deliver all copra gathered by his people to Slocum and to none
other.

“When did you sign that contract?” asked Beazley.

“It was yesterday,” replied Malietoa.

“He wants to freeze us out,” said Beazley, half to himself, half to his
wife. “He can’t handle all that stuff he has, and now he’s going in for
more—swine.”

Mrs. Beazley said nothing, she looked thoughtful, and then, assured in
their minds that nothing could be done, they bade good-bye to the
friendly chief and returned to the south side of the island and home.

They had delayed a long time at Malietoa’s, and when they reached the
plateau the sun had set and the moon was rising.

“That does us,” said Beazley; “we won’t do any good here, that pig
intends to gobble all the copra that’s to be had, he knows all the ropes
and he has got before us. I should have gone to Malietoa the day before
yesterday.”

“Well, Malietoa doesn’t own the whole island,” said Mrs. Beazley, “we
can try other people.”

“We can try them,” said Beazley, “but I don’t think it’ll be much use.
Slocum has bought the whole crop in advance if I am not very much
mistaken, and he has done it to freeze us out.”

He was right.

Next day, making diligent search, he could find no one to trade with.

Copra is the kernel of the cocoanut; the nut is broken in two, the
kernel taken out, dried and strung on a string; it is valuable, but only
in bulk; to make any profit out of it one must handle large quantities,
and though I have said that Beazley could find no one to trade with,
that statement is not rigidly correct. There were several small growers
who were ready to deal with him, but they were so small that Slocum,
with a fine contempt, had passed them over.

Mrs. Beazley was out when her husband returned from his second fruitless
journey; he was making himself some lemonade when she returned, and when
she heard his tale she sat down like a person upon whom a heavy burden
has suddenly fallen.

“Well,” she said, with a sigh, “we must go, that’s all. Oh, dear, and I
was so happy in this house, and the place is so beautiful, and the
natives—I simply love them. They run to me if they are ailing and they
tell me their affairs; they are just like children, and I have to leave
them.”

She wiped her eyes, and Beazley stood by biting his lips.

He was cursing Slocum.

It was just as if Slocum had hit his wife.

If the Captain had appeared at that moment there would have been a very
ugly scene, but he did not appear, and Beazley bit on the bullet,
recovered himself and started to comfort his wife.

But he could not refute facts. He had a consultation next day with
MacAdam, and he determined to take his goods off the island, restow them
on board the _Tamalpais_, and sail for another island a hundred miles to
the west where there _might_ be trade doing.

It was a bitter failure, all the more bitter on account of the sweetness
of the place and the kindness of the people.

Slocum had once suffered in this island from the effects of a _tabu_ put
upon him by the lying stories of Lewin and his partner Sakers, but this
trouble was not in the nature of a _tabu_—the natives were willing to
trade and indeed anxious to do so, for Mrs. Beazley had found their
hearts—it was not a question of willingness, however, but of copra.
They had contracted with Slocum to supply him with the stuff and they
could not go back on their contract. Arnold, the missionary, was
unfortunately away, else he would very soon have brought Slocum to his
senses. Slocum, despite his hostility to missionaries in general, had a
respect for Arnold.

Arnold represented a whole world almost beyond Slocum’s ken, but of
which Slocum had always felt the pressure—the world of respectability
and formed opinion on conduct. He was also the ambassador of
Righteousness. Slocum did not like righteousness very much, but he
respected the ambassador.

Arnold not being available, there was no one to stand up to Slocum or
point out the fact that in driving the Beazleys off the island he was
injuring the community and committing an act incongruous with honest
dealing and fair trading.

Beazley, the day after his interview with MacAdam, went for a long walk
to work off his irritation. Everything was now decided, and he had given
his orders for the transport of all the trade back to the schooner and
the removal of the house furniture on the morrow.

He returned at about six o’clock in the evening to find that his wife
was not at home. At seven she had not returned, and, taking his hat, he
started off to look for her. He met her at the gate.

“Oh, George,” cried Mrs. Beazley, “poor Captain Slocum’s little child is
dying; he came here himself to fetch me and I have been doing what I
could for it. I’ve come back for the medicine-chest.”

“Been here to fetch you!” cried the outraged Beazley, “like his
cheek—what do I care about his child? To fetch you—as if you were a
hospital nurse—after the way he has treated me——”

Mrs. Beazley took him by the arm and led him into the house, led him
into the sitting-room, went and fetched the Burroughs-Welcome medical
tabloid chest and opened it.

“There is no use in thinking of that,” said she; “the little child did
nothing against us. The Captain may be a wicked and hard man, but he
loves it, and he can’t be quite bad. Think if it was our own.”

The Beazleys had lost a child, the only child that had ever come to
them, and this shot told.

He sat silent whilst his wife went over the contents of the chest.

“It has convulsions,” said she, “and can scarcely breathe. I am going to
give it a grey powder if I can get it to take it. Old Dr. Turner at
Sydney told me—that time—that it’s always safe to give a child a grey
powder, and that in many cases it will save their lives if the lungs or
stomach are bad.”

“Well, I don’t want to stop you,” said Beazley, “poor little chap——”

“It’s a girl,” said she. “It’s a darling, and I’ve always wanted to take
it on my lap—and—and——” she went off hurriedly, and Beazley, left
alone, lit a pipe.

Human nature is strange. He could not but feel a grim, vague
satisfaction that trouble had come to Captain Slocum.

Beazley was one of the men who can hate and keep hatred glowing; he was
also a generous man, and, as men go, emotional. He was satisfied with
the fact that the Captain was getting punishment, yet he hoped the child
would live.

Mrs. Beazley did not return that night, and he slept on the cane lounge
in the sitting-room. At breakfast time she appeared, happy and
weary-looking, and with good news.

“It’s safe now,” said she. “I don’t know whether it was the grey powder
or not, but it took a turn for the better in the night, and now it’s
asleep—yes, it will live.” She took a cup of tea and some food, and
then she went upstairs to lie down and have a sleep herself.

Beazley, having covered her with a rug and drawn down the blinds to keep
the light out, took his hat and went off to superintend the removal of
the trade from the go-down.

A hundred yards away from the house he met the Captain, who came up to
him in a furious manner as if to pick a quarrel.

“Look here,” said that gentleman, “me name’s Slocum, and them that knows
me knows me for a straight man. I’m goin’ to be straight with you, and I
don’t deny I took a down on you more particular considerin’ the letter
of that pig Lewin’s. Let that be. You want copra—well, you can have
it.”

“Thanks,” said Beazley, “but I’ve made all arrangements to leave here
and seek copra elsewhere.”

“You ain’t goin’ off this island,” said Slocum. “What you want pushin’ a
man for? D’ye want to make me ’pologize? I ain’t one to ’pologize, I’ll
see you damned before I ’pologize—now, don’t you mind me, I’m dragged
this way and that. I’m het up—but I say, man to man, you stay here and
I’ll help you all I can. It’s that kid. She’s allus bringin’ me to my
bearin’s. Showin’ me the sort o’ fool I am. She’s shown me now I acted
like a skunk, cornerin’ the copra against you. Why, that kid, she’s me
mainstay—she’s the rudder that keeps the fool end of me hindmost. I
called her me Luck and I guess she is, and on’y for your missis I’d ’a’
lost her last night sure. Well, then, here’s my hand—you’ll stay?”

“Yes, I’ll stay,” said Beazley, taking the huge hand.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Arnold, the missionary, when he arrived back a month later, found the
Beazleys well-installed, prosperous, and a great addition to the place.

When he heard the whole story he laughed—he was talking to Mac.

“You’re not what they call a religious man, MacAdam,” said he, “but
there’s an everyday religion you stick fairly close to, the religion
that rules between men and regulates their dealings. If the old Captain
hadn’t that child to care for he’d have been off the track with the
Beazleys and they’d have gone and some worse trader would have taken
their places. He calls it his Luck. It is. Give a man something to care
for and you give him a piece of luck. Call it a woman, call it a child,
call it a dog—it’s Luck all the same.”


                                   V
                                ABKELLER

It is strange how the tender and fragile things of life go about with
men unbroken by the hardest conditions. Only a little time ago I was
standing talking to a cable engineer on a deep sea cable ship in the
Western Ocean; we were hauling up a cable for repair, and he was telling
me of his little daughter and her progress at school; he had quite
forgotten the cable for a moment, the dripping cable on which I noticed
a coraline sea-fan, delicate as lace, fragile as the texture of a dream,
yet unbroken by the rough handling of the cable workers.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Some years ago, when I was cruising in the Pacific not a hundred leagues
east of the Marshalls, we raised, one morning, an atoll island, a ring
of coral fringed with palms and enclosing a lagoon. It was a pearl
island well known to traders.

“That’s Five Stick Island,” said Captain Billy Saunders, our skipper,
ranging up beside me as I stood by the weather-rail gazing at the
far-off palm tree tops swimming above the shimmer of the sea. “A chap
named Kellerman bought the pearling rights from the Kanaka chief that
owned it for five sticks of tobacco. There’s Ten Stick Island the
British Admiralty bought for ten sticks of tobacco, and they use it as a
target for gun practice; but I guess they didn’t do as good a deal as
this chap Kellerman. He pretty well skinned the lagoon and then sold it
to the Sydney Government, and they lease it. There’s a fair amount of
shell and some pearls, though nothing to what it was years ago.”

“Who has got it now?” I asked.

“A chap by the name of Slocum. Captain Sam Slocum. Used to trade down in
Navahoe; left the sea and took to copra. Now, if you could write a yarn
about that chap and his doings you’d make your fortune—only, maybe, no
one would believe it. Wouldn’t believe it myself if I didn’t know the
chap first-hand and all about him. He was a ’Frisco man and he started
in a venture with another chap—trading—down to an island somewhere
near the Marquesas. There was dark doin’s on that island, but the upshot
was, Slocum got off with his skin; said a Kanaka baby saved his life,
and brought the baby on board with him. _I_ say it’s more like he shot
the mother in whatever row there was, shot her, maybe, by accident, and
then brought the thing off to ease his mind. There’s no other way to
account for all his actions. He took on about that baby same as a
heathen over a graven immige—said it was his Luck. _I_ say it was more
like that he was afraid of the devil catchin’ him for whatever he’d
done, and that he kept the thing for a fend-off. However, there you have
it; he stuck to the Kid and it cut the cards for him and turned up the
ace of trumps every time, that’s certain, there’s no gettin’ away from
that, _every_ time. Why, down at Navahoe, where he took to tradin’,
there was a most outrageous pair o’ scamps who had the whole blessed
island under their thumb, and would ’a’ fired Satan off if he’d set foot
on the beach in the way of competition. Lewin and Sakers were their
names. Well, the Captain landed with the Kid, and he did ’em in in less
than a fortni’t; he started a tradin’ station and had the schooner he
came in, the _Contra Costa_ was her name, to fetch and carry for him. He
was makin’ money hand over fist, when he went bust.”

“What made him do that?”

“He lost the Luck.”

“The Kanaka child?”

“The same.”

“Did he ever find it again?”

“Well, now, I’ll tell you——” said Captain Billy Saunders.

But with all due respect to Captain B. S., I will turn him off and tell
the wonderful story myself. This is it.

One bright morning Captain Samuel Slocum, chief trader of the Island of
Navahoe, came out of his house and on to the beach. It was early
morning, and from the little town of Niniea, fringing the shore and
piercing the palm groves, came all sorts of early morning scents and
sounds on the wind that was bending the palm fronds and whipping the
blue water of the anchorage.

“I’m lookin’ for the Kid,” said the Captain to an idler who was sitting
on an upturned canoe and cutting up some tobacco. “Seen anythin’ of
her?”

“No, I ain’t seen nothin’ of her,” said the man, who knew to whom the
Captain referred, for the Luck was as well known in the island and among
the Pacific traders as the Captain himself. “Have you lost her?”

“She’s got crawlin’ away somewheres,” said the Captain. “When I came
down ten minutes ago she was gone; she sleeps in the lower room; blest
if I won’t have to tether her!” He looked around, shading his eyes with
one enormous hand. Then:

“Where’s them blighters gone?” asked he.

The other knew at once what he meant. Two large canoes, gipsies of the
sea, had put in the day before for water. Sinister-looking folk they
were, the rowers, keeping to themselves, giving no indication of their
island, and wandering through the little town, incurious, yet seeming to
note everything going forward.

“They left in the night, or maybe at sun up,” replied the other. “They
weren’t here when I came down; nothing left but their canoe marks and
the mess they left on the beach.”

The Captain wandered down and looked at the marks in the sand. The
groove of the keel and the little grooves left by the outriggers were
plainly visible. Then, all at once, a chill went to his heart. The
“Blighters” had stolen the Kid.

By noon that day there could be no doubt. The Luck was gone. They
searched the groves, the gardens, the shore, without result.

That was the tragedy of Captain Slocum’s life. He took his schooner, the
_Contra Costa_, to all the near about islands without result. Then he
took to drink. The Luck had been the apple of his eye. Not till he had
lost her did he know the fact that she had been everything to him. She
had turned from a mascot to a child, and it was the child he missed.
Success was nothing to him now, so he drowned it in drink.

For a while. His nature was too powerful to be swamped entirely by
alcohol, and he recovered himself, but only to find his business and his
desire for business gone. He sold out his share in the _Contra Costa_ to
his partner Ambrose, and started with the money on a peregrination about
the Pacific, now trading a bit, now engaged in illicit businesses of one
sort or another, generally losing money, or gaining it only to be
robbed. This lasted five years.

One evening, at the end of the five years, Captain Slocum found himself
on the beach of Raratupa, a French island, without supper or the
wherewithal to buy it. He was talking with a lean, brown, tattered
individual, and the tattered one—his name was Abkeller—as he sat by
the Captain on the sand and whittled a stick, chewed a plug of navy
twist and expectorated from time to time through the space left by the
absence of a dog-tooth.

Said the Captain: “Well, this ends it for me. Every which way I look,
there’s nuthin’ to be seen but a blank wall or the cold stone jug. I
guess I’ll quit.”

“Well, now, I’ll tell you,” said Abkeller. “Quit’s the word for me, but
I ain’t goin’ to end my days by drownin’. Now, I’ve taken a likin’ to
you, and I don’t take a likin’ to every man I meet, no, sir, I don’t,
and I’m as ready as you to shake the sand of this blessed island off my
uppers. Our minds are jumpin’, Cap’, and I vote we jump after them.”

“It’s blame easy to talk of jumpin’,” replied Slocum. “Where do you
propose to jump to?”

“Aboard that hooker in the anchorage,” replied Abkeller, with a squirt
of tobacco juice in the direction of the sixty-ton inter-island
schooner, the only vessel lying in the little reef-protected harbour
that the blazing west was now turning into a golden mirror.

“Whach you mean?” asked the Captain.

“I mean what I say. There’s the _Golden Light_. Maddox is ashore
boozing; he’ll be drunk for the next three days. To-night, when they’re
all asleep here, or drunk, I’m goin’ aboard her; the anchor watch is
pretty sure to be asleep. I’ll put this to their heads”—he produced a
cheap revolver from his pocket—“and I’ll walk her out of the
lagoon—_and I’ll do it by meself if you ain’t man enough to lend a
hand_.”

“Steady on,” said the Captain, who seemed taken aback for a moment by
this daring proposition, and the fire-speed and energy which Abkeller
had put into the last words; “this gets me. It’s not a question of bein’
a man, it’s a question of bein’ sent to Noumea by the durned French
Goviment—blister them.”

“Better Noumea than here,” said Abkeller, throwing away the stick,
turning lazily on his back and yawning at the buttercup-coloured sky. He
flung the back of his right hand across his eyes, and then went on
dreamily: “To-night I does it, Noumea or no Noumea, whether you lend a
hand or whether you don’t. Her hold is full of copra, and I can spell my
way in navigatin’; there’s nothin’ to chase us with—only canoes. If
they chase us I don’t care. I’ve ammunition enough to fight the hull
island with.”

Slocum had met many rogues and vagabonds and desperadoes in his career,
but it seemed to him that he had never met a more desperate than this
Abkeller lying there in his rags and laziness, seeming now half asleep.

Laziness seemed the keynote of Abkeller’s personality, yet there were
indications of a formidable energy hidden somewhere in him and ready to
develop itself when called upon.

Slocum meditated for a while. Anything was better than the beach; even
the chance of Noumea was better than the certainty of remaining at
Raratupa. Then he had a grudge against Maddox, the captain of the
_Golden Light_, a drunkard without any of the saving qualities that most
bibulous folk possess. He had asked Maddox for a fill of tobacco only
that morning and had met with a refusal.

“I haven’t no tobacco for loafers. Why don’t you get a job?” had been
the reply, and no surer indication could be given of Slocum’s temporary
demoralization than the fact that he had not laid Maddox out.

“I’ll teach the swine,” said he to himself. “I’ll larn him. He’ll be
lookin’ for a job himself when he wakes to-morrow mornin’ sober and
finds the hooker gone.” Then, turning to Abkeller, “I’m with you,” said
he.

“Right,” murmured the drowsy one. “Thought you’d come in.” He raised
himself on his elbow.

The sun had set now and the sky was all violet and pierced by the silver
of stars, the anchor light of the schooner, just shown, was casting a
golden dribble on the ruffled water of the anchorage. From the little
town came the sounds of evening festivity; the palm tops were waving
against the stars.

“There’s grub and water on board all right,” said Abkeller. “Saw the
water go off this afternoon. Maddox was making out to leave to-morrow
noon—God!—he’ll find himself left!”

“I’m not sayin’ I’d ’a’ come in but for that blighter,” said the
Captain. “Got a fill o’ tobacca?”

The other produced a piece of stick tobacco, cut off a chew and handed
the rest to the Captain.

“If this wind holds,” said he, “it’ll take us out niftin’, if it falls
we’re done.”

“It’s got to hold,” said Abkeller.

They sat for a while in silence, watching the starlit anchorage and
listening to the sounds from the little town. Fireflies were dancing in
the wind on the edge of the dark groves of pandanus and tree-fern, and
all sorts of subtle scents filled the air, as though some vast and
variegated flower had spread its petals open to the night.

Then the moon, still hidden by the higher land, showed her silver far at
sea beyond the reef, and now she came creeping over the hill tops,
touching the spars of the _Golden Light_, the foam upon the reef, and
the white coral sand of the beach. With the rising of the moon the
sounds of life from the town grew less.

Abkeller rose up.

“It’s time to be moving,” said he.

He led the way along the beach, their black shadows marching in front of
them, till they reached some canoes drawn up on the sand. They were
fishing canoes prepared for early morning work, with all their gear on
board. Abkeller chose the smallest, and, helped by his companion, ran it
down to the water’s edge. In a moment they were afloat and paddling
towards the schooner.

The tide was flooding in, and the _Golden Light_ was swinging to it on a
taut anchor chain with her nose pointing straight for the reef opening.
The wind still held steady from the land. Nothing could be more
favourable for their escape.

They brought the canoe softly up, and whilst the Captain scrambled
aboard, Abkeller drew the plug of the little craft, and, leaving her to
scuttle, followed. The anchor watch—consisting of three Kanakas—was
asleep, spread starfish-wise on deck and snoring. Abkeller went to the
fo’c’sle and slid the hatch, imprisoning what remained of the crew; then
he kicked the anchor watch awake. He did not draw his revolver; there
was no need. The Kanakas suddenly awakened, and without the least
comprehension of the reality of the situation, were the last people in
the world to give trouble.

“Captain Maddox is sick,” said Abkeller. “He has sent us to take the
schooner out—savvy?” Then he gave his orders. The halyards were manned,
the mainsail set, the gaskets flung off the jib, then the shackle was
knocked off the anchor chain. Slocum was at the wheel, and as the canvas
spread and the _Golden Light_ took way, he turned the spokes, keeping
her straight for the reef opening.

She rose to the swell of the incoming tide, the foam on the reef on
either side showing like snow in the moonlight; then the open sea took
her and the sound of the surf fell behind.

“We’ve done it,” said the Captain.

Abkeller took a glance at the island, the moon-washed trees, and the
little sleepy town showing a few sparks of light like glow-worms in the
foliage. Then he rushed forward, opened the fo’c’sle hatch and called to
the fellows below.

They had been sound asleep through it all, and they came on deck now
rubbing their eyes, eight of them, and not one of them showing much
surprise at finding themselves under sail and at sea. They were not paid
to think and they had few brains to think with; Captain Maddox was sick,
and the schooner was being taken out by these white men in his place.
They listened to Abkeller’s words just as the others had done, and stood
by whilst he and the Captain picked watches. Then the starboard watch
went below and fell asleep, the wheel was handed over to a dusky
individual who had been bo’sun under Maddox, and the course laid.

Then the two white men went and leaned on the lee rail and, with an
occasional glance at the far receding island, talked, spat into the sea
and chuckled.

“Makes one feel kinder mean,” said the Captain. “It’s like bulldozing a
Sunday School; Kanakas do take the biscuit. Oh, my Gawd! when Maddox
wakes in the mornin’ won’t his eyes bug out of his swelled head. ‘I
ain’t got no tobacca for loafers,’ says he. ‘Why don’t y’ get work?’
says he. Well, I’ve got work, workin’ his blessed schooner. I tell you,
Ab, I don’t care if she was sunk to-morrer, so long as he doesn’t get
her back.”

“It’s better than sitting on the beach,” said Abkeller. “Here we are,
masters of ourselves, with a good schooner under foot, a hold full of
copra, lots of grub and tobacco, lush, without any manner of doubt,
though I’m not much of a drinkin’ man, and a crew jumping to our
orders.”

“Come down below,” said the Captain, “and let’s see what’s to be found.”

“Let’s see the island out of sight first,” said Abkeller.

Slocum agreed, and they paced the deck talking, till the island from a
blur on the moonlit sea vanished to nothingness.

Abkeller questioned the fellow at the wheel, and found that the Kanaka
who acted as steward was one of the watch on deck. He sent him down to
light the cabin lamp and put out some food, and then in a little while
followed with Slocum.

The cabin of the _Golden Light_ was not a big place, but it was
comfortable; two dog-holes, each provided with a bunk, opened off it,
one for the Captain, the other for the mate. On the table the steward
had set out half a tongue, some cheese, ship’s bread and a bunch of
bananas. There was also a bottle of Worcester sauce, a jar of chutney
and a bottle of cayenne pepper; also two bottles of beer. Slocum told
the steward he could go on deck, then they sat down.

“Will you look at the pickles and the sasses and the pepper,” said
Slocum. “That chap Maddox’s tongue is so copper-lined with drink he
can’t taste nothin’ without sass to it—hope he’ll like the sass we’ll
give him for breakfast to-morrer mornin’.”

Abkeller said nothing. He was engaged on the food.

After they had finished they routed round till they found some Manilla
cigars, boxes and boxes of La Perla del Oriente, bearing the Calle San
Pedro 214 stamp.

“Those are the boys,” said Abkeller, lighting one. “This chap Maddox
knew how to look after himself.” He glanced at the tell-tale compass
overhead and saw that the schooner was still on her course, then he
proposed a turn-out of Maddox’s cabin. There was a swinging lamp there
and they lit it, closing the door so that the steward, if he came below,
might not see what they were doing.

They found four hundred dollars in coin and two hundred in notes, the
ship’s papers, some boxes of opium, a few books, and all sorts of odds
and ends of no considerable value. What pleased Slocum most was the fact
that all Maddox’s clothes were here. Good stuff, too, for Maddox was a
dandy despite his drinking habit. Slocum, to use one of his own
expressions, had taken a down on Maddox—a furious hatred against him.
Nothing could please him better than the thought of his enemy going
about shabby.

“We’ll have to arrange about the division of the money,” said Abkeller,
“but that’ll do to-morrow.”

“I don’t want none of the chap’s money,” said Slocum, “though I’m not
above takin’ my share these hard times. What pleases me is them
clothes.”

They went into the main cabin, where the steward had taken away the
supper things and put out spirits, and then, each with a glass of grog
in front of him and a cigar in his mouth, they set to work to map out
their course.

“Valdivia,” said Abkeller, “that’s the port for me—Chile, and no
questions asked; besides, I know a chap there that’ll take the copra and
cash those notes. What do you say to Valdivia?”

He had taken a chart from the chart locker, and it was spread on the
table. Abkeller’s awful history included the fact that he had sailed
twelve years as mate on various American ships; he had a good knowledge
of navigation and a profound intimacy with the shady side of sea life as
exhibited in the ports of the western American seaboard and the China
rivers.

“I don’t mind Valdivia,” said Slocum. “It’s all the same to me where we
go, s’long as we don’t get ketched. Make it Valdivia.”

“The course we’re steering now is pretty well on to it,” said Abkeller;
“we can’t miss. Lucky Maddox was going to put out to-morrow, for the
chronometer’s set and wound; seems like Providence, don’t it? Well,
we’ve fixed that, and now I propose one of us turns in.”

It was Abkeller who turned in; and Slocum, taking the deck, paced up and
down, now with a glance at the binnacle card, now with an eye over the
water to windward, whistling softly to himself and chuckling
occasionally at the thought of Maddox’s clothes.

Next morning the fine weather still held, and Slocum and his companion
took things easily, though, like all Pacific sailors, ever with an eye
to windward. Four of the Kanaka crew proved to be good steersmen, the
bo’sun also proved a capable hand, and the prospect ahead seemed bright
and cheerful.

There was no fear of pursuit; the French gunboat that patrolled the
station was away at Papeete and not due to return for a week, and the
course of the schooner was as unknown to the good folk at Raratupa as
the course of a sea-gull that flits away in the night.

The Pacific is a fine hiding ground; limitless wastes of water,
countless islands for a fugitive to water at or refit, China to run for
on one side and all the Americas on the other.

So Abkeller and his companion, feeling safe and assured of the future,
took things easily, lounged on deck, smoked, yarned and talked
occasionally to the crew without inviting familiarity, speaking to them,
in fact, as a man might speak to a child or favourite dog.

“Not one of them chaps knows where he’s goin’ to,” said Slocum, “and
though I’m pretty sure they’ve some notion that everythin’ isn’t upside,
they don’t care. It’s partly becos they’re Kanakas aboard ship, which is
a long sight different from Kanakas ashore. Kanakas aboard ship don’t
seem to have no intellects at all; put ’em in a canoe or ashore and they
thinks for themselves; put ’em aboard ship and they’ve no holt on
anythin’ but orders. And it’s partly becos they’re glad to be shut of
Maddox. I’ve heerd tell of his doin’s when in liquor, rope-endin’ them,
and so on. Now, we’ve got to keep these chaps smilin’ for our own sakes;
get them tight on our side an’ they’ll stick to us like wax an’ tell no
tales.”

“I’ve never believed in man-handlin’ a crew like some fellows do,” said
Abkeller. “It’s waste of energy, for one thing, and for another, you lay
yourself open to get a belayin’ pin in the neck some dark night. No,
take it easy is my motto, and if you can’t keep a crew together with
your eye, get ashore and look for a softer job.”

Later on they had an overhaul of the lazaret and the food supply of the
crew. They calculated that there was enough to last for the voyage with
care; one fact alone troubled them, there was no fruit on board. None,
that is to say, with the exception of a single bunch of bananas.

“Maddox wouldn’t have put the fruit on board till this morning,” said
Abkeller. “It’s a nuisance; we ought to have had a couple of
hundredweight of bananas for those fellows, and nuts, to say nothing of
taro.”

“Maybe we can strike some island where it’d be safe to land,” said
Slocum; “no big place for me, for the _Golden Light’s_ no doubt known
all round here. She’s been cruisin’ a good many years in these waters,
but there’s many a small island as good’s a fruiter’s shop.”

“Maybe,” said Abkeller.

They did. Three days later bloomed in view a pearly, pinky trace like a
crag in the white blaze above the horizon. It was the peak of a tiny
island mist wreathed after the rains, and now, as the wind freshened,
dipping the _Golden Light_ almost gunnel deep, the mist scarves blew
away, leaving to view green slopes, where the plumy foliage billowed
like wheat under the wind.

Here on the northern side the foliage broke off, where black cliffs
clean cut and pitiless received the full wash of the sea; but as they
came round to the southern side reefs showed, and beyond the reefs a
beach.

“It’s not on the chart,” said Abkeller, “and I’m blest if I’m going to
risk the schooner, getting her into that anchorage beyond the reef.
We’ll heave her to and row ashore. What’s that over yonder with all
those chaps about it? I thought it was a wreck, but it isn’t.”

On the reef lay a huge black object, around which a crowd of natives
seemed busy; then, suddenly, on a puff of wind came a faint and
poisonous odour, and they knew. The black object was the carcase of a
whale cast up by the sea, and decomposing; the natives were salving the
whalebone, absolutely indifferent to the condition of their quarry.

The _Golden Light_ dropped a boat and Abkeller, followed by the Captain,
got in; then, as they shoved off for the shore, the natives, seeing them
coming, forsook their business about the stranded whale and made off for
the beach.

“Now, I wonder, are those chaps goin’ to be friendly or not?” said the
Captain. “We ain’t any too well armed if they cut up rough.”

“I’ve got my revolver,” said Abkeller, “but we’ll soon see.”

They did.

Rowing through the opening in the reef, they crossed the anchorage, and
seeing that the natives were unarmed, ran the boat’s nose up on the
sand. Nothing could be more friendly than their reception, and in all
the islands of the Pacific nowhere could you have found more
happy-looking, innocent and child-like Kanakas than these. They
gambolled about the new-comers like dogs, and when the Captain, who
could speak most of the dialects of Polynesia, made known his wants, a
score of them started off for fruit, whilst the remainder stood around
fraternizing with the boat crew.

The Captain sat down on the sand of the beach and lit a pipe.

“Well,” said he to Abkeller, “we couldn’t have struck it better; ’pears
like as if our fortune was holdin’ good.”

Abkeller did not reply for a moment; he seemed in deep thought. Then he
spoke:

“I shouldn’t mind spending the night ashore,” said he. “What you say?
When the chaps bring the fruit down I’ll take it off to the schooner and
then come back, and we can stick here the night. I might bring the
schooner in; it’s all deep water and plain sailing into the anchorage.”

“I don’t care,” said the Captain. “I’d as soon stay as not——” Then
suddenly he raised himself on his elbow.

His eyes were fixed on some children playing near. Then he rose up, and
walking strangely, after the fashion of a man unsure of himself, he
approached the group. A little girl, much lighter in colour than the
others and seeming of a different race, was just bending to pick up a
lump of coral used in the game, when he seized her, lifted her towards
him, and looked at her shoulder, on which a faint blue anchor was
tattooed.

Then he gave a shout.

“Hi!” said Abkeller. “What’s up?”

“It’s the Luck!” shouted the Captain. “It’s me child. Jumping Moses,
I’ve _got_ her! Me child—me child!” He had the child in his arms; the
natives were crowding round; the fellows racing down with mats full of
bananas and fruit threw down their loads and joined round.

The story told itself without a word, and the Captain, now sitting on
the sands with the Luck in his arms—she seemed nothing loth—talked up
at the people above him and received answers.

More than four years ago two canoes filled with bad men had come to the
island; they had camped on the beach and killed several natives, then
they had fought amongst themselves. The smoke of a steamer had appeared
on the horizon, and the remnants of the fighters, fearing a man-of-war,
had gone off hurriedly—all crowding into one canoe. The child had been
left behind.

Then the Captain, showing the tattoo-mark and telling how he had put it
there six years ago, gave his story, and they listened and listened,
wondering and compassionate—all save Abkeller, like an evil spirit,
standing dark and ragged, heartless, incurious and brooding.

“And now I’ve got her,” said Slocum; “blest if there _ain’t_ a
Providence. Well, it’s all the same, she sticks to me now as I sticks to
her—I—well—it’s all the same——” He scrambled on to his feet,
controlling his emotion by a powerful effort, and stood, the Luck beside
him, her hand in his and his free arm wiping the moisture from his brow.

“Well,” said Abkeller, as though nothing had happened, “now you’ve
finished, I’ll take the fruit off and bring the schooner in.”

He collected the fruit-gatherers and their loads, filled the boat, and
started off, leaving the Captain and the Luck still hand in hand and
surrounded by chattering and sympathetic Kanakas.

The human heart is pretty much the same all over the world, and this
finding of a lost child by a sea-battered mariner appealed to the
Polynesian crowd just as it would have appealed to a collection of
American or English people.

Then, after a little, they drew off; and the Captain, leading the child
by the hand, walked along by the sea edge, he talking to her in the
native, and she replying in lisping monosyllables.

                     *      *      *      *      *

She did not remember him in the least, so he gathered, and he would
never have recognized her but for the fact that she was different from
the other children, lighter in colour and subtly differentiated from the
Polynesian type by some peculiarity impossible to define exactly. There
was European blood in the Luck. Heaven knows from where it had come, but
it was there.

Finding that she had no recollection at all of the past or of himself,
he left it at that, content with the fact that she had “chummed up to
him.” And as he walked along he picked up bright bits of seaweed for
her, flung stones at the sea-birds, and, finding a couple of oyster
shells, made ducks and drakes with them over the calm water of the
anchorage. He had forgotten Abkeller and everything else, and she,
fascinated by the strange man who had suddenly appeared from nowhere and
who had chosen her out for adoration, had no eyes for anything but him.
Slocum, dazed with happiness, walked like a man in a dream.

They had almost reached the southern limit of the beach when Slocum,
rising from the act of picking up a piece of coral, caught sight of
something in the water, something bulky and white, half stranded by the
incoming tide.

It looked like a huge mass of fat. Wading out knee deep, and forgetting
for a moment even the Luck, he seized the stuff, squeezed it, and then
smelt his hand. Then he knew. It was ambergris.

He had seen it once before when he was serving on a whaler. It had come
evidently from the dead whale on the reef, and had floated in here on
the tide. Ambergris, worth twenty dollars an ounce—and here was a
hundredweight of it and more! A fortune twice over.

The Captain, standing now thigh deep in the water, wiped his brow with
his coat-sleeve. There are strokes of fortune so vivid that they leave
the stricken ones dumb and dazed, and for a moment Slocum was in that
condition. Then his eyes fell on the child on the beach, and a great
broad smile spread over his countenance and was reflected from hers.

“You’ve done it again,” said the Captain; “blest if you ain’t done it
again. It beats the Keller job. It beats _me_—b’Gosh!” Then he began
shouting to the Kanakas to come and help him, and half a dozen pairs of
hands soon had the stuff salved and lying on the white-hot sands.

The Kanakas did not know in the least the value of the prize, nor did
the Captain enlighten them. Something was already beginning to trouble
his thoughts. Abkeller—he would have to share this glorious find with
Abkeller.

He turned to the sea, with his hand shading his eyes, watching to see
the _Golden Light_ brought in. He saw the _Golden Light_. She had
hoisted up the boat and she was under all plain sail, but she was not
coming in. She was standing out to sea.

For a moment he could not quite comprehend this. Then, suddenly, the
full infamy of Abkeller broke upon him like a horrible sun.

Abkeller was making off with the schooner.

The fruit business had been a blind, the marooning of his partner had
been the real object of the ragged and ill-conditioned one, and the
theft of the schooner. The Captain stood for a moment staring at the
retreating vessel, then he sat down on the sands and began to laugh.

He laughed and laughed, the tears rolling down his face, and the Kanakas
standing round laughed to keep him company.

“Oh, _Lord_! Oh, Lord!” cried Slocum. “He’s gone off with a ten cent
schooner and left a fortin on the beach behind him. Rag-tailed swab!
Left me with a fortin behind him, and gone off with a lousy crew of
Kanakas an’ a few ton o’ copra, sailin’ for perdition, and sure to be
cocht.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Whether Abkeller was “cocht” deponent sayeth not, but perdition he was
sure of. That the Captain took the Luck and the ambergris away from that
island I know, also that he prospered exceedingly.

I met him on the pearl island; Captain Billy Saunders introduced us, and
I also met the Luck.

The Captain was a huge old man. I liked him at first sight, and the
Luck—I would have fallen in love with her, only that I am married.

She was lovely, just budding into womanhood, and in that lonely place
she seemed a rose in a wilderness.

“There’ll be trouble here some day,” said I to Captain Billy Saunders,
“trouble with the Captain when the Luck turns to someone else.”

“Sure,” said Captain Billy.


                                   VI
                                  MARU

The fame of her had gone nearly all over the Pacific just as the perfume
of a flower may spread all over a house.

When I say all over the Pacific, you must not take me too literally, but
in the bars and clubs and places where traders and sea captains
forgather, Captain Slocum’s daughter was a topic of conversation after
other and more interesting subjects had been talked dry.

Slocum was so well known that any general talk about the islands was
likely to bring him in for discussion, and as sure as that happened so
surely did his daughter come in for reference.

There were four facts about this lady most alluring to the male mind.
Firstly, her youth and beauty; secondly, her wealth—for Slocum was
reputed to be immensely wealthy; thirdly, the mystery of her origin, for
she was not entirely a European; fourthly, the fact that no princess in
a castle of old days was more strictly watched over by a dragon than
this lady by her father.

Old Man Slocum was a terror. Amorous traders and mates and captains of
inter-island schooners got short shrift from Captain Slocum when caught
casting eyes at the Luck.

Luck was her name, or, as the Captain had it, “her christened name,” but
he had so long used the definite article in referring to her that it
remained, even now when she was grown up.

It was in the hotel bar of Papeete that Fairbrother heard of her first.
He was a young man new to the Pacific, and he fancied himself
“considerable.” That was the verdict of sundry salt-seasoned individuals
who haunted the bar and to whom he had stood drinks. He also had some
money.

It was Captain Tyler who told him of Slocum and his island and the Luck.

“Now, if you want a good speculation,” said the Captain, “why don’t you
go in for pearling? There’s Slocum, the chap with the daughter I told
you of—down at Five Stick Island; he’s not as young as he used to be,
and the last time I saw him he was talking of getting a partner. Of
course the lagoon doesn’t pay as it used to do in the old days, but
there’s good business to be done there all the same.”

These words remained in Fairbrother’s mind. They were “meant sarcastic,”
but he did not know it. Fairbrother was one of those self-confident
individuals who are proof against sarcasm. He was an Englishman who had
started in life as a mining engineer, drifted from that into
speculations on real estate in San Francisco; he had made a considerable
amount of money in this line of life and lost a good deal of it in
ranching, then he had picked up somewhat by speculations in fruit
farming and left that line of life for the Pacific Islands. A rolling
stone, not at all destitute of moss—as yet.

You will find these men all over the world, gipsies who cannot settle
down. They generally end their days in rags, but at all events they live
and enjoy their lives whilst they are rolling.

Then Captain Targett, an old Pacific schooner captain, got hold of
Fairbrother, and at the instigation of Tyler and the others, filled
Fairbrother up with more ideas about Five Stick Island. This gentleman
dwelt on the beauty of Slocum’s daughter and the wealth of Slocum. He
was an artist. He had also an old sixty-ton schooner rotting in the
anchorage, and, having prepared Fairbrother’s mind, he suggested as a
little speculation that they should run down to Five Stick Island with a
cargo of trade and return with a cargo of shell.

“Slocum uses a good deal of labour and he pays the chaps in trade
goods,” said Targett; “you’ll sell the shell here for five hundred, or,
maybe, six hundred dollars a ton; we won’t make a fortune, but if you
wish to get an insight into Pacific life and have a few weeks’ holiday,
we’ll pay expenses and, maybe, have a good bit over.”

Fairbrother thought over this proposal for a day or two and then
accepted it.

The _Bollero_ was the name of the schooner; she smelt of cockroaches,
her canvas was rotten and her sticks to match, but she was an
unbreakable tub, one of the old navy, built to last.

“So Targett is takin’ you down to Five Stick,” said Captain Tyler on the
morning of sailing. “Well, I hope you’ll get there. Oh, I haven’t
nothing to say against the schooner ’cept that I’ve heard she had
somethin’ wrong with the garboard strake, but it’s only a hundred and
fifty miles to the s’uth’ard and you ought to fetch it if the weather
holds—give my love to the Luck.”

They had to be towed out to get the wind, and a mile from the shore the
_Bollero_ shook out her frowsty old canvas and turned her broad stern to
Papeete.

They had a Kanaka crew, and Fairbrother, who knew a little about
everything, knew enough about seamanship to be able to stand a watch.

Targett had said that it would be more like a yachting cruise than
anything else, and after the first twelve hours Fairbrother, who had
never been on a yachting cruise before, determined in his own mind never
to go upon another.

Even amongst inter-island schooners the _Bollero_ was noted for her
cockroaches. Tyler, after a cruise on her once, had spoken freely on the
subject. “I don’t call them things insects,” said he, “they’re
animals—s’help me, yes, they sit up and beg like dogs—when they aren’t
bitin’ your toe-nails off. If you leave your boots on the floor when you
get into your bunk you hear them cockroaches bitin’ and playin’ with
them like terrier pups, luggin’ them about and shakin’ them. When you
wake up of a night you see them sittin’ on the bunk edge glarin’ at you
and grittin’ their teeth. I tell you, the _Bollero_ ain’t a schooner by
night, she’s a delirium trimmins. They turn up in the soup, drowned, on
their backs, and with their legs in the air, they get into the coffee
mill and comes ground to table in your cup, they gets into the molasses,
they gets into the plum duff, they gets into your hair. I reckon they’ll
get into heaven some day, them cockroaches of the _Bollero_, if
persistence counts for anythin’, unless, maybe, the dry rot in her
timbers sinks her some night in the anchorage—which ain’t unlikely.”

The picture was over-coloured, but not much, and between the cockroaches
and the cooking and the musty, fusty smell of the vessel and the
constant fear of her sticks going during a squall, Fairbrother was not
sorry when one morning the look-out signalled Five Stick Island on the
horizon. He was repaid for his sufferings as they entered the lagoon.

It was a lagoon island. A great calm pond surrounded by a ring of coral
and groves of palm, pandanus and bread-fruit. It was after the rains,
the foliage was of the greenest, the air brilliant, and the blazing
white beaches of coral sand almost blinding to the eye.

The _Bollero_ cast anchor close to the northernmost beach and the
“settlement,” which consisted of a frame house, several store-houses and
a number of huts for the workers, all bowered and backed by trees.

“That’s Slocum’s house,” said Captain Targett, “not a bad place for an
island like this, and there’s the old man himself, if I’m not mistaken,
on the verandah. He’s havin’ a look at us through the glass. Well, we’d
better get ashore.”

A boat was lowered, and Targett, followed by Fairbrother, getting into
her, they were rowed to the beach.

Slocum received them on the verandah of his house like an emperor, then,
forgetting his importance, clapped Targett on the back and led them into
the main room, spacious and cool, with a matted floor, American rockers,
a bamboo couch and island clubs and paddles adorning the walls.

Slocum was an old acquaintance of Targett’s, and as they chatted,
including Fairbrother in their conversation, a mat curtain was pushed
aside and a girl entered.

The most wonderfully pretty girl that Fairbrother had ever seen.

It was the Luck.

Clad in the native dress and with bare feet, she was totally distinct
from the Polynesian type, or, rather, any of the Polynesian types—yet
she was not entirely European; a faint tint of the sun, a vague hint of
the wilderness, of the islands, clung to her, giving a touch of
strangeness to her beauty impossible to describe.

She was followed by a Kanaka servant bearing a tray with whisky,
soda-water, lemons, and a big bowl of broken ice, for Slocum was a
sybarite in a way, and had installed a small Cushing ice plant in a hut
away back among the trees.

She ordered the servant to place the tray on the table, and then with
her own hands prepared the drinks.

Slocum introduced her with two words:

“My daughter.”

Fairbrother, paralysed by this lovely vision, sat watching whilst, with
the seriousness of a priestess officiating at an altar, she prepared the
drinks, then he watched her, the business completed, depart. He heaved a
sigh, sipped the iced lemonade with which she had presented him,
accepted a cigar from Slocum, and sat smoking and listening to the
conversation between the others without heeding it in the least.

He was in love.

He had heard so many tales of the beauty of the Luck that he had been
sceptical. He had little faith in the æsthetic sense of rough sailor
men, and he had expected to see a young woman of the good-looking but
blowsy type that appeals to the sons of Neptune. The reality had shown
him that supreme loveliness finds worshippers everywhere and amongst all
people and all classes of people.

The beauty of the Luck did not abash Mr. Fairbrother, even though it
rendered him for the moment dumb. You will remember that, according to
the verdict of Papeete, he fancied himself “considerable,” and as a
matter of fact he did. And not without some cause. He was a good-looking
man, glossy-haired, fresh of complexion, healthy, bright of eye and
ruddy of lip; he was a bit too coloured and a bit too glossy for a plain
person’s taste, but women liked him. He fascinated bar girls—and he
knew it.

He, subconsciously, felt sure of himself, and that, as far as women are
concerned, counts for a good deal.

Slocum, wishing to have a word with Targett, drew him out on the
verandah, leaving Fairbrother to smoke.

“What’s the business you’ve really come on?” said Slocum. “You’ve been
winkin’ at me and makin’ signs at that guy behind his back till I’m all
of a tangle as to what’s your meanin’. What ails him?”

“Oh, he’s all right,” said Targett; “the only thing is he’s so full of
himself there’s nothing else in him. I’ve brought you some trade in
exchange for shell, but he’s the main thing I’ve brought, and he’s a
joke. Mind you, he’s paid for the cargo and chartered the schooner, but
that’s not where the joke lays. Mind you, there’s more in this than a
trade voyage to make a few dollars out of shell; there’s a great big
joke, and the chaps in Papeete are only waiting to laugh at it when it
comes off. He’s after the Luck.”

“He’s which, you say?” queried Slocum.

“After your daughter—heard her talked about. He’s come courtin’ her.
That’s the joke.”

The base betrayer of Fairbrother’s tender affections spat a squirt of
tobacco juice at a green lizard on the sand, missed it, and turned to
Slocum to see the effect of his words.

Slocum seemed quite unperturbed. Grasping the verandah rail in his huge
hands, he was looking out over the anchorage. Then he spoke.

“You say that chap bought the trade you’ve brought? He’s got some money
to his back, I reckon?”

“I should say so,” replied Targett, considerably taken aback by the
coolness of the other. He had expected an explosion; the Captain, he
very well knew, had sent better men than Fairbrother to the right-about,
yet explosion there was none. Slocum seemed considering the matter!

“And he’s an upstandin’, honest-lookin’ chap,” went on Slocum. “Well,
Bill, after I’ve seen a bit more of him I’ll be able to tell better if
my likin’ holds good. I don’t say he won’t have a chance. It’s a big
thing he’s askin’ for, but, maybe—well, we’ll see.”

“But look here,” cried Targett, “this lays over all I ever knew. Why,
you’ve fired man after man better’n him—what’s the meanin’ of it?”

“Bill,” said Slocum, “I’ve been a blame fool. I ain’t goin’ to let the
Luck go, but she’s a girl when all’s said and done, and what’s a girl
made for but matin’? It came to me only six months ago when I was
sittin’ over there on a bit of coral one day. I sees two lizards makin’
love, and I was lookin’ at them when it all came in on my intellects
like a flash of lightnin’. I sees that all female and male things was
made for matin’, and I says to myself, ‘There you are, drivin’ chaps
away from the Luck; she’s made to mate and there you are stoppin’ her.
And what’s to become of her s’posin’ you up and die?—and you ain’t
gettin’ any younger. Who’s to carry on the pearlin’.’”

“Why, good Lord!” said Targett, “this is like conjuring.”

“Which is like conjurin’?” asked Slocum.

“What you’re saying,” replied the other. “I was that set on seeing this
chap let down and put in his place, that I slung him a lying yarn as to
how you’d _told_ me you wouldn’t be against the Luck marryin’ a likely
man, seeing that you weren’t getting any younger and would like a
partner.”

“You told him that out of your own head?” said Slocum.

“I did, for truth—it’s queerer than conjuring.”

“It’s like a clear lead, to my mind,” said Slocum. “I don’t much b’lieve
in Providence mixin’ its finger in things—but there’s no gettin’ over
it, it’s blame queer.”

They left the verandah and wandered off to the store-houses, where
Slocum showed the stuff he had on hand, and, forgetting for a moment the
Luck and Providence, Fairbrother and his quest, devoted his entire
energies to the hard task of diddling Captain Targett over the trade
goods that he and Fairbrother had brought to the island—or, rather, to
the task of preparing the ground for that operation.

“Full up, I am,” said Slocum, flinging wide the door of a store-house,
“and some of the stuff’s perishin’; you couldn’t have come at a worse
time for trade.”

“Still,” said Captain Targett, “you have a good many chaps engaged on
the fishing, and you’ve gone in for copra now, I hear.”

“Not I,” replied Slocum. “Leastways, only partly. I’ve sub-let the copra
right to a Kanaka over from Uruwari. He and his tribe gather it all.”

“And where do they take it?”

“Well, they sell it to me.”

“Oh, ho!” said Captain Targett. “You let the copra-gathering to them and
then you buy the crop?”

“That’s so,” replied Slocum. “A man must do all he can these times to
turn a penny. I tell you, Bill, the islands is played out. What between
the mishinaries turnin’ the heads o’ the Kanakas, and what between
competition, and what between low prices an’ high wages, there’s scarce
a livin’ to be made.”

Captain Targett cast his eyes round the store-house, which _looked_
pretty full of trade; there were cases and barrels arranged with a fine
eye for effect, bolts of what seemed to be cloth wrapped in canvas for
protection against climate and vermin, boxes marked “Arms,” and boxes
marked “Ammunition,” and boxes marked “knives,” a pile of Libby and
Armour and Post boxes, marked generally “Provisions.” There were boxes
of trade gin and tobacco.

Captain Targett cast his eye over this profusion. Then he gave one of
the cases a rap with the toe of his boot. It was hollow.

He burst out laughing, and Slocum, unable to help himself, joined him.

“Well, you are a one!” said Targett admiringly.

He rapped on several more cases—they were all empty.

“This is the bluff shop,” said Slocum, without the slightest shame.
“What d’you think of it, Bill? You see, all them crates and cases came
here full, and instead of burnin’ them I fixed them up here for show.
Them bales of calico is full of cokernut sennit. Five dollars would buy
all the trade here and leave a margin. Y’see, when a mug brings a cargo
of trade same’s you’ve done, I tell him I’m full up and to take it away.
I learned the trick from a chap by name of Keller, on’y he was an ass;
he didn’t keep no bluff shops, his go-downs were empty. I brings the mug
in here and I says to him, ‘Look at that,’ says I. ‘What d’you think I’d
do with your trade? Howsomever, if you like to leave it, I’ll pay you
such an’ such a price.’”

“Well, you beat all,” said Captain Targett. “No wonder you’re rich; and
you near took me in, too.”

“All the same,” said Slocum, “don’t you go and give the game away to
them chaps at Papeete; there’s not another man I’d have owned up to but
you—so keep your head shut.”

“Oh, _I_ won’t peach,” said Targett, “let the other chaps look after
themselves; but own up now—have you any trade on the island at all?”

“A bit,” said Slocum, closing the door of the store-house and leading
the way to another.

He opened the door, and disclosed his poverty in goods. Here there were
only half a dozen cases of provisions and a couple of boxes of tobacco
and one roll of printed calico.

“Why,” said Targett, “you’re run out, and the cargo of the old _Bollero_
will be a godsend to you.”

“’Pears so,” said Slocum.

He took his “gruel,” to use Targett’s phrase, quite good-humouredly. His
mind, in fact, was not set on money-making that day. Fairbrother was
filling his thoughts.

Looking out for a suitable “mate” for the Luck, it seemed to him that
Fairbrother fulfilled his requirements. Here was a man, young,
good-looking, healthy, well set-up, and possessing some money; a man,
also, who—according to Targett—would be content to settle on the
island and help as a partner in the fishing. That last was the essential
condition. The richest man in America would have been refused by Slocum
had he made a bid for the Luck, simply because the richest man in
America would have taken her away from him.

He walked back to the house with his companion, rejoined Fairbrother and
went into details as to the exchange of the trade on board the _Bollero_
for shell. Fairbrother did the bargaining, and the passion for filthy
lucre was so strong in that gentleman’s breast that he forgot for a
moment everything else, Love and the Luck included. Slocum rarely had
come across a harder bargain-driver than Fairbrother, and the fact
delighted him. Fairbrother had all the prices of shell, from
golden-tipped to white, at his fingers’ ends—he had been studying the
matter up on the voyage—he seemed to know all about pearling, and he
could quote the current wholesale prices for stick tobacco, provisions,
prints, knives, etc., like a book.

He made a most successful deal with Slocum, and the latter gentleman was
so pleased that he invited him to dinner that night and produced
champagne in honour of the occasion.

The Luck presided at table, and then, when the meal was over, vanished
into the starlight of the night outside.

After dinner, as they sat outside in the verandah, smoking, Fairbrother,
who had learned from Targett of the Captain’s views concerning him,
plunged straight into the subject of the pearling and made a proposal as
to a partnership, stating the amount of money he could put into the
business and the amount of work.

“Well, I don’t know,” said the Captain. “It’s a big jump to make, and I
ain’t a jumping man; but maybe I’ll think of it. You’re fixed here for a
while till the cargo is off and on the _Bollero_, and there’s time
enough. Would you be willin’ to settle here for always?”

“Why, yes,” replied the other. “I haven’t struck a better place in
years; the place suits _me_ all right.”

“Well, we’ll see,” said the Captain.

He had made up his mind to accept Fairbrother as a partner and a
son-in-law; although he was not a jumping man, he was an old gentleman
who could make up his mind very rapidly, and when it was once made up he
never altered it.

The one question that remained now was the attitude of the Luck; and,
foolish man that he was, he never stopped to consider this. He took it
for granted that all would be right; no girl in her senses would refuse
this good-looking, “hefty” young feller—and if she did, there was
always his—Slocum’s—will.

Next day he managed to throw them together a good deal; and the next, he
saw them walking together along the sea edge of the beach, Fairbrother
talking to her and making ducks and drakes on the water of the lagoon
with oyster shells for her amusement. Then he knew that everything was
all right.

Yet, lo and behold! the day before the _Bollero_ was due to spread her
frowsy canvas to the breezes and make for Papeete, Fairbrother appeared
before him with a very downcast face.

“Well, Captain,” said he, “I’m sorry about the partnership, but it’s not
to be.”

“What are you talkin’ about?” said the Captain. “What mug’s game is
this—what ails you, anyhow?”

“It’s not me,” said Fairbrother. Then he told of his passion, and of how
when he had told the Luck of it she had firmly but politely rejected it.

“She don’t care for me,” said Fairbrother, “and there’s an end of it.”

“You wait here,” said the Captain.

He left the room where this conference had taken place, and started out
of the house, hatless and furious, to find the object of his anger.

She was in the cocoanut grove at the back of the premises, seated on a
fallen tree trunk and engaged in stitching.

“Now,” said the Captain, “there’s that young feller in the house waitin’
to see you. You’ve hit him crool hard. You and he was made for each
other—what have you got again’ him?”

“Nothing,” replied the Luck.

“Well, then, go in and tell him so; he’s a straight chap, and a
better-lookin’ you wouldn’t wish to see. I’ve took to him, and it’s not
every man I takes to. He’s the only likely man that’ll come here and
stick to the island; he’s axed you to marry him, and there he is in the
house waitin’ to say the words again—and he’s not a waitin’ sort. In
you go an’ tell him you’ll have him—there ain’t no time to waste.”

But the Luck shook her head.

Then slowly, in a few calm sentences, she told him that never, never,
never would she marry _that_ man. She did not like him.

Then she went on with her stitching, and the Captain went back to the
house. He knew better than to waste his time in opposing this soft,
frail, dreamy, beautiful creature whose will when aroused was far more
powerful than his will.

“You’re right,” said he, entering the room where Fairbrother was seated
waiting for his return. “There ain’t no chance; she won’t have nothin’
to do with you. ’Tisn’t my fault, it’s just her contrariness, but there
it is—she won’t have nothin’ to do with you.”

Fairbrother took his departure on the receipt of this delicate statement
of the position, and next day he sailed; but he left behind him a
problem for the Captain to unriddle.

What ailed the girl? What had made her turn so definitely against this
likely man?

Slocum knew little about women and less about love affairs, yet some
profound instinct told him that the rejection of Fairbrother was less an
act of rejection than selection. The quite definite manner in which the
Luck had “turned Fairbrother down” spoke strongly in support of the idea
that she had set her affections elsewhere. Yet he knew of no man who
could possibly have appealed to her. The mates and traders who had cast
eyes at her counted for nothing; she had avoided them.

Where, then, could this mysterious man be hidden? This man whom he felt
instinctively to be there. He was not long in finding a solution to the
problem.

One evening, some few days after the departure of Fairbrother, Slocum,
coming through the cocoanut grove to the west of the house, caught a
glimpse of two figures seated side by side on the coral of the seaward
beach.

One was the Luck and the other was Maru, the overseer of the Kanaka
shell-gatherers. Maru was holding her hand.

Maru was only twenty-two years of age, good-looking, straight as a
dart—but a Kanaka. It was this latter fact that struck Slocum like a
poisoned dagger. He did not look upon Kanakas as human beings, but
rather as creatures half-way between animals and white men. He did not
realize the fact that in the girl there was a strong strain of Kanaka
blood; that she was, in fact, the child of a Kanaka chief, and that her
European strain was a mystery never to be unravelled.

He considered nothing but the bare fact that Maru had dared to love the
Luck and make her love him, and all the old evil in the man’s nature
woke up, a bit stiff from disuse, but powerful and ready to strike.

He returned to the house, poured himself out some whisky and sat down to
consider this matter with the help of alcohol. It was a council of war
between the devil and drink.

Ever since he had picked her up as a baby, the Luck had stood between
Slocum and the devil; she had played the great part that women and
children alone can play in this world, the part of defenders of men
against man’s evil instincts. She had fended drink away from him, she
had made him care for her more than he cared for himself, and even in
purely material matters, she had brought him luck by destroying in part
that crass perversity, that iron and narrow individuality that had
always brought him want of success.

Slocum’s life was a whole and wonderful book, a sermon more powerful
than any sermon ever preached on the subject of Love. Not the Love of
Romance, but the Romance of the Love that saves and makes better the
life of man.

Slocum even when salved was pretty much of a wreck; he still was a very
hard trader and up to every trick of his trade—but, after all, are not
the majority of us and the best of us somewhat battered when we come by
some good chance into the quiet haven beyond the stormy sea? Slocum,
unlike most of us when brought to our anchorage, was to experience now
the greatest storm of his life, a storm that threatened to sink him at
his moorings and to wreck with him all that he loved.

He sat up late that night, drinking and smoking.

Next day he went off to the eastern part of the island to superintend
the shell-fishers, but he scarcely saw them at their work. He saw Maru,
however, and gave him orders, and Maru guessed nothing of the wrath and
destruction standing before him in the form of the heavy old man, who
spoke so strangely to-day and in such a thick, slow manner and with eyes
that did not meet the eyes of Maru, but rested on his breast as if
gazing through it at something beyond.

There was only one thing to be done with Maru, only one possible thing.

Slocum came back to the house, drink and fury walking on either side of
him.

He had more whisky when he arrived there, and an hour before sunset he
took down the loaded Winchester that hung on the wall of the
sitting-room, and with it under his arm he went out.

He was going dog-shooting. He repeated the words over to himself as he
came through the cocoanut grove, walking westward.

Maru, because of his position, lived apart from the other Kanakas in a
little house on the westward side of the atoll.

The groves close to this house were choked with a heavy undergrowth,
through which a man could work his way unperceived.

Slocum, half bending, half crawling, came through this growth, hibiscus
branches hitting him in the face and ground lianas tangling his foot. A
hundred yards from the house of Maru, and close to the beach, he
suddenly rose erect, and leaning against a tree and half-sheltered by
it, looked. On the beach, against the blazing western sky and the
infinite spaces of the ocean, two figures were standing, Maru and the
Luck.

His arms were round her and her arms were clasping him close, her face
was upturned to his.

It was a lovely picture, made more lovely by the wildness and desolation
of beach and sea.

The man leaning against the tree looked. Motionless as a statue and with
the red sunset light striking his face, his arm and the great hand
clasping the rifle barrel, he stood and looked.

The figures of the man and woman, no longer clasped together, were
wandering away now along the beach; but Slocum did not move, nor did he
follow them with his eyes. He was still looking at the figures clasped
together. Then, of a sudden, with a great, deep sigh like that of a man
awaking from sleep, he turned and tramped his way back through the
undergrowth to the house.

Inside, he flung the rifle on the couch and sat down. He sat for a long
time with his head bent, then he looked up. The room was almost in
darkness, but there was light enough to show the table and the empty
glass upon it, and the whisky bottle by the glass, and the pitcher of
water by the bottle.

He rose suddenly and vigorously, took the bottle by the neck and came
out on the beach, where the sands were beginning to show bright under
the stars.

He dashed the bottle against a coral rock by the water’s edge, dashed it
viciously as though hurling it at the head of an enemy.

“Damn you!” said he.

Then he stood with folded arms, looking over the starshot lagoon, seeing
nothing but his own salvation and the Thing that he might have done.




                           THE BIRTH OF LOVE


                                   I
                          PLUNDER FROM THE SEA

A waning moon, vast and vague, hung above the icy blue of dawn, and all
down the coast the sea, beating upon the rocks, sang to the land a
thriddy song desolate as the wind that blew from the distant mountains.

The mountains lay to the east, the sea to the west, to the north lay
mountains, and to the south a vast plain bordered by the sea and
reaching to the eastern foothills; and north, and east, and almost to
the sea edge in the south, the forms and fumes of volcanoes stamped and
stained the sky.

Some inhabitant of Mars, had he suddenly been placed here, would have
stood fascinated and held by two things: the enormity of that awful
moon, so huge, so ghostly, yet so vividly real, and, despite its
vagueness, so evidently a solid body and not a cloud; and the activity
of those volcanic hills in the midst of the absolute and utter
desolation. Then, had he stood long enough and scanned the scene
attentively, other things, stranger than the moon or the silence or the
furiously active hills, might have drawn his attention. Those great
rocks by the sea border in the middle distance, could it possibly be
that they were in motion? That flight of giant birds breaking the sky,
now, above the hills, was that an illusion?

Then, had he carried here with him from Mars a human intelligence, he
would without doubt have forgotten all else in contemplation of the man
and woman coming up from the sea edge and making eastward along the flat
lands in the direction of the distant mountains. The woman was walking
first, laden with a bundle of sea refuse collected beneath the light of
that vanishing moon, a light that had been brilliant, almost, as the
light of day; she was carrying the bundle by a thong of hide on which
the fur still remained, and from amongst the fucus and sea-wrack the
claw of an enormous crab hung loose.

The man following the woman carried nothing but a club, black as ebony,
made from some heavy wood and charred into shape by fire. They wore no
semblance of clothing, and the man, as he walked swinging the club,
gazed about wildly and vaguely, sweeping all the landscape near and far,
to right, to left, in front, and now and again, glancing back, behind.

His gaze from time to time, losing its vagueness, concentrated on some
point, and then became piercing and hard as a dagger. He seemed the
incarnation of watchfulness. Tireless, mechanical, eternal watchfulness.
The woman looked neither to right nor left. She carried the load.

Her legs were marked by old scars, as were her sides and arms. The man
was terrible with old wounds long cicatrized, and his face wore scars
that were features.

They seemed to have travelled all their lives through some great bramble
that had clutched and torn at them without being able to stay them or
kill them. Their appearance, far from being pitiable, was terrific,
emblematic of the truth that Man, though Nature has denied him fangs and
claws, has always been the most potent and terrible animal in the
world—and ever will be.


                                   II
                    THE VALLEY OF THE LITTLE HORSES

As the sun broke above the eastern hills, and the level beams struck
across from the hill shadows to the blue blaze of the sea, the air
became filled with a dolorous piping and droning. Millions of
squat-shaped lizards and flying and crawling insects were giving tongue,
and from the rock shadows round about creatures like plucked chickens,
with huge membranous wings, fluttered up and fleeted away on the air to
right and left before the advance of the human beings.

The man noted everything, missed nothing of what was happening within
reach of his eyes and ears and skin, for his skin, though almost
indifferent to changes of temperature, told him with unfailing sureness
of the approach of those awful thunderstorms that shook the world to its
foundations, and of the earth storms that now and then made the hills
heave and tumble to the light of new blazing volcanoes, the great bogs
to break their beds and the geysers to roar and thump and boom.

And just as his senses told him all things without language, so his mind
accepted all things without question and saw all things as they were. No
thing had for him a name, not even the woman tramping before him.

Speech was only a means of communication, a method of expressing sudden
anger or dislike, rebuke or encouragement.

Now, as the man tramped behind his mate, he would call out occasionally
if she slowed her pace or paused for any reason, “Hike-Hike-Hike,” a
sound monotonous and hard as the clapping of a rattle. The voices of the
Pterodactyls clacking in the distance were no less human, and the voice
of the far-off sea scarcely less articulate.

They were making across the boulder-strewn plain towards a spot where
every now and then a white plume rose into the air, wavered and
vanished.

It was a geyser, and as they neared it its voice came to them on the
wind, and as they passed it the water spouted and sputtered, booming up,
snarling, snoring and spraying them as they went by, absolutely heedless
of it.

Beyond the geyser the ground dipped into a vast basin, a valley where
rank grass grew and great boulders stood about like stone figures, and
little forms moved here and there singly and in groups.

They were horses. Tiny horses of a height scarcely reaching the height
of the man’s knee, wandering about like moving toys, cropping the grass,
and scattering now at the sight of the new-comers with shrill cries and
a sound like the beating of little drums.

In a moment not a horse was to be seen, and the man and woman were the
only moving things in all that vast valley, with the exception of the
lizards that haunted the rock shadows. Enormous, dun-grey lizards, a
dying tribe, sluggish and so given over to inertia that they scarcely
moved from the path of the human beings, lying like creatures in a great
infirmary, patients given over by nature and doomed to die.

They were the last patterns of an extinct Age, a fashion in form that
Nature was discarding.

The great Pterodactyls sometimes made raids here when food was scarce
elsewhere, but the great Pterodactyls, for some mysterious reason,
dreaded the little horses, and the dying tribe was left in comparative
peace.

The rock shadows were now shortening, and they had almost vanished when
the man and woman reached the rising ground that marked the end of the
valley and the beginning of a country hard and fierce, and fantastic
with the fantasy of basalt. Giants seemed to have fought here with rocks
and left behind them the silence that held the place, which, seen from a
distance, had the appearance of a broken plain. But it was not that. To
cross it you had to follow gullies that sank hundreds of feet between
walls of basaltic rock, cañons that seemed valleys in a hilly country.


                                  III
                   THE HOME OF THE DYING PTERODACTYLS

They were nearly through the place when they came upon a horror.

Where the cañon they were following broadened out to begin the ascent to
higher and less dismal ground, a croaking sound filled the air and was
amplified by the cliff echoes, and now amongst the rocks and perched on
the rocks might be seen vast forms, like the forms of birds that had
lost their feathers, birds with huge, membranous, half-folded wings,
birds with the heads of demons, spectres that had once flown but would
never fly again.

They were the sick and old of the great Pterodactyls. This was their
hospital and last home. No longer able to hunt and seek their food, they
came here to die, and, being things almost indestructible, they did not
die quickly.

In a more hungry land they would have been sought out, even in this last
retreat, and devoured by all sorts of creatures; but in this world food
was plentiful for all who could pursue and strike or even move about to
graze under the protection of armour plating, and these bloodless things
were left in peace. Besides, though capable of being easily attacked by
their own kind, they were still capable of evading the attentions of
footed creatures by fluttering to the rock shelves and the higher rocks.

The wayfarers, steadily pursuing their path, took no notice of these
familiar ghosts or the ghastly and faded odour of the air around them,
but pushed on to the higher ground, where they paused for the first time
in their journey, whilst the woman, putting down her bundle, produced
some raw fish for the midday meal.

It was now slightly after noon, and from this high point of ground the
country lay spread before the eye far and wide—a terrific desolation
lit by the sun for the blowing wind that seemed its only denizen.

As they fed the woman sat with eyes fixed before her, chewing, as a cow
chews the cud. Thought with her was a half-brother of sleep, her life a
gigantic labour in a dream.

The man, as he ate, stood erect and watchful. He had no need for rest;
he never rested, except when he slept, stretched out in the cave that
was their hiding-place and home.

The cave was still far away.

Once every season when the new grass was showing they left it, drawn by
some irresistible instinct to the sea. The sea began to talk to them and
call to them with a voice that was not to be resisted. All over the land
this migration of cave-dwellers to the sea took place at the same
season, and the eternal warfare and feuds between man and man ceased.

Life by the sea edge was safe from human attack—the migrants seemed
under a common pledge to observe peace—but here it was different, with
the sea out of sight and in a country that seemed constructed with a
view to ambush.


                                   IV
                               THE ATTACK

It was long after noon amongst a country broken and boulder-strewn that
the ever expected happened. Something whistled past the man’s head, and
a disc-shaped stone smashed itself to pieces against a mass of basalt,
and from the rocks around three forms appeared, shouted one to the
other, and then came on the wayfarers with a rush.

They were armed with great stones, and the man with the club, attacked
by two adversaries and knowing that they would only strike with the
stones when at close quarters, ran, taking a half circle round a rock
and instantly doubling back again. He met his first pursuer full face,
and dashed his chin up with the end of the club before the stone could
be raised for attack. Leaving the corpse, he faced like lightning
towards the second attacker, who had drawn off and was now rushing in
with stone upraised. It flew, was evaded, and now the stone-thrower,
running and screaming, was the man attacked.

The club man held on his heels, doubling as he doubled, twisting as he
twisted, and now, as the pursued took a straight line, gaining on him as
a greyhound on a hare. A watcher would have seen the club rising as the
striking distance was slowly gained, and then falling, lethal and swift,
and so perfectly aimed that the head of the stricken man flew outward
from the crown and he fell as if cut off at the knees.

Without a second glance at him, the club man wheeled and came running to
where the woman and the third attacker lay fighting and struggling on
the ground. This man had got the blow of the stone in, catching the
woman on the side, but without entirely disabling her. The great crab
and the bundle of sea refuse was the prize that had drawn the
plunderers, and they were the objects for which now the woman was
risking her life, she who could have obtained safety at the outset by
dropping her load.

The man with the club drew near the strugglers at a swift run, half
bending, trailing the club behind him and crouching, like a cat prepared
to spring, when he reached them.

The bundle was lying loose on the ground, and the struggling forms were
so interlocked that to strike might have been death to the woman. She
had her teeth fixed firmly in the shoulder of her assailant, her left
arm was round his body and her right hand fixed in his hair. As they
rolled over and over, biting and fighting like mad cats, the right hand
of the man suddenly shot out, grabbing along the ground as if in search
of the weapon it could use so well—a stone. The man with the club
instantly saw his chance, and brought the club down with an awful blow
on the hand.

Just as the octopus drops from its prey when the brain is pierced, so
did the wretch on the ground when his hand was shattered. He fell away
from the woman, she sprang to her feet, and the man, with the club
struck home. He struck solemnly and hard, like a workman completing a
good job. Then he rearranged the bundle, from which the precious crab
had nearly broken loose, and the woman standing by let him fasten it
upon her.

It had been a great fight, yet there was no jubilation shown by the
victors; the three dead men might have been three rocks that they had
succeeded in climbing over for all the attention they paid to them. The
crab was everything and the bundle of sea refuse. There was two days’
food in the crab, and the refuse was mostly edible seaweed. The migrants
to the sea always returned laden with whatever sea food they could find
to bring back, and this fact was known to the few men who did not
migrate, preferring to remain in the solitudes, hearing no call from the
sea, but always ready to plunder the returning travellers of their fish
and crabs.

They never attacked unless in superior numbers. These three had fancied
that a man and a woman would be fair game for them, and they lay now
amidst the rocks, never to fancy anything more, whilst the man and the
woman passed on.

They could see now the low range of hills beyond which lay their home.
But the range was a good way off still, and between them and it lay a
bog that was bad to pass. A lake of mud through which a ridge of firm
land ran, making a road. They reached this place and began to cross,
walking warily, whilst the woman, for the first time on the journey,
looked incessantly to right and to left of her, as though dreading some
trap or antagonist.

They had nearly reached the opposite bank, when the mud on their right
suddenly heaved and broke, and a vague head that seemed roughly
compounded of mud broke up, rose up on a long ringed neck and shot
towards them. It was met by a blow of the club and collapsed, sinking
back into the mud, which closed on it.


                                   V
                             THE LAST HALT

It was nearly sundown when they reached the crest of the hills, and here
the woman stopped. She let the bundle slip from her back, and then, just
as though all life were going out of her, she fell together and sank to
the ground. The man, uncomprehending, stood and looked at her.

The blow of the great stone had inflicted a mortal injury, affecting the
heart and lungs, yet she had carried her load and walked forward to the
last. It was impossible any longer to stand, impossible to lie on her
left side. She lay supporting herself on her right arm, breathing hard
and looking up at the man.

From the hill top, away beyond the broken plain, could be seen the sea
nearly touched by the setting sun, to the east the volcanic mountains,
all mauve and purple and grey, and between the mountains and the sea
line no living things or sign of life, with the exception of the two
forms upon the hill crest.

The woman’s eyes were still fixed on the man, filled with a wild
perplexity, and her breathing, heavy and laboured, was that of a
creature drawing to its last gasp.

The man squatted down beside her, knowing nothing of the extent of her
injury, knowing nothing of that last desperate effort that enabled her
to climb to the top of the last barrier dividing them from their home.
He saw the light now fading out of her eyes. He placed his hand upon her
chest. He felt her body arch upwards, stiffen, and collapse. Then he
knew that she was dead.

She would never walk again, or move, or help him or be with him any
more.

                     *      *      *      *      *

He knew little of pain and he had never known sorrow. His memory was so
vague that in his mind the woman had always been with him.

He looked at her, and then looked away to the great setting sun and the
blazing western sea. Then, as if stricken by the desolation that lay
before him, he raised his face to the blind skies above, calling to them
in a lamentable voice; waking the echoes of the hills to repeat what
they had never heard before.




                             SHORT STORIES


                         THE MOUND OF DARKNESS


                                   I

The _Pelorus_ was a five-hundred-ton ocean-going steam yacht, built at
Southampton for Mediterranean work to the order of the Earl of
Crowborough. Her engines were being set up when Lord Crowborough died,
and she came into the market right from her trial trip and was snapped
up by Cyrus Mulliner, junior partner in the firm of Mulliner, Mulliner
and Oppenshaw, the great bankers of New York and Pittsburg.

Young Mulliner—he was thirty-five years of age at the date of this
story—was more than a banker, he was a bug-hunter. His collection of
beetles and butterflies was the finest in the States; he was a
correspondent of foreign learned Societies, known favourably to
spectacled circles in Berlin, Vienna and Amsterdam, to say nothing of
that English circle of enthusiasts of whom the Natural History Museum is
the centre and hub.

New York looked upon him as a crank. Oppenshaw and old Mulliner were
quite content to let the middle partner work his works undisturbed as
long as he did not meddle with the banking business, of which he knew as
little as they knew of the Coleoptera; so it came about that after the
purchase the _Pelorus_ found herself voyaging in all sorts of strange
waters and palm-shadowed estuaries, scraping her keel on sand-bars and
uncharted coral reefs, tied up by river banks with crocodiles nosing her
plates and monkeys pelting her with nuts and more undesirable
missiles—and all for a handful of beetles.

But crazy men are often the happiest, and the amount of fresh air,
health, excitement and general satisfaction that came to Mulliner in the
course of his seemingly insane peregrinations about the world formed a
total of riches far beyond the wealth of Wall Street.

Oppenshaw, who had amassed a liver along with his wealth, and Mulliner
Senior, for ever hunting for his lost digestion in drug-stores, would
have recognized the fact could they have looked this afternoon through
the bank windows and seen their missing partner standing on the bridge
of the _Pelorus_, the R.M.S. pilot beside him, and all the broad Amazon
river before him.

The yacht was a thousand miles up the river, the vast river that seemed
here almost as wide as at its mouth, where the waters flood out right
into the blaze of the Equator; they were hugging the left bank and the
fringe of a wonderland of forest growth, vast, unknown, where the vigour
of the early days of the world seemed still rising in the sap of trees
monstrous in splendour and size, and burgeoning in flowers that mimicked
birds, and birds more beautiful than flowers.

Mulliner had only to pull the syren rope to set nature off in a display
finer than fireworks, rouse the echoing woods and lift rocket stars of
painted and screaming birds, blazing parrots, scarlet, green and blue,
paroquets, toucans circling and yelping like dogs far above the tall
matamata trees, and egrets like puffs of snow against the burning
sapphire of the sky.

Occasionally the vast verdurous wall would break, giving view of dim
glades that were glades before Pan was dreamed of by the Greeks, or
Babylon built, or the Israelites a people. Older than mythology,
youthful as spring, and mysterious as life itself, these breaks in the
forest showed in stereoscopic stillness the misty blue of ponds, trees
fantastically bearded with hanging moss, the vague vapour over marshes
deadly with malaria, and twilit spaces where the cables of the liantasse
hung from tree to tree, fathom upon fathom, festooned with orchids.

The right bank far across the river showed in humps and billows of
foliage, above which here and there appeared the faint tracery of palm
fronds.

Mulliner, walking to the after-bridge rail, looked over. He could just
see in the shadow of the awning that covered the quarter-deck the left
foot of a girl, a bit of white skirt, and the legs of the canvas back
deck-chair in which she was sitting. It was Miss Kearney.

The _Pelorus_ had for passengers Mrs. Mulliner, her brother George
Pinckney, and Mabel Kearney of San Francisco, a friend of Mrs.
Mulliner’s. Mabel Kearney was reckoned the prettiest girl in San
Francisco, and Pinckney was in love with her; he had known her for a
very short time, but a sea voyage quickens acquaintanceship, and nothing
grows faster than love on the Amazon.

He had nearly worn his deck shoes out running to fetch cushions for her;
they had photographed alligators and harpooned sting-rays, and, seated
side by side on deck of nights, had listened to the howling-monkeys
under a sky that was one solid crust of stars.

Just now, under the awning and alone for the moment, silence had
suddenly come between them, a silence broken only by the pounding of the
propeller and an occasional clank of the rudder chains as the wheel
shifted in the hands of the steersman on the bridge.

Then Pinckney leaned forward in his chair.

“Do you know how long this river is?” he asked.

“Three thousand five hundred and fifty miles,” replied Miss Kearney,
looking up from the Lion medallion she was crocheting. “I looked it up
in the atlas before starting.”

“Only three thousand miles,” said he; “I wish it were ten.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I don’t want this voyage ever to stop—I want it to go on for
ever—I don’t want to lose you—can’t you see?”

As if in reply to this last query, she raised her deep-blue eyes to his.
Yes, she could see, and she told him so without a word, told him all
sorts of things that paralysed his heart for a moment with happiness. It
seemed far too good to be true, yet it was true, and real as the hand
that was letting itself be held by him now, the warm palm that he was
covering with kisses.

Then, quite unconscious of the charm he was breaking, Mulliner came down
the bridge ladder. He might have thought that they had been
quarrelling—they looked so stiff and speechless; but he was an
unobservant man as regards human beings, and his mind was engaged on the
report the chief engineer had just sent up to him.

“We’ll have to tie up somewhere quiet for a day or two,” said he. “One
of the cylinders is giving trouble and wants repairing. There’s a big
bayou up higher and the pilot has fixed to run in there. It’ll give us a
chance with the guns, Pinckney.”

“I don’t mind if you tie up for a year,” replied the young fellow, with
a side glance at Miss Kearney. “I was just saying I wished this voyage
would last for ever.”

“So was I,” said she.

Mulliner sank into a deck-chair and lit a cigar. “That’s what I like,”
said he; “guests in one’s own house can go and walk down the street if
they are tired of their surroundings, but on board ship people are like
birds in a cage. I’m real pleased you two are enjoying this trip. Last
time I took a party with me I felt most of the way they weren’t making a
pleasure business of it; some were grumbling about the mosquitoes, some
about the heat, and we ran out of ice and the cook went dotty and
quarrelled with one of the hands and tried to jump overboard; that was
off the Fly river, where we blew a cylinder cover off to put a cap on
everything. No, they weren’t happy; I could feel that and it spoilt the
trip. Now this time everything works smooth as oil. You two people are
young, and that’s the great thing—you’re not above enjoying life.”

Pinckney laughed and looked at the girl, who laughed in reply. Then Mrs.
Mulliner appeared on deck, and almost immediately the gong sounded for
afternoon tea.

Down below in the saloon, with Mrs. Mulliner pouring out the tea, home
fashion, and Pinckney handing the scones, you never would have imagined
yourself a thousand miles up the Amazon. It is one of the delights and
wonders of a voyage like this that you take your home with you; that the
commonplace and everyday is always with you as a contrast to the strange
or the marvellous. You never properly appreciate the gobbling, choking
night cry of an alligator till you hear it, so to speak, outside your
bedroom window, or the strangeness of a flying-fish till it lands on
your breakfast-table through an open port and exhibits itself beside the
eggs and bacon.

As they were finishing tea, word came down from the pilot that they were
reaching their destination; Mulliner led the way on deck, and the whole
party followed him on to the bridge.

Captain Sampson was on the bridge, and the _Pelorus_ was out in
mid-stream thrashing her way against the current, and the mouth of the
bayou showed on the left bank, gradually widening as they opened it,
till now, with helm hard over, it lay straight ahead.

Now, as they passed the mouth, the bayou itself spread before them, it
seemed a vast lake, so vast that the trees on the far banks were dwarfed
to the size of shrubs, yet it was only the river—opening to greater
waters beyond.

It seemed to Pinckney that he had never seen anything more lone and
melancholy than this great sheet of water, breeze-ruffled and lit by the
westering sun, voiceless, expressionless, and forlorn of life.

“It’s a big dug-out all here at the mouth,” said the pilot, “and it’s
ten-fathom water right up to that bank; we’ll moor her there same as to
a quay.”

“Right,” said Captain Sampson.

He moved the lever of the engine-room telegraph, and the faint sound of
the bells ringing the engines off came from below. Then they were put
full astern for a few revolutions. The great rope fenders were now out,
and the _Pelorus_ came drifting gradually up to the bank and touched it
with a little shudder that ran right through her. One might have said
that she shivered.

The bank here was high and steep, so that the fellows with the mooring
ropes could jump right on to it with scarcely a drop from the bulwarks.
Two hawsers fore and aft were brought ashore and fastened to tree boles
and the business was complete.

“No harbour dues, either,” said the Captain.

“And no pubs ashore,” replied the pilot.

Miss Kearney, who was standing with the others on deck abaft the port
alley-way, looked across the bayou. The sun was just setting, and the
mournful light of sunset filled the world and lit the water, across
which a flock of birds was stringing, the only visible sign of life in
all that wide expanse.

“How long do we stay here?” she asked Mulliner.

“Oh, a day or two,” he replied, “till we get the cylinder defect put
right. Lonely sort of place, isn’t it?”

“It is,” she replied.

A little shudder suddenly ran through her, and she turned sharply round
facing the bank.

“Funny,” said she; “I felt just as if someone were behind me—looking at
me and wanting me to turn round.”

Mulliner laughed.

“I don’t blame them if they did,” said he; “but you won’t find many
admirers here, Mabel, unless it’s the howling-monkeys. This isn’t
exactly the place for Paris frocks, is it, Jane?”

“It’s a melancholy place,” said Mrs. Mulliner, “but I daresay it will
look better in the morning. I hate the sunset when I have to face it;
the only proper way of seeing the sunset is to turn your back upon it.”

She meant that the eastern evening sky is full of depth and beauty, the
western full of melancholy and without true depth. They did not laugh at
her, for they understood her meaning.

Pinckney felt nothing of the lonesomeness of the place. He was in love.
Standing beside the girl, he managed to secure her hand, unseen by the
others. That was enough for him, even though the hand let itself be held
in captivity only for a moment.

Dinner on board the _Pelorus_ was always a cheerful function, yet,
somehow, to-night conversation flagged a bit, and even Captain Sampson’s
good spirits seemed ever so slightly damped. Perhaps it was the heat of
the night, or the fact that the _Pelorus_ was no longer under way, or
some tincture of the mournfulness of the place outside, or a combination
of all these; but the party had lost something of its old cheerfulness,
and a vague depression, scarcely perceived yet still perceptible, mixed
itself in the atmosphere, shadowing the minds and dulling the
conversation of the diners.

Pinckney, without feeling it in himself, felt it through Miss Kearney.
She seemed put out about something: joining in the talk, yet without
initiative or spirit, as though some mournful or unpleasant recollection
were holding her mind and making her sometimes forget her surroundings.

“It’s hot to-night,” said Captain Sampson, “and lying up here tied to
the bank makes it seem hotter; besides, there’s no draught. The old
_Pelorus_ is a sea boat, and it must seem strange to her being tied up
here to trees, a matter of nearly eleven hundred miles from the sea, and
I expect she’s out of temper and making it hotter for us. Boats have
their likes and dislikes just the same as humans; some can’t stand a
beam sea, and they let you know it, and some can’t stand a head sea, and
they drown you out in consequence. Some come to their berths as if you
were trying to insult them—restive as horses they are—and some do
loathe an anchorage and drag their moorings no matter where you stick
your anchor.”

“That’s true,” said Mulliner, who had some knowledge of the ways of
ships; “everything made by man has a touch in it of man’s character, or,
anyhow, a character of its own; why, no two guns are alike—and that
reminds me, you may have a chance of trying that new Winchester of yours
to-morrow, Pinckney, on something better than crocs.”

“You propose going into the woods?”

“Why, yes,” said Mulliner. “You must remember this expedition is out for
business as well as pleasure, and its business is——”

“Beetles,” said Sampson with a laugh. Sampson was an Englishman. If he
had been an American he would have said “Bugs,” but even the more
dignified word seemed to jar on Mulliner, or perhaps it was the laugh
that accompanied it; at all events, he looked, for the first time on the
voyage, put out, but he said nothing, and coffee having been served the
ladies went off to their cabin, leaving the men to smoke and talk.

When Pinckney switched off his light that night and lay down in his
bunk, it was not to sleep.

The little blue silk curtain covering the porthole showed a vague azure
disc in the darkness, telling of the moonlight outside, and there were
sounds unconducive to slumber.

Sometimes along by the plates something would come rubbing and
bumping—either a drift log moving on the current of the bayou or an
alligator—and now the hobgoblin chorus of the frogs that had been
steadily tuning up broke into full song—the full Southern chorus, as
different from the Aristophanic orchestra as the moon of the South from
the moon of the North.

“Going home—going home—going home—Paddy got drunk—Paddy got
drunk—Paddy got drunk—Bottle of Rum—Bottle of Rum—Bottle of Rum,”
and so on _Da capo_.

After a while, despite these serenaders, Pinckney fell into a doze, from
which he suddenly sprung wide awake. For a moment he experienced that
horrible sensation which comes to a person who wakes from sleep without
being able to remember where he is. Then full recollection came to him
and he lay down again, but not to sleep. A vague uneasiness filled his
mind, like the uneasiness that comes as a prelude to sea-sickness; an
uneasiness that seemed to come from the very foundations of his being.
It increased by waves, till he found himself sitting up and clutching
the bunk edge, filled with terror such as he had not experienced since
childhood.

Some evil influence seemed around him and in the very air he breathed;
every nerve thrilled to it and his stomach crawled. It was the night
terror of childhood affecting the brain of a man. He sprang from the
bunk and switched on the electric light; the terror passed, and catching
a glimpse of his white face in the mirror by the door, he felt ashamed
of himself. Yet he could not dismiss the feeling that something had been
with him in the dark, some spirit or influence, evil and deadly, that
the light had dispelled.

Pinckney was a level-headed man; he did not believe in ghosts, he was
not more superstitious than his fellows, and he told himself now that he
had been suffering from nightmare, and believed the tale. Then, putting
on some clothes, he came on deck for a breath of air. He spoke to the
watch and then climbed up to the bridge, where he lit a cigarette and
stood for a moment looking at the view.

The great moon, nearly full, had risen over the forest, and the bayou
lay like a sheet of silver to the tree line of the distant banks; bats
were flitting above the trees, a night moth came fluttering along on the
windless air, and away out on the water a dark streak marked the course
of some swimming animal or reptile.

Nothing could be more ghostly, more beautiful, more mysterious than the
great bayou seen like this by moonlight. The signs and sounds of
secretive life were everywhere, traces and echoes across a stillness
that seemed to have lasted from the very beginning of time.


                                   II

Next morning Miss Kearney did not appear at breakfast, and Mrs. Mulliner
had a tired look—she said the heat had kept her awake—but Mulliner
seemed in the highest spirits. The beetle hunt which he had promised
himself that day banished everything else from his mind, even his wife’s
tired look.

“Those awful frogs,” said Mrs. Mulliner. “There does seem a stupidity in
nature sometimes; why and for what earthly reason the Almighty allows
creatures like that to make such nuisances of themselves is beyond me,
and they seem to take such a satisfaction in it—that’s the irritating
part. I heard poor Mabel tossing awake for hours, and this morning she’s
a wreck.”

“They are pesky brutes,” said Mulliner lightly; “but I guess the
Almighty knows what He’s about, and we mustn’t grumble at His works. I
thought Mabel and you were coming with us on this expedition; she said
she’d like to come next time I made a landing, and I’d counted on
letting her see what the forests are really like.”

“Well, she doesn’t want to go,” replied Mrs. Mulliner. “She says she
doesn’t like this place, and doesn’t want to land here, and she’s got a
headache from want of sleep, so you’ll just have to go alone. I’ll stay
and look after her. I’ll go and see the cook now about your
luncheon-basket. How many of you are going?”

“Pinckney and myself and one of the crew to carry the basket, and Joe
Slick to do the axe work. I’m going to blaze a trail. I’m taking a
compass, of course, but it’s better to be on the doubly safe side.”

It was nine o’clock when they started, Pinckney carrying his Winchester,
Mulliner the tin box for his beetles, a collapsible butterfly net and a
collector’s gun, single-barrelled and light, swinging by its strap from
his shoulder. A quartermaster carried the basket, and Joe Slick, an old
trapper who had accompanied Mulliner on most of his expeditions, the
axe.

Going into the forest was like walking into a glass-house; the
atmosphere, damp, hot and heavy with the faint fragrance of a thousand
growing things, literally fell on the shoulders like a cloak. Pinckney
breathed with difficulty, and after the first hundred yards, the sweat
ran from his face as though he were in a Turkish bath.

After a little, and as they got further away from the water, things
became better and he could breathe more freely, and then slowly began to
dawn upon his brain the reality of this place where he was, the fantasy
of this home of eternal twilight, this green eternal gloom, broken only
by shrill stars of light in the roof of leaves.

The most striking features in the Amazonian forests are the trees whose
roots are partly exposed above ground; the pachiuba palm, that seems
standing on stilts, and the huge matamata trees, whose roots form
veritable buttresses. The ferns form a wonderland of their own, filling
the glades with a delicate tracery, hauntingly beautiful seen through
the veils of the barrier lianas; the air is a garden.

Looking up, Pinckney was fascinated by the tangle above, the soaring
air-shoots and water-shoots, the sagging lianas cable-thick and tufted
with orchids—orchids that imitated birds and butterflies, dun-coloured
orchids, variegated orchids, orchids coloured like parrots, orchids
festooned like the lyre-bird.

All that, however, was lost on Mulliner, whose game was Beetles.

How he found them, Pinckney was at a loss to discover, but find them he
did.

Pinckney might have wandered in these forests for miles without sighting
a single member of the tribe of Coleoptera; for Mulliner the place was
swarming and alive with them. He knew their haunts; rotten trees,
certain leaves and all sorts of slight indications unperceivable to his
companion led him straight to his quarry. Yet his bag was very small; he
did not take more than one out of every twenty that he found, and the
result of the day’s hunt as they drew back towards the bayou in the late
afternoon seemed infinitesimal as compared with the labours of the
chase. Yet the hunter was more than satisfied—he was triumphant. He had
discovered a beetle absolutely new and unknown to science—a
chocolate-coloured specimen, marked with white circles on the
wing-cases—and he proclaimed his find to his wife as they came
alongside the _Pelorus_, shouting the news like a schoolboy, and just as
elated as a schoolboy who has gone out fishing for minnows and who
returns with a five-pound trout.

Mrs. Mulliner was on the bridge with Miss Kearney, and deck-chairs had
been brought there for them so that they might catch the breeze which
had risen up and was blowing straight across the water.

Pinckney followed his companion up the ladder, and whilst the latter was
showing his find to the women, went into the chart-house and placed his
still loaded Winchester on the table. In the ordinary course of things
he would have taken it to his cabin and drawn the cartridges; he would
have drawn the cartridges now in the chart-house, but the sight of Miss
Kearney and his eagerness to get beside her made him forget everything
else.

The girl was seated close to Mrs. Mulliner; she looked pale and
depressed, and as she glanced up at Pinckney there was a hunted look in
her eyes that went to his heart like a knife. Deeply disturbed in his
mind, he drew a deck-chair towards her and sat down without a word, and,
without either of the others perceiving it, he took her hand. The little
hand clung to his for a moment, as if for protection, then its hold
relaxed and he released it. The beetle was held out for her to admire;
she glanced at it without touching it, and then Mrs. Mulliner, rising
and picking up her work, went below, followed by her husband.

Pinckney turned to the girl.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “It is something here in this horrible
place—oh, I don’t know what it is; there is something evil here,
something that keeps urging and pulling me and dragging me to
itself—something in those woods.”

Pinckney sprang to his feet.

“We must leave at once,” said he; “it’s wicked to keep you here feeling
like that—we must get out of here at once. I will tell Mulliner.” He
made a step to the bridge ladder.

“Don’t,” she said. “Come here, sit down; we can’t leave till to-morrow.
Mrs. Mulliner was talking to the captain about it; she, too, wants to
go, and he said he would not be able to put off till to-morrow at noon,
but he would get the work done as quickly as possible; _he_ doesn’t like
the place either.”

Pinckney came back and sat down.

“I don’t like it myself,” he said. “What is there about it that makes
one feel like that? Last night——” he checked himself.

“Did _you_ feel it last night?” she asked in a low voice.

“I did; at least, I woke up feeling nervous, then I went on deck.”

“Did you see anything?”

“Nothing, only the bayou with the moon upon it.”

“Did you hear anything?”

“Nothing—only the frogs—I put my nervousness down to indigestion or
the heat.”

“It was not that,” she replied, as if speaking from sure knowledge.
Then, after a moment’s silence:

“Do you believe in evil spirits?”

“I—I don’t know,” he replied. “The Bible speaks of them as if they
existed, but I do not believe if they do exist that they can harm
innocent people—like you.”

“Or you?” she asked, looking up at him.

“Well, yes, perhaps. I’m not a saint, but I’m—not the other thing—what
makes you talk like that?”

“Because,” said she, “I seem to have been working out a philosophy of my
own ever since we came here. I have never been afraid in my life till we
came here; or only once, and that was when I was staying in Haarlem two
years ago. A murder was committed, and I saw them taking the murderer
away. He was a poisoner. I saw his face, and it frightened me because it
was so evil. It seems to me that evil is the only thing in the world one
has to fear; at least, it is the only thing in the world that frightens
me. That is why I asked you about evil spirits. There’s one here.”

He felt shocked by the conviction in her tone. He remembered his own
sensations of the night before, and for the first time in his life he
found himself face to face with the raw consideration of those things
and influences in this world that are not good. He had come across many
forms of wickedness, from the man-killing horse to the soul-killing man,
but Wickedness itself he had never considered as an entity. He was
considering it now.

“Do you mean to say,” he asked, “that it is on board the ship?”

“I don’t know,” she replied.

“Well,” said he, tearing himself away from the thought that was in his
mind, “you need not be afraid. I’m here, and it will have to come across
me to touch you. I’ll keep watch all to-night. I won’t go to bed. Mabel,
darling, if you only knew, if you only guessed how I love you, you would
not have one bit of fear. It’s not me, it’s just my love for you that is
powerful. God! what is love? It is everything, it is strength itself,
against which no evil can fight.”

A step on the bridge ladder made them turn; it was Captain Sampson. He
stood talking to them for a moment, his cheery voice and commonplace
remarks coming strangely enough after their late conversation.

Miss Kearney did not come in to dinner that night, and Pinckney did not
help the conversation much in her absence. A dull anger burned in his
mind, an anger born of the whole situation. Why could they not have tied
up on the river, out there amidst the healthy, moving water, instead of
here in this ghostly bayou? He did not know all the reasons that had
urged Captain Sampson to his choice of a berth; he did not know that it
was near flood time, when the upper river and the Marañon and Javary and
Hecoathy would be pouring their waters to the sea—waters freighted with
logs and all the débris of the forest; he put it down to Mulliner and
his crave for fresh beetle-hunting grounds, and he was rather silent
during the meal, which was scarcely a cheerful one, despite the fact
that Mulliner talked enough for two and insisted on toasting the
newly-discovered beetle in champagne, mineral water being the usual
tipple on board the _Pelorus_, which was, in the words of Captain
Sampson, an exceedingly dry ship.

When all the others had gone to bed, Pinckney, true to his promise to
keep guard, went up on the bridge, where Captain Sampson was smoking a
cigar. The moon, full to-night, was just rising over the forest, and the
chorus of the frogs had struck up like the hubble-bubbling of a witch’s
pot.

“Hum-hum-hum—Paddy got drunk—Paddy got drunk—Bottle of
Rum—Rum—Rum.”

“Lord! Listen to the beasts,” said Sampson. “Don’t wonder Mrs. Mulliner
was so down on them last night. And there’s another beauty—hark at it!”

The cry of the little owl, called by the natives the Mother of the Moon,
came from far away in the forest, the most lamentable sound in all the
wide earth.

“Say, this isn’t exactly the place one would choose to have delirium
tremens in,” said the captain. He walked to the port side of the bridge,
flung his cigar-end into the water, and then, bidding the other
good-night, slipped down the ladder to his cabin.

The anchor watch was forward, hidden from the bridge by the forward
awning, and most probably asleep. Not a soul was in sight fore and aft,
and Pinckney had the night to himself.

The trees of the far banks were half hidden to-night by a veil of mist,
and mist spirals showed on the water here and there like the ghosts of
water spirits, whilst the great moon, slowly lifting above the forest,
lit the world with a light strong almost as the light of day.

Pinckney sat for a while smoking and then rose up and paced the bridge.
He looked at his watch—it pointed to a quarter past eleven. He
calculated the hours till sunrise.

Never in his life had he felt so cut off, so lonely. Never had he felt
such a craving for close contact with his fellow-men. It was the object
of his vigil that oppressed his soul, the unknown danger, the unguessed
evil, the brooding antagonism of this place felt by the girl and more
vaguely by himself.

As he paced up and down he tried to distract his thoughts from his
surroundings by calling up distant scenes and places; failing in this,
he fell to arguing with himself on the absurdity of allowing the Purely
Imaginary to dominate his mind. He told himself that he was in an absurd
position, standing guard against nothing; that he had allowed himself to
be dominated by the fancies of a girl; that he would be laughed at by
Mulliner if the truth were known—and he told himself all this in vain.

The spirit of the place admitted no sophistry, and as time wore on the
dread that he had been fighting made such way with him that, failing
other support, he went into the chart-house and fetched out the
Winchester that he had left on the table.

There is company in a gun. Then, with the rifle under his arm, he
resumed his watch.

Ten minutes later, resting for a moment at the starboard or shore end of
the bridge, his eye was caught by something white just below. A girl’s
form had appeared from beneath the awning. It was Miss Kearney, fully
dressed. She was walking with hands outspread, and he recognized at once
that she was walking in her sleep.

As she reached the bulwarks he saw that the outstretched hands were
nearly palm to palm, as though the wrists were tied together by some
invisible rope by which she was being led.

Then, before he could reach the deck, she had stepped from a life-belt
locker on to the bulwarks and had reached the bank.

In a moment he was on the bank and following her amongst the trees;
twice he tried to call to her, but the Something that led her was
clutching at his throat, his mouth was parched and his lips like
sandstone, and his tongue dry as the tongue of a parrot.

She led to the left. He tried to increase his pace to a run, that he
might reach her and seize her, but he was walking as a man walks in a
nightmare or as a Martian might walk on earth, pushed against and held
down by a weight that was not his. There was light in the forest. The
place glowed green to the moonlight, and the glade where the girl was
standing when he reached her was brilliant with the rays of the moon.

In the centre of the glade lay a vast dark mound, ten feet in height,
spreading broad at the base and spilled all over with points of silver.

For a moment he fancied that what lay before him was some monstrous
mountain of ship’s cable, coiled and forgotten and covered with dew. He
could see the coils, here vague in shadow, here moonlit and distinct.
Then suddenly the whole mass of abomination heaved gently as the breast
of a sleeper, and he knew.

At the same moment he recognized the head, flat on the ground, heavy,
huge, with eyes like points of burning tinder that glowed and dimmed as
though breathed upon by a demon.

It was the great anaconda of the Amazon, the _sucuruju_ of the Indians,
the one thing of all animated things that can spread terror around it
like an atmosphere, like an odour, like a charm, fascinate unseen, and
call the Indian canoe-man from half the river’s breadth away to his
undoing.

Above it an orchid, like a flying bird, swung from a tendril in the
moonlight. The eyes of the anaconda were fixed upon the girl. She had
come to it in her sleep, drawn like the iron to the magnet, and now in
the last and inmost circle of attraction she stood lost, bound like a
fly in the toils of a spider.

The great head of the anaconda, motionless up to this, moved gently and
began to glide forward, then the rings began to move like flowing
shadows, and Pinckney, with the rifle at his shoulder, took aim and
fired.

Struck fairly between the eyes, the head flung back and rose in air
thirty feet with a hiss like the hiss of steam from a burst pipe.
Another shot rang out, and then, flinging the rifle away, he seized the
girl in his arms, and, turning, ran with her, bursting from the trees as
the _Pelorus_ blazed alight at the sound of the alarm, and the anchor
watch came tumbling ashore to meet him.

Mulliner, Mrs. Mulliner, every soul was on deck, as they brought the
girl on board and carried her below, struggling and crying out,
terrified, and not knowing in the least what had happened.

Then, when Pinckney told, Mulliner, the captain and the crew stood
listening to what was still going on in the forest.

A giant seemed fighting for his life amongst the trees, and over the
pounding and slashing and banging in the darkness came the screaming of
birds above the tree tops. It lasted half an hour. Then it ceased, and
the birds sank to rest.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Next day the _Pelorus_ continued her voyage, with the girl who had been
saved and the man who had saved her companions for life.

And, will you believe it? In the log of Mulliner you will find a page
and a half describing the charms of a certain chocolate-coloured beetle,
its hunting and its habitat, followed by two lines and a half: “Pinckney
shot anaconda at night in woods close by, after incident with Miss
Kearney—snake measured fifty-four feet six inches—head spoiled, skin
worthless, chewed by wild animals before morning.”


                                THE HERO

The _Triton_, of the British East African line, bound from Southampton
to the Cape, was just casting off from the wharf; the rumble of the
great boilers preparing to send their steam into the cylinders, the
rattle of a steam winch swinging the last crate of luggage on board, the
shouting of quartermasters, the crying of gulls from the harbour, the
crying of babies, the voices of fifteen hundred passengers, half of whom
were searching for luggage and half of whom were bidding good-bye to
friends, made a fitting accompaniment to the turmoil of the decks.

On the boat deck, leaning on the rail and with his eyes fixed on the
wharf, stood a man of some forty-five years, middle-sized, well-dressed,
plain of face, neutral-tinted. A man who, to judge from appearances, had
walked all his life in the very middle of the clean, high road of
respectability.

Internally—could you have opened his skull, as one opens a box, and
peeped in at his thoughts, you would have found the mind of Mr. John
Musgrave as respectable as his overcoat, as neutral-tinted, and as
well-cut according to the canons of convention.

I doubt if you could have found amidst the fifteen hundred passengers of
the _Triton_ a mind as content, for in twenty years of prosperity which
lay immediately behind him I doubt if Mr. Musgrave could have found
outside the chicanery of business a bad action to be ashamed of. A
diamond merchant of Hatton Garden, prosperous in trade, respected by all
men, happily married to a woman who loved him, he was now taking a
winter trip to Kimberley at the invitation of Harris, the diamond
magnate. Three months of summer weather, festivity, and perhaps good
business lay before him; he had excellent health, he was a good sailor,
the _Triton_ was a floating palace. No wonder that he surveyed the grimy
wharf with a satisfied eye entirely unaffected by the gloomy sky of the
dark November day.

The gangways were going now, now the last hawser was cast off, and the
tug was hauling the great ship’s head out from the wharf, and now the
tramp of the engines began, dead slow, quickening to half speed, and
then full speed ahead.

Musgrave was gazing at the shore passing away on the starboard quarter
when a hand gripped his arm. He turned and found himself face to face
with a man he knew, despite the alteration twenty-four years had made in
him.

It was Jan Keyser. Keyser, the man whom Musgrave had attacked, robbed,
and left for dead on the South African veldt twenty-four years ago!

There are surprises in life that by their very vastness lose their true
property. Musgrave, standing before Jan Keyser, felt no surprise; he
knew that this was no ghost, he knew that the man he had murdered in
thought and attempted to murder by deed had in some miraculous way
escaped; here was the fact before him in the person of the man, and
before the man and the fact he stood unconfused in mind. That perhaps
was his punishment.

On the best of terms with life, prosperous, well-dressed,
self-respecting; with twenty clean years of past behind him he had
leaned on the rail of the boat deck, a hand had fallen on his arm and he
had turned to find his self-respect swept away, his prosperity, nay,
even perhaps his freedom. He had committed the deed urged by ill-luck,
hatred of Keyser, the lucky one, and lust of gold. Prosperity had
allowed him to develop, _he had grown out of his sin_. Callous by
nature, he had buried his crime, forgotten it, taken its benefits, and
twenty years of respectable life had made of him a respectable man, only
to reduce him in a second of time to his true proportions.

“Well, Mr. Henderson,” said Keyser. “Dick Henderson, good old Dick
Henderson—that was what Murphy used to call you—shake!”

He held out a broad hand; he was a broad man, a man of Dutch extraction,
with a face very broad across the cheek-bones, a fine face in many ways
and a terrible face in some ways.

Musgrave held out his hand and Keyser took it and shook it. He laughed
as he shook it. It was not only the laughter of revenge about to be
satisfied; it was sardonic as well, the expression of a foreign humour,
and more insulting than the vilest abuse. But even worse to the craven
heart of the victim was the hand-grip, the hard iron grip, the merciless
grip that said plainer than tongue could say, “I’ve got you. This is no
chance meeting; I have followed you long and followed you far, and now
I’ve got you, Mr. Henderson, good old Dick Henderson—for all your
change of name, for all the twenty-four years that have cloaked you.”

Then the half-fainting Musgrave felt his hand released. Keyser had
dropped it, turned, and disappeared in the surrounding crowd. But he had
left something in Musgrave’s hand: a piece of paper folded in four,
which the wretched man glanced at and then thrust into his pocket.

Shaking and shattered, as a prisoner leaves the dock after sentence of
death, Musgrave left the boat deck, crawled down the companion-way to
the main deck and sought his state-room. He rang for the state-room
steward, ordered some brandy, swallowed it, and then, sitting on the
edge of his bunk holding his head between his hands, he tried to think.

The thing was absolutely unprecedented. Had Keyser openly accused him,
vilified him, struck him, the position would have been more bearable.
But Keyser had shown no sign of anger, nothing but contempt and the
triumphant assurance of the man in whose hand the game lies.

Musgrave had placed the folded slip of paper on the bunk beside him; he
took it now, opened it, and spread it on his knees.

“Six years ago I found you under your changed name, but I was not then
prepared to do you justice; evidence takes time to collect, and I had to
find Murphy. The money in my possession that day, the money you robbed
me of, I was taking to my wife in Cape Town; she was an invalid, unable
to rough it, unfit for work. She died from want. The money you robbed me
of would have saved her. Stand up and look at your crime and ask your
God to forgive you. I have nothing to do with forgiveness—only
punishment.” Musgrave, as he read the message, felt the physical nausea
that comes of pure, blank terror.

A crime committed is like a stone cast into a pool; the splash only
affects a certain space of the water, but the ripples reach who knows
where? Here was an innocent woman whom Musgrave had never seen, of whom
he had never heard, and he had killed her away back there twenty-four
years ago, and for twenty-four years he had lived unconscious of the
fact, and now the fact, which had been lurking tiger-like in his past,
had sprung forth to devour him.

The money he had stolen was the basis of his prosperity and fortune, and
the wife of Jan Keyser had died for want of that money.

He looked back and saw again the blue sky, the arid veldt and the blaze
of sunshine that formed the background of the tragedy.

There had been three of them. Murphy, Keyser and Henderson. They had
been prospecting for gold; they had been prospecting for three months
without finding a sign or indication of what they sought. It was in the
days long before the Boer War, before Jameson’s Raid, before
Johannesburg had fully developed. They had no money to speak of at
starting, but Murphy had influence at the Cape, and had they struck rich
ground he could have brought capital to bear on it. Murphy was their
main hope—after the gold—and he was their mainstay through their
disappointments, for he was an optimist, and an optimist on an
expedition of this sort is as essential as food and water.

One evening of a blazing September day they rode up to a farm on the
veldt to ask shelter for the night. The farmer, a heavy old Dutchman of
the Kruger type, who was sitting smoking his pipe on the stoep, gave
them welcome, called a Kaffir to take their horses, and ordered his wife
to prepare supper. Musgrave, as he sat on the edge of his bunk, could
visualize the whole scene and the scene after supper, when, sitting
smoking their pipes, the three gold prospectors had held a council as to
their future proceedings. He and Keyser, sick of the fruitless business,
declared their intention of throwing it up and pushing on to Harrisburg
next day, there to look for work. Murphy, the optimist, declared that he
would stick to business till he dropped in his tracks; and so it came
about that next morning at sun up Henderson and Keyser bade good-bye to
their companion, and turning their horses’ heads, made for Harrisburg,
which lay twenty-two miles away to the south-east, and which they
reached at about nine o’clock.

It was a small, tin-roofed, dusty town, boasting a general store, a post
office, and a drinking saloon. Keyser dismounted at the post office,
saying that there might be a letter for him, as a friend at the Cape who
owed him some money had promised, if possible, to send him a remittance
in a letter to be called for at Harrisburg. He went in—and Musgrave,
sitting on the edge of his bunk, could still feel the hot, dusty wind
blowing in his face as he sat that day waiting for his friend, and he
could still see Keyser’s jubilant face as he came out flourishing the
month-old letter in one hand and a sheaf of bank-notes in the other.
Seventy-five pounds there were. Seven ten-pound notes and a five-pound
note; and Musgrave could still taste the whisky they drank in the little
tin-roofed bar to celebrate the good luck; whisky worse than “Balloon
Juice,” worse than “Valley Tan,” worse than “Cape Smoke.” They carried a
bottle of this poison along with them, and Keyser, a most abstemious man
as a rule, under the influence of the drink grew jolly, then maudlin,
then quarrelsome.

He remembered how Keyser’s good luck had rankled in his soul like the
barb of a poisoned arrow; how the fight began he could not remember, but
he could very well remember Keyser lying on his back, and his own
ferocity, and how he had kicked the fallen one on the head and then
knelt beside him, feeling his heart, which had ceased—so he thought—to
beat. He could remember the flight to Cape Town with the seventy-five
pounds in his pocket, and the vision of the dead man behind him urging
him along. How he had cashed the notes, how he had taken his passage to
England as a steerage passenger under an assumed name, how with his
crime his luck had seemed to change, good fortune pouring on him for
twenty-four long years till now, a moment ago, when the whole hideous
tragedy had materialized itself and rushed upon him, threatening
destruction.

He was awakened from his dream by a sound. It was the luncheon bugle.

Should he go to the saloon—would he be there? It was not a full ship,
and though there were two berths in the cabin he had it to himself.
There was no necessity for him to go to the saloon; feigning
indisposition, he could have ordered the steward to bring his luncheon
to the cabin. Why torture himself by sitting at meals in the same place,
perhaps at the same table, with the man who, for him, was no longer a
man but Fate in a terrible shape?

Yet he had to go. The fascination that draws the bird to the serpent,
the fascination of the precipice that draws a man to the extreme edge
and will draw him over if he be not strong enough to resist it, the
motive that makes a man draw near to the worst of his fate, touch,
examine and measure it, drew him towards Jan Keyser with irresistible
power.

He tore up the scrap of paper, and climbing into the upper bunk, opened
the huge scuttle of the port. A burst of sea breeze entered; a few yards
below the heavy, lead-coloured sea was rushing astern as the ship tore
her way through it at twenty knots, and a few cable lengths away a
fishing-boat on the starboard tack and making for shore cut the leaden
background with her brown mainsail.

He thrust his hand out of the port with the scraps of paper in it,
opened it, and let them flutter away like white butterflies on the wind;
then he closed the scuttle and left the cabin.

The saloon of the _Triton_ was a huge apartment, big almost as the
dining-room of the “Savoy” or “Cecil,” and set out with numerous tables.
A steward led Musgrave to his place at a table near the door; at first
he could see nothing of Keyser, and then he made him out at a table on
the port side of the saloon.

He took his seat. There was only one other passenger at his table, a
stout, business-like individual, far too much engrossed with the menu to
bother about conversation, or notice the absence of mind and agitation
of his table companion.

Had Keyser looked in his direction, had he stared, had he even risen up
and denounced him before the other passengers, the situation would have
been, at all events, less uncanny; but Keyser, though he must have seen
Musgrave enter, never once looked in his direction.

Just as a schoolboy who has committed some grave offence tries to
imagine what punishment the stern and chilly-faced head master is about
to mete out to him, so Musgrave sat at table with his eye every now and
then wandering from his plate to the man he feared.

He left the table before the meal was over and returned to his
state-room; he got a book from his portmanteau and tried to read it.
Useless; the words had no interest, for, though he could hold the
threads of the sentences and the meaning of the writer, the thing seemed
written for people living in a world different from that in which he was
living—yet it had interested him yesterday.

Late in the afternoon he came on deck. The sea was still calm and the
boat deck was crowded, but there was no sign of Keyser; he came down on
to the main deck, he was not there; he wandered into the smoking-room,
men were there drinking and smoking and telling yarns, but Keyser was
not amongst them. He had vague ideas of going up to the man he had
wronged, asking for an interview and attempting an explanation; but had
he met Keyser face to face he would have slunk away without courage to
speak, and in his heart of hearts he knew this. What he really wanted
was to see and be close to the object of his terror. To be alone with
the thought of the Avenger was far, far worse than to be near him and to
have him in view.

When the bugle blew for dinner he went to the saloon and took his place
at the same table. Keyser was not there, but he presently came in and
went to the table as that he had occupied at luncheon, but he never
looked in the direction of Musgrave.

That night Musgrave could not sleep; he was kept awake not by fear, but
by a great idea. The ship stopped for a few hours at Las Palmas,
passengers would land to see the place; he would land with them, stop
ashore, and evade his fate, for he had in his mind as a certain fact
that at Cape Town his punishment would fall upon him, either in the form
of disgrace and imprisonment, or death at the hands of the man whom he
had wronged.

The idea of escape stilled his nerves like an opiate; he no longer
sought to be near Keyser, he went very little on deck, and took his
meals in his own cabin.

At nine o’clock of a beautiful morning the _Triton_ cast anchor off Las
Palmas; it was a five hours’ stop, for coal had to be taken on board,
and a number of passengers were landing. They were crowded round the
starboard gangway, the steps had been lowered, and the shore-boats were
waiting at the grating.

Musgrave was amongst the passengers waiting to go ashore. He would lose
all his luggage and forfeit his ticket, but that was nothing. He had
watched for Keyser and had seen no sign of him; escape seemed imminent,
and he was moving forward with the rest when a broad, serge-covered back
barred his passage. It was Keyser’s.

The back said as plainly as words, “You shall not leave this ship.” He
moved to one side, hoping to pass, but Keyser moved too. “You shall not
leave the ship.” No one heard the words, but to Musgrave they were
spoken clearly and emphatically. He dared not touch the man in front of
him or speak to him; he gave up, and with shaking legs and lips dry as
pumice-stone returned to his cabin, rang for the steward and ordered
brandy.

At two o’clock that afternoon the _Triton_ weighed anchor and started on
the long run to the Cape.

                     *      *      *      *      *

If Keyser had been planning his vengeance for a thousand years he could
scarcely have invented a more artistic or refined method of torture than
that which he was now using against Musgrave.

Musgrave was perfectly free, as far as the narrow boundaries of the ship
went; he was respected by his fellow-passengers as far as their
knowledge of him lay, and this very freedom and respect were the spice
of his torture. Around him were people happy and amused, playing deck
quoits, reading novels, making a holiday of the voyage, and he had to
mix with them and dine with them and answer them when they spoke to
him—he, a robber and a scoundrel, whose crime was ever before him, and
whose punishment, unknown but surely terrible, was awaiting him at the
end of the voyage.

After a few days his sufferings were noticeable in his face and manner.
He became the ghost of himself and moped about alone; at night,
sometimes, unable to sleep, he would open the scuttle of his port and,
lying in the upper bunk, look out at the sea rushing below. The
porthole, as is common now on all big liners, was very large—quite
large enough to let his body pass through—and the temptation often came
to him to slip out and leave Keyser and his troubles and the world for
ever behind him.

The ship was on a level with Bathurst, when one evening Keyser, who was
standing on the boat deck with his hand on the rail and a cigar in his
mouth, felt a touch on his arm and heard a voice.

“I, too, have got a wife,” said the voice. Keyser turned and looked into
the white face of the condemned man, then he turned again without
speaking and went on smoking as though he had heard and seen nothing.
That was the last straw for Musgrave, and it was on the next day at noon
that the inevitable happened. Keyser, who had a friend in the steerage,
was standing on the after-gratings talking to him—the ship was going at
twenty knots through a heavy sea.

Suddenly, from away forward on the bridge, sharp and thin like the call
of a gull came the cry:

“Man overboard!”

Keyser rushed to the port-rail. He was just in time to see Musgrave’s
pale face whirling away astern in the wash of the ship; a life-buoy had
been flung and Musgrave had clutched it and was clinging to it. Keyser
saw this, and next moment he had cast his coat and shoes off and was
overboard.

                     *      *      *      *      *

Musgrave, when he had thrown himself overboard, had reckoned without his
cowardice.

The well-flung life-buoy had fallen within his grasp, and he had grasped
it. With the sea hitting him in the face and the buoy twisting and
bucking and turning in his grasp, he saw the vast stern of the _Triton_
passing away from him; he saw a man spring over the rail and strike the
sea, and then he saw, as the waves lifted him, the head of a swimmer
making for him.

As the swimmer approached he saw his face. It was Keyser.

The ship, though the engines were reversed, was a full mile away, but
Musgrave had forgotten the ship, his eyes were fixed on the approaching
face of Keyser. Now the two men were in touch, and Keyser was resting a
hand on the buoy.

“You told me you had a wife,” sputtered Keyser, and his broad face
seemed beneficent to the half-drowned Musgrave. “For her sake I forgive
you—for her sake I am doing this.”

He gripped Musgrave by the collar, forced his head under the water, and
held it there in his powerful grip till all struggles ceased. Then,
letting the body slip away and sink, he clung to the buoy, waiting for
the boat which the _Triton_ had lowered.

                     *      *      *      *      *

At Cape Town, some ten days later, under a glorious sunset, the _Triton_
came into harbour. There was a meeting in the smoking-room that night
and the presentation of a cheque (for the purchase of a piece of silver)
to Jan Keyser, the hero of the voyage.

And the widow of Musgrave is still searching for the hero to thank him
for what he did; and the humorous thing in the tragic business is that
he deserves her thanks—in a way.


                             THE SATIN SHOE

I was staying at Grange-on-the-Sands when Sargenson came down for a day
to the little hotel. He did not know that I was there, and it was a
mutual and pleasant surprise when, coming into the hotel bar for a glass
of beer at eleven o’clock in the morning, I found him newly arrived and
seated on a high stool by the counter talking to the barmaid.

Let me say at once that the bar of the Crab Hotel is not as other bars
are. Pitch-pine panelled and frequented mostly by the sound of the sea,
an occasional visitor, and a few old longshoremen, fresh and innocent as
sea breezes, it is a bar that a bishop might enter without losing in
dignity or self-respect.

Miss Jenkins, the presiding deity, who was chatting with Sargenson when
I entered, was in keeping with her surroundings—a plain, healthy girl,
with an honest mind of her own, a pleasant word for everyone, a faithful
church-goer, and a serious student of the works of Mrs. Barclay and Mr.
Hocking.

I was somewhat surprised to see these two getting on so well together,
for Sargenson, as far as he had disclosed himself to me, was a man of
reserved disposition and of a severe habit of thought. Very wealthy,
unmarried, and without any business to worry him, he engaged himself in
none of those occupations pursued by the wealthy and the free. Horses,
motor-cars, golf courses and salmon rivers made no appeal to him. Chess
was one of his few pleasures, and anything with a problem in it had a
curious fascination for him. More especially if the problem had to do
with crime.

“Criminals set problems for honest men to unravel,” he said to me once.
“That is why criminals interest me. In themselves they are the most
uninteresting people in the world, simply because their motives are
always sordid. The most fascinatingly interesting murder problem has for
its core the low-down creature who, for the sake of gain, has committed
the murder.”

“How about murders for the sake of revenge?” I asked.

“There aren’t any,” he replied, “or if there are they rarely present a
problem. Revenge murders, at least in this country, are, I should say,
nearly always committed in hot blood. And hot blood leaves traces as
plain as the spoor of an elephant. But I said there aren’t any—I can’t
recall any murder for the sake of revenge committed within my
memory—that is to say, any murder of distinction. I know men have shot
one another and knifed one another, and servant-girls have put
rat-poison in their mistress’s food, but those little affairs do not
rank in my category of crimes worth considering.”

Sargenson was an admirer of Sherlock Holmes and a greater admirer still
of the Chevalier Dupin, and it chanced that on the following
morning—Wednesday—as we were walking along the beach discussing the
methods of the latter, Fate put into the hands of Sargenson the material
for an inquiry that would have delighted the heart of the Chevalier’s
inventor.

The fine weather of the day before and early morning had vanished,
giving place to a clouded sky and a blustering south-westerly wind with
a push in it that spoke of more weather behind. The sea had grown angry
and big, sheeting up over the desolate sands and showing white caps far
out, where all the visible traffic was a lone tramp steamer pounding
along down the channel and a pilot boat making up.

We had almost reached the limits of the sands, where the rocks cut out
sheer into the water, when something washing in on the waves caught my
eye—a dark spot on the spume, now drowned out, now appearing again.
Sargenson had noticed it too.

“Look,” said he, “it’s an old shoe, and, by Jove, there’s something tied
to it.” The next wave laid this offering of the sea fairly at our feet,
and a strange enough gift it was. An old red satin, high-heeled shoe,
connected and tied to a bundle of blue papers by a piece of red tape a
foot and a half long.

The tape was wound round the bundle of papers and formed a binding as
well as a connecting ligament.

Sargenson, with the crook of his stick, raised shoe and bundle and
carried them dripping to the rocks, where we sat down to contemplate our
find.

“Funny, isn’t it?” said he. “Where in the world can they have come
from?”

“Some ship, possibly,” I replied. “Take the tape off the bundle and see
what the papers are.”

He took a pen-knife from his pocket and carefully cut the tape where it
encircled the papers. They were sodden with water, and the outside
layers went to pulp under his fingers, without showing any stain,
however, of writing or printing ink. The inside papers, though damp,
held together. There were three of them of equal size, rough sheets of
blue-white paper which, when spread out, showed no sign of writing or
mark of any sort.

“This becomes interesting,” said Sargenson.

“There doesn’t seem to be any reason in it,” said I.

“That’s just why it’s interesting,” he replied. “There is a reason for
everything. Why should these extremely uninteresting and commonplace
pieces of paper have been so carefully tied up; why the shoe—why——”
He broke off, and whistling softly to himself, picked up the shoe.

It had been lined with white satin, but the dye had reached the lining,
turning it a pale pink; it had been considerably worn, and on the satin
of the inside, almost obliterated, was the maker’s name in gold letters,
“Morton—Birmingham.”

Sargenson spelled out the letters, and he was on the point of handing
the thing to me when, instead, he took up the open pocket-knife which he
had laid beside him on the rock, and carefully with the point of it
picked out something from the inside of the shoe, something that had
tucked itself in the crevice between the leather of the sole and the
side. It was a grain of rice, a grain of rice swollen by the sea water
and faintly pink with the dye of the outside satin.

“There’s another seemingly unreasonable thing,” said he. Then he
laughed, flicked the rice grain away, closed his pen-knife and put it in
his pocket.

I carried the shoe back with us to the hotel, leaving the papers and the
tape for the wind to play with, the irritating puzzle of the business
pursuing me.

“What woman,” said I, as we sat at dinner, “could have tied that rubbish
to her shoe and flung it into the water—and why?”

“Lord knows,” said he; “but it wasn’t a woman—at least, I don’t think
so.”

“Why?”

“Because those knots on the tape were a man’s. Women don’t tie knots
like that. Do you know, there seems to me something tragic about all
that. It may be fancy, but I’ve got a feeling that if we could open up
the reality of the business we would come on something more serious than
a cast-off shoe tied to a bundle of blank papers.”

“We never will,” I said.

“Possibly not,” he replied.

Sargenson left for town next day, and I saw nothing and heard nothing of
him again till one December evening, six months later, when he turned up
at my rooms in London.

It was nine o’clock, and I was sitting over the fire reading a book when
he was shown in.

He took the arm-chair opposite mine and lit a pipe, and after we had
talked for a while on indifferent matters he came to the real object of
his visit.

“By the way,” said he, “do you remember that shoe we picked up on the
beach at Grange-on-the-Sands?”

I had something to say relative to that shoe, but I held my peace, for I
guessed by his manner that he had some story to unfold.

“Yes,” said I, “I remember it. What about it?”

“You remember that I was very much interested in the business, more than
you were—well, all the way to London that shoe haunted me. That and the
bundle of papers and the length of red tape _and_ the grain of rice.
Well, so stupid are we that the idea of a wedding did not occur to me
till I reached Waterloo.”

“The idea of a wedding?”

“Rather, the idea of coupling the shoe with a wedding. They throw old
shoes and rice after newly-married people, and an old shoe thrown into a
carriage after a bride who has just received a shower of rice—do you
take me?”

“Might carry a grain of rice in it—yes, it’s possible—and the bride
might keep the shoe for luck.”

“Precisely. I kept figuring on that idea, as the Americans say, all day.
Then I set my imagination to work to discover in what possible manner
that shoe found itself in the sea, and you would laugh, perhaps, if you
knew the money and time I spent in working out the possibilities
involved in that problem. The result was the arrival at the most
possible solution. The thing was flotsam from a passing ship. The
currents run very strong on that part of the coast, and the set of the
current just there was quite enough to account for the carriage
shoreward of a small article dropped from a vessel passing up or down
channel. The shoe was then most probably dropped from a ship, and that
ship was most probably outward-bound.”

“Why outward-bound?”

“Well, the thing was to my mind the property of a newly-married woman.”

“I see, a newly-married woman leaving England on her honeymoon or
emigrating—you are a perfect Sherlock Holmes.”

“Don’t laugh—wait till you have heard the end. I determined, having
gone so far, to go further. You will remember that there was the name of
the maker on the inside of the shoe, ‘Morton—Birmingham.’ Now, that
might have been considered by some people a fine clue to the owner. I
disregard it at once. Morton’s I discovered to be a large general
stores; the shoe was old—the clue was worthless. I did not spend an
hour on it. Instead, I looked for a much more important thing—the
ship.”

“Good heavens! why, there are a thousand ships going up and down
channel,” said I.

“Oh, no, there aren’t, not at one particular time. It was Wednesday, the
third of June, that we found the thing, at nine o’clock in the morning.

“I was, then, hunting for a ship that passed Grange-on-the-Sands,
outward-bound, somewhere between midnight and nine o’clock on the
morning of June the third, and not a sailing ship or a tramp, but a
passenger ship. I employed a man to do this spade work for me; it took
him three days and it cost me five guineas. He brought me the only three
possible ships, and not only that, he brought me their passenger-lists.”

I could not but admire the persistency of this mole digging into the
darkness of the world’s affairs for the pure pleasure of the thing, but
I said nothing whilst he went on.

“There was a Japanese boat, the _Fuji Maru_, and there was a married
couple on its passenger-list, but they had a family, so they were ruled
out. There was a Union Castle intermediate boat, but it had scarcely any
passengers and no married couple. The reason it had so few passengers
was owing to the fact that it would call at Southampton, where most of
its passengers were due to join. There was also a Black Funnel liner.
She was full up, and in her passenger-list occurred the names of two
married couples. A Mr. and Mrs. Johnstone and a Mr. and Mrs. Fremling.

“I said to myself, that shoe belongs in all probability to Mrs.
Johnstone or Mrs. Fremling.

“The Black Funnel liner was named the _Glasgow_, bound for Cape Town and
Durban, and not due back for another nine or ten weeks. She was a swift
boat, almost as good as the mail, and she did not stop at Las Palmas or
Teneriffe like most African boats—she stopped at the Cape Verde
Islands.

“Now, all my trouble and inquiries had up to this led me nowhere, only,
that is to say, to a probability, or, to put it more correctly, to
something between a possibility and a probability.

“The thing had amused my mind, but honestly I was getting rather tired
of it, and the very sight of a woman’s shoe gave me indigestion. I went
for a trip to Paris, and then I went to Scotland, but I had left with my
spade man in London directions to ascertain the exact date of the
_Glasgow’s_ return, and to wire me when she was coming into port.

“This he did, and I came up to London, and two days later I managed it
so that the purser of the _Glasgow_ dined with me at the ‘Savoy.’

“The purser is the brains of a passenger ship, and Mr. Hitchin of the
_Glasgow_ was a very good representative of his class. A little man,
quick in the uptake and a bit reserved at first. My agent had told him
that I was a wealthy man; what other things he had said I don’t know,
beside the fact that I wanted to make inquiries as to Africa; but I do
know that when Hitchin met me in the lounge of the ‘Savoy’ he was
awkward and evidently not quite at ease, and that a cocktail at the
American bar scarcely thawed him. However, at dinner he became more
himself. Nothing inspires confidence so much as food; eating with
another man, you become more friendly than even drinking with him. I
expect the reason comes from undated ages when men only ate together who
were of the same tribe or family, or who were absolute and assured
friends.

“However that may be, when towards the close of the meal I told him that
I wanted to make inquiries not about Africa but about one of the
_Glasgow’s_ passengers on the last African trip, he did not shy at the
question.

“‘You had two married couples on the last voyage out,’ said I, ‘and I am
interested in one of them.’ I noticed that his face changed.

“‘Yes,’ said he; ‘is it by any chance Mr. and Mrs. Fremling you are
interested in? I suppose you saw it in the papers?’

“Now, when he said that, I experienced the most extraordinary thrill.
Could it be possible that my blind hunting after imaginary game was to
bear me to something in reality?

“‘About Mrs. Fremling?’ I asked.

“‘Yes,’ said he, ‘about Mrs. Fremling.’

“We had finished dinner by this, and it was in the lounge over coffee
and cigars that he told me the whole story.

“The _Glasgow_ had cleared the Thames and was making down channel; it
was one o’clock in the morning when Fremling appeared on deck saying
that his wife, who occupied the lower bunk in their cabin, was not in
her bunk and was nowhere to be found.

“The quartermaster on duty, the officers of the watch had seen nothing
of her. Mrs. Fremling, it seemed, was a sleep-walker according to her
husband’s account, and he feared that she might have come on deck and
fallen overboard.

“Now, all aft of the bridge and the alley-ways was darkness, and it
would have been quite possible for a person to come on deck unobserved.
Had they got on the after-gratings, there was nothing but the after-rail
to prevent them reaching the sea, and the after-rail was not an
insuperable obstacle. Leaving that aside, a person might climb over the
bulwark rails if walking in their sleep or determined on suicide.
However that might be, Mrs. Fremling had vanished, and her husband was
inconsolable.

“‘There was no suspicion of foul play?’ said I.

“‘Oh, no,’ said Hitchin, ‘why should there be? There was no cry or
struggle heard, and a man cannot pitch a woman overboard same as if she
was a bale of wool.’ He looked at me curiously.

“‘Why do you ask?’ he finished.

“‘I’ll be quite frank with you,’ said I, ‘and I will ask you to treat
what I say as confidential. I believe Fremling murdered his wife. Come,
I see you have something on your mind about him; out with it.’

“‘Well,’ said Hitchin, ‘it’s nothing much—only this. Mr. Fremling left
the ship at Cape Town; we went on to Durban, and we came back to Cape
Town, where we stayed a day and a half. Well, I found out by accident
that Fremling was staying at the “Mount Nelson,” and he had registered
there under the name of Mason.’

“‘Changed his name?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘You did nothing?’

“‘What could one do? My business is not to act as a detective, and I had
nothing to go on; a man may change his name for a dozen reasons.’

“‘Well,’ said I, ‘the fact remains, it is only one more fact in the
case, but for me it is the crowning one—by the way, what are the
portholes on the _Glasgow_ like?’

“He knew at once what I meant. Since the terrible fire in New York
Harbour, when people were slowly roasted alive with their heads
protruding through portholes too small to give exit to a grown person’s
body, ship-builders have altered and expanded their ideas in this
direction. The portholes of the _Glasgow_ were quite big enough to allow
the passage of an ordinary person’s body, and Hitchin said so.

“‘You think he threw her through the porthole?’ said he, ‘or rather,
forced her through?’

“‘That is the idea,’ I replied. ‘Killed her in some sort of way and then
pushed her out through the porthole. It would be quite safe; the splash
would be nothing in a ship under way, and a ship’s side at night is the
most unobserved blank wall in the world.’

“Hitchin pondered over this, and then he asked me straight out how I had
come into the business, and what I knew of the Fremlings.

“I told him the whole story of the finding of the shoe and the papers,
and how I had reasoned the thing out, basing my reasoning on the grain
of rice. He was considerably impressed, and I must own that I was
considerably impressed myself with my own astuteness, and also with the
feeling that Providence, or Justice, if you like the term better, had
used me as its instrument in the matter. For not only had I worked up
from absolute darkness to the fact of the tragedy, but I had brought
with me the suggestion based on material evidence that Fremling had
thrown some of his wife’s belongings overboard. Hitchin, reviewing all
the circumstances with me, agreed that the shoe and the papers _might_
not have been the property of the lost woman, but that, taking
everything into consideration, it was a million chances to one that they
were. Also, going over the matter soberly, we came to the conclusion
that, suggestive as all the evidence in the case might be, it was
legally useless at present. Also, I saw that Hitchin, much as he was
interested in the affair, had little stomach for prosecuting the matter.
He was a ship’s purser with his living to make, and a wife and family at
Hammersmith. He said so frankly, and I agreed to leave him out of the
business till such time as his evidence might be required. In return he
gave me a full and minute description of Fremling, _alias_ Mason, and we
parted company, he going off to Hammersmith and I returning to my rooms.

“Now, what I ought to have done was plain. I ought to have gone to New
Scotland Yard, sent to you for that shoe, and placed the whole matter in
the hands of trained detectives.”

“Ah,” said I, “if you had only done that—but go on.”

“What I did do,” went on Sargenson, “seems to me now a lunatic
proceeding, yet it was justified by results. I found that a Union Castle
boat was leaving for the Cape in two days, and I took my passage on
board her for Cape Town. Frankly, I went for pleasure as well as for
business, for I felt the need of a sea voyage. Fate was pursuing
Fremling as well as Justice, for it had cast the shoe of his wife into
the hands of an idle man with money enough to satisfy all his whims and
with an instinct for detective work, and it was just that feeling, the
feeling I had of Fate being at my shoulder, that gave me the push
necessary to carry the thing through.

“On the voyage I was engaged sometimes in speculating on the one
mysterious thing which will never be explained, perhaps—why those
papers were tied to the shoe, and why they were hove overboard. I came
to the only probable solution. Fremling had bundled out of the porthole
after his wife everything that might incriminate him; had made a rapid
search of her luggage flinging photographs, papers, and so forth over,
the shoe and the bundle of papers, tied together for some reason by Mrs.
Fremling, with the rest. I remembered the knots on the tape seemed to
have been tied by a man; all the same, I did not alter my opinion, which
was upheld by the fact that Fremling after his landing at Cape Town
changed his name, wishing, we may presume, to cut himself absolutely off
from his past.

“At Cape Town I began my hunt for the gentleman. I determined to meet
him, speak to him, ask him about his wife, and at the first sign of
hesitation on his part, the first evidence of guilt, go for him
bald-headed and accuse him right out and man to man. A dangerous thing
to do, but a thing to be done. I loathed him already, and I never knew
the hunting instinct was so deep in me till then.

“At Cape Town I found the man for my purpose—Lewis, the sharpest
detective in the world, I should think, and a man who knows Africa like
the inside of his own pockets. He told me I was a fool, and then he took
the commission and we started together on the grand hunt.

“We tracked Mason to Port Elizabeth, and then to Durban; from Durban we
followed his spoor to Bloemfontein, and there at an hotel we found him.
A medium sized man, very quiet in appearance, and nothing remarkable
about his face with the exception of the cheek-bones. His face just
there was flat and broad—noticeably so.

“It was on the verandah of the hotel that I tackled him. He was seated
in a basket arm-chair smoking a cigar and with a drink beside him. I
drew an arm-chair right up to his table and sat down and gave him
good-day, calling him by his name, Fremling.

“He knew at once that his hour had come, and he showed his knowledge by
his manner, still very quiet—the quiet of a man paralysed by the sudden
appearance of the long-expected and long-dreaded.

“I had no pity for him. I went right ahead.

“‘I have come from England,’ said I, ‘about that matter on board the
_Glasgow_. I have a friend here with me.’

“He looked up and saw Lewis.

“‘And,’ finished I, ‘we want the pleasure of your company back to
Durban.’

“‘Quite so,’ said he; ‘I don’t want any scene here. I know it’s all up.’

“He rose in a leisurely manner from his chair. Then, taking his fingers
from the pocket of his waistcoat, where they had been fumbling, he
clapped his hand to his mouth.

“Almost immediately he fell on the verandah floor in a fit, and he was
dead in five minutes.

“He had taken cyanide of potassium. Arrest, trial, verdict, death, all
came to him like a stroke of lightning.

“You remember that morning I said that I felt there was a tragedy behind
that shoe? Well, what do you think of it?”

I sat speechless for a moment, while Sargenson sat watching me,
evidently proud of himself and his deeds.

“But,” I said at last, “that shoe and those papers had nothing to do
with Mrs. Fremling—no more than I have.”

“I beg your pardon,” said he; “what is that you say?”

“That shoe and those papers were part of the properties of a
cinematograph company.”

“A cinematograph company?”

“Good heavens! yes, there was a photo play on the beach that morning at
seven—some rubbish—anyhow, part of the thing was the flinging away of
some documents into the sea by a woman. To make them sink, she tied her
shoe to them with a stone in the shoe. When you had gone that day I
mentioned the finding of the shoe to Miss Jenkins, the barmaid. She had
been down watching the show, and she explained the whole business with
the exception of the rice grain, which may have had a dozen possible
origins.”

“Good God!” said Sargenson.

He was silent for a moment. Then he said:

“So I was following a wrong scent all the time?”

“You were.”

“And yet it led me to the murderer just as truly as if it had been in
connection with him.”

“That is so, if you are sure that Fremling murdered his wife.”

“Why, he confessed it—you would have no doubt at all about _that_ if
you had seen his end. Tell me, is this thing the long arm of
Coincidence—or Justice, or what?”

“Well,” said I, “as far as I can see, it’s the long arm of Providence,
for if you had done what people call the sensible thing, and placed the
matter in the hands of Scotland Yard, they would either have turned the
affair down or inquired into it. They would have come to me for the
shoe, heard the truth, laughed at you, and Fremling would have escaped.”

He agreed with me, and, as far as I can make out, from that day he has
observed a humbler frame of mind with regard to those things which are
eternally confronting human Reason—and confounding it.


                        THE VALLEY OF THE SWORD

I had not seen Twisden for six years, and then I met him in the lift of
an hotel in London. He was going up to his bedroom, and I was going up
to mine. The mutual recognition drove sleepiness away, and we decided to
come down again to the palm court and have a cigar and a talk.

The last time I met him he had just returned from the Rift Country,
where he had been prospecting for gold. To-night he had just returned
from Iceland, where he had been prospecting for metals in general and
having a look at the disused sulphur mines at Krisuvik.

“I reached there by the first boat to arrive in April,” said he, “and I
was there till the thirtieth of June—that’s a week ago. The sulphur
mines are useless—the transport is too costly—there’s no gold, there’s
no silver that I could find, but there’s something better than gold to
be found in Iceland.”

“Diamonds?”

“Better than diamonds—radium.”

“You have found radium?”

“My dear man,” said Twisden, “I have located a patch of pitchblende,
which, as you know, is oxide of uranium, and it’s not more than one
quarter the area of this palm court of the hotel, but it is simply
living with radium. It is the richest radium deposit on this earth, and
I’ve come back to London to get the money to work it and pay the
Icelandic Government for the mining rights. Now, what do you say? I do
not want to get the ordinary financiers into this business. You are a
man with money. Will you put up the money to work this thing, and go
half shares in the profit?”

I did not reply for a moment. I had absolute confidence in Twisden’s
integrity, and I knew him to be an expert in his business. But I knew
also that he was a most terribly unlucky man. His bad luck was
fantastic. Yet, strange to say, this man who could never make money for
himself was always making money for other people. He was one of the
foremost men on the Klondyke business, and all he got out of it was a
frost-bitten finger, and he even lost that, for it had to be amputated.
He was the discoverer of the New Potosi Mine in Mexico, and a flaw in
his contract with the Government left him out in the cold. I could give
you other instances, but those are enough. Yet he was a brave man and a
straight man, and I liked him, and I am a bit of a speculator, and, in
short, I said “Yes.”

We fixed the whole thing up that night, and a week later we were both on
board the _Botnia_, the mid-July boat for Iceland, steaming out of Leith
Harbour.

All my female relatives had given me mascots, and Twisden had been
presented with a Billikin by some friend—he had no relatives. There was
a black cat on the _Botnia_, and we sailed on the fifteenth, which was
my lucky day. The omens were with us.

“I believe in luck and signs,” said Twisden, “but if all the signs were
set dead against us it would not matter. Iceland can’t run away or sink
into the sea, and nothing else could stop us. Say, what shall we call
the mine—something with both our names in it?”

“Let’s wait till everything is finished,” I replied. “There is no use in
naming a child before it is born.”

We were passing through the Pentland Firth when this conversation took
place, and northward of us lay the Old Man of Hoy, the sinister rock
that has seen so many wrecks. To westward lay the sunset of fine
weather—weather that held in an almost glacial calm till, on the
evening of the fourth day of the voyage, Twisden led me by the arm right
to the bow of the _Botnia_ and pointed to the west-nor’-west, where,
vaguely stretching itself like a grey pavilion on the sky, stood Vatna
Jokul, the great ice dome that stretches from Tugnafells to the
Hornafyordur on the Eastern Sea.

“That’s Iceland,” said Twisden.

It was Iceland indeed, and, even without the view of Vatna Jokul, the
land would have told of its presence by the birds.

Coveys of red-billed puffins were paddling on the glassy swell, all
diving like one bird at the approach of the ship; great gannets were
hovering and fishing, falling like stones into the water and sending the
spray yards high; a white tern or two, graceful as swallows, came
flitting about us as if to inspect the ship, and a burgomaster gull came
sailing across our bows, stern and fierce, a true predatory gull, pirate
and overlord of the air.

But all these were nothing to the guillemots that greeted us next
morning when we anchored to discharge mails and passengers at the
Westmann Islands. They lined the cliffs by the thousand, and the storm
of their voices followed us as we put out, steaming by the southern
coast for Reykjavik, that coast where there is not a tree, or sign of a
house or habitation, where the mountains stand in their desolation as
they stood a million years ago, and where no movement breaks the
stillness, with the exception of here and there a wind-blown plume of
smoke rising from a boiling spring.

It was eleven at night when we cast anchor in the Faxa Fiord, with
Reykjavik a biscuit-throw to port, and to starboard the fifty-mile-broad
bay with Snaefel at its northern horn, the very same Snaefel down whose
crater Jules Verne led his party on their expedition to the centre of
the earth.

It was still broad daylight, and we landed in one of the shore-boats
that surrounded the ship, and made straight for Zoega’s Hotel.

I could scarcely believe that I had left London only five days ago.
Here, walking up the street of corrugated iron houses, with its
background of volcanic hills and the light of afternoon still lingering
over everything, as though the sun had forgotten to sink, I seemed a
million miles from London and civilization and the whole world I knew.

“Did you notice the first man who came aboard the ship?” asked Twisden,
as we tramped along through the street, crowded as though it were
midday, for the whole population had turned out to welcome the _Botnia_.

“No,” I replied. “What about him?”

“He had a squint.”

I knew how superstitious Twisden was, and, as I knew superstitious
people, I was quite aware that it was useless to talk of common-sense.
Besides, my attention was distracted by a dramatic incident. Dismounting
from a pony at Zoega’s Hotel was a man whom Twisden pronounced to be
Kellerman, a rival prospector, who had been in Iceland ever since
May-end, and who had declared to Twisden his intention of leaving by the
next boat after Twisden’s. Instead of leaving, he had stayed on, and he
had just now returned from a prospecting trip, to judge by the number of
ponies that were unloading tents and equipment.

“And he has my guide,” said Twisden. “I see it all. I have been given
away. This chap has got word of the radium from the guide. I never said
the word radium, but the guide would have known that I wasn’t hunting
for mushrooms, and he’d have known from my face, and from all the time I
was pottering about there, that I’d found something. Well, he hasn’t
done me yet. If I can get first in the morning to the Government man who
has the mining lands under control, I’ll do _him_. Come right back to
the Reykjavik Hotel; we’ll stay there instead of at Zoega’s, and so we
will avoid him.”

We turned in our tracks and went to the Reykjavik Hotel. It was now
nearly midnight, but the extraordinary town of tin houses was still
filled with daylight. People were walking in the public square, where
the little stone Parliament House is, and the statue to Thorwaldsen, who
was an Icelander. We could not sleep, and, though we had been travelling
since dawn, we did not feel a bit tired. You never feel tired in
Iceland. We talked and talked and smoked. Lying in that bare
double-bedded room, we talked of radium, its value and its wonders, but
mostly of its value. Then we talked of what we would do with our great
wealth when we got it. Twisden said, whatever else he did, he would
build a Radium Institute. I, less philanthropic, declared for a steam
yacht, an ocean-going boat built on the lines of Drexel’s _La
Margharita_; and we discussed all the steam yachts we knew till a man in
the next room hammered on the wall with a boot-heel.

We were up at six and out at seven. There was no sign of Kellerman
anywhere. At eight we were in the Government office that deals with
lands and mining leases, and at half-past eight Twisden had in his
possession a document giving him the right to search for and to mine for
minerals in the Valley of the Sword—that was the Icelandic name for the
location—a lease that held good for thirty-three years under a
Government tax on all minerals and deposits found and exported. We would
not have got the lease so quick only that Twisden, before coming to
London, had put the thing in train. The Minister for Iceland was a
friend of his, and a friend at Court like this greases the bureaucratic
wheels wonderfully.

As we left the Mines Office, whom should we meet but Kellerman. I never
saw a man so taken aback as Kellerman was when he saw Twisden.

“So you are here,” said Kellerman. “I thought you had gone for good.”

“So I did—for the good of my pocket,” replied Twisden.

Then he explained. He rubbed it in beautifully, and the stolid German
stood like a sheep being scrubbed with sheep dip, not liking it,
perhaps, but unprotesting.

“Ah, then, you are a lucky man,” said Kellerman. “And where is this so
rich radium deposit, if it is not asking you too rude a question?”

“In the Valley of the Sword, beyond Thingvellir,” replied Twisden,
giving the name in Icelandic.

“I have been there only three days ago,” said Kellerman, “but I did not
see any indication of what you say.”

“Did you look in the dead centre of the valley?” asked Twisden.

“No,” replied Kellerman, “I did not.”

“If you had, you would have found what I did. Well, there it is. I’ve
got the mining rights and the Government lease and permit, stamped, in
my pocket. Keep your eye on the money columns of _The Borsen Courier_
next month, Kellerman, and see the price the shares stand at.”

“Assuredly I will. What is the name of your mine?”

“We haven’t named it yet,” said Twisden. “What would you suggest?”

“Something local,” replied the German. “A thing that will have mostly a
local interest should have a local name—the Reykjavik Mine, or, better
still, the Geyser Mine.”

“Geyser will do,” said Twisden; “and as for only local interest, you
watch _The Borsen Courier_ and see.” “Confound him and his local
interest!” said Twisden, as we went off to breakfast. “He’d give his
left hand to have a share in the thing. I’ve never seen a man madder
under the surface, though he kept his temper—I will say that for him.”

That day, at eleven o’clock, we started with twelve ponies, a native
guide named Olsen, scientific apparatus, picks, tents, and provisions
for a fortnight. We were going to make a preliminary survey of our
property, and we had instructed M. Helgi Zoega, that kind-hearted friend
of travellers, to have all preparations ready to send a large staff of
workers when we should telephone for them.

We crossed the Elethaár River and took the road by the boiling springs,
where the town’s washing is done with hot water provided by Nature free
of expense. Up, up we went till we reached that tremendous plateau which
stretches from the confines of Reykjavik to the sheer drop where begins
the great plain of Thingvellir. The road is the most desolate I have
ever seen. It is the only road in Iceland—all other ways are
bridle-tracks. Cairns border it, to give the traveller direction in the
snows of winter, and the great Icelandic ravens perch on the cairns like
evil spirits on the heads of men who have been turned to stone by
enchantment. There is no sound but that of the wind and the cry of the
whimbrel, that most musical and desolate of all bird cries.

Towards evening, Twisden, who was riding beside me, and who had been
silent for some time, broke out.

“I’ve been wondering,” said he, “if Kellerman by any means has got the
cinch on us.”

“What makes you think of that?”

“I don’t know. Seems to me he took the thing too coolly. Of course, he’s
a German.”

“Why, my dear man,” said I, “that’s nothing. Germans have the name for
being phlegmatic, but they are really the most emotional people on
earth. But how could he have got the better of us? You have the papers
giving us our rights in your pocket.”

“I know; but there are so many dodges in this mining business, and I
_know_ Kellerman is one of the shiftiest chaps that ever put pick to
earth or pen to prospectus. It seems to me that calm of his was unholy,
for I’m sure he’s been after this job himself. He had my guide. What I’m
thinking of is this: if I have made any flaw in the business, or
mistaken the name of the valley, he’ll have us, sure.”

“How could you have mistaken the name?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Only this—I had the name from the guide, and I have
my doubts about him. I may be wrong. But the fact is, he was with
Kellerman after I left, and I believe he led Kellerman to the place.
There are two valleys lying side by side, separated by a great cliff of
basalt. Mine—the Valley of the Sword—is the most eastern of the two.
Now, if that guide lied about the name, and if my valley is, let’s say,
the Valley of the Scabbard, and the other is the Valley of the Sword,
we’re done.”

“Don’t let’s think of it,” said I; “there’s no use making trouble.
Olsen, the man with us, is to be trusted, and he’ll soon tell us the
truth when he sees the place.”

“Ay,” said Twisden, “he’s to be trusted, right enough.” And we left it
at that.

We descended by the road over the River Oxara to the plain of
Thingveller, a large lava field ringed with mountains, a veritable
amphitheatre, just as it was when the Icelandic heroes fought together
there in the days of Burnt Njal. In the centre of the plain there is a
summer hotel made of corrugated iron and matchboarding. Here we put up
for the night, starting again early the next morning on the road that
leads to the great geyser. We pursued the road, or, rather, track, for
some four miles; then, led by the guide, we struck off to the right and
into a scene of the most tremendous desolation I have ever witnessed. It
was a fine day and hot. The great walls of basalt lining the valleys we
passed through cut the sky with their battlements; one could have sworn
that they were fortifications built by man, for there were towers of
basalt, over which the ravens fluttered like black flags, and the splits
in the stone, running vertically and longitudinally, were so evenly
placed that the stones seemed to have been laid by hand.

The evil spirit of these valleys lay in the mirage. The heated air shook
so that hounds seemed racing along the basaltic ledges, and the far-off
mountains seemed in undular motion.

When the path reached an eminence, Iceland could be seen, far and wide,
a tempest of basalt, crags, hills, highlands, all sweeping toward the
vast and presidential heights of Vatna Jokul, and showing, amidst their
far-off confusion, the snow-tipped cone of Heckla.

Towards evening Twisden, who had been silent for some miles, suddenly
became talkative and animated.

“We are nearly there now,” said he. “When we reach that hill top, half a
mile away, we’ll have the place right at our feet.”

His manner from depression had changed to gaiety—he was flushed and
excited. Half-way up the hillslope we left the ponies to Olsen, and
raced each other to the top.

There beneath us lay a narrow, mournful valley, and Olsen, who had just
joined us, put our doubts to rest at once. The other guide had not lied
to Twisden—the name was right.

“And there in the centre is where the mine is,” said Twisden. “Yet the
ground looks yellower there than it was. Good Heavens, can that scamp
Kellerman have done anything to it?”

As if in answer came a sound, faint and muffled, like the sound of a
gong beaten in a cave, and away down there, in the quiet light of
evening, a white plume slowly rose from the place where the radium
location had been, stood stiff in the windless air for a minute and a
half, and then sank and vanished. It was a geyser.

When, an hour later, we reached the spot where the pitchblende deposit
had been, there was nothing but yellow mud, in the midst of which the
geyser was playing again. Volcanic action had, since Twisden’s location
of the place, swallowed again the radium deposit born of volcanic
action, but I wish it had not left that geyser.

“That’s what Kellerman meant when he told us to call it the Geyser
Mine,” said Twisden. “Look at it! You’d swear it was mocking us. A
million of money gone, and a geyser in its place! Well, Olsen, do you
call that bad or good luck?”

“Neither,” replied the guide, whose face wore the sorrowful look
peculiar to his countrymen. “Neither good nor bad luck—it’s only
Iceland.”


                            THE “CORMORANT”


                                   I

The schooner _Cormorant_ was a free-lance of the Pacific, and she looked
it. She had been built at Sydney in the days when sandal-wood trading
was at its last gasp, and copra was coming to its own. She had carried a
cargo of sandal-wood, and she had been used in the copra trade, these
honest jobs falling to her in her virtuous youth; then she had broken
away from the narrow path, and had left honest trading. Labour
recruiting, opium smuggling, gun-running, pearl-poaching, all these had
formed chapters in her unwritten history; she had unloaded rifles for
revolutionaries in the blue waters off Valdivia, filled up with forced
labour in palm-shadowed lagoons, and run from the Bonins with a Japanese
gunboat in pursuit, firing practice shells over her and round her,
saving herself by running into the arms of a white Pacific fog.

Ships, like men, have characters and personalities; there are wicked
ships and good ships, and mediocre. Clever and stupid ships, and sheer
brutes, neither to hold nor to bind if they drag their anchors, nor to
reason with coming into dock.

There are also lucky and unlucky ships.

The _Cormorant_ was an unlucky ship. Lucky for herself, inasmuch as she
had always managed to save her skin; unlucky for her owners and
captains. Two had been drowned, and one had been killed on her deck by a
spear down in the Solomons. She had got a name, and, being now pretty
old and abused by the sea and scrimpy owners, with dry rot rampant, and,
to use the expression of one of the ’Frisco pilots, “all rats and
roaches,” Kitchin, her present possessor, had got her dirt-cheap.
Filling her up with a cargo of dirt-cheap trade, he had come down to the
Marshalls and done a good stroke of business, selling his stuff for cash
on the nail to a Belgian firm, after which he had set a course for the
Solomons, with an eye to recruiting.

Kitchin had started life as a sailor man; had left the sea for dock-side
courses, swindled his way into possession of a low public-house,
prospered in the triple capacity of crimp, publican, and unlicensed
pawnbroker, and now had taken to the sea again as captain and owner of
the _Cormorant_, with a fat balance in the Bank of California, and a
half-caste wife looking after the public-house business in Tallis
Street, down near the China Docks, in ’Frisco. A most unlovely record,
yet the strange thing was that the man had parts of a sort, being
self-educated, speaking fairly correct English, unaddicted to drink or
tobacco, and with little trace of the dock-side or the sea about him. He
was stoutish, wore side-whiskers, and possessed a bland manner that,
blending with his other external attributes, gave him the air of a
trustable and fatherly man.

He inspired confidence in the minds of illiterate and simple people,
and, as those were the people he had chiefly to do with, this power was
for him a big asset.

The _Cormorant_, when she had reached the latitude of New Ireland, had
been blown out of her course by a storm that swept the Pacific from
Mindanao to Fanning Island. She was now north-west of the Ellice Group,
steering a westerly course on a sea sapphire blue, breeze blown, and
heaving to a far-spaced and slumbrous swell.

Kitchin was on deck. It was noon, and he had been taking the sun. Jewel,
first, second, and third mate in one, was standing by the steersman, a
coffee-coloured Kanaka, with old scars caused by ringworm on his arms
and breast; McKay, the second mate, had stayed behind at the Marshalls,
preferring freedom and his chance on the beach to the _Cormorant_,
Kitchin, Jewel, and the cockroaches—especially to Jewel, a red-headed
runt, to use McKay’s description of him, which somehow fitted.

The captain was about to turn down below to work out his position, when
a thin cry, like the cry of a sea-gull, came from forward. It was the
Kanaka look-out, who had sighted land.

“It’s one of them islands dotted about hereaway,” said Jewel, going
forward with Kitchin. “Some of them ain’t marked on the chart neither.
That’s it.” He was shading his eyes. “You see that glitter in the pale
of the sky—that’s it—one of them ring islands, and not a tree-top
showing.”

The captain called for one of the Kanakas to bring his glass, and then
he climbed with it into the rigging.

“It’s maybe twenty miles off,” said he, coming down. “Keep her head to
it; we’ll maybe drop in and pick up some fruit if it’s a likely place.”

He went below, and the mate, having given directions to the steersman,
lit a pipe, and, leaning against the weather-rail, fixed his eyes on the
great, sun-smitten, honey-coloured trapezium of the mainsail.

The sunlight came through it as it bellied to the breeze, marking
vaguely the reef-point shadows, and the curving lines of the stitching.
There are few things finer to look at than a clean, new, well-made sail,
filled with the wind and touched by the sun, but Jewel had little
thought for the beauty of the thing; his mind was far away. He had a
small share in the takings of the _Cormorant_, and he was speculating on
the Solomons, and the chance of finding labour there.

The _Cormorant_ was making seven knots, and in an hour or so the island
had lifted, showing through the glass the palm tree tops, like beads
strung on the sea-line.

It was an atoll island, just a ring of coral enclosing a lagoon, and
unmarked on the old, out-of-date charts of the _Cormorant_.

“It’s not much of a place,” said Kitchin, “but good enough to put in.
It’s ten to one uninhabited, and so we’ll get all the fruit we want for
nothing. We can do with some bananas.”

“Sure,” replied Jewel, “anything comes in handy one can get for nothing.
Besides, one never knows what pickings is to be found in out-of-the-way
places off trade tracks. I’ve heard of chaps pickin’ up shell lagoons
and guano islands worth a fortune, and lyin’ there only waitin’ to be
took. You see, a lot of these out-o’-the-way islands aren’t visited
except by whalers, and whalers hasn’t eyes for anythin’ but whales.”

“I reckon there’s not much to be got in the Pacific nowadays by picking
up,” said Kitchin. “The missionaries come poking round most places, and
they have a keen eye for what’s to be got. What between them and these
Admiralty surveys, and chaps hunting for copra wherever there’s more
than a dozen palm trees, the place is fairly skinned.”

“That’s so,” assented Jewel.

In another hour they were well up to the island. From out here there was
little to see but the white beach and sheeting foam of the encircling
reef, and the break in the reef showing a glimpse of the calm mirror of
the lagoon.

“This breeze will take us right in,” said Kitchin, “and there’s no fear
of reefs. The tide scouring always gives a good channel at the opening.”

The _Cormorant_ heaved to the sea at the break, and then came in
swimming like a swan across the calm lagoon.

It was like coming into a great, voiceless, deserted harbour, a harbour
a mile and a half wide, bounded on all sides by the white inner beach of
the reef and the green of foliage, artu, bread-fruit, pandanus,
mammee-apple, all shaken over by the breeze-swept cocoanut palms.

To the right of the entrance, and about a mile from it, appeared a frame
house with a flagstaff to one side of it, and on the other some native
huts thatched with palm-leaves, the whole forming a little colony
half-bowered in trees.

“They’ve seen us,” said Jewel, “whoever they are. Look, there goes their
flag!”

A black ball was climbing to the truck of the flagstaff; it broke out
into the French flag. The _Cormorant_ showed the Stars and Stripes, and
altered her course slightly. Under reduced sail, she came swimming
gently over the clear, emerald-green water, that showed the coral and
sand spaces of the lagoon floor as if seen through glass.

In five-fathom water, and a quarter of a mile, or less, from the shore,
the anchor was let go, and the rumble-tumble of the chain through the
hawse-pipe came back in faint echoes from the groves. Kitchin ordered a
boat to be lowered, and, getting into it, and leaving Jewel in charge,
he started for the beach, where half a dozen natives were standing,
amongst whom could be seen the figures of a man dressed in white
clothes, and a girl, also dressed in white and wearing a broad-brimmed
hat—a panama, Kitchin judged. He was very much interested by these
figures—the very last he expected to meet with in this desolate spot;
and when the boat was run up, and he jumped out on the hard white sand,
his interest was turned into a sort of mild amazement at the beauty of
the girl, the refinement of her dress, and the fact that the man, young,
well-looking, and dressed in white flannels, was a gentleman—a nob!

“I’d have come out in a canoe to meet you, only I saw the boat being
lowered,” said the young fellow, after he had greeted the new-comer. “My
name is Markham. I was wrecked here three years ago, and have been here
ever since. This is Mademoiselle Levasseur, the daughter of Captain
Levasseur, who owns this island. Captain Levasseur is very ill. Do you
know anything about doctoring, by any chance?”

“Well, I know a little,” said Kitchin. “Ought to, seeing I’ve used the
sea for thirty years, and more. Ill, is he? Sorry to hear that. Nothing
infectious, I hope?”

“Oh, dear me, no!” replied the young fellow. “It’s chest trouble.” He
took Kitchin aside and walked him along the sea edge, beyond earshot of
the girl. “It’s consumption, and I don’t believe there’s the least thing
to be done for him. All the same, your coming is a blessing. You know
how hard it is to see a person die without any medical help, and I want
you—if you’ll excuse me for saying it—to make out that you are better
at the medical business even than you are. It’s for the girl’s sake I
say this. Then, there’s another thing. We have been on the look-out for
a ship. Very few ships touch here, just a whaler now and then; but
Levasseur, feeling himself in a bad way, has been wanting to settle up
his affairs. He is a rich man, and he has made a will disposing of his
property, but he has no one to witness it. There’s no one here but
Kanakas.”

“How about you?” said Kitchin.

“The bother is, he wants to leave me a bequest. I don’t want it, but
there you are. I will be quite frank with you. I am to be married to
Miss Levasseur, and we are each to share equally in the captain’s
property. He has been a father to me since I was tossed ashore here. I
have worked for him—worked for him hard—I will say that.”

Markham broke off and was silent for a moment. The sound of the surf
came from the reef, and the crying of gulls from the lagoon mixed with
the rippling of the little waves on the sand, wavelets scarcely three
inches high and each crystal bright as a jewel.

“What was the work?” said Kitchin.

“Pearling and shell. We have a schooner, the _Tarpon_; it comes twice a
year for shell. It’s not due for a month and a half yet. The captain has
been at this lagoon now for six years. It’s pretty well done, and he has
cleared a lot of money out of it. It was very rich in pearls.”

“And what did he do with the pearls, if I may ask?”

“Oh, he sent a lot to Sydney, but we have the takings of the last two
and a half years here now.”

“You must have handled a lot of labour.”

“We have thirty men and their womenfolk, quite a little colony; and when
I leave here and bid good-bye to the island, the place will be theirs.”

They were walking back now along the sands towards the house.

“Well,” said Kitchin, “he’s been a pretty lucky chap, the captain, in
striking a place like this and working it so well without interference.”

“Oh, there was no one to interfere with him,” replied Markham. “When he
came here first, he found the place inhabited, and he bought the
pearling rights from the chief.”

“Paid him a stick of tobacco, I suppose?” laughed Kitchin.

“I don’t know what he paid him,” replied Markham, rather stiffly, “but
of this I am sure, he didn’t swindle him.”

“No offence meant,” replied the other. “I wasn’t thinking of swindling,
which is not in my line, but it’s just this: a stick of tobacco is more
use to a Kanaka than a hat full of pearls, and if you can buy the one
for the other, it’s not swindling; it’s just trade.”

“Maybe,” said Markham. “Well, shall we go in and see the captain?”

Kitchin assented, and they turned to the house. Mademoiselle Levasseur
had disappeared, and the knot of natives had dispersed, leaving only one
or two before the house door.

Markham did not live in the captain’s house; he had a shack of his own
on the borders of the bread-fruit grove to the right, and he pointed it
out to Kitchin as they drew near the door. Then, before lifting the
latch, the young man turned to the new-comer.

“I forgot to tell you,” said he, “the captain is not like other men in
some respects. He is subject, sometimes, to the outbreak of the most
terrific temper. I’m not easily frightened, but, by Jove, he has
frightened me once or twice. It’s more like a tropical storm than a
man’s temper. If I see any sign of it coming on, I’ll give you a hint.”

“Right,” said Kitchin. “I’m not afraid of his temper,” and they entered.

The house was simplicity itself; two bedrooms on the upper floor, and
one large living-room on the lower floor. Levasseur, fully dressed, was
lying on a couch in the living-room, a man with a strong aquiline face
of the type that the Roman Consuls left as a legacy to the Latin races,
a fine-looking man, but terribly wasted, and most evidently in the last
stage of consumption.

All the man’s vitality seemed concentrated in his eye, an eye dark yet
luminous, fixed now on the new-comer, whom Markham was introducing.

“You cannot do me any good,” said Captain Levasseur, speaking with
scarcely a trace of the French accent. “Nothing will do me any good. I
am dying, and I do not want to waste any time. It was lucky your
schooner touched here at this moment, and one may trace the hand of
Providence. I am a believer in Providence; are you, monsieur?”

“Lord, yes,” said Kitchin, somewhat taken aback at this unexpected
question. “I’m a Baptist—but now, as to this complaint of yours.”

Levasseur did not seem to hear him.

“I have seen the evil of men dying without having made an arrangement of
their property, but, fool that I was, I did not draw up my will when my
schooner was here on her last visit. Then I felt myself so well in
health that I reckoned, as strong men do, to live for ever. In two
months my malady took this acute form—and now you see me. George, fetch
me that paper.”

Markham went to a press bureau without lock or key, opened it, and took
from it a paper. Kitchin, watching him, saw amongst the other things in
the bureau two tin cash-boxes.

“This is my will,” said Levasseur, taking the paper from Markham. “It
only waits to be signed—but I require two witnesses.”

Markham clapped his hand to his forehead.

“I never thought of that,” said he.

“Well,” said Kitchin, “that’s easily settled. If you take the boat over
to the schooner, you can fetch Mr. Jewel, my first officer; he’ll come,
and welcome.”

Levasseur thanked him, and Markham started off. In half an hour or less
he returned, accompanied by Jewel; the will was signed and witnessed,
and Levasseur with a sigh of relief handed it to Markham.

“That is yours,” said he. “Keep it in your possession. It is yours and
Celestine’s. Captain Kitchin, you have my thanks.” He drew a valuable
ring from his finger. “And this small token of my esteem, if you will
accept it? Medicine? Oh, no, you have given me the only medicine I
require—pray take all you will from the island in the way of fruit or
provisions, we are well stocked; and now I think I will sleep a little.”
He held his hand out to Kitchin and the mate, turned on his side, and
closed his eyes.

When Kitchin and Jewel got back to the schooner with a boat-load of
fruit, the captain of the _Cormorant_ took the mate to the after-rail. A
shark was hanging about the stern of the schooner on the look-out for
scraps, and Kitchin, after watching the creature for a moment, broke
silence:

“There’s forty thousand dollars’ worth of pearls in that chap’s bureau,”
said he, “in two tin cash-boxes a child could lift. He told me all about
them when we were talking together, and you were being fetched.”

“Forty thousand dollars’ worth?” said Jewel.

“Forty thousand,” replied the captain.


                                   II

An hour later, having finished tea, Kitchin and his companion came on
deck. In the evening light the lagoon and inner beach looked more
beautiful than a picture; away across the water the French flag still
fluttered to the breeze, but it was no longer at the truck, it was
half-masted.

“He’s croaked,” said Jewel.

“Seems so,” replied Kitchin.

Then the two began to talk.

“The wind has shifted a bit,” said Jewel; “right fair for our getting
out; it seems like Providence, don’t it?”

“That chap asked me did I believe in Providence?” said Kitchin. “And I
told him I did. Well, if we pull this thing off, I’m going to clear from
’Frisco; there’ll be lots of time before these mugs can do anything. I’m
getting fed up with ’Frisco, and trade’s not what it was. I’ll sell
everything, and Captain Smith, of Macassar, will be my name and station.
I’ve got a liking for Macassar. There’s trade to be done that way.”

“How about that woman of yours?”

“I reckon she’ll stay in ’Frisco.”

“The only fly in my unction is the weather,” said Jewel. “There’s a big
change coming; the glass has fallen a big jump.”

“God bless you,” said Kitchin, “if we get off to-night with whole skins,
you needn’t bother about the weather! That chap Markham is sure to be
armed, and you know what those Kanakas are when they’re up.”

“You’ve got your six-shooter?” said Jewel.

“I have, but I want no shooting,” replied Kitchin. “If you and I slide
ashore in the dinghy, and I go up to the house, why, it’s a friendly
visit. If the girl’s not sitting keeping watch by the body, who’s to
know? Of course, they may become suddenly mistrusting and get a hiding
fit on—tuck the stuff away somewhere for safety—but I don’t think so.
They’re the trustingest lot I’ve ever struck outside the shareholders of
a boob and boodle company. Not that I’d take advantage of them in
ordinary ways. But this isn’t so. What right have they to those pearls?
They’ve picked this lagoon same as if it was a pocket. I’d take my oath
that if they were put in a witness-box they couldn’t substantiate their
claim. Old Levasseur diddled the Kanakas into selling him the fishing
rights, and, back of that, what claim have Kanakas on fishing rights,
anyway? Fishing rights! Why, they ought to be down on their marrow-bones
praising their Creator they’re not between hatches being took off to
work on plantations, same as Bully Hayes would have treated them.”

“That’s so,” said Jewel.

The sun had vanished beyond the reef now, and all the west was a great
sheet of yellow light, hard, with a tinge of lemon in it; a bad sky for
the time of year. The breeze still held and was even strengthening; and
now, as darkness fell and the stars came out, lights began to appear on
shore, the lights of the native huts, like glow-worms in the foliage,
and the lights of the house where the dead man lay.

Then, one by one, the lights began to go out, and in an hour not one was
left, and the shore, blue-black and pearl-grey, lay under the starlight,
voiceless, except for the tune of the surf on the outer beach.

The boat in which they had brought off the fruit had been hauled up, and
the dinghy lowered. Kitchin, who had gone below for a moment, came up
now; he was wearing a pair of soft-soled deck shoes. Jewel, who had
rousted out the watch below and given the Kanaka boatswain his
instructions, led the way to the side ladder where the little boat was
moored, followed by the captain.

A moment later the dinghy, with Jewel sculling from the stern with a
single oar, and Kitchin crouching in the bow, detached itself from the
schooner. Jewel had muffled the oar, and the boat, noiseless as a
water-beetle, passed across the surface of the lagoon, ruffling the
starlit water. It grounded on the soft sand, and Kitchin, getting out
and leaving the mate in charge, came up the beach towards the house.

He was not a coward, yet his heart was alive in him and fluttering like
a caught bird. Every shadow seemed to hold a watcher; the night itself
seemed observing him, and the appearance of indifference to all things
mortal, so distinctive of the darkness and the stars, seemed now the
cloak of an ambuscade.

At the door he paused. Not a sound was to be heard except the reef
murmur and the movement of the foliage of the groves beneath the wind.
Then, feeling gently for the latch, and placing his hand on it, he
pressed it.

It went down with a click that shot through his brain like a bullet. It
seemed to him that the whole house rang with the sound, and he waited,
wavering between the impulse to fly and the pull of the plunder so close
to his hand.

No sound came from the house. House, beach, groves, and island still
maintained that sinister silence of which he felt himself to be the
centre, and, more than that, the cause. At any time that silence might
spring alive with shouts and the whistling of spears; at any moment his
retreat to the boat might be cut off; yet moment after moment passed,
and nothing happened. And then all at once a feeling of security came to
him. This island of innocence was, in reality, as innocent as it looked,
an island of “boobs.”

He pushed the door gently; it opened without sound, revealing the room,
tenantless except for a rigid form lying upon the couch, the form of
Levasseur, covered with the French flag.

A night-light, burning in a cocoanut-bowl on the table, lit the room
dimly, and, fronting Levasseur, the bureau stood, its press doors closed
on whatever the shelves might contain.

Levasseur, who had lived in uprightness and honour all his life, and who
on the island had no fear of robbers, who, moreover, saw in Kitchin a
friend in need, had told him of the pearls, pointing to the bureau to
emphasize his words.

It remained to be seen whether they were still in the bureau’s keeping.

Crossing the room swiftly, Kitchin turned the little latch which held
the doors of the bureau closed, and opened them. The cash-boxes were
still there undisturbed. He made a swift examination of the shelves
without discovering anything of value; and then, a cash-box in each
hand, he made back for the door.

It had closed a bit. Opening it with his left elbow, he sidled out into
the night.

The thing was accomplished; it seemed to him now incredible. The very
ease with which the business had been done would have made any man with
a last grain of honour in his composition revolt against it. But Kitchin
had no scruples whatever on the score of robbery, or the dead whom he
had robbed, or the innocent whom he had defrauded; besides that, his
mind was not in a condition for reflection. Making across the soft sand
with his burden, he felt now that curious paralysis which comes to us in
dreams when we are trying to escape from unknown dangers, and are held
and clogged at every step.

He reached the dinghy, wading into the water to meet her, and clambered
in, nearly upsetting the little boat.

“Done it?” whispered Jewel.

“Quick!” replied the other.

The single word told everything, and Jewel working the scull, the dinghy
made its way back swiftly and noiselessly across the water.

Kitchin climbed on board. The boxes were passed to him, the dinghy
brought on board, and now a watcher on the shore might have seen the old
_Cormorant_ spreading her wings to the night.

Scarcely a sound came to the shore as the fellows hauled on the throat
and peak halyards, and the mainsail hung slatting to the wind, then the
foresail showed, and the jib; and now the _Cormorant_, with Kitchin
himself at the wheel, began to move and break the star-silvered water.
There was no clank of windlass or sound of anchor being hove up; they
had knocked the shackle off the anchor chain, leaving the anchor as a
token of their visit and departure. Soundless as a ghost, the
_Cormorant_ went on her way across the lagoon, rising gently to the
heave of the sea at the break in the reef, and dissolving from sight in
the void that lay beyond.


                                  III

The blow began an hour after midnight. An hour and a half after the
departure of the _Cormorant_, the wind lulled and died to a dead calm
that lasted for ten minutes, during which the heave of the swell
mounting the outer reef increased till the boom of it filled the night.
Then through the calm came the wind; it came in puffs, and it was hot as
the breath of a panther; it had shifted, and was coming now dead from
the south, where not a star was to be seen, and for an hour it held like
this. The night seemed breathing hard and in gasps.

Markham, in his hut, felt the electrical tension; it awoke him from
sleep. He dressed and came out on the beach for a breath of air, and as
he stepped on to the sands a great light suddenly filled the world and
vanished. It was as though some giant had flashed his lantern on the
sea.

He saw the lagoon brilliantly lit from reef to reef, and he saw that the
_Cormorant_ was gone.

Kitchin had talked of spending several days at the island, and, behold,
he was gone!

The lagoon, after the flash, was still vaguely visible in the light of
the few remaining stars, and as Markham stood bewildered by the fact
before him, the boom of thunder following the flash rolled over the sea,
vast in volume and seeming to come from a hundred leagues away.

Then, as he stood, a sudden inkling of the truth came to him. He turned
swiftly towards the house, reached it, and found the door open. The
night-light in the cocoanut shell was still burning on the table; it
showed the press doors of the bureau open, and the cash-boxes gone.

The dead man, rigid beneath the flag, gave the last touch to the
picture. Markham knew quite well that the vanished pearls had been
Levasseur’s main stand-by; the shell and the few pearls already exported
from the island had brought in a good deal of money, but the expenses
had been considerable, and there was not a very large balance in the
bank at Sydney. The stolen pearls had been the pick of the fishing, the
cream of the labour of years, and now they were gone for ever, lost,
owing to his, Markham’s, stupidity.

He went to the foot of the stairs, knocked, and called out to
Mademoiselle Levasseur. She had lain down fully dressed; the storm had
awakened her, and now, in response to the call, she appeared at the head
of the stairway.

“Come down!” said Markham. “We have been robbed.” When she reached him,
he pointed to the open bureau.

“The schooner has gone from the lagoon,” said he. “That man has taken
the pearls. It is my fault entirely.”

“Taken the pearls?” said Celestine, in a low voice, glancing from the
empty bureau to the form on the couch. “Taken the pearls?”

She seemed unable for a moment to understand the truth of the matter or
grasp the full infamy of it. Then it came to her in all its horribleness
and nakedness. Her father, lying there dead and helpless, had been
robbed. The pearls were his treasure, his pride, the things he had
worked and slaved for, his chief possession. Not for a moment did she
think of herself or what the loss would mean to her.

She sat down by the table and buried her face in her hands. Markham,
standing before her, waited motionless, listening to the inferno of
sound that was developing outside. The wind had risen to hurricane
force. It was coming from the south, and was passing over the island
from the lagoon-mouth northward, and its lamentable cry had risen now to
a scream, the steady, ceaseless scream of a maniac, a sound that, once
heard, could never be forgotten. It had beaten the sea flat, but now it
was piling the waves before it, helped by the tide; the whole Pacific
seemed crowding up to enter the lagoon, and the waves on the inner beach
were falling ten feet high.

He knelt down beside the girl and took both her hands in his and kissed
them.

“Listen!” said he. “They have gone out into that. Listen to the lagoon.
If it is like that here, what must it be outside?”

It seemed to him that the wrath of Levasseur was out there in the night.


                                   IV

At daybreak the wind, no longer a hurricane, but a full gale, had blown
nearly every rag of cloud from the sky. Markham, who had gone back to
his hut, and who had fallen into an uneasy sleep, was suddenly awakened
by the crying of the natives outside. He made out the words
“Ship—ship!” And coming out, he saw the blaze of the new-risen sun
across the reef, the blue sky, the great green, racing waves, and
bearing into the lagoon, lifted on a great roller, the _Cormorant_.

She had fought the storm, but her rotten spars had betrayed her; then,
almost dismasted, in the trough of the sea, she had managed by some
miracle to put her stern to the gale and run before it with a rag of
canvas on her fore mast stump.

Markham saw her lift and vanish, and lift again; but the tide, which was
flooding out of the lagoon, made a tumble with the incoming rollers that
turned her round and twisted her with a movement sickening to see. She
turned broadside on to the watchers, and then, rolling over in a great
boost of spray, showed her weed-grown copper to the sun blaze; the keel
showed, and Markham, at that sight, forgetting everything but the horror
of it, cried out and gasped for breath like a man who is being dashed
with ice-water.

Nothing is more awful than the sight of a capsizing ship, keel to the
sky.

He watched the horrible humped mass washed like the back of a whale;
then from the stern came a jet of foam just like the spouting of a
whale, and then—there was nothing!

Nothing but the tumbling green water and dark spots of wreckage.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Towards noon the body of Kitchin was washed up on the beach, a life-belt
round him, and the two cash-boxes tied to him with a lanyard. Not a
pearl was missing!

They buried him in the grove to the north of the house, and the pious
Kanakas, who erected a wooden cross over the grave, completed their
business by a touch of quite unconscious humour, for they hung,
wreath-wise, on the cross, the life-belt that had failed to save its
wearer’s life, and on which was written in white letters, the word

No tomb ever bore a more fitting description, and Markham let it stand.
During the destruction of the schooner he had felt as though watching
the rage of Levasseur materialized and wreaking vengeance on the robber,
and now the fortuitous erection of this inscription seemed to him as
though it were an emanation of the dead man’s humour, for Levasseur,
besides his ferocious temper, had possessed a very lively and caustic
wit.


                              PEARL ISLAND


                                   I

“Knox was one of those men who can do anything,” said Captain Carver.
“Born a gentleman, and bred up to be a doctor, he had all the world
before him, you would think. He had two right hands. He could make
anything from a pair of boots to a suit of canvas, mend a watch, or
doctor a dog; he could do anything in this blessed world but get on in
life, and he was a mark for every girl to shoot her eyes at. Funny that
a man like that couldn’t get on. He wasn’t crooked—or, at least, he
wasn’t crookeder than most ordinary men—and he had every blessed thing
in the way of an outfit to help him to success. But he couldn’t get on;
or not, at least, till he had made a pretty bad failure.

“I met him in Sydney. I had just come back from a cruise to the Islands,
and I was off my luck and out of a berth, and feeling that the world
wasn’t just such a place as it used to be, when, going into a bar on
Market Street, I met Knox. We cottoned to one another at once, seemed to
have known each other for years, and found that we had a mutual
acquaintance in a scamp, named Morgan, I’d met in Portuguese Timor.

“‘So you’re just in from the islands,’ said Knox. ‘What was your ship?’

“‘The _Pathfinder_.’

“‘Oh—she—I’ve heard of her!’

“‘Well, if you’ve heard any good of her, you’ve heard a lie,’ says I.
‘There’s no saying, but there may be some who would find no fault with
her. I’m different, that’s all; and there may be some who could work
with Trentham, her master, and sit with him at table without Murder
serving the victuals and nudging you in the ribs. But that sort’s
different from me.’

“‘Were you fired?’ asks Knox, in his quiet way.

“‘No, I weren’t,’ says I. ‘I fired myself. And is there any more
personal questions you’d like to ask?’

“‘I beg your pardon,’ says Knox, ‘but I didn’t mean to be personal in
one little bit. I only meant that if you’d left sudden you’d be all the
longer looking for a job, and, maybe, all the more disposed to take my
offer.’

“‘And what might that be?’ I asked.

“He took a pull at his drink, then he set the tumbler down, then he
lifted it again, finished what was in it, and put it down again.

“‘Pearls,’ said he; ‘that’s what I mean. But I can’t talk of it here, so
if you won’t have another, let’s get out of here and talk in the
street.’ He took me by the arm, and out we went, and no sooner had the
swing door banged behind us than he let himself go. The yarn he spun me
as we walked down to the waterside laid over all the yarns I had ever
heard. He took me right into his confidence. You see, he had sized me
up. He knew I was just the man he wanted, and he wanted me desperately
bad.

“And this was his yarn, cut short:

“Six years before he’d been wandering about Sydney, after a lucky hit,
with seven hundred pounds in his pocket and his head full of whisky,
when who should he meet but a fellow called Amyot. A fellow with a name
like that would be a man to avoid, one would think; but Knox didn’t
avoid him. He chummed up with him, and Amyot got him to put all his
money into a pearling venture. Amyot had struck a lagoon island in the
low archipelago, where the lagoon was simply thick with pearl oysters.
It wasn’t on the Admiralty charts; it belonged to no one but first
finders, and this Amyot had it marked down on a chart of his own, and
only wanted the money to fit out a schooner and set to work diving for
the oysters with Kanakas, and filling his pockets with the produce,
which was pearls.

“Knox fell in at once, and put up his seven hundred, which with two
hundred of Amyot’s made nine. Half shares was the order of the day, and
they chartered a schooner, filled her with trade and Kanakas, and struck
luck by selling their cargo for cash at Papeetong at a good profit. Here
they filled up with more Kanakas, canned beef, spuds, and such-like, and
set sail for Pearl Island, which was the name Amyot had given his atoll.

“They found their island, and brought the schooner into the lagoon,
stuck up shanties on the beach, landed provisions and stores and labour,
and then set the labour to work diving for oysters. Kanakas in those
days were most like children. They hadn’t been spoiled by crinolines and
all manner of civilized clutter, though it’s true enough the
missionaries were pretty strong even then. However, these chaps dived
and bobbed like corks for the oysters, and Amyot and Knox opened the
shells. There were pearls, but Knox soon came to find that pearling—at
least, in some lagoons—is a different business from the pearling that
goes on in story-books. You see, if every pearl oyster had a decent
sized pearl in it, pearls could be had for about a shilling apiece. What
makes the price is the fact that pearls are scarce, even in pearl
oysters.

“Knox, on a rough calculation, said that they worked at a profit of some
eight thousand pounds a year when everything was paid. He made trips in
the schooner once a year to Sydney—they bought the schooner outright at
the end of the first year—and brought back provisions and stores, and
did a bit in the way of trade so that no one might smell a rat. Amyot
stuck to the island. To get money for the buying of the schooner and
current expenses, they had to sell some of the pearls, and this they did
through a man named Keller, a friend of Amyot’s, who owned a big ship’s
chandlery on South Street down by the waterside; but they did not
dispose of all the pearls through Keller, not by a long sight. Amyot
kept the bulk of them on the island in trust for himself and partner.

“‘There’s close on forty thousand pounds’ worth on that island now,’
said Knox, as we sat on a balk of wood by the waterside whilst he
finished his yarn, ‘and I’m taking the schooner back to-morrow. This is
my yearly trip to Sydney for canned spuds and bully beef, and it’s my
last. I want you to go with me.’

“‘Now, see here,’ said I, ‘you meet a perfect stranger and you sling him
this yarn; you give away the whole show to a perfect stranger, location
of pearls and all; you ask him to go back with you—for why? To graze on
pearls, or what? What’s your game, anyhow, and why do you want me?’

“‘I want you,’ says he, ‘because Amyot is going to play me false. I was
asleep in Keller’s office yesterday, and I won’t say I hadn’t had too
much rum, but I woke on the tail-end of a conversation between Keller
and Captain Twells—he’s the skipper of the schooner—and what I heard
gave the whole thing away.’

“‘“You’ll just leave him behind,” says Keller. “Not a hair of his head
will be hurt. Amyot is no murderer, and Captain Drake wouldn’t hurt a
lamb. There’s lots of ships will pick him up, and there’s a thousand
pound for you in gold or pearls, whichever you fancy, when Amyot and the
stuff is landed safe in Sydney.”’

“‘They were talking in the next room and not talking loud, but I heard
every word; then Twells, he says, “Right,” says he, and off he goes—and
ever since I’ve been near mad till I met you, and the sight of your jaw
and the size of you gives me an idea. Come with me and see me through.
Twells is a drunken old wreck, Amyot is a man of no size, and Kanakas
can never fight for much. You shall have your share of what is due to
me, and what is due to me is twenty thousand pounds’ worth of stuff, as
far as I can make it. We will both be well armed. Well, what do you
say?’

“‘One moment,’ says I. ‘Who is this Captain Drake they were talking of?’

“‘Heaven only knows—I don’t,’ replied Knox. ‘It’s some chap they have
pulled into the business, but he won’t come with us on board the
schooner. I’m supercargo and chief and first mate in one, and I can fire
anyone off I choose. There will only be Amyot and Twells and the Kanakas
to reckon with. Leave that to me.’

“‘But will Twells take me on?’ says I.

“‘Twells will have to do as I tell him. We want a second mate—at least
I want one—and there’s an end of the matter.’

“‘And my share of the boodle?’ says I.

“‘Name it,’ says he.

“‘Well, I’m not a grasping man,’ I says. ‘I’ll take a fourth.’

“‘And you shall have it,’ says Knox. ‘Your fist.’

“We shook hands on the bargain, and there I was, bound to follow where
he led, signed on, so to speak, without limit of time or latitude, and
all for the promise of a quarter share in pearls that maybe didn’t
exist. I was young.”


                                   II

“But the real signing on came next morning, when I was sprung as a
pleasant surprise on Captain Twells by Knox.

“Twells had been having a rough night, and he had no nerve to help him
make any trouble about taking on an extra mate. His face was one
grog-blossom, and I guess his soul was another; but he was a good
schooner captain and he was cheap, for he had piled up three vessels
through drink. He held his post as captain of the _Foam_—that was the
name of our schooner—because he had a hold on Amyot, who had told him
one night in drink the whole blessed secret of the island, and shown him
its location on the chart. Drink ties a lot of knots, and it tied Twells
to Amyot; it never wants string either, for the devil supplies it. . . .

“Thank you, you may fill it up. . . .

“Well, when the signing on was over we went aboard the _Foam_, which was
anchored out in the harbour. She was an old boat, but her lines were a
picture, and she was new sparred and not an inch of rotten canvas on
her, such as you find on them island trading schooners that haven’t
nothing right about them, or tight about them, or safe about them,
except their insurance and the sure fact of their perdition.

“Well, we upped anchor and got away, and the most surprising fact was
that no Captain Drake came aboard.

“Knox and I had many a talk during the first few days on this same
subject of Drake. We fancied he might be hid aboard, and between us, and
taking our time over it, we overhauled every hole and corner where a man
might be hid; but we turned up nothing but cockroaches, and there we let
the matter stand.

“One night, as I was smoking and leaning over the after-rail, Knox comes
up to me and talks about the island, and lets out a new fact. There was
a girl on the island, Amyot’s daughter. Amyot had brought her with him
on his first going there; she had been a bit of a thing then, but she
was sixteen or so now, and Knox was in love with her. Said he’d been
watching her growing all those six years, said she’d been growing there
like a palm tree, and such-like rot, said he hadn’t noticed her,
scarcely, till last year, when all of a sudden she’d burst into blossom,
or some such rubbish. When he opened his mouth to let out his opinions
on that girl it was like listening to a chap playing the flute, which is
the sickest thing a man can listen to. Anyhow, I cut him short, and made
him own up he was in love, and she was in love with him, and Amyot knew
nothing of the business.

“‘Well,’ I said, ‘if I’d known this cruise was going to have led me into
the middle of a sevenpenny novel, I’d have been hanged if I’d have
signed on. There was no mention of a girl in the charter; I’d sooner a
dozen pirates was mixed up in it than one girl. I came after pearls.
Fighting I expected——’

“‘And fighting you’ll get,’ says he.

“‘Much fighting you’ll do with a girl swinging round your neck,’ says I,
‘and she the daughter of the man you’re going to fight.’

“‘You wait and see,’ says Knox. ‘Amyot has betrayed me; he’s a
black-hearted beast and cares nothing for his daughter, makes her cook
and slave, and at times I’ve fancied he has ill-used her when I’ve been
away from the island. She hates him.’

“‘That’s better,’ says I. ‘She-angels was what I was dreading. Will she
help to fight him if it comes to a rough-and-tumble?’

“‘She shot a Kanaka once who tried to insult her,’ says he. ‘She loves
me, and she hates the man who calls himself her father. I don’t believe
he is her father, for he’s no more like her than you are like me;
anyhow, he has never given her a kind word.’

“With that he goes forward, leaving me smoking there by the after-rail
and spitting into the sea. Well, we called at Papeetong, and took on
some pigs and yams, and then we headed south by east for our
destination.

“You know, those atoll islands lie so low that a ship might trip over
one of them just as a man trips over a kink in a carpet. A ring of coral
and a clump of palm trees is all there is to them; just a ring of coral
enclosing a lagoon, with a break in the ring so that ships may come into
the lagoon.

“I don’t know what makes the break, but there it always is, like a
harbour mouth. I expect the Almighty makes it. Chaps are mighty shy
about giving the Almighty His due nowadays, and only yesterday a fellow
was saying that the Lord didn’t make men—they came from monkeys. ‘And
who made the monkeys?’ says I; which he couldn’t answer.

“Well, it was noon when we sighted Pearl Island, and we came into the
lagoon on the sunset, with the sea all behind us like boiling gold, and
the lagoon before us, green water six fathom deep filling to ten, and
the bottom clearer than a picture.

“But it wasn’t the beauty of the spot, as the poets say, that struck us
in the eye and made our mouths fly open, but the sight of another
schooner anchored in the lagoon a cable-length from the shore and the
clump of houses that made the settlement.

“It wasn’t a miracle to see a schooner anchored in a good anchorage, but
the island was uncharted, clean out of the track of ships, and in a part
of the ocean that shipmasters avoided as they would avoid small-pox. It
wasn’t a miracle, but it was a coincidence—and a queer coincidence,
too, that Knox should be in fear of foul play, and expecting something
to happen, whilst the queerest thing that could happen had happened—a
strange schooner in the lagoon.

“We could read her name on her stern as she lay there swinging to the
tide, which was pulling out of the lagoon: the _Peradventure_. Not a
soul was in sight, but as we anchored a cable’s length away from the
_Peradventure_, and as the rumble-tumble of our anchor chain went over
the water to the beach, a figure appeared at the main door of the block
of buildings.

“‘That’s Amyot!’ said Knox.

“It was; and when we’d rowed ashore I stood looking at this Amyot whilst
Knox talked to him, and the Kanakas crowded round thick as flies, and
another white man, a chap like a sick parson in a sun-helmet, stood as
if waiting to be introduced. I didn’t notice him much—I was noticing
Amyot. Now, this Amyot had the mark of the devil in his face, which mark
was neither more nor less a look as though the cheek-bones of him had
been squeezed flat by two big thumbs. Flat he was under the eyes, and
broad; and when you see a face made like that you just beware of the
owner of it, me son. Don’t play with him, anyhow, and don’t trade with
him, unless you can’t help.

“I couldn’t help trading with Amyot in this particular deal, however;
and there I stood, being stared at by the Kanakas—on account of my
size, no doubt—till Amyot, being introduced to me and I to him, he
turns to the sick parson in the sun-helmet and, ‘Captain Drake,’ says
he, ‘this is my partner, Jim Knox, and this here is the second mate of
the _Foam_. And why hasn’t Captain Twells come ashore?’ says he, turning
to Knox again.

“At the name ‘Captain Drake’ I saw the blood go out of Knox’s face, and
felt it coming into my own. So this was the chap that was to help in the
doing in of Knox? It was all as plain as a pikestaff now. Keller had
sent Drake in the _Peradventure_ to whip off Amyot and the pearls; but
there was more to it than that. When I bother to think at all, I think
rapid. In a flash, I saw the whole business as laid out by Keller and
Amyot. The _Foam_ was to be scuttled, and insurance claimed on her.
Amyot was to be taken off the island by Drake _with_ the pearls. Knox
was to be put out of the way. Twells, most likely, was to be done in,
too, all on the quiet; and the Kanakas were to be left on the island
under charge of a foreman, to go on diving for pearls—of which the
lagoon had been skinned.

“‘Captain Twells is indisposed,’ says Knox, speaking the truth, for
Twells was flat out with rum, or seemed so to us, who hadn’t yet got the
knowledge of Twells’s full part in the conspiracy. ‘So I brought Mr.
Carver ashore. And where is Juanita?’

“‘Juanita is down with a touch of fever,’ says Amyot. ‘It is not much,
and I expect she will be about again to-morrow. And now, gentlemen, if
you will come up to the house and have a bit of supper, it’s ready for
you; and I make no doubt fresh victuals won’t be unwelcome after
schooner fare.’

“Up we went, all in a body, and there, in a bare room, we sat down to
baked pig and palm cabbage—Amyot at the head of the table, with Drake
on his right, Knox on his left, and me sitting by Knox.

“It wasn’t a success, somehow, that supper, in the way of conversation.
We talked of everything but the main topic—as to how we were most
conveniently to cut each other’s throats; and Knox was down-spirited at
not seeing Juanita.


                                  III

“After supper we smoked on the verandah, with a big moon lolling on the
sea edge, and silvering up the lagoon right to our feet almost.

“Drake had explained how he came to be there—how his schooner had been
blown out of her course, how he had fetched up here to refit and get
water; and it was sickening to sit there in the light of God’s moon and
hear that scoundrel thank Amyot for his hospitality, and Amyot answering
back.

“I’d ’a’ taken the pair of them and knocked their heads together, and
drowned them after in the lagoon, but for the fact of the Kanakas being
round about and sure to take Amyot’s part. Besides, cunning was our
game, not force.

“After a while we rowed back to the _Foam_. Twells was nowhere to be
seen; he wasn’t on deck, and he wasn’t in the saloon.

“The saloon was a poor enough affair, pine panelled, with three
dog-holes opening off it, one for the captain, one for the mate, and one
for whoever chose to use it. We looked into Twells’s cabin, and there he
was, sure enough, lying on his back in his bunk, snoring, and the smell
of rum was enough to knock a sober man down.

“‘Drunk!’ whispers Knox.

“He took me by the arm and led me to his cabin, and there in the dark,
sitting on his bunk, and with our heads together, we began to talk.

“‘Look here,’ says Knox. ‘Juanita isn’t down with fever. She’s aboard
the _Peradventure_. Did you see me drop behind to speak to that buck
Kanaka, and ask him how he’d been doing since I left? Well, he’s the
only man here I can trust. I saved him once, and he gave me the whisper
that she’s aboard the _Peradventure_. You see, he’s a brainy chap, and
Amyot trusts things to him. The others are worse than children, and
don’t know anything, and don’t care anything. He said, “She’s aboard
Cappen Drake’s ship, she and everything else.”’

“‘That means the pearls.’

“‘Seems so. Now you see our position. The _Peradventure_ is ready to
weigh anchor. They have only to put us out of court and be off. They’ll
sink this schooner in the lagoon or outside, and claim insurance. She’s
insured up to the hilt.’

“‘Knox,’ says I, ‘I was thinking that myself; more, I’m thinking that
there’s no marooning meant. It’s sure death for you and me, and they’ll
work the job to-night. We haven’t a moment to lose. I’ve got a plan.’

“‘What’s your plan?’ he asks, and I heard him catch his breath back on
the words.

“‘No time to explain,’ I answers. ‘Follow me.’ I slipped out of the
cabin into the saloon, where the lamp was burning low; Knox followed. We
closed the cabin door and came up on deck.

“There was only one man on deck, a Kanaka. I walked up to him,
leisurely, nailed him by the throat before he could cry, and bundled him
down the fore scuttle into the fo’c’sle, and slid the hatch. It was like
shutting it on a swarm of bees. Full the fo’c’sle was with chaps wide
awake and waiting down there in the dark, and, as God is my witness, we
heard the voice of Amyot and Drake. We hadn’t been twenty minutes
colloquing together, Knox and me, in his cabin, and in that time Amyot
and Drake must ’a’ come aboard soft-footed, and taken their places in
the fo’c’sle till the moment came to do what was to be done.

“‘We’ve bottled the devils!’ says I. ‘And it’s now for the
_Peradventure_ and away. We can work the crew at the points of our
revolvers . . .’

“‘Shut your head!’ says Knox. ‘There’s Twells!’ And there he was
emerging from the open main hatch, crawling out dead sober, with a
lantern in his hand which didn’t twinkle twice before I was on him,
seized him by the breeches and the neck, bundled him back into the hold,
closed the hatch, and fastened the locking bars.

“I kicked the lantern into the scuppers, where it went out.

“‘Any more beetles about?’ says I.

“‘Don’t seem so,’ says Knox. ‘We’ve coopered the lot.’ He rushed to the
side, where the ladder was down, and there, sure enough, was the shore
boat Amyot and Drake had come in, and the four rowers all snoring like
pigs. Which they didn’t long.

“We were in her in a tick, kicking the chaps awake, and they took to
their oars like automatons, whilst Knox took the tiller and steered for
the _Peradventure_, which we hailed.

“A Kanaka on deck dropped the ladder and we boarded her, ordered the
boat crew to put back ashore, giving them instructions to put out again
at dawn and fetch Amyot and Twells off the _Foam_.

“Off they went, suspecting nothing; and Knox, cool as a cucumber, orders
the Kanaka on deck to turn out the crew. They came up, rubbing their
eyes, and he tells them that Amyot’s orders were to take the schooner
down to an atoll island a hundred and twenty miles to the east, and that
he was their new captain. Gave his orders quiet and decided, told them I
was their new second officer, and lit a cigar whilst they manned the
capstan bars.

“The Kanaka who had been keeping anchor watch had seen nothing of the
work on the deck of the _Foam_. He’d been keeping his watch asleep, and
there’d been no noise or shouting to wake him; but as I stood listenin’
to the clank of the windlass pawls, now and again, as the chaps slacked
off for a moment, I thought I could hear a humming noise, like bees
swarming, and took it to be the chaps prisoned in the fo’c’sle of the
_Foam_, shouting together for exit, as you may say.

“The funny thing was, they’d been pretty silent from the first till now,
else the chaps in the boat would have heard them. You see, on the first
start of surprise at finding themselves bottled, Amyot and Drake must
have been consulting as to what to do, and so on, lighting a lantern to
get at their thoughts, for whites can’t think in the dark, and the
Kanakas had hung on them waiting for orders. Then they must have tried
to prise off the hatch, which wouldn’t be done by shouting. Now they
were hollering, true enough, but the sound of them was nothing to speak
of. Might ’a’ been a drinking bout.

“I speaks to Knox about it, but he only says, ‘They’re all right;
there’s ventilation enough for them. I know that fo’c’sle.’ Then he
turns to give orders, for the anchor was aboard and the schooner
talking, as she shook her canvas to the seven-knot breeze that was
frosting up the lagoon, blowing from the east sou’-east, and so being as
fair a wind as we could wish for.

“I could see Knox like a cat on hot bricks to get down to the cabin and
find the girl, but he stuck to his post till we’d passed the break in
the reef and had the swell under us, and the island away in the foam of
our wake.

“Then he orders the saloon hatch, which was closed, to be opened, and
down he goes, and I listens and hears a female voice cry ‘Ji-i-m!’ and
then I hears a sound like buttermilk gurgling out of a jug, and I knew
it was all right—the girl was there. . . . I guessed that when the
cuddling was over Jim would look for the pearls; and I was right. It
took two hours, though, and then he comes on deck with a smile on his
face, and, ‘Carver,’ says he, ‘the pearls are there. Come down and see
them, and see Juanita, the best pearl of the lot.’

“We went down—and she was. But the others were beautiful, all the same.
A whole cabinet of them, running from the size of marrow-fat peas to
maybe twice or three times as big, and there was one chap the size of a
sparrow’s egg.

“‘Amyot shall have his share all right,’ says Knox, ‘whenever he comes
to fetch it. We’ll divide it up when we get to Sydney and leave his lot
in the bank.’

“‘Right,’ says I. ‘And now I’ll go up and have a look at the weather.’
Scarce had I got on deck when, ‘My God!’ says I, ‘what’s that?’

“Away to the south’ard the sky-line was red, red and leaping, over the
point that was the island. I stood holding on to the after-rail and
looking, half-thinking it might be a volcano broke out, till of a sudden
the truth caught me.

“It was the _Foam_. She was the only thing near the island that would
give that light in burning, and then I remembered Twells coming out of
the hold with the lantern in his hand, and the truth hit me again, and
nearly took the wind out of me.

“He’d been firing the schooner, intending to burn us like two rats in
our cabins, and there he was now, burnt dead, no doubt, in the hold, and
all the others burning in the fo’c’sle.

“And there was nothing to be done. The flare was fourteen miles or more
to south’ard, and she’d be burnt to the water-line in less than a
quarter of an hour.

“Then I thought of those two canoodling down there in the cabin, and was
turning to run and call them up, but I stopped myself. What was the good
of spoiling a love affair and poisoning, maybe, their lives? So I stood
and watched the flare burn down and flicker and snuff out, and the big
stars harden up again over the sky where it had been. And that was the
last of Twells and Amyot. The sea closed over that traverse like a book
closes when you put it down after you have read a yarn.

                 *        *        *        *        *

“Pearls aren’t bad till you’ve changed them for money and lost half your
money in speculations. Still, I have enough, and that’s all that a plain
man can want.”


                             THE BLOODSTONE

Evindur Magnuss carried the mails twice a week between Reykjavik and
Thingvellir. It was in the days before the mail-carts ran, and before
the road to Thingvellir was practicable for wheels. He carried them on
foot, for he was a gigantic man, too big for even the stoutest Icelandic
pony.

He had been a guide in his youth, and had saved money. He lived in a
small house in Reykjavik close to where the Leper Hospital now stands,
and there, with the help of his two sons, he engaged in the fish-curing
business, carrying the mails more for the sake of exercise than the few
kroner a week paid him by the Government.

The two sons were the children of his first marriage. A year ago he had
married again, taking for wife the prettiest girl in Reykjavik, Helga
Olsen, the daughter of Helgi Olsen, the furrier and exporter of
sheep-skins.

Helga had flaxen hair, blue eyes, and a laughing face; the latter a
rarity in this country of sad-faced women; and she was the idol of
Magnuss’s heart. She followed him like a dream on his long journeys to
Thingvellir, and he found her, on his return, a reality waiting for him
at the door.

In Iceland the wild flowers are abundant; in the bleakest and most
inaccessible places you will find them painting the dreariness with a
touch of colour. To Magnuss, Helga always seemed like one of these, a
thing beyond the understanding, beautiful in itself, and more beautiful
by reason of its dreary setting.

Reykjavik in summer is dreary; the eternal daylight of June shows
nothing but the black volcanic hills, the vast expanse of the Faxa
Fiord, guarded by Snaefel fifty miles away, and the glimmer of the
Snaefel Jokul like a cloak of glittering ice. The very beach is
volcanic, and speaks, by the tongue of the waves on the black sand, of
extinguished fires, and of the time when all that range of distant hills
smoked and fumed like a row of torches, and the lava fought with the
ice, and the ice with the lava in a war unseen by all but God and the
Saurian.

But if Reykjavik is desolate in summer, who can tell of the desolation
in winter, when the day begins at eleven in the morning and ends with
the leaping Northern Lights at three o’clock?

The well-to-do have their amusements: with the setting in of the winter
season a round of entertainments begins; there are quite good houses in
the town, and quite enough of them to form a small circle of that magic
thing called “society”; but to men of Magnuss’s stamp amusements come
rarely, still more rarely then than now when two cinematograph theatres
give even the poorest an hour’s entertainment for the price of fifteen
ore.

One day in June the _President Georges_, a French boat employed in the
cod fishing, put into Reykjavik Harbour, with the captain and half the
crew down with diphtheria.

She had taken the disease from a village in the Isa Fiord, and they
brought her into the summer harbour to disinfect her, allowing the
unaffected members of the crew to land.

Four men landed: Jean Carnot, Alphonse Courmeyeur, Charles Guyot and
Dirk Boll. They lived in the town at the expense of the company to which
their boat belonged, until such time as a new captain and four new hands
could be scraped together and the _President Georges_ got to sea.

Courmayeur, Guyot and Boll were simple fishermen, such as you find in
the Icelandic trade, but Carnot was of a type begotten of the French
Revolution, and left by the Revolution as a curse to France; a
good-looking, swarthy scoundrel, with curly black hair and great ideas
of the rights of man, but none of the rights of woman; a strange
character to find on a Paimpol boat, and no favourite on board.

On shore he drew away from his fellows, or rather they drew away from
him, and, striking up an acquaintance with one of Magnuss’s sons on the
very first day he landed, he was soon a frequenter of the little house
by the shore, where the codfish, split open and curing on lava blocks,
looked from a distance like the washing of a whole village spread out to
dry.

Mrs. Magnuss spoke French; a nurse at the French hospital had taught
her. She was quick at languages, like most Icelanders, and though Carnot
could speak Icelandic, he and she generally talked to one another in
French, the language of Love and cookery.

She made pancakes to perfection.

One Friday, Magnuss, who had just returned from Thingvellir and who had
left his mail-bag at the post office, found the gate of his house-yard
open. The click of the gate brought his wife out to meet him as a rule,
but it did not click to-day, for, hungry and almost tired with his
thirty-mile walk, he passed through without taking the trouble to shut
it.

The house had two windows on the ground floor facing the sea, and, to
get to the door, one had to pass the easternmost of these windows.

With the supreme stupidity of lovers, or perhaps because the fit had
come on them unawares, leaving them no time to bother about trifles,
they had not pulled down the blind, and Magnuss, passing the window, saw
his wife in the arms of the Frenchman.

It would be hard to conceive a situation more terrific or more freighted
with tragic possibilities. Magnuss had an implicit belief in his wife;
she was the only thing in the whole world that mattered so far as he was
concerned. Carnot was his friend; he had taken greatly to the Frenchman
during the last couple of weeks, and would have trusted him with
anything. He, Magnuss, was a giant, capable almost of pulling the
light-framed house to ruins on the heads of the lovers.

Yet he passed on, though from the moment that the sight struck his eyes
he went unconscious as the dead as to what his limbs were doing with
him. He passed his own doorway, rounded the western side of the house,
avoided a bucket that was standing in his path, and, having found the
gate, closed it, and there stood leaning on it and looking up and down
the road.

The road he had known since his childhood, the corrugated iron houses,
the lava block walls, the swinging sign of Bergsen’s shop a hundred
yards away; all these held him and seemed questioning him in an unknown
language about some terrible thing that had happened to the world; some
catastrophe that had happened to the world he knew, destroying it, and
leaving only a world of phantoms, things visible but unrelated to his
present existence.

Then, opening the gate, he passed out, closed it behind him, and walked
away towards the town.

The Leith steamer was just in, and the stone quay that leads down to the
water was crowded with townsfolk.

Everyone turns out to greet the steamer, and the quay was packed with
people thick as herrings in a barrel. Magnuss mixed with the throng, and
stood staring at the red-funnelled steamer anchored a quarter of a mile
away and the boats making for the shore. When spoken to he answered
“Yes” or “No,” or more often made no reply; he seemed entirely absorbed
by the sight before him, but, in reality, he saw nothing of it, or only
as a man who watches changing cloud-shapes and moving waves in the
abstraction of reverie.

Before the boats landed he turned away. It was his habit on Friday to
call at the Edinboro’ stores to lay in his weekly supply of tobacco; he
was a great smoker, and, having turned from the quay side, he made
unconsciously for the stores. He reached the door and was about to open
it, but no sooner had he touched the handle than he seemed to realize
the futility of what he was about. He passed the sleeve of his coat
across his forehead, turned, and walked off, striking this time in the
direction of the little public square fronted by the Parliament House.
Passing this, he made for the lake at the back of the town.

Three hours later he returned home.

His wife and his two sons were seated at supper, and Magnuss, having
cast his hat on the horsehair-covered sofa and kissed his wife, sat down
to the meal. Usually dull and rather heavy after his journeys, to-night
he seemed burning with mental activity. He was almost gay. Born of a
race of people who for a thousand years have fought with Nature and
suffered from man, Magnuss’s nature did not lend itself to gaiety; it
sat queerly upon him, but passed unnoticed by his wife, who had thoughts
sufficient to occupy her, and by his elder son, who was not observant.
But Bjarni, the younger son, felt alarmed. He had seen his father with
just that brightness of eye and restlessness of manner when he was
stricken by the typhoid two years ago, and Bjarni, who was a dreamer and
a believer in omens, had dreamt only the night before of the himbrimmi,
a bird with a double black mark, like a scarf, round its neck, and
always a herald of evil to Bjarni.

But he said nothing, and the family went to bed; and Magnuss lay by the
side of his wife; but he did not dream, simply because he did not sleep.

During the Saturday and Sunday supreme peace reigned in this small
household, and if there be such a thing as the peace of Hell, one might
have fancied it brooding upon the little house round which the split
codfish lay drying in the wind and sun.

Jean Carnot called as usual, even when Magnuss was out, and Magnuss saw
nothing, and when he met Carnot greeted him with effusion, and talked of
their coming visit to Thingvellir, for days ago it had been arranged
that Carnot should accompany Magnuss on his Monday postal journey to
Thingvellir to see the wonders of the place round which all Icelandic
history centres.

They started on the Monday at five o’clock in the afternoon, Magnuss
with his post-bag on his back, and Carnot carrying the provisions for
the journey.

Now, the road from Reykjavik to Thingvellir leads past the boiling
springs where the Reykjavik women do their washing, crosses the
Ellithaár, one of the greatest salmon rivers in the world, yet nothing
to look at as it flows amidst the boulders of grey rock lazily to the
Faxa Fiord; and Magnuss, after the fashion of a good guide, explained
these points of interest to his companion, and Carnot, not in the least
interested in knowing the number of salmon taken out of the Ellithaár
last season, or the history of the boiling laug, still listened with a
semblance of attention, partly due to the debt that he owed this married
man, partly from French politeness.

He trudged along beside Magnuss, but in no very good humour, for the
road is an ever-ascending one till the heights above Thingvellir are
reached, and he was not feeling well. He had a sore throat and a general
feeling of slackness, so that he broke into a sweat on very little
exertion.

“_Pardieu!_” said he. “I would think I had got the diphtheria but that I
have no pain in the back.”

Magnuss, who had been silent, broke into a sudden gust of laughter.

“Pain in the back!” cried he. “You have no pain in the back!”

“I said so,” replied the other, wondering what this savage meant by his
laughter. “Where is the joke?”

“Why,” said Magnuss, suppressing his hilarity, “you will know when you
get there and hear the story of the place, and it’s enough for me to
tell you now that a pain in the back was the common complaint of certain
folk who went to Thingvellir in the old days. But I’ll tell you the
story when we get there.”

They were now on the heights above Reykjavik, and the road stretched
before them, leading across the desolate moors.

On the right-hand side of the road, and spaced a good distance apart,
stood cairns of stones, each the height of a man. They stretched for
miles away, and looked not unlike men. From each cairn a stone
projected, looking not unlike a hand half held out. These cairns, built
to serve as road-marks during the snows of the winter, gave a completing
touch to the sinister nature of the scenery; they replied to the great
desolation of the hills.

The ground on either side of the road after the first ten miles became
broken, and the grass showed scarcely at all. Ravens, enormous and black
as night, perched sometimes on the heads of the cairns or flew across
the path. Once they came on three ravens devouring the carcase of a
lamb. When the raven did not show like a black dot on the scenery there
was always the melancholy cry of the whimbrel, a bird like the curlew,
only bigger. The whimbrel fills Iceland in summer from end to end with
its melancholy warbling cry.

“_Mordieu!_” said the Frenchman, stopping and wiping his brow. “This is
not a cheerful place.”

“Oh,” said Magnuss, “you should see it in winter, when it is one day’s
journey from Reykjavik to the Rest House and one day from the Rest House
to Thingvellir. Yes, you should see it in winter. But there is one thing
you may be thankful for—you will never do that.”

“Who knows?” said Carnot; whereat the other began to laugh as men laugh
when a child makes a funny remark.

“Decidedly,” thought Jean, “this man is a fool. I wonder would he laugh
so loud if he knew?”

This thought, which lent a spice of humour to the situation, heartened
him up. There is nothing that brightens the Gallic cock so much as the
thought of his farmyard supremacy. He laughed also, and his laughter set
Magnuss off again, and Magnuss’s laughter set off the other, and there
they stood on the road, midst the grey loneliness, laughing like boys, a
frightful sight before the Gods in that desolation.

“Come on,” said Magnuss, wiping his brow at last. “Once one starts
laughing ’tis hard to stop, if the joke be good.”

“It doesn’t take much to make a joke in Iceland,” replied the other.

“Ah,” said Magnuss, “if you only knew what I was laughing at you
wouldn’t say that.”

“What were you laughing at, then?”

“I will tell you later. Look, there is an Arctic gull.”

A huge, fierce-looking gull was flying towards the west; its shadow
crossed the road, and Carnot watched it as he walked till it dwindled to
nothing across the purple-grey hills.

It was now past eight o’clock, but the sun was still high in the sky,
though its light was fainter than it would have given at a similar
altitude in the south. There is always something of illusion about the
Icelandic summer and its never-ending day. Real summer has never found
her home in this place where trees are not, and though night holds aloof
one can feel her still watching, and her shadow mixes, though it be ever
so little, with the eternal daylight.

As they went on their way Magnuss continued, like a good guide, to point
out the places of interest. Every square mile of the land, often every
square yard, has its story, and the story seems always one of war and
revenge. Here Flossi passed on his expedition against Njal; here Gunnar
fought; here Hallfrethur fell; and you will scarcely find a peasant or a
labouring man who is not acquainted with these stories.

They reached the Rest House at nine o’clock or a little after. It stands
on the left-hand side of the road, a square stone building not much
bigger than a cowshed.

Here they had supper, and, after the meal, resumed their way.

It was half-past eleven when, passing the shoulder of a hill, the plain
of Thingvellir and the vast lake lay at their feet. Though wanting only
an hour of midnight, the world was bathed in the light of early evening.
The lake and its islands, the hills far and near, the great lava dome
which in itself is one of the wonders of the world, all lay wrapped in
the silence of night, yet clearly seen as in the light of a September
afternoon.

Magnuss, still acting the part of guide, pointed out the different
hills, the hills that had once watched Flossi, and Njal, and Gunnar, and
Snorri; all those men who were chief actors in the dramas of revenge and
murder of which this land was the fitting stage. One might have fancied
their ghosts standing about the gigantic Magnuss as he pointed out the
scene of their doings, and, like the women of the Sagas, “egging” him
on.

Then they began the descent to the valley till they reached that great
chasm between the cliffs of basalt that leads to the river and the
bridge.

“Look!” said Magnuss, just before they reached the bridge, “this is the
drowning pool.”

Carnot came to the wall at the side of the road and looked. From the
basaltic cliffs away to the right a thunderous cascade poured its water,
which swept amidst broken rocks till it reached the bridge. Just under
the bridge it formed a chute over a rocky incline slippery as ice and
black as night.

The pool into which Carnot was looking was a by-product of the river; a
pool deep and silent and sinister, yet so clear that the rocks even in
this light could be seen far down, even as they might have been seen in
the days of Njal.

“And who used they to drown here?” asked Carnot.

“Women taken in adultery,” replied Magnuss.

“_Ma foi!_” said the Frenchman, laughing. “It speaks well for Iceland
that the pool is so small. In France or England they would want for that
purpose the Thingvellir lake.”

“So I should imagine,” replied Magnuss, “from what I have seen of
Frenchmen.”

Carnot shot a glance at him, but Magnuss was laughing, and the sudden
suspicion of the other was stilled.

“So they used to fling them in here?” he said. “In the old days?”

“In the old days,” replied Magnuss. “They made many mistakes in the old
days, for it seems to me that a woman, being weak and easily tempted,
should be treated as a child, not as one would treat a ferocious beast,
especially by man, who is, after all, the tempter. I have reasoned this
matter out with myself, and were I a man whose wife had betrayed him,
and did I love her as I love my wife, why—I would forgive her if she
played me false and if I were sure that the fault was not so much hers
as the other man’s.”

“Ah, yes, the other man,” said Carnot. He did not raise his eyes from
the pool, but continued gazing at it with a slight smile on his lips, as
though at some jest written upon the water and which he alone could see.

“And the other man?”

“Oh, that is a different matter,” replied Magnuss. “But come; I wish to
reach the farm I am going to before midnight, and there are still more
sights to see.”

Carnot turned from the pool and they passed on to the bridge.

In those days the bridge was made of stone. The stone bridge has been
destroyed and its place supplied by a bridge made of wood.

“Now see,” said Magnuss, stopping on the bridge. “Here is something even
better than the pool.”

He placed his hand on a stone with a savage angle that formed part of
the bridge wall. One sometimes comes upon inanimate things that chill
one by their expression of malevolence, and in this connection one may
formulate the fancy that never in the inanimate world does one come
across the expression of the benign. The stone upon which Magnuss had
laid his hand had a look of cruelty, caused perhaps by the incisive
angle and its relation to the mass, aided perhaps by its darkness, a
darkness accentuated by the smoothness of the surface. One might have
fancied it to have been carefully polished by man in long-forgotten
ages, a friction kept up by the sleet and rain of a thousand winters, to
the tune of the wind roaring down the basaltic cañon and the wave from
the howling Thingvellir lake.

“How better?” asked Carnot.

“Why,” said Magnuss, “in the pool they used to drown unfortunate women,
but here, on this stone, they used to break the backs of criminals.”

“Eh?” said the other. “Break their backs! And then?”

“And then,” said Magnuss, “they would fling them over. Look down and see
what chance a man would have with a broken back down there.”

Carnot looked over the bridge at the raving chute of water descending to
a pool thirty feet below the level of the drowning pool.

“Not much,” said he.

“You are assured of that?”

“Certainly.”

“And remember,” said Magnuss, “in case of miracles there was always a
man ready with a stick or a big stone to finish the business; even
without stick or stone the man would sometimes do the job by seizing a
foot of the criminal as the water whirled him round down there and,
pulling the foot up out of the water, the criminal would sink at the
head and be drowned.”

“One would think from the way you talk you had seen it all,” said
Carnot. “What do they call this stone?”

“The Blood Stone.”

“Well, let us be going.”

Magnuss laughed.

A whole mine of uneasiness that had slowly been storing itself in the
subconscious brain of the Frenchman was touched off by this laugh and
the note that rang in it. He glanced at Magnuss’s face, and then he
turned to run and was caught by the shoulder and slung round as a leaf
is tossed by the wind. He saw nothing clearly and was conscious of
nothing but deadly fear, and whilst he was whirled about as a leaf is
whirled by the tempest and raised and lifted, beyond the terror of
calamity came the chill of a greater terror—he was beyond the reach of
man, in the power of Gods that knew not man. For Magnuss had gone beyond
himself and stepped back far away to the land of Snorri.

For a moment he held his victim up to the sky, whilst Carnot, grasped by
the great hands and absolutely motionless, could hear the cry of a
whimbrel disturbed by the presence of men, the only sound in all that
vast valley across which the silent hills gazed as they had gazed in the
time of Njal.

Then the victim felt the hands take firmer hold and the smashing impact
of the rock angle upon his spine, like the stroke of a great whip
spinning him out into the eternal darkness.

Magnuss watched the body snatched by the chute into the lower pool.
Then, leaving the bridge, he sprang down the rocks and, coming to the
pool edge and waiting till the body came within reach, seized it by one
foot.

But there was no necessity for this precaution. Carnot was dead; the
blow had been sufficient for the finishing of this modern man, though
such a blow would only have been the beginning of death for one of the
mighty men of old.

An hour later Magnuss reached the farm for which he had been bound, and
giving notice of the “accident,” set out with the farmer and some of his
men to search for the body.

They found it floating face downwards in the pool, and, stripping it,
they found the mark on the back where, as the _Visir_ pointed out some
days later, the unfortunate man had struck himself in falling.

“It is strange,” said the _Visir_, “that this victim of ill-luck should
have found his death where in ancient days thousands of victims found
their deaths, and almost in the same manner. One may fancy Fatality
attaching herself to certain places and repeating her work
unconsciously, or, who knows, consciously and from malevolence?”

“And Magnuss? Did he forgive his wife?” I asked of the Icelandic
gentleman who told me this story.

“Oh, yes; but little good there was in that. For, on his return home,
she was sickening for an illness—diphtheria—and she died of it. She
caught it, no doubt, from the lips of her lover. Yes, that was so, and
it was in the nature of things, for it is my experience that scoundrels
like that always get the better of an honest man in the end, _let the
honest man do what he will_!”


                               BLACK BASS

The sea, surface-smooth, but under-run by a gentle swell, was breaking
on the beach of Santa Catalina Island, and the roofs of Avalon were lit
by the first rays of the morning sun. Avalon, facing the Californian
coast, and tucked away in its little bay, is the fishing village where
millionaires are the fishermen, and where kings of sport, like Colonel
Moorhouse, von Hoffe, and Holder, may be seen walking about like
ordinary folk, when not engaged in warfare with tuna, bass, yellow-tail,
and the other kings of the sea.

The first fisherman down this morning was Colonel Calhoun. He was
crossing the shingle to the sea edge, carrying a rod, and followed by
his gaffer and his boatman. He was walking with his son George, a
good-looking young fellow of about twenty-two, black-haired, bright of
eye, and kicking the shingle aside as he walked. The two men were
evidently disputing about something, and the boatman and the gaffer, a
long way behind, could catch, now and then on the sea wind, the voice of
the Colonel and a few stray words. “No, suh! No, suh! Cut yourself
adrift. She’s a Pinckney! Not another word!” and then, loud enough to
reach the _plage_, “You can jolly well go hang yourself!”

It was the end of the dispute, and George Calhoun, leaving the Colonel
to embark in quest of sea bass, turned and walked back up the shingle, a
dejected figure against the bright background of the morning.

The Calhoun family were staying at the Presidio Hotel, and, as luck
would have it, the Pinckney family were staying at the Avalon.

Now, between these two families there existed one of those
half-reasonless, half-reasonable, deathless enmities that flourish only
in the South. The Calhouns were a Charleston family, the Pinckneys
hailed from Virginia, and, to complete and bind together their hatred,
there existed the surest of all bonds—marriage ties.

But the animosity of the present Colonel Jack Calhoun and the present
Roger Pinckney was a thing apart from the family feud, and more perfect.

These two men, Christians in every other respect, had carried on their
warfare one against the other for the last thirty-five years, and Fate
had helped them—helped them on five or six occasions to crab each
other’s deals in railway stock or cotton, brought them together once in
a motor smash in the streets of Richmond, and, lastly, had juggled with
the invitations to the St. Cecilia ball in such a manner that the
Pinckney family, just arrived on a visit to Charleston, were left out of
that function, and, of course, put the insult down, without the least
shadow of reason, to the Calhouns.

Each man was obsessed with the idea of grievous injuries done to him by
the other, and now Fate had drawn them and their families into the
little circle of Avalon, and George Calhoun had fallen in love with
Maria Pinckney, dancing with her last night, to the families’ disgrace,
at the Presidio ball, and capping the business by proposing to her in
the balcony of the hotel, to the sound of the music of the band and in
the light of the great Southern moon.

He had only met her three times, but the moon does a lot down South
besides lighting the lemon groves and the palms.

George had just told his father that not only had he proposed to Maria,
but that he had been accepted, and the fury of the Colonel was so great
that now, as he embarked in the dinghy for his yawl, he did not see the
hated Roger Pinckney coming on to the _plage_ with a rod in his hand and
a man with a gaff following him.

The dinghy pushed off, a boy rowing, and the Colonel and his satellites
crowded in the stern. A hundred yards out from the beach lay the
_Sunfish_, a white-painted yawl, gasoline driven, and built for
seaworthiness and comfort. It had been built specially to the Colonel’s
design, and had, therefore, all sorts of defects to balance its supposed
qualities. It sailed like a wash-tub, and acted like a barrel in a heavy
swell; the engine was too far forward, and the rudder and propeller did
not hit it off together. But the Colonel was content, and that was the
main thing.

He scrambled on board now, and, giving his rod to Joe, the gaffer,
proceeded to inspect the engine, whilst the boy took the dinghy back to
the beach.

It was delightful out here. The _Sunfish_, riding to her moorings, moved
gently to the long-spaced undulations of the swell, and the tune of the
crystal-green waves on the shingle came as a hush-a-bye from the whole
stretch of beach clipped by the two horns of the bay. Avalon, with the
Stars and Stripes waving above the Presidio, looked like a toy village,
and far away across the blue morning sea a freighter in ballast showed
the foam of her propeller, the faint thud-thud of which came like the
beating of a pulse through the voices of the morning.

“There’s the Pinckney yawl gettin’ ready, and there’s Pinckney himself
puttin’ off,” said Joe, who was shading his eyes and looking shoreward.
“He’s not always so early out, and he’s got Bill Robbins for a gaffer,
and he’s got a blame fool. Nick Sergusson was his gaffer, but they say
he treated Nick crool bad in one of his tempers, day before
yesterday—broke the butt piece of his rod on his neck for somethin’ or
’nother that didn’t amount to much, and gave him a hundred dollars to
keep his head closed about it. Nick said nothin’, but, all the same, he
told me he’d sooner gaff for Satan than old man Pinckney.”

The Colonel, wiping his hands with a piece of cotton waste, shaded his
eyes and looked in the direction indicated. Then he ordered the boatman
to unbuoy and roust up the engine, and came to his seat in the stern,
where he began to overhaul his tackle, whilst the _Sunfish_, free of her
moorings, began to make a bow wash against the glittering sea.

There is no fishing ground in the world to compare with the waters round
Santa Catalina Island, none so varied, none so rich. North of the island
you get, in their season, bonito, yellow-fin, tuna and yellow-tail;
east, striking across Sand Dab Bank, you find skip, jack porpoise, large
flying-fish and sheep’s-head. The tuna grounds lie to the south-east,
and, working round the south of the island, you strike the haunts of the
barracuda, swordfish, sunfish and the great kelp beds where hide the
black sea bass. You find yellow-tail near these kelp beds, too, and
whitefish by chance.

The Colonel had brought his breakfast with him—sandwiches and a Thermos
flask of coffee—and as the yawl, with full way upon her, turned due
south, he ate his sandwiches and chatted with Joe on the subject of
fish.

There is no other subject at Avalon. Politics, trade, cotton, or railway
stocks may be mentioned casually, but the one serious thought occupying
all men’s minds—the idea dominating all other ideas—is fish.

They turned Bonito Point, clearing the southern end of the island, and
there, twenty miles away across the blue, blue sea, lay the island of
San Clemente, like a dream of the golden morning, and beyond San
Clemente the Pacific, a sheet of azure stretching right to the coast of
Japan.

The beauty of the scene awakened no feeling of enthusiasm in the
Colonel. They were approaching the great kelp beds, and the boatman was
getting ready the anchor.

You anchor for black bass fishing, and the boat end of the anchor rope
has a buoy attached to it which can be flung overboard, so that the boat
may have freedom of movement when the fish is on the hook.

“This is about the best spot,” said Joe. “Shut off the engine, Micky,
and get ready to heave.”

The tune of the little engine ceased, and the _Sunfish_ was suddenly
surrounded by a great silence, broken only by the far-off crying of
gulls and the hush of the surf from the coast of the island.

The anchor went over in ten-fathom water, and Joe proceeded to bait.

Now, if you want to understand the task that old Colonel Calhoun had set
before himself, I must explain that the black sea bass runs from one
hundred to five hundred pounds in weight, is crafty beyond the natural
in fish, and has the rushing power of a torpedo, that the Colonel’s rod
was a split bamboo weighing ten ounces, and his line an eighteen-strand
linen thread that would snap at a strain of over thirty-eight pounds. He
had five hundred feet of this line on his reel. The line had a leader of
fine steel wire and a small sinker attached. To bring a
four-hundred-pound fish to gaff with such tackle seems impossible to the
uninitiated. It is the commonest of occurrences on the California and
Florida fishing grounds.

Joe baited the Colonel’s hook with a slice of albacore, and over it
went, flittering down through the green water, whilst the Colonel took
his seat in the chair fixed for him in the stern, the butt of an unlit
cigar between his teeth. Micky, the boatman, having seen that the buoy
end of the mooring rope was foul of nothing, and ready to be cast
overboard at a moment’s notice, was cleaning up the little engine, and
Joe, crouching with his gaff beside him, and his chin on the starboard
gunnel, was brooding upon the waters.

“I’m thinking it’s a good day for the bass,” said Joe in an undertone,
half to himself and half to the Colonel. “Water’s got the feel of bass,
this greasy swell keeps the kelp movin’ just about enough to make ’em
comfortable in their mind, and I haven’t seen no durned sharks about.” A
faint throbbing sound made him turn his head.

Round the nearest point of coast a white yawl was coming, the blue flag
of the Tuna Club at her masthead. She was steering for the kelp beds.

“It’s Pinckney’s yawl,” said Joe. “Thought he was goin’ after
yellow-tail. After the bass, is he, with Bill Robbins for gaffer? Why,
the last time Bill got within strikin’ distance of a bass he gaffed the
line instead of the fish, he did so. Sand dabs is his game—sand dabs
and a paternoster.”

“I hope they’ll keep clear of our water,” growled the Colonel.

“They’re makin’ for a pitch haff a mile from this,” said Joe. “Not near
as good as here. But, Bill, he don’t know. Give him the choosing of a
dozen pitches, and he’d choose the worst. That’s the way fools do—it’s
onnatural for them to choose the best. Now, just about here there’s a
big divide in the kelp, owin’ to the current runnin’ strong, and the
bass, they head down the divide when they’re shiftin’ their
feedin’-ground and wantin’ to get out in the open sea to get to the
outer kelp bed, and here’s the place to find them.”

The Colonel said nothing; all of a sudden his face had grown tense. He
let a few feet of the line slip from the reel, and then, with an oath,
began to reel in furiously. Some bait snatcher had taken his bait.

Joe rebaited, and a new cast was made.

“That chap is bringing me ill-luck,” said the Colonel, glancing away to
where the Pinckney yawl had anchored half a mile off. “He and his fool
gaffer are enough to frighten all the bass between here and San
Nicolas.”

“It hasn’t frightened his luck, anyhow,” said Micky, the silent boatman.

He was right. Even at that distance it was evident that Pinckney had
struck a big fish.

They could see the bending rod, they could see the despised Bill heaving
the mooring rope overboard, and Joe watched, swearing beneath his
breath, as the happy fisherman settled down to the big fight.

“I don’t believe it’s no bass; I believe it’s a shark Pinckney’s got on
to,” said he, “the way the line’s runnin’!”

“It’s a bass right enough,” said the gloomy Micky. “It’s makin’ its big
bull rush, and it’s a four-hundred-pounder if it’s an ounce. Look,
now—it’s checked!”

“Line’s broke!” cried Joe.

“Broke your eye! It’s takin’ a zig-zag now. Brayvo, Pinckney!”

“Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re right,” muttered Joe, forgetting
everything but the fight on hand. “I believe it is a bass—yes, for sure
it is—and he’s playin’ it a treat.”

The Colonel, furious, and biting his cigar, said nothing. He could have
drowned Joe and Micky for their honest admiration of the other’s skill,
but he was ashamed to show his wrath, and, indeed, he had scarcely time
before the knowledge came to him that something was at the bait. He let
out the line slowly, and then, raising the rod tip till the line came
taut, struck, hooking his fish.

At the same instant Micky, all eyes and nerves in a moment, flung the
mooring rope and buoy overboard, whilst the line rushed out from the
singing reel.

It was the big bull rush of a hooked bass, and the Colonel, standing now
and making gentle pressure on the brake, watched the line flying away
into the blue water, fathom after rushing fathom to the shrill gnat song
of the reel. Every fiftieth foot of the line was marked by red thread,
and these thread marks, following one upon the other, seemed like a
flight of gaudy red insects spitting the blue water.

Seven, eight, nine of them told that now four hundred and fifty feet of
the line were out, and the yawl, no longer stationary, began to help in
the fight. She was moving under the tension of the line, being towed by
the fish, whilst the water chuckled against her planking, and the song
of the reel went on and on, dying at last to silence.

The Colonel had checked his fish. With a pressure on the brake, bringing
the line to within half an ounce of the breaking-point, he had stopped
the rush and won the first rubber.

The great bass, making out to sea, was headed off his course, and the
fisherman was now reeling in furiously.

The fish, checked in its course, had taken a hairpin curve, sweeping
back towards the yawl for two hundred feet or so, then, still feeling
the hook, it struck off at right angles.

The boatman, as cunning as the fish, had the yawl’s stern pointing on
this new course in no time, so that, when the strain came on the rod,
the engines going astern helped to reduce it.

Half a mile they were taken like this, and then of a sudden the strain
on the line eased, and the rod straightened.

“He’s off!” cried Micky.

“Off! Not he,” replied Joe. “He’s comin’ back. Look out, Colonel!”

The Colonel, reeling in, shouted to Micky to put the engine ahead, and
then, as the pluck of the fish came again, ordered it to be put astern.

Just as a fever patient tosses his head from side to side on the pillow,
so was the great bass now tossing itself from side to side in the sea.
Then came a series of zig-zag rushes absolutely fatal, had the fisherman
been an inexperienced hand, and then, making a straight course, the fish
brought them along the kelp bed for a mile, every yard of which was a
moment worth living.

They were in Pinckney’s water now, but unconscious of the fact. The
Pinckney yawl, a few hundred yards away to the southward, showed white
against the blue of sea and sky, with Pinckney standing in the stern,
rod in hand, playing a fish that seemed as big or, maybe, even bigger
than the Colonel’s. But Pinckney was blind to the doings of the Colonel,
just as the latter was blind to the doings of Pinckney. Nothing short of
a snapped line or a tornado would have broken the spell holding these
two gentlemen in its keeping.

“He’s makin’ for the outer bed again,” cried Joe, “and once he gets
tangled up in that rope kelp, it’s good-bye to him.”

But the Colonel had no idea of letting the big fish have its way. The
steady and systematic pressure of the brake told its tale, and, unable
to endure the continuous strain, the bass slung round and began heading
this time along a line that would bring him close past the stern of
Pinckney’s yawl.

The _Sunfish_, following, now for the first time perceived the close
proximity of the other boat.

“We’ll clear her all right,” said Joe. “No, we won’t. Pinckney’s fish is
striking this way. Hi! Hi! Hi! Put your engine ahead, Bill Robbins! You
cayn’t? Break the line! I’ll break your head with the boat-huck!”

It was Fate. Pinckney’s fish at this moment, making a wonderful
semicircular sweep like the sweep of a sword, crossed its line with the
line of the Colonel’s fish, the lines snapped, and eight hundred pounds’
weight of bass went free into the blue domain of the Pacific, whilst the
two broken lines wound thread-like in the wind.

The _Sunfish_ approached the _Barracuda_—that was the name of the
Pinckney yawl—and the boatmen and gaffers held themselves in in dead
silence, waiting for their betters to open fire; whilst Pinckney, rod in
hand, and the Colonel, rod in hand, stood each of them with a foot on
the gunnel of his boat, facing one another and almost within touching
distance.

These two men, who had fought with and injured one another for years,
had never been so close to one another since their youth, except in the
motor smash in Richmond, and then a policeman had been between them.
Furious, yet recognizing that it was the fault of neither, speechless
before this outrage committed against them by luck, they stood till all
of a sudden, like a great white light, the absurdity of themselves and
the beauty and humour of the whole position broke upon them.

“The Colonel, he was standin’ there with his boot on the gunnel of the
yawl,” said Joe, detailing the occurrence later to a select company at
the inn, “and I was layin’ for the boat-huck to land Bill Robbins one
with the butt of it, not that he could ’a’ helped the bisness, but his
big fat face was risin’ the gall in me. Well, I was layin’ for the
boat-huck when the Colonel broke out laffin’.

“Mind you, that fish was all four hundred, and the iron as good as in
him, and that chap broke out laffin’. But that wasn’t all. Pinckney
stood there a moment, lookin’ as if he was tryin’ to swallow hisself,
and then what does he do—he breaks out laffin’! I never did see such a
pair of laffin’ hyenas, and then old Bill Robbins goes off, and at the
sight of that face splittin’ in two I goes off myself, and Micky follows
soot. A girls’ school taken with the cackles was nowhere besides that
cargo of jackasses, till the Colonel, he orders the lot of us into the
_Barracuda_, and makes Pinckney step aboard the _Sunfish_. Then off they
go home—that pair of lovey-doveys—thick as them Katzejammer kids in
_The N’York American_.

“Well, folks, it gets me. Them two fightin’ all their lives, knifin’ one
another, and then goin’ on like that. What was there to laff about? They
say them two chaps hadn’t spoke for thirty years, and the two families,
when they met by chance on the front, you could see their noses liftin’;
and now the whole lot’s as thick as thieves, and the young Cal’s due to
marry the Pinckney girl.”

And he did. And it seems to me, so strangely do things happen, that the
happiest marriage I have ever known was the outcome of the meeting of
two fish.

                                THE END


         _Printed at The Chapel River Press, Kingston, Surrey._




                           TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors
occur.

The book has been reordered to place all the short stories together.

A ‘SHORT STORIES’ section header has been added for reader convenience.

        [The end of _In Blue Waters_ by Henry de Vere Stacpoole]