Chapter IV

“We lit from that place never wanting to see an oyster again, and leaving tons of shell on the beach worth, maybe, five to six hundred dollars a ton. We didn’t want it. We laid our course for Malakā and raised it ten days later, a big brute of a copra island with Sanderson in pyjamas on the beach and a schooner loading up in the lagoon. He didn’t want Pat’s cargo, said it was four months overdue, and he had cleared the last of his copra and had enough trade to carry on with. We didn’t mind, seeing our contract was to call there out or back with no time limit specified, and we were mighty glad Pat had been done in the eye, seeing how he’d served us. There was nothing to do but cart the stuff back to ’Frisco, and dropping Malakā, we made a straight run of it, raising the Farallones in twenty-eight days and laying the old hooker off Tiburon without a spar lost or a scratch on her.

“I said to Buck: ‘What are you going to give that Chink? You promised him a suck of the orange, didn’t you?’

“‘I’m going to give him a thousand dollars,’ said Buck, ‘when I’ve cashed the pearls and settled with Pat. I’m a man of my word, and there’s no luck in breaking a promise.’

“I was with him there.

“We landed with the stuff in a handkerchief and made straight for Patrick O’Brien’s business office. We’d cleaned ourselves a bit, but we still looked pretty much scarecrows, but when we’d shown that handkerchief of pearls to the old man he didn’t bother about our looks.

“I told him how, through my bad navigation, we’d missed the island at first, and then struck it by chance.

“‘Well,’ says Pat, ‘you’re the only men in ’Frisco that’s ever got the better of a Chink so far as to get something out of him for nothing, for twenty dollars is nothing against that hatful of pearls. The schooner is yours, Buck, and from what I hear of the cargo you can dump it in the harbour or sell it for junk.’

“Then when we’d cleaned ourselves and got some decent clothes, he took us off to the Palatial and gave us a big dinner. Now that chap was the meanest guy in small things you could find in California, yet he’d lost a cargo and a schooner and instead of cutting up rough he seemed to enjoy it. Buck being his nephew, I suppose he was proud of being done by him and seeing him successful.

“The next day, having cashed in half the pearls. Buck says to me: ‘Come on,’ he says, ‘and we’ll settle up with father Abraham.’

“Off we starts and gets to the place, and there was the bird shop sure enough beside a Chow restaurant, but there was no father Abraham.

“A young Chink was in charge, and when Buck asks for Fong Yen he said there was no such person. Then he seemed to remember, and said that Fong had sold the shop and gone back to China.

“‘Why, that’s him inside there,’ said Buck, and makes a dive into the shop, but there was no one there. Fong must have done a bunk through a back door or something—anyhow he was gone.

“Then all of a sudden there comes up a big master mariner looking man along the street, drops anchor before the bird shop and calls out asking for Ming Lu. The young Chink came out and asks what he wants, saying there was no such person as Ming Lu.

“‘Say, brother,’ says Buck, jumping at the truth, ‘was Ming Lu, by any chance, an old gendarme in spectacles?’

“‘He was,’ says the crab, and then he spun his story. He’d been walking along Alta Street three months ago when he saw three Chinks at a corner, an old boob in spectacles and two young ones. As he came up with them they started quarrelling, pulling the old chap about and kicking him cruel, and Blake, that was the guy’s name, started in like a whole-souled American to save the antiquity from ruin.

“He helped Ming back to his bird shop, and the old chap near drowned him in gratitude, and gave him a chart of a pearl island his son, that had been murdered in a tong dust-up the month before, had discovered when a sailor in one of the Chinese _bêche de mer_ boats, that had been wrecked, with all hands lost but his precious son.

“Blake gave him ten dollars to buy opium with, and being a schooner owner, lost three months hunting for that island which wasn’t there.

“It was the same island that had been wished on us—Buck pulled out his chart and they compared—exactly the same, spot of blood and all. The things must have been lithographed by the dozen and Lord knows how many mugs had fallen to the gratitude trap; which no one but a Chink could ever have invented, if you think over the inwards and outwards of it.

“Then Buck told out loud so that Fong, if he was listening, could hear, how we had fallen on a pearl island, by chance, and how, thinking it was bad navigation that had made us out in our reckonings, he was bringing a thousand dollars to Fong as a present out of the takings according to promise. Then he pulls out his roll and gives the thousand dollars to Blake as a make up. The young Chink ran in at the sight of this, and, as we walked off arm in arm for drinks, I heard sounds from the upper room of that bird shop as if Fong was holdin’ on to something and trying not to be sick.

“Then as we were having drinks the question came up in Buck’s head as to whether he was entitled to that schooner seeing that Fong had managed to get the better of him at the go off. He put it to Blake, and Blake, who was a great chap for backing horses when ashore, says: ‘Go off be damned,’ he says. ‘It’s the finish that matters. You did him on the post,’ he says—and we concluded to leave it at that.”

VIII—A CASE IN POINT