Chapter V: Part II: The “heart of Ireland” (2)

The great yellow funnel had crashed over onto the rocks, and lay with lengths of the guys still adhering to it; a quarter boat, with bottom half out, had gone the way of the funnel; crabs were crawling over all sorts of raffle--broken spars, canvas from the bridge screen, and woodwork of the chart house, while all forward of amidships, the plates, beaten and twisted and ripped apart, showed cargo, held, or in the act of escaping. One big packing case, free of the ship, had resolved itself into staves round its once contents, a piano that appeared perfectly uninjured.

A rope ladder hung from the bulwarks amidships, and up it Ginnell went followed by the others, reaching a roofless passage that had once been the port alleyway.

Here on the slanting deck one got a full picture of the ruin that had come on the ship. The masts were gone as well as the funnel, boats, ventilators--with the exception of the twisted cowl looking seaward--bridge, chart house, all had vanished wholly or in part, a picture made more impressive by the calm blue sky overhead and the brilliancy of the sunlight.

The locking bars had been removed from the cover of the fore hatch, and the hatch opened evidently by the Chinese in search of plunder. Ginnell scarcely turned an eye on it before he made aft, followed by the others, reached the saloon companionway, and dived down it.

If the confusion on deck was bad, it was worse below. The cabin doors on either side were either open or off their hinges, bunk bedding, mattresses, an open and rifled valise, some women’s clothes, an empty cigar box, and a cage with a dead canary in it lay on the floor.

The place looked as if an army of pillagers had been at work for days, and the sight struck a chill to the hearts of the beholders.

“We’re dished,” said Ginnell. “Quick, boys, if the stuffs anywhere, it’ll be in the old man’s cabin; there’s no mail room in a packet like this. If it’s not there, we’re done.”

They found the Captain’s cabin; they found his papers tossed about, his cash box open and empty, and a strong box clamped to the deck by the bunk in the same condition. They found, to complete the business, an English sovereign on the floor in a corner.

Ginnell sat down on the edge of the bunk.

“They’ve got the dollars,” said he. “That’s why they legged it so quick, and--we let them go. Twenty thousand dollars in gold coin, and we let them go. Tear an ages! Afther them!” He sprang from the bunk, and dashed through the saloon, followed by the others. On deck, they strained their eyes seaward, toward a brown spot on the blue far, far away to the sou’west. It was the junk making a soldier’s wind of it, every inch of sail spread. Judging by the distance she had covered, she must have been making at least eight knots, and the _Heart of Ireland_ under similar wind conditions was incapable of more than seven.

“No good chasing her,” said Blood.

“Not a happorth,” replied Ginnell. Then the quarrel began.

“If you hadn’t held us pokin’ over them old sacks on the rocks there, we’d maybe have had a chance of overhaulin’ her,” said Ginnell.

“Sacks!” cried Blood. “What are you talking about? It was you who let them go, shouting good day to them and telling them we’d got the boodle!”

“Boodle!” cried Ginnell. “You’re a nice chap to talk about boodle. You did me up an’ collared me boat, and now you’re let down proper, and serve you right.”

Blood was about to reply in kind, when the dispute was cut short by a loud yell from the engine-room hatch.

Harman, having satisfied himself with a glance that all was up with the junk, had gone poking about, and entered the engine-room hatchway. He now appeared, shouting like a maniac.

“The dollars!” he cried. “Two dead chinkies an’ the dollars!”

He vanished again with a shout. They rushed to the hatch, and there, on the steel grating leading to the ladder, curled together like two cats that had died in battle, lay the Chinamen. Harman, kneeling beside them, his hands at work on the neck of a tied sack that clinked as he shook it with the glorious, rich, mellow sound that gold in bulk and gold in specie alone can give.

The lanyard came away, and Harman, plunging his big hand in, produced it filled with British sovereigns.

Not one of them moved or said a word for a moment; then Ginnell suddenly squatted down on the grating beside Harman, and, taking a sovereign between finger and thumb gingerly, as though he feared it might burn him, examined it with a laugh. Then he bit it, spun it in the air, caught it in his left hand, and brought his great right palm down on it with a bang.

“Hids or tails!” cried Ginnell. “Hids I win, tails you lose!” He gave a coarse laugh as he opened his palm where the coin lay tail up.

“Hids it is,” he cried; then he tossed it back into the bag and rose to his feet.

“Come on, boys,” said he, “let’s bring the stuff down to the saloon and count it.”

“Better get it aboard,” said Blood.

Harman looked up. The grin on his face stamped by the finding of the gold was still there, and in the light coming through the hatch his forehead showed, beaded with sweat.

“I’m with Ginnell,” said he. “Let’s get down to the saloon for an overhaul. I can’t wait whiles we row off to the schooner. I wants to feel the stuff, and I wants to divide it right off and now. Boys, we’re rich; we sure are. It’s the stroke of my life, and I can’t wait for no rowin’ on board no schooners before we divide up.”

“Come on, then,” said Blood.

The sack was much bigger than its contents, so there was plenty of grip for him as he seized one corner. Then, Harman grasping it by the neck, they lugged it out and along the deck and down the saloon companionway, Ginnell following.

The Chinese had opened nearly all the cabin portholes for the sake of light to assist them in their plundering, and now, as Blood and Harman placed the sack on the slanting saloon table, the crying of gulls came clearly and derisively from the cliffs outside, mixed with the hush of the sea and the boost of the swell as it broke, creaming and squattering amid the rocks. The lackadaisical ventilator cowl, which took an occasional movement from stray puffs of air, added its voice now and then, whining and complaining like some lost yet inconsiderable soul.

No other sound could be heard as the three men ranged themselves, Ginnell on the starboard, and Blood and Harman on the port side of the table.

The swivel seats, though all aslant, were practicable, and Harman was in the act of taking his place in the seat he had chosen when Ginnell interposed.

“One moment, Mr. Harman,” said the owner of the _Heart of Ireland_, “I’ve a word to say to you and Mr. Blood--sure, I beg your pardon--I mane Capt’in Blood.”

“Well,” said Blood, grasping a chair back, “what have you to say?”

“Only this,” replied Ginnell, with a grin. “I’ve got back me revolver.”

Blood clapped his hand to his pocket. It was empty.

“I picked your pocket of it,” said Ginnell, producing the weapon, “two minits back. You fired three shots over the heads of them chows, and there’s three ca’tridges left in her. I can hit a dollar at twinty long paces. Move an inch, either the one or other of you, and I’ll lay your brains on the table forenint you.”

They did not move, for they knew that he was in earnest. They knew that if they moved he would begin to shoot, and if he began to shoot, he would finish the job, leave their corpses on the floor, and sail off with the dollars and his Chinese crew in perfect safety. There were no witnesses.

“Now,” said Ginnell, “what the pair of you has to do is this: Misther Harman, you’ll go into that cabin behind you, climb on the upper bunk, stick your head through the porthole, and shout to the coolies down below there with the boat to come up. It’ll take two men to get them dollars on deck and down to the wather side. When you’ve done that, the pair of you will walk into the ould man’s cabin an’ say your prayers, thanking the saints you’ve got off so easy, whiles I puts the bolt on you till the dollars are away. And remimber this, one word or kick from you and I shoot; the Chinamen will never tell.”

“See here!” said Harman.

“One word!” shouted Ginnell, suddenly dropping the mask of urbanity and leveling the pistol.

It was as though the tiger cat in his grimy soul had suddenly burst bonds and mastered him. His finger pressed on the trigger, and the next moment Harman’s brains, or what he had of them, might have been literally “forenint” him on the table, when suddenly, tremendous as the last trumpet, paralyzing as the inrush of a body of armed men, booing and bellowing back from the cliffs in a hundred echoes came a voice--the blast of a ship’s siren:

“Huroop! Hirrip! Hurop! Haar--haar--haar!”

Ginnell’s arm fell. Harman, forgetting everything, turned, dashed into the cabin behind him, climbed on the upper bunk, and stuck his head through the porthole.

Then he dashed back into the saloon.

“It’s the _Port of Amsterdam_,” cried Harman. “It’s the salvage ship; she’s there droppin’ her anchor. We’re done, we’re dished--and we foolin’ like this and they crawlin’ up on us.”

“And you said she’d only do eight knots!” cried Blood.

Ginnell flung the revolver on the floor. Every trace of the recent occurrence had vanished, and the three men thought no more of one another than a man thinks of petty matters in the face of dissolution. Gunderman was outside; that was enough for them.

“Boys,” said Ginnell, “ain’t there no way out with them dollars? S’pose we howk them ashore?”

“Cliffs two hundred foot high!” said Harman. “Not a chanst. We’re dished.”

Said Blood: “There’s only one thing left. We’ll walk the dollars down to the boat and row off with them. Of course we’ll be stopped, still there’s the chance that Gunderman may be drunk or something. It’s one chance in a hundred billion; it’s the only one.”

But Gunderman was not drunk, nor were his boat party, and the court-martial he held on the beach in broken English and with the sack of coin beside him as chief witness would form a bright page of literature had one time to record it.

Ginnell, as owner of the _Heart of Ireland_, received the whole brunt of the storm--there was no hearing for him when, true to himself, he tried to cast the onus of the business on Blood and Harman. He was told to get out and be thankful he was not brought back to Frisco in irons, and he obeyed instructions, rowing off to the schooner, he and Harman and Blood, a melancholy party with the exception of Blood, who was talking to Harman with extreme animation on the subject of beam engines.

On deck, it was Blood who gave orders for hauling up the anchor and setting sail. He had recaptured the revolver.

III A CARGO OF CHAMPAGNE

I

Billy Meersam, an old sailor friend in Frisco, told me this story as I was sitting one day on Rafferty’s wharf, contemplating the green water, and smoking. Billy chewed and spat between paragraphs. We were discussing Captain Pat Ginnell and his ways; and Billy, who had served his time on hard ships, and, as a young man, on the _Three Brothers_, that tragedy of the sea which now lies a coal hulk in Gibraltar harbour, had quite a lot to say on hazing captains in general and Captain Pat Ginnell in particular.

“I had one trip with him,” said Billy, “shark catchin’ down the coast in that old dough dish of his, the _Heart of Ireland_. Treated me crool bad, he did; crool bad he treated me from first to last; his beef was as hard as his fist, and bud barley he served out for coffee. He was known all along the shore side, but he got his gruel at last, and got it good. Now, by any chance did you ever hear of a Captain Mike Blood and his mate, Billy Harman? Knew the parties, did you? Well, now, I’ll tell you. Blood it were put the hood on Ginnell. Ginnell laid out to get the better of Blood, and Blood, he got the better of Ginnell. He and Harman signed on for a cruise in the _Heart of Ireland_; then they rose on Ginnell, and took the ship and made him deck hand. They did that. They made a line for a wreck they knew of on a rock be name of San Juan, off the San Lucas Islands, and the three of them were peeling that wreck, and they were just gettin’ twenty thousand dollars in gold coin off her, when the party who’d bought the wreck, and his name was Gunderman, lit down on them and collared the boodle and kicked them back into their schooner, givin’ them the choice of makin’ an offing or takin’ a free voyage back to Frisco, with a front seat in the penitentiary thrown in.

“It was a crool setback for them, the dollars hot in their hands one minit and took away the next, you may say, but they didn’t quarrel over it; they set out on a new lay, and this is what happened with Cap’ Ginnell.”

But, with Mr. Meersam’s leave, I will take the story from his mouth and tell it in my own way, with additions gathered from the chief protagonists and from other sources.

When the three adventurers, dismissed with a caution by Gunderman, got sail on the _Heart of Ireland_, they steered a sou’westerly course, till San Juan was a speck to northward and the San Lucas Islands were riding high on the sea on the port quarter.

Then Blood hove the schooner to for a council of war, and Ginnell, though reduced again to deck hand, was called into it.

“Well,” said Blood, “that’s over and done with, and there’s no use calling names. Question is what we’re to do now. We’ve missed twenty thousand dollars through fooling and delaying, and we’ve got to make good somehow, even on something small. If I had ten cents in my pocket, Pat Ginnell, I’d leave you and your old shark boat for the nearest point of land and hoof it back to Frisco; but I haven’t--worse luck.”

“There’s no use in carryin’ on like that,” said Harman. “Frisco’s no use to you or me, and your boots would be pretty well wore out before you got there. What I say is this: We’ve got a schooner that’s rigged out for shark fishin’. Well, let’s go on that lay; we’ll give Ginnell a third share, and he’ll share with us in payin’ the coolies. Shark oil’s fetchin’ big prices now in Frisco. It’s not twenty thousand dollars, but it’s somethin’.”

Ginnell, leaning against the after rail and cutting himself a fill of tobacco, laughed in a mirthless way. Then he spoke: “Shark fishin’, begob; well, there’s a word to be said be me on that. You two thought yourselves mighty clever, collarin’ me boat and makin’ yourselves masthers of it. I don’t say you didn’t thrump me ace, I don’t say you didn’t work it so that I can’t have the law on you, but I’ll say this, Misther Harman, if you want to go shark fishin’, you can work the business yourself, and a nice hand you’ll make of it. Why, you don’t know the grounds, let alone the work. A third share, and me the rightful owner of this tub! I’ll see you ham-strung before I put a hand to it.”

“Then get forrard,” said Harman. “Don’t know the grounds? Maybe I don’t know the grounds you used to work farther north, but I know every foot of the grounds here-a-way, right from the big kelp beds to the coast. Why, I been on the fish-commission ship and worked with ’em all through this part, takin’ soundin’s and specimens--rock, weed, an’ fish. Know the bottom here as well as I know the pa’m of me hand.”

“Well, if you know it so well, you’ve no need of me. Lay her on the grounds yourself,” said Ginnell.

He went forward.

“Black sullen,” said Harman, looking after him. “He ain’t no use to lead or drive. Well, let’s get her before the wind an’ crowd down closer to Santa Catalina. I’m not sayin’ this is a good shark ground, the sea’s too much of a blame’ fish circus just here--but it’s better than nothin’.”

They got the _Heart_ before the wind, which had died down to a three-knot breeze, Blood steering and Harman forward, on the lookout.

Harman was right, the sea round these coasts is a fish circus, to give it no better name.

The San Lucas Islands and Santa Catalina seem the rendezvous of most of the big fish inhabiting the Pacific. Beginning with San Miguel, the islands run almost parallel to the California coast in a sou’westerly direction, and, seen now from the schooner’s deck, they might have been likened to vast ships under press of sail, so tall were they above the sea shimmer and so white in the sunshine their fog-filled cañons.

Away south, miles and miles away across the blue water, the peaks of Santa Catalina Island showed a dream of vague rose and gold.

It was for Santa Catalina that Harman was making now.

To tell the whole truth, bravely as he had talked of his knowledge of these waters, he was not at all sure in his mind as to their shark-bearing capacity. He did not know that for a boat whose business was shark-liver oil, this bit of sea was not the happiest hunting ground.

Nothing is more mysterious than the way fish make streets in the sea and keep to them; make cities, so to say, and inhabit them at certain seasons; make playgrounds, and play in them.

Off the north of Santa Catalina Island you will find Yellow Fin. Cruise down on the seaward side and you will find a spot where the Yellow Fin vanish and the Yellow Tail take their place; farther south you strike the street of the White Sea Bass, which opens on to Halibut Square, which, in turn, gives upon a vast area, where the Black Sea Bass, the Swordfish, the Albacore, and the Whitefish are at home.

Steer round the south of the island and you hit the suburbs of the great fish city of the Santa Catalina Channel. The Grouper Banks are its purlieus, and the Sunfish keeps guard of its southern gate. You pass Barracuda Street and Bonito Street, till the roar of the Sea Lions from their rocks tells you that you are approaching the Washington Square of undersea things--the great Tuna grounds.

Skirting the Tuna grounds, and right down the Santa Catalina Channel, runs a Broadway which is also a Wall Street, where much business is done in the way of locomotion and destruction. Here are the Killer Whales and the Sulphur-bottom Whales and the Grey Whales, and the Porpoises, Dolphins, Skipjacks, and Sand Dabs.

Sharks you will find nearly everywhere, _but_, and this was a fact unknown to Harman, the sharks, as compared to the other big fish, are few and far between.

It was getting toward sundown, when the schooner, under a freshening wind, came along the seaward side of Santa Catalina Island. The island on this side shows two large bays, separated by a rounded promontory. In the northernmost of these bays they dropped anchor close in shore, in fifteen-fathom water.

II

At dawn next morning they got the gear ready. The Chinese crew, during the night, had caught a plentiful supply of fish for bait, and, as the sun was looking over the coast hills, they hauled up the anchor and put out for the kelp beds.

There are two great kelp beds off the seaward coast of Santa Catalina, an inner and an outer. Two great submarine forests more thickly populated than any forest on land. This is the haunt of the Black Sea Bass that run in weight up to four hundred pounds, the Ribbon Fish, the Frogfish, and the Kelpfish, that builds its nest just as a bird builds, crabs innumerable, and sea creatures that have never yet been classified or counted.

They tied up to the kelp, and the fishing began, while the sun blazed stronger upon the water and the morning mists died out of the cañons of the island.

The shark hooks baited and lowered were relieved of their bait, but not by sharks; all sorts of bait snatchers inhabit these waters, and they were now simply chewing the fish off the big shark hooks.

Getting on for eleven o’clock, Blood, who had been keeping a restless eye seaward, left his line and went forward with Ginnell’s glass, which he levelled at the horizon.

A sail on the sea line to the northwest had attracted his attention an hour ago, and the fact that it had scarcely altered its position, although there was a six-knot breeze blowing, had roused his curiosity.

“What is it?” asked Harman.

“Schooner hove to,” said Blood. “No, b’gosh, she’s not; she’s abandoned.”

At the word “abandoned,” Ginnell, who had been fishing for want of something better to do, raised his head like a bird of prey.

He also left his line, and came forward. Blood handed him the glass.

“Faith, you’re right,” said Ginnell; “she’s a derelick. Boys, up with them tomfool shark lines; here’s a chanst of somethin’ decent.”

For once Blood and Harman were completely with him; the lines were hauled in, the kelp connections broken, mainsail and jib set, and in a moment, as it were, the _Heart of Ireland_ was bounding on the swell, topsail and foresail shaking out now and bellying against the blue till she heeled almost gunwale under to the merry wind, boosting the green water from her bow, and sending the foam flooding in sheets to starboard.

It was as though the thought of plunder had put new heart and life into her, as it certainly had into her owner, Pat Ginnell.

As they drew nearer, they saw the condition of the schooner more clearly. Derelict and deserted, yet with mainsail set, she hung there, clawing at the wind and thrashing about in the mad manner of a vessel commanded only by her tiller.

Now the mainsail would fill and burst out, the boom swaying over to the rattle of block and cordage. For a moment she would give an exhibition of just how a ship ought to sail herself, and then, with a shudder, the air would spill from the sail, and, like a daft woman in a blowing wind, she would reel about with swinging gaff and boom to the tune of the straining rigging, the pitter-patter of the reef points, and the whine of the rudder nearly torn from its pintles.

A couple of cable lengths away the _Heart of Ireland_ hove to, the whaleboat was lowered, and Blood, Ginnell, and Harman, leaving Chopstick Charlie in charge of the _Heart_, started for the derelict. They came round the stern of the stranger, and read her name, _Tamalpais_, done in letters that had been white, but were now a dingy yellow.

Then they came along the port side and hooked on to the fore channels, while Blood and the others scrambled on deck.

The deck was clean as a ballroom floor and sparkling with salt from the dried spray; there was no raffle or disorder of any sort. Every boat was gone, and the falls, swinging at full length from the davits, proclaimed the fact that the crew had left the vessel in an orderly manner, though hurriedly enough, no doubt; had abandoned her, leaving the falls swinging and the rudder playing loose and the winds to do what they willed with her.

There was no sign of fire, no disorder that spoke of mutiny, though in cargo and with a low freeboard, she rode free of water, one could tell that by the movement of her underfoot. Fire, leak, mutiny, those are the three reasons for the abandonment of a ship at sea, and there was no sign of any one of them.

Blood led the way aft, the saloon hatch was open, and they came down into the tiny saloon. The sunlight through the starboard portholes was spilling about in water shimmers on the pitch-pine panelling; everything was in order, and a meal was set out on the table, which showed a Maconochie jam tin, some boiled pork, and a basket of bread; plates were laid for two, and the plates had been used.

“Beats all,” said Harman, looking round. “Boys, this is a find as good as the dollars. Derelict and not a cat on board, and she’s all of ninety tons. Then there’s the cargo. B’ Jiminy, but we’re in luck!”

“Let’s roust out the cabins,” said Ginnell.

They found the Captain’s cabin, easily marked by its size and its furniture.

Some oilskins and old clothes were hanging up by the bunk, a sea chest stood open. It had evidently been rifled of its most precious contents; there was nothing much left in it but some clothes, a pair of sea boots, and some worthless odds and ends. In a locker they found the ship’s papers. Blood plunged into these, and announced his discoveries to the others, crowding behind him and peeping over his shoulders.

“Captain Keene, master--bound from Frisco to Sydney with cargo of champagne----. And what in thunder is she doing down here? Never mind--we’re the finders.” He tossed the papers back in the locker and turned to the others. “No sign of the log. Most likely he’s taken it off with him. What I want to see now is the cargo. If it’s champagne, and not bottled bilge water, we’re made. Come along, boys.”

He led the way on deck, and between them they got the tarpaulin cover off the cargo hatch, undid the locking bars, and opened the hatch.

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 while he talked to them.

“There’s some chaps,” said Blood, “who’d be for running crooked on this game, taking the schooner off to some easy port and selling her and the cargo, but I’m not going to go in for any such mug’s business as that. Frisco and salvage money is my idea.”

“And what about the _Yan-Shan_?” asked Ginnell. “Frisco will be reekin’ with the story of how Gunderman found us pickin’ her bones and how he caught us with the dollars in our hands. Don’t you think the underwriters will put that up against us? Maybe they won’t say we’ve murdered the crew of this hooker for the sake of the salvage! Our characters are none too bright to be goin’ about with schooners and cargoes of fizz, askin’ for salvage money.”

“_Your_ character ain’t,” said Harman. “Speak for yourself when you’re talkin’ of characters, and leave us out. I’m with Blood. I’ve had enough of this shady business, and I ain’t goin’ to run crooked no more. Frisco and salvage moneys--my game, b’sides, you needn’t come into Frisco harbour. Lend us a couple of your hands to take her in, and we’ll do the business and share equal with you in the takin’s. I ain’t a man to go back on a pal for a few dirty dollars, and my word’s as good as my bond all along the water side with pals. I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ about owners or companies; I say with pals, and you’ll find your share banked for you in the Bank of California, safe as if you’d put it there yourself.”

Ginnell for a moment seemed about to dissent violently from this proposition; then, of a sudden, he fell calm.

“Well,” said he, “maybe I’m wrong and maybe you’re right, but I ain’t goin’ to hang behind. If you’ve fixed on taking her into Frisco, I’ll follow you in and help in the swearin’. You two chaps can navigate her with a couple of the coolies I’ll lend you, and, mind you, it’s equal shares I’m askin’.”

“Right,” said Harman. “What do you say, Blood?”

“I’m agreeable,” said Blood; “though it’s more than he deserves, considering all things.”

“Well, I’m not goin’ to put up no arguments,” said Ginnell. “I states me terms, and, now that’s fixed, I proposes we takes stock of the cargo. Rig a tackle and get one of them cases on deck and let’s see if the manifest holds when the wrappin’s is off.”

The others agreed. With the help of a couple of the Chinamen from the boat alongside, they rigged a tackle and got out a case. Harman, poking about, produced a chisel and mallet from the hole where the schooner’s carpenter had kept his tools, a strip of boarding was removed from the top of the case, and next moment a champagne bottle, in its straw jacket, was in the hands of Ginnell.

“Packed careful,” said he.

He removed the jacket and the pink tissue paper from the bottle, whose gold capsule glittered delightfully in the sunlight.

Then he knocked the bottle’s head off, and the amber wine creamed out over his hands and onto the deck.

Harman ran to the galley and fetched a pannikin, and they sampled the stuff, and then Blood, taking the half-empty bottle, threw it overboard.

“We don’t want any drinking,” said he; “and we’ll have to account for every bottle. Now, then, get the lid fixed again and the case back in the hold, and let’s see what’s in the lazaret in the way of provisions.”

They got the case back, closed the hatch, and then started on an inspection of the stores, finding plenty of stuff in the way of pork and rice and flour, but no delicacies. There was not an ounce of tea or coffee, no sugar, no tobacco.

“They must have took it all with them when they made off,” said Harman.

“That’s easy mended,” replied Ginnell. “We can get some stores from the _Heart_; s’pose I go off to her and fetch what’s wanted and leave you two chaps here?”

“Not on your life,” said Blood; “we all stick together, Pat Ginnell, and so there’ll be no monkey tricks played. That’s straight. Get your fellers into the boat and let’s shove off, then Harman and I can come back with the stores and the hands you can lend us to work her.”

“Faith, you’re all suspicious,” said Ginnell, with a grin. “Well, over with you, and we’ll all go back together. I’m gettin’ to feel as if I was married to you two chaps. However, there’s no use in grumblin’.”

“Not a bit,” said Blood.

He followed Ginnell into the whaleboat, and, leaving the _Tamalpais_ to rock alone on the swell, they made back for the _Heart of Ireland_.

Now, Ginnell, although he had agreed to go back to Frisco, had no inclination to do so, the fact of the matter being that the place had become too hot for him.

He had played with smuggling, and had been friendly with the Greeks of the Upper Bay and the Chinese of Petaluma. He had fished with Chinese sturgeon lines, foul inventions of Satan, as all Chinese sporting, hunting, and fishing contraptions are, and had fallen foul of the patrol men; he had lit his path with blazing drunks as with bonfires, mishandled his fellow creatures, robbed them, cheated them, and lied to them. He had talked big in bars, and the wharf side of San Francisco was sick of him; so, if you understand the strength of the wharf-side stomach, you can form some estimate of the character of Captain Ginnell. He knew quite well the feeling of the harbour side against him, and he knew quite well how that feeling would be inflated at the sight of him coming back triumphant, with a salved schooner in tow. Then there was Gunderman. He feared Gunderman more than he feared the devil, and he feared the story that Gunderman would have to tell even more than he feared Gunderman.

No, he had done with Frisco; he never would go back there again; he had done with the _Heart of Ireland_. He would strike out again in life with a new name and a new schooner and a cargo of champagne, sell schooner and cargo, and make another start with still another name.

Revolving this decision in his mind, he winked at the backs of Blood and Harman as they went up the little companion ladder before him and gained the deck of the _Heart of Ireland_.

Blood led the way down to the cabin. The lazaret was situated under the cabin floor, and, while Harman opened it, Blood, with a pencil and a bit of paper, figured out their requirements.

“We want a couple of tins of coffee,” said he, “and half a dozen of condensed milk--sugar, biscuits--tobacco--beef.”

“It’s sorry I am I haven’t any cigars to offer you,” said Ginnell, with a half laugh, “but there’s some tins of sardines; be sure an’ take the sardines, Mr. Harman, for me heart wouldn’t be aisy if I didn’t think you were well supplied with comforts.”

“I can’t find any sardines,” said the delving Harman, “but here’s baccy enough, and eight tins of beef will be more than enough to get us to Frisco.”

“Take a dozen,” said Ginnell; “there ain’t more than a dozen all told; but, sure, I’ll manage to do without, and never grumble so long as you’re well supplied.”

Blood glanced at him with an angry spark in his eye.

“We’ve no wish to crowd you, Pat Ginnell,” said he, “and what we take we pay for, or we will pay for it when we get to port. You’ll please remember you’re talking to an Irishman.”

“Irishman!” cried Ginnell. “You’ll be plazed to remember I’m an Irishman, too.”

“Well I know it,” replied the other.

This remark, for some unaccountable reason, seemed to incense Ginnell. He clenched his fists, stuck out his jaw, glanced Blood up and down, and then, as if remembering something, brought himself under control with a mighty effort.

“There’s no use in talk,” said he; “we’d better be gettin’ on with our business. You’ll want somethin’ in the way of a sack to cart all that stuff off to the schooner. I’ll fetch you one.”

He turned to the companion ladder and climbed it in a leisurely fashion. On deck he took a deep breath and stood for a moment scanning the horizon from north to south. Then he turned and cast his eyes over Santa Catalina and the distant coast line.

Not a sail was visible, nor the faintest indication of smoke in all that stainless blue, sweeping in a great arc from the northern to the southern limits of visibility.

No one was present to watch Ginnell and what he was about to do. No one save God and the sea gulls--for Chinese don’t count.

He stepped to the cabin hatch.

“Misther Harman!” cried he.

“Hello!” answered Harman, from below. “Whacher want?”

“It’s about the Bank of California I want to speak to you,” replied Ginnell.

Harman’s round and astonished face appeared at the foot of the ladder.

“Bank of California?” said he. “What the blazes do you mean, Pat Ginnell?”

“Why, you said you’d put me share of the salvage in the Bank of California, didn’t you?” replied Ginnell. “Well, I just want to say I’m agreeable to your proposal--and will you be plazed to give the manager me love when you see him?”

With that he shut the hatch, fastening it securely and prisoning the two men below, whose voices came now bearing indications of language enough, one might fancy, to lift the deck. He knew it would take them a day’s hard work to break out, and maybe two. Bad as Ginnell might be, he was not a murderer, and he reckoned their chances were excellent considering the provisions and water they had, their own energies, and the drift of the current, which would take them close up to Santa Catalina.

He also reckoned that they would give him no trouble in the way of pursuit, for he had literally made them a present of the _Heart of Ireland_.

Having satisfied himself that they were well and securely held, he sent the whaleboat off to the _Tamalpais_, laden with the crew’s belongings, consisting of all sorts of quaint boxes and mats. This was managed in one journey; the boat came back for him, and, in less than an hour from the start of the business, he found himself standing on the deck of the _Tamalpais_, all the crew transferred, the fellows hauling on the halyards, Chopstick Charlie at the helm, and a good schooner, with a cargo worth many thousands of dollars, underfoot.

He turned to have a look at the compass and a word with the steersman before going below.

Down below he had a complete turnout of the Captain’s cabin, and found the log for which Harman had hunted in vain; it had got down between the bunk bedding and the panelling, and he brought it into the main cabin, and there, seated at the table, he pored over it, breathing hard and following the passages with his horny thumb.

The thing had been faked most obviously, and the faking had begun two days out from Frisco. A gale that had never blown had driven the _Tamalpais_ out of her course, et cetera; and Ginnell, with the eye of a sailor and with his knowledge of the condition of the _Tamalpais_ when found, saw at once that there was something here darker even than the darkness that Blood and Harman had perceived. Why had the log been faked? Why had the schooner been abandoned? If it were a question of insurance, Captain Keene would have scuttled her or fired her.

Then, again, everything spoke of haste amounting to panic. Why should a vessel, in perfect condition and in good weather, be deserted as though some visible plague had suddenly appeared on board of her?

Ginnell closed the book and tossed it back in the bunk.

“What’s the meaning of it?”

Unhappy man, he was soon to find out.

At eight o’clock next morning, in perfect weather, Ginnell, standing by the steersman and casting his eyes around, saw across the heaving blueness of the sea a smudge of smoke on the western horizon. A few minutes later, as the smoke cleared, he made out the form of the vessel that had been firing up.

Captain Keene had left an old pair of binoculars among the other truck in his cabin. Ginnell went down and fetched them on deck, then he looked.

The stranger was a torpedo boat; she was making due south, and, like all torpedo boats, she seemed in a hurry.

Then, all at once, and even as he looked, her form began to alter, she shortened mysteriously, and her two funnels became gradually one.

She had altered her course; she had evidently sighted, and was making direct for, the _Tamalpais_. Not exactly direct, perhaps, but directly enough to make Ginnell’s lips dry as sandstone.

“Bad cess to her,” said Ginnell to himself; “there’s no use in doin’ anythin’ but pretendin’ to be deaf and dumb. And, sure, aren’t I an honest trader, with all me credentials, Capt’in Keene, of Frisco, blown out of me course, me mate washed overboard? Let her come.”

She came without any letting. Shearing along through the water, across which the hubbub of her engines could be distinctly heard, and within signalling distance, now, she let fly a string of bunting to the breeze, an order to heave to, which the _Tamalpais_, that honest trader, disregarded.

Then came a puff of white smoke, the boom of a gun, and a practice shell that raised a plume of spray a cable length in front of the schooner, and went off, making ducks and drakes for miles across the blue sea.

Ginnell rushed to the halyards himself. Chopstick Charlie, at the wheel, required no orders, and the _Tamalpais_ came round, with all her canvas spilling the wind and slatting, while the warship, stealing along now with just a ripple at her stern, came gliding past the stem of the schooner.

They were taking her name, just as a policeman takes the number of a motor car.

It was a ghastly business. No cheery voice, with the inquiry: “What’s your name and where are you bound for?” Just a silent inspection, and then a dropped boat.

Next moment a lieutenant of the American navy was coming over the side of the _Tamalpais_, to be received by Ginnell.

“Captain Keene?” asked the lieutenant.

“That’s me name,” answered the unfortunate, who had determined on the rôle of the blustering innocent; “and who are you, to be boardin’ me like this and firing guns at me?”

“Well, of all the----cheek!” said the other, with a laugh. “A nice dance you’ve led us since we lost you in that fog.”

“Which fog?” asked the astonished Ginnell. “Fog! It’s some other ship you’re after, for I haven’t sighted a fog since leavin’ port.”

“Oh, close up!” said the other.

His men, who had come on board, were busy with the covering of the main hatch, and he walked forward, to superintend.

The hatch cover off, they rigged a tackle and hauled out a case of champagne; four cases of champagne they brought on deck, and then, attacking the next layer, they brought out a case of a different description. It contained a machine gun.

Under the champagne layer, the _Tamalpais_ was crammed right down to the garboard strakes with contraband of war in the form of arms and ammunition for the small South American republic that was just then kicking up a dust around its murdered president.

Ginnell saw his own position at a glance. The _Heart of Ireland_ given away to Blood and Harman for the captaincy of a gun runner, and a seized gun runner at that.

He saw now why Keene and his crew had deserted in a hurry. Chased by the warship, and running into a fog, they had slipped away in the boats, making for the coast, while the pursuer had made a dead-west run of it to clear herself of the dangerous coast waters and their rocks and shoals.

That was plain enough to Ginnell, but the prospect ahead of him was not clear at all.

He could never confess the truth about the _Heart of Ireland_, and, when they took him back to Frisco, it would at once be discovered that he was not Keene, but Ginnell. What would happen to him?

What did happen to him? I don’t know. Billy Meersam could throw no light on the matter. He said that he believed the thing was “hushed up somehow or ’nother,” finishing with the opinion that a good many things are hushed up somehow or ’nother in Frisco.

IV AVALON BAY

I

Avalon Bay, on the east of Santa Catalina Island, clips between its two horns a little seaside town unique of its kind. Billy Harman had described it to Captain Blood as a place where you saw girls bathing in Paris hats. However that may be, you see stranger things than this at Avalon.

It is the head centre of the big-game fisheries of the California coast. Men come here from all parts of America and Europe to kill tarpon and yellow-tail and black sea bass, to say nothing of shark, which is reckoned now as a game fish. Trippers come from Los Angeles to go round in glass-bottomed boats and inspect the sea gardens, and bank presidents, Steel Trust men, and millionaires of every brand come for their health.

You will see monstrous shark gallowsed on the beach and three-hundred-pound bass being photographed side by side with their captors, and you will have the fact borne in on you that the biggest fish that haunt the sea can be caught and held and brought to gaff with a rod weighing only a few ounces and a twenty-strand line that a child could snap.

Every one talks fish at Avalon, from the boatmen who run the gasoline launches to the latest-arrived man with a nerve breakdown who has come from the wheat pit or Wall Street to rest himself by killing sharks or fighting tuna, every one. Here you are estimated not by the size of your bank balance, but by the size of your catch. Not by your social position, but by your position in sport, and here the magic blue or red button of the Tuna Club is a decoration more prized than any foreign order done in diamonds.

Colonel Culpepper and his daughter, Rose, were staying at Avalon just at the time the _Yan-Shan_ business occurred on San Juan. The colonel hailed from the Middle West and had a wide reputation on account of his luck and his millions. Rose had a reputation of her own; she was reckoned the prettiest girl wherever she went, and just now she was the prettiest girl in Avalon.

This morning, just after dawn, Miss Culpepper was standing on the veranda of the Metropole Hotel, where the darkies were dusting mats and putting the cane chairs in order. Avalon was still half in shadows, but a gorgeous morning hinted of itself in the blue sky overhead and the touch of dusk-blue sea visible from the veranda. The girl had come down undecided as to whether she would go on the water or for a ramble inland, but the peep of blue sea decided her. It was irresistible, and, leaving the hotel, she came toward the beach.

No one was out yet. In half an hour or less the place would be alive with boatmen, but in this moment of enchantment not a soul was to be seen either on the premises of the Tuna Club or on the little _plage_ or on the shingle, where the small waves were breaking, crystal clear, in the first rays of the sun.

She came to a balk of timber lying close to the water’s edge, stood by it for a moment, and then sat down, nursing her knees and contemplating the scene before her--the sun-smitten sea looking fresh, as though this were the first morning that had ever shone on the world, the white gulls flying against the blue of the sky, the gasoline launches and sailing boats anchored out from the shore and only waiting the boatmen, the gaffers, the men with rods, and the resumption of the eternal business--Fish.

The sight of them raised no desire in the mind of the gazer; she was tired of fish. A lover of the sea, a fearless sailor and able to handle a boat as well as a man, she was still weary of the eternal subject of weights and measures; she had lived in an atmosphere of fish for a month, and, not being much of a fisherwoman, she was beginning to want a change, or, at all events, some new excitement. She was to get it.

A crunching of the shingle behind her made her turn. It was Aransas Joe, the first boatman out that morning, moving like a seal to the sea and laden with a huge can of bait, a spare spar, two sculls, and a gaff.

Anything more unlovely than Aransas Joe in contrast with the fair morning and the fresh figure of the girl, it would be hard to imagine. Wall-eyed, weather-stained, fish-scaled, and moving like a plantigrade, he was a living epitome of longshore life and an object lesson in what it can do for a man.

Joe never went fishing; the beach was his home, and sculling fishermen to their yawls his business. The Culpeppers were well known to him.

“Joe,” said the girl, “you’re just the person I want. Come and row me out to our yawl.”

“Where’s your gaffer an’ your engine man?” asked Joe.

“I don’t want them. I can look after the engine myself. I’m not going fishing.”

“Not goin’ fishin’,” said Joe, putting down his can of bait and shifting the spar to his left shoulder; “not goin’ fishin’! Then what d’you want doin’ with the yawl?”

“I want to go for a sail--I mean a spin. Go on, hurry up and get the dinghy down.”

Joe relieved himself of the spar, dropped the gaff by the bait tin, and scratched his head. It was his method of thinking.

Unable to scratch up any formulable objection to the idea of a person taking a fishing yawl out for pleasure and not for fish, yet realising the absurdity of it, he was dumb. Then, with the sculls under his arm, he made for a dinghy beached near the water edge, threw the sculls in, and dragged the little boat down till she was half afloat. The girl got in, and he pushed off.

The _Sunfish_ was the name of the Culpeppers’ yawl, a handy little craft rigged with a Buffalo engine so fixed that one could attend to it and steer at the same time.

“Mind you, and keep clear of the kelp,” said Joe, as the girl stepped from the dinghy to the larger craft, “if you don’t want your propeller tangled up.” He helped her to haul the anchor in, got into the dinghy, and shoved off.

“I’ll be back about eight or nine,” she called after him.

“I’ll be on the lookout for you,” replied he.

Then Miss Culpepper found herself in the delightful position of being absolutely alone and her own mistress, captain and crew of a craft that moved at the turning of a lever, and able to go where she pleased. She had often been out with her father, but never alone like this, and the responsible-irresponsible sensation was a new delight in life which, until now, she had never even imagined.

She started the engine, and the _Sunfish_ began to glide ahead, clearing the fleet of little boats anchored out and rocking them with her wash; then, in a grand curve, she came round the south horn of the bay opening the coast of the island and the southern sea blue as lazulite and speckless to the far horizon.

“This is good,” said Miss Culpepper to herself; “almost as good as being a sea gull.”

Sea gulls raced her, jeered at her, showed themselves to her, now honey yellow against the sun, now snowflake white with the sun against them, and then left her, quarrelling away down the wind in search of something more profitable.

She passed little bays where the sea sang on beaches of pebble, and deep-cut cañons rose-tinted and showing the green of fern and the ash green of snake cactus and prickly pear. Sea lions sunning themselves on a rock held her eye for a moment, and then, rounding the south end of the island, a puff of westerly wind all the way from China blew in her face, and the vision of the great Pacific opened before her, with the peaks of San Clemente showing on the horizon twenty-four miles away to the southwest.

Not a ship was to be seen, with the exception of a little schooner to southward. She showed bare sticks, and Miss Culpepper, not knowing the depth of the water just there, judged her to be at anchor.

Here, clear of the island barrier, the vast and endless swell of the Pacific made itself felt, lifting the _Sunfish_ with a buoyant and balloonlike motion. Steering the swift-running boat across these gentle vales and meadows of ocean was yet another delight, and the flying fish, bright like frosted silver, with black, sightless eyes, chased her now, flittering into the water ahead of the boat like shaftless arrowheads shot after her by some invisible marksman.

The great kelp beds oiled the sea to the northward, and, remembering Joe’s advice, but not wishing to return yet a while, the girl shifted the helm slightly, heading more for the southward and making a beam sea of the swell. This brought the schooner in sight.