Chapter VI: Part II: The “heart of Ireland” (3)

It was now a little after seven, and the appetite that waits upon good digestion, youth, and perfect health began to remind Miss Culpepper of the breakfast room at the Metropole, the snow-white tables, the attentive waiters. She glanced at her gold wrist watch, glanced round at Santa Catalina, that seemed a tremendous distance away, and put the helm hard astarboard.

She had not noticed during the last half minute or so that the engine seemed tired and irritable. The sudden shift of helm seemed to upset its temper still more, and then, all of a sudden, its noise stopped and the propeller ceased to revolve.

Miss Culpepper, perhaps for the first time in her life, knew the meaning of the word “silence.” The silence that spreads from the Horn to the Yukon, from Mexico to Hongkong, held off up to this by the beat of the propeller and the purr of the engine, closed in on her, broken only by the faint ripple of the bow wash as the way fell off the boat.

She guessed at once what was the matter, and confirmed her suspicions by examining the gasoline gauge. The tank was empty. Aransas Joe, whose duty it was, had forgotten to fill it up the night before.

Of all breakdowns this was the worst, but she did not grumble; the spirit that had raised Million Dollar Culpepper from nothing to affluence was not wanting in his daughter.

She said, “Bother!” glanced at Santa Catalina, glanced at the schooner, and then, stepping the mast of the yawl, shook out her sail to the wind. She was steering for the schooner. It was near, the island was far, and she reckoned on getting something to eat to stay her on the long sail back; also, somehow, the sudden longing for the sight of a human face and the sound of a human voice in that awful loneliness on whose fringe she had intruded had fallen upon her. There were sure to be sailormen of some sort upon the schooner, and where there were sailormen there was sure to be food of some sort.

But there was no one to be seen upon the deck, and, as she drew closer, the atmosphere of forsakenness around the little craft became ever apparent. As she drew closer still she let go the sheet and furled the sail. So cleverly had she judged the distance that the boat had just way enough on to bring it rubbing against the schooner’s starboard side. She had cast out the port fenders, and, standing at the bow with the boat hook, she clutched onto the after channels, tied up, and then, standing on the yawl’s gunwale, and, with an agility none the less marked because nobody was looking, scrambled on board. She had not time to more than glance at the empty and desolate deck, for scarcely had her foot touched the planking when noises came from below. There were people evidently in the cabin and they were shouting.

Then she saw that the cabin hatch was closed, and, not pausing to consider what she might be letting out, the girl mastered the working of the hatch fastening, undid it, and stepped aside.

The fore end of a sailorman emerged, a broad-faced, blue-eyed individual blinking against the sunlight. He scrambled on deck, and was followed by another, dark, better looking, and younger.

Not a word did these people utter as they stood taking in everything round them from the horizon to the girl.

Then the first described brought his eyes to rest on the girl.

“Well, I’m darned!” said he.

II

Let me interpolate now Mr. Harman’s part of the story in his own words.

“When Cap Ginnell bottled me and Blood in the cabin of the _Heart of Ireland_,” said he, “we did a bit of shoutin’ and then fell quiet. There ain’t no use in shoutin’ against a two-inch thick cabin hatch overlaid with iron platin’. He’d made that hatch on purpose for the bottling of parties; must have, by the way it worked and by the armamints on it.

“You may say we were mugs to let ourselves be bottled like that. We were. Y’ see, we hadn’t thought it over. We hadn’t thought it would pay Ginnell to abandon the _Heart_ for a derelick schooner better found and up to her hatches with a cargo of champagne, or we wouldn’t have let him fool us down into the cabin like we did and then clap the hatch on us. Leavin’ alone the better exchange, we hadn’t thought it would be nuts to him to do us in the eye. Mugs we were, and mugs we found ourselves, sittin’ on the cabin table and listenin’ to the blighter clearin’ the crew off. There weren’t no chance of any help from them. Chows they were, carin’ for nothin’ s’long as their chests an’ opium pipes was safe.

“The skylight overhead was no use for more’n a cat to crawl through, if it’d been open, which it wasn’t, more’n an inch, and fastened from the deck side. Portholes! God bless you, them scuttles wasn’t big enough for a cat’s face to fit in.

“I says to Blood: ‘Listen to the blighters! Oh, say, can’t we do nuthin’, sittin’ here on our beam ends? Ain’t you got nuthin’ in your head? Ain’t you got a match in your pocket to fire the tub and be done with it?’

“‘It’ll be lucky for us,’ says Blood, ‘if Cap Ginnell doesn’t fire her before he leaves her.’ With that, I didn’t think anythin’ more about matches. No, sir! For ha’f an hour after the last boatload of Chows and their dunnage was off the ship and away I was sniffin’ like a dog at the hatch cover for the smell of smoke, and prayin’ to the A’mighty between sniffs.

“After that we rousted round to see how we were fixed up for provisions and water. We found grub enough for a month, and in one of the bunks a breaker ha’f filled with water. Now that breaker must have been put there for us by Ginnell before we left the _Heart_ to ’xamine the derelick schooner. He must have fixed in his mind to do us in and change ship right from the first. I remarks on this to Blood, and then we starts a hunt for tools to cut our way out of there, findin’ nuthin’ serviceable but cutlery ware an’ a corkscrew. Two prong forks and knives wore thin with usin’ weren’t what we were searchin’ for; a burglar’s jimmy, blastin’ powder, and a drill was more in our line, but there weren’t any, so we just set to with the knives, cuttin’ and scrubbin’ at the tender parts of the hatch, more like tryin’ to tickle a girl with iron stays on her than any useful work, for the plates on that hatch would ’a’ given sniff to the plates on a battleship, till I give over and just sat down on the floor cursin’ Schwab and the Steel Trusts and Carnegie and Ginnell and the chap that had forged them plates from the tip of his hammer to the toe of his boots. ‘Oh, why the blazes,’ says I, ‘weren’t we born rats! There’s some sense in rats; rats would be out and on deck, while here’s two chaps with five fingers on each fist and men’s brains in their heads bottled and done for, scratchin’ like blind kittens shet up in a box, and all along of puttin’ their trust in a swab they ought to have scragged when they had the chanst.’

“‘Oh, shet your head!’ says Blood.

“‘Shet yours,’ says I. ‘I’m speakin’ for both of us; it’s joining in with that skrimshanker’s done us. Bad comp’ny, neither more nor neither less, and I’m blowed if I don’t quit such and their likes and turn Baptis’ minister if I ever lay leg ashore again.’ Yes, that’s what I says to Cap Blood; I was that het up I laid for everythin’ in sight. Then I goes on at him for the little we’d done, forgettin’ it was the tools were at fault. ‘What’s the use,’ says I, ‘tinkerin’ away at that hatch? You might as well be puttin’ a blister on a bald head, hopin’ to raise hair. Here we are, and here we stick,’ I says, ‘till Providence lets us out.’

“The words were scarce out of my head when he whips out Ginnell’s gun, which he was carryin’ in his pocket and hadn’t remembered till then. I thought he was goin’ to lay for me, till he points the mouth of it at the hatch and lets blaze. There were three ca’tridges in the thing, and he fires the three, and when I’d got back my hearing and the smoke had cleared a bit there was the hatch starin’ at us unrattled, with three spelters of lead markin’ it like beauty spots over the three dimples left by the bullets.

“All the same, the firin’ done us good--sort of cleared the air like a thunder-storm--and I began to remember I’d got a mouth on me and a pipe in my pocket. We lit up and sat down, him on the last step of the companionway and me on the table side, and then we began to figure on what hand Providence was like to take in the business.

“I says to him: ‘There’s nothin’ _but_ Providence left, barrin’ them old knives and that corkscrew, and they’re out of count. We’re driftin’ on the _Kuro Shiwo_ current, aimin’ right for the Horn, you may say, but there’s the kelp beds, and they’re pretty sure to hold us a bit. They’re south of us, and Santa Catalina’s east of them, with lots of fishin’ boats sure to be out, and it’s on the cards that some of them jays will spot us. “Derelick” is writ all over us--bare sticks and nothin’ on deck, and sluin’ about to the current like a drunk goin’ home in the mornin’.’

“The Cap he cocks his eye up at the telltale compass fixed on the beam overhead of him. It cheered him up a bit with its deviations, and he allowed there might be somethin’ in the Providence business if the kelp beds only held good.

“‘Failin’ them,’ he says, ‘it’s the Horn and a clear sea all the way to it, with the chance of bein’ passed be day or rammed at night by some rotten freighter. I don’t know much about Providence,’ he says, ‘but if you give me the choice between the two, I’ll take the kelp beds.’

“Blood hadn’t no more feelin’s for religion in him than a turkey. He was a book-read man, and I’ve took notice that nothin’ shakes a sailorman in his foundations s’ much as messin’ with books.

“I don’t say my own religious feelin’s run equal, but they gets me by the scruff after a jag and rubs me nose in it, and they lays for me when I’m lonely, times, with no money or the chanst of it in sight; times, they’ve near caught me and made good on the clutch, so’s that if I’m not bangin’ a drum in the Sa’vation Army at this present minit it’s only be the mercy of Providence. I’ve had close shaves, bein’ a man of natural feelin’s, of all the traps laid for such, but Blood he held his own course, and not bein’ able to see that the kelp beds might have been put there by Providence to hold us a bit--which they were--and give us a chanst of bein’ overhauled before makin’ a long board for the Horn and sure damnation, I didn’t set out to ’lighten him.

“Well, folks, that day passed somehow or nuther, us takin’ spells at the hatch to put in the time. Blood he found a spare ca’tridge of Ginnell’s, and the thought came to him to scrape a hole at the foot of the hatch cover and use the ca’tridge for a blastin’ charge. The corkscrew came in handy for this, and toward night he’d got the thing fixed. ‘Now,’ says he, ‘you’ll see somethin’!’ And he up with the revolver and hit the ca’tridge a belt with the butt end, and the durned thing backfires and near blew his head off.

“After that we lit the cabin lamp and had supper and went asleep, and early next mornin’ I was woke by the noise of a boat comin’ alongside. I sat up and shook Blood, and we listened.

“Then we began to shout and bang on the hatch, and all at once the fastening went, and all at once the sun blazed on us, and next minit I was on deck, with Blood after me. Now what d’you think had let us out? I’ll give you twenty shots and lay you a dollar you don’t hit the bull’s-eye. A girl! That’s what had let us out. Dressed in white, she were, with a panama on her head and a gold watch on her wrist and white shoes on her feet and a smile on her face like the sun dazzle on water. And pretty! Well, I guess I’m no beauty-show judge, and my eyes had lit on nothin’ prettier than Ginnell since leavin’ Frisco, so I may have been out of my reckonin’ on points of beauty, but she were pretty. Lord love me, I never want to see nothin’ prettier! I let out an oath, I was that shook up at the sight of her, and Blood he hit me a drive in the back that nigh sent me into her arms, and then we settled down and explained matters.

“She was out from Avalon in a motor boat, and she’d run short of spirit and sailed up to us, thinkin’ we were at anchor. Providence! I should think so! Providence and the kelp beds, for only for them we’d have been twenty miles to the s’uth’ard, driftin’ to Hades like hutched badgers on a mill stream. We told her how Ginnell had fixed us, and she told us how the gasoline had fixed her. ‘And now,’ says she, ‘will you give me a biskit, for I’m hungry and I wants to get back to Avalon, where my poppa is waitin’ for me, and he’ll be gettin’ narvous,’ she says.

“‘Lord love you,’ says I, ‘and how do you propose to get back?’

“For the wind had fallen a dead ca’m, and right to Catalina and over to San Clemente the sea lay like plate glass, with the _Kuro Shiwo_ flowin’ under like a blue satin snake.

“She bit on her lip, but she was all sand, that girl--Culpepper were her name--and not a word did she say for a minit. Then she says, aimin’ to be cheerful: ‘Well, I suppose,’ says she, ‘we’ll just have to stay at anchor here till they fetch me or the wind comes.’

“‘Anchor!’ said I. ‘Why, Lord bless you, there’s a mile-deep water under us! We’re driftin’.’

“‘Driftin’!’ she cries. ‘And where are we driftin’ to?’

“That fetched me, and I was hangin’ in irons when Blood chipped in and cheered her up with lies and told me to stay with her whiles he went down below and got some breakfast ready, and then I was left alone with her, trustin’ in Providence she wouldn’t ask no more questions as to where we were driftin’ to.

“She sat on the cargo hatch whiles I filled a pipe, lookin’ round about her like a cat in a new house, and then she got mighty chummy. I don’t know how she worked it, but in ten minits she’d got all about myself out of me and all about Ginnell and Blood and the _Yan-Shan_ and the dollars we’d missed; she’d learned that I never was married and who was me father and why I went to sea at first start. Right down to the colour of me first pair of pants she had it all out of me. She was a sure-enough lady, but I reckon she missed her vocation in not bein’ a bilge pump. Then she heaves a sigh at the sound of ham frying down below, and hoped that breakfast was near ready, and right on her words Blood hailed us from below.

“He’d opened the skylight wide and knocked the stuffiness out of the cabin, and down we sat at the table with fried ham and ship’s bread and coffee before us.

“I’d never set at table with the likes of her before, but if every real lady’s cut on her bias, I wouldn’t mind settin’ at table with one every day in me life. There was only two knives left whole after our practice on the hatch with them. Blood and she had the whole ones, and I made out with a stump, but she didn’t mind nor take notice. She was talkin’ away all the time she was stuffin’ herself, pitchin’ into Cap Ginnell just like one of us. Oh, I guess if she’d been a man she’d have swore worth listenin’ to; she had the turn of the tongue for the work, and what she said about Ginnell might have been said in chapel without makin’ parties raise a hair, but I reckon it’d have raised blisters on the soul of Pat Ginnell if he’d been by to hear and if he’d a soul to blister, which he hasn’t.”

Mr. Harman relit his pipe, and seemed for a moment absorbed in contemplation of Miss Culpepper and her possibilities as a plain speaker; then he resumed:

“She made us tell her all over again about the _Yan-Shan_ business and the dollars, and she allowed we were down on our luck, and she put her finger on the spot. Said she: ‘You fell through by not goin’ on treatin’ Ginnell as you begun treatin’ him. If he was bad enough to be used that way, he wasn’t even good enough for you to make friends with.’ Them wasn’t her words, but it was her meanin’.

“Then we left her to make her t’ilet with Blood’s comb and brush, tellin’ her she could have the cabin to herself as long as she was aboard, and, ten minutes after, she was on deck again, bright as a new pin, and scarce had she stuck her head into the sun than Blood, who was aft, dealin’ with some old truck, shouts: ‘Here’s the wind!’

“It was coming up from s’uth’ard like a field of blue barley, and I took the wheel, and Blood and her ran to the halyards. She hauled like a good un, and the old _Heart_ sniffed and shook at the breeze, and I tell you it livened me up again to feel the kick of the wheel. We’d got the motor boat streamed astern on a line, and then I gave the old _Heart_ the helm, and round she came, so that in a minit we were headin’ for Santa Catalina hull down on the horizon and only her spars showin’, so to speak. I thought that girl would ’a’ gone mad. Not at the chanst of gettin’ back, but just from the pleasure of feelin’ herself on a live ship and helpin’ to handle her. I let her have the wheel, and she steered good, and all the time Santa Catalina was liftin’, and now we could see with the glass that the water all round the south end was thick with boats.

“‘They’re huntin’ for me,’ said she. ‘I guess poppa is in one of them boats,’ she says, ‘and won’t he be surprised when he finds I ain’t drowned? Your fortunes is made,’ says she, ‘for pop owns the ha’f of Minneapolis, and I guess he’ll give you ha’f of what he owns. _You_ wait till you hear the yarn I’ll sling him----. Here they come!’

“They sighted us, and ha’f a hundred gasoline launches were nose end on for us, fanning out like a regatta, and in the leadin’ launch sat an old chap with white whiskers and a fifty-dollar panama on his head.

“‘That’s pop,’ she said.

“He were, and we hove to, whiles he came climbin’ on board like a turtle, one leg over the bulwarks and one arm round her neck, and then up went a hallelujah chorus from that crowd of craft round us, women wavin’ handkerchiefs and blowin’ their noses and blubbing nuff to make a camel sick.

“Then he and she went down to the cabin to make explanashions, and the parties in the boats tried to board us, till I threatened them with a boat hook and made them fend off while we got way on the _Heart_.

“When we were near into Avalon Bay, the Culps came on deck, and old man Culpepper took off his hat to me and Blood and made us a speech, sayin’ we’d lifted weights off his heart, and all such.

“‘Never mind,’ says Blood, ‘we haven’t done nuthin’. Put it all down to Providence,’ says he, ‘for if we saved her she saved us, and I ain’t used to bein’ thanked for nothin’.’

“But, Lord bless you, you might as well have tried to stop the Mississippi in flood as that old party when he’d got his thank gates up. He said we were an honour to merchant seamen, which we weren’t, and the great American nation--and Blood black Irish and me Welsh, with an uncle that was a Dutchman--and then I’m blest if he didn’t burst into po’try about the flag that waves over us all.

“It began to look like ten thousand dollars in gold coin for each of us, and more than like it when we’d dropped anchor in the bay and he told us to come ashore with him.

“Now I don’t know how longshore folk[1] have such sharp noses, but I do know them longshore boatmen on Avalon Beach seemed to know by the cut of the _Heart_ and us we weren’t no simple seamen, with flags wavin’ over us and an honour to our what-you-call-it navy. They sniffed at us by some instinct or other, more special a wall-eyed kangaroo by the name of Aransas Jim, I think it were.

“Said nothin’ much, seein’ old man Culp was disembarkin’ us with an arm round each of our necks, so to say, but we took up their looks, and I’d to lay pretty strong holts on myself or I’d have biffed the blighters, lot o’ screw-neck mongrels, so’s their mothers wouldn’t have known which was which when sortin’ the manglin’.

“Now you listen to what happened then. Culp he took us up to a big hotel, where niggers served us with a feed in a room by ourselves. Champagne they give us, and all sorts of truck _I’d_ never set eyes on before. And when it was over in came old man Culp with an envelope in his hand, which he gives to Blood.

“‘Just a few dollars for you and your mate,’ says he, ‘and you have my regards always.’

“The girl she came in and near kissed us, and off we went with big cigars in our mouths, feelin’ we were made men. The longshoremen were still on the beach scratchin’ the fleas off themselves and talkin’, I expec’, of the next millionaire they could rob by pretendin’ to be fishermen. Blood he picked up a pebble on the shingle and put it in his pocket, and when the longshore louts saw us comin’, smokin’ cigars and walkin’ arrogant, they made sure old man Culp had given us ha’f a million, and they looked it. All them noses of theirs weren’t turned up just now. They saw dollars comin’ and hoped for a share.

“‘Here, you chap,’ says Blood to Aransas Jim or Aransas Joe or whichever was his name, ‘help us to push our boat off and I’ll make it worth your while.’ The chap does, and wades after us, when we were afloat, for his dues. He held out his hand, and Blood he clapped the pebble into it, and off we shot with them helaballoing after us.

“Much we cared.

“On board the _Heart_, we tumbled down to the cabin to ’xamine our luck. Blood takes the envelope from his pocket, slits it open, and takes out a little check that was in it. How much for, d’you think? Five thousand dollars? No, it weren’t.

“Twenty dollars was writ on it. Twenty dollars, no cents.

“‘Say, Blood,’ says I to him, ‘you’ve got the pebble this time.’

“Blood he folded the check up and lit his pipe with it. Then he says, talkin’ in a satisfied manner ’s if to himself:

“‘It were worth it.’

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

FOOTNOTE:

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

V THE BIG HAUL

I

Captain Michael Blood and Billy Harman, having received ten thousand dollars for services rendered to Henry Clay Armbruster, and having cashed the check, held a consultation as to what they should do with it.

Harman was for filling up their schooner, the _Heart of Ireland_, with trade and starting off for the islands in search of copra. Blood, tired of the sea, for a while demurred. He said he wanted to enjoy life a bit.

“And who’s to stop you?” replied the open-minded Harman. “A thousand dollars is all we want for a bust, and a week to do it in. I’ve took notice that the heart is mostly out of a bust by the end of a week, after that it’s a fair wind and followin’ sea for the jimjams with an empty hold when you fetches them. Let’s lay our plans and work cautious, for, when all’s said and done, it’s no great shakes to wake jailed with empty pockets, robbed of your boots by the bar drummers you’ve been fillin’ with booze.

“Booze ain’t no use,” continued Mr. Harman, finishing his glass--they were celebrating the occasion in a bar near the China docks. “Look at the chaps that sell it, and look at the chaps that swallow it--one lot covered with di’monds and the other lot with their toes stickin’ out of their boots. We’ve got to work cautious and keep takin’ soundings all the time, for riches is rocks, as I heard a chap once sayin’ in a temp’rance meetin’ on the Sand Lot. Twenty year ago it was, but the sayin’ stuck in my head--have another?”

They failed to “work cautious” that night. Flushed with prosperity and unaccustomed drinks, they found themselves playing cards with professional gamblers, who relieved them of five thousand dollars in an hour and twenty-five minutes.

“Riches is rocks.” There was never a truer saying; and next morning, not being altogether fools, they determined to thank God the whole of their little fortune was not gone and to set to work to retrieve their losses.

Now, it had become known all about the waterside that the _Heart of Ireland_ was back. The fate of Ginnell, her original owner, who had been jugged for gun running, was still fresh and pleasant in the mind of the public; and the authorities, who boarded the _Heart_ on the morning after the gambling adventures of Blood and Harman, would have had a lot of things to say to those two had not Harman already made things straight with the “Clancy crowd,” that amiable political ring whose freemasonic friendship and protection was never invoked in vain by even the least of its members. So it came about that after friendly conversation and cigars the authorities rowed off, and scarcely had they gone when a boat with a big, fat man in the stern came sculling up.

“That’s Mike Rafferty,” said Harman to his companion. “He’s a cousin of Ginnell’s. Now what in the nation does he want with us?”

Rafferty hailed Harman by name and came aboard. Rafferty knew everything about them, from the fact that they were flush of coin to the fact that they were in a kind of lawful-unlawful possession of his cousin’s schooner.

He talked quite openly on these matters, but of the fate of his Cousin Ginnell he said nothing, with the exception of a dark hint that wires were being pulled in his favour.

Harman was equally explicit.

“He jugged us in the cabin of this ship,” said Harman, “and made off on the derelick we struck down the coast there; he gave us a present of her. That we stick to, and if I ever lay hands on Pat Ginnell I’ll give him a present that’ll stick to him for the rest of his nacheral.”

“Aisy, now,” said Rafferty; “don’t be losin’ your hair. I know the swab, and, though I’m workin’ in his favour, bein’ cousins, I’ve me own down on him. He sold me a pup over the last cargo of oil he brought in, and if it wasn’t for the disgrace of the family I’d l’ave him lie without raisin’ a finger to better him. What I’ve come about is bizness. I hear you’ve been talkin’ of copra.”

Harman had, in various bars, and he made no trouble about admitting the soft impeachment.

“Well,” said Rafferty, “it’s become a poor business, what with them Germans and missionaries and such. You go to any of the islands with trade, and see what you’ll get. I’ve worked the Pacific since I was a boy the height of me knee, and I know it. There’s not an island, nearly, I’m not acqueented with, not a reef, begob; you ask any one, and they’ll tell you.”

Harman knew this to be a fact. Rafferty, who was no good age, had been engaged in blackbirding, in copra, in opium smuggling, in all the in-and-out ways of life that the blue Pacific held or holds open to man.

“Heave ahead,” said he.

“Well,” said Rafferty, “this is me bizness with you. Pay me fifty dollars down and ten per cent of the takin’s, and I’ll put you on to an island where you’ll fill up with copra for a few old beads and baccy pipes. It’s a vargin island out of trade tracks; you won’t find any Dutchman there, and the Kanaka girls come dancin’ round you with nuthin’ on them but flowers. You won’t find any Bibles nor crinolines sp’ilin’ the people there. I marked it down last year when I was comin’ up from south of the line, with a never-mind cargo. But I left the sea last spring, as maybe you know, else I’d have taken a ship down there meself. Fifty dollars down and ten per cint on the takin’s, and I’ll put you on the spot.”

Harman begged time to consider the matter, and Rafferty, after drinks and conversation of a political nature, took his departure, leaving his address behind.

“Now, you see how crookedness don’t pay,” said Harman, as he watched the boat row off. “Pat Ginnell was so good at bestin’ he bested his own relations. I remember that bizness about the shark oil; Rafferty was givin’ Ginnell his name over it in every bar in Frisco, and now Rafferty’s spoilin’ to get his own back by usin’ the _Heart_. Funny them Irish are, for he’s tryin’ with the other hand to get him clear of jail for the sake of the family. Jail’s hell to an Irishman. I’ve always took notice of that--no offence to you.”

Blood looked away over the blue waters of the bay. “It is,” said he, “and, bad as I hate Ginnell, if I could turn the lock to let him out, I’d do it to-morrow--and scrag him the moment after. Jail’s not natural to a man. If a man’s not fit to live loose, kill him, if you want to; if you want to make him afraid of the law, cut the skin off him with a cat-o’-nine-tails, but to stick him in a cage--and what’s jail but a cage?--is to turn him into a brute beast. And it never betters him.”

Harman concurred. Sailors have a way of getting at the truth of things because they are always so close to them; and these two, discussing penal matters on the deck of the _Heart of Ireland_, might have been listened to with advantage by some of the law officers of the nations.

Then they had drinks, and later in the day they called on Rafferty at his office in Ginnis Street.

They had come to the decision to take his offer. A soft island was well worth paying for. Cayzer, the owner of the great Clan line of steamers, made his fortune by knowing where to send his ships for cargo, and, though Harman knew nothing of the owner of the Clan line, he was keenly alive to the truth of this matter.

“So you’ve come to agree with me,” said Rafferty. “Well, you won’t be sorry. Now, how will you take it--fifty dollars down and a ten-per-cent royalty to me on the takin’s, or would you sooner make a clean deal and pay me a hundred and fifty down and no royalties? For between you and me there’s a lot of sea chances to be taken and the old _Heart_ is not as young as she used to be.”

Blood and Harman took a walk outside to consult, and determined to make a “clean deal.”

“I don’t want to be payin’ no royalties,” said Harman; “let’s cut clear of the chap and pay him a hundred down; he’ll take it.”

He did, after an hour’s bargaining and wrangling and calling the saints to observe how he was being cheated.

Then, the hundred dollars haring been paid, he gave them the location of the island on the chart which Harman had brought.

To be almost precise, the island was situated in the great quadrilateral of empty sea southwest of Honolulu, bounded by the International Date Line to westward, latitude 10° north to southward, longitude 165° to eastward, and the Tropic of Cancer to northward.

Having paid a hundred dollars for the information, Blood and Harman left Rafferty’s office and that very afternoon began to purchase the trade for their new venture.

II

A fortnight later, with a full Chinese crew and Harman at the helm, the _Heart_ shook out her old sails, and, picking her anchor out of the mud, lay over on a tack that would take her midway between Alcatras and Bird Rock. It was a bright and lovely morning, with a west wind blowing, and Harman whistled softly to himself as he shifted the helm under Alcatras and the slatting sails filled on the tack for Black Point. She was catching the full breath of the sea here and heeled with the green water a foot from the starboard gunwale as she made the reach for Lime Point, then on the port tack she felt the first Pacific sea, taking the middle channel.

After fighting the tumble of the thirty-six-foot water of the bar, Harman, having set their course, relinquished the wheel to one of the Chinamen and joined Blood.

In buying the trade, they had received some tips from Rafferty. “Now,” said that gentleman, “there’s no use in takin’ hats to Paris or coals to Newcastle. If you’re going to trade with a place, you must take the things that’s wanted there. I was sayin’ you could get all the copra you wanted for baccy pipes and beads--that was only me figure of speech. Them chaps on Matao--the name of the island--want stuff different from that, I took note when I was there, thinkin’ to trade some time with them. They’re no end keen on diggin’ the land and growin’ things, and they traded me a lot of fish and shells for a packet of onion seed. They want stuff that’s not grown there natural--onions, potatoes, and garden seed in general. You might take some spades and wheelbarras and not be amiss; and tinware, pots, and pans, and so on.”

Harman took this useful tip, and the _Heart_ was well provisioned with things useful in the way of agriculture. He was talking now with Blood on the stowage; the wheelbarrows were exercising his mind, for there is nothing more awkward to stow, or, in its way, more likely to be damaged, and they had seven of them. It was a feature of Harman’s make-up that he sometimes didn’t begin to bother about things till it was impossible to put them right, and Blood hinted so in plain language.

“What’s the good of talkin’ about it now?” said he. “We worked the thing out ashore, and what’s done is done. You got them cheap, and if the Kanakas don’t take to them they’ll always fetch their price in any port.”

“That’s what’s bothering me,” said Harman; “for if the Kanakas don’t want them and we fill up with copra, we’ll have to dump the durned things, for we won’t have stowage room for them.”

“Wait till we’ve got the copra,” replied Blood.

Then they stood watching the Californian coast getting low down on the port quarter and a big tank steamer pounding along half a mile away making to enter the gates.

“Wheelbarrows or no wheelbarrows, you may thank your God you’re not second mate on _that_,” said Blood.

Harman concurred.

III

They had favourable winds to south of Bird Island, which is situated north of Nilihau and Kaula in the Hawaiian group, then came a calm that lasted three days, leaving the old _Heart_ groaning and whining to the lift of the swell and the grumbling of Harman, hungry for copra.

“There’s somethin’ about this tub that gets me,” said he. “Somethin’ always happens just as we’re about to make good. I believe Pat Ginnell’s put a curse on her.”

“Oh, close up!” said Blood. “How about Armbruster? I reckon she’s lucky enough; it’s the fools that are in her that have brought any bad luck there’s been going.”

“Well, we’ll see,” replied the other.

As if to disprove his words, an hour later the wind came; and three days later, nosing through the great desolation of blue water between Sejetman Reef and Johnston Island, the _Heart of Ireland_ raised the island. It was midday when the sea-birdlike cry of one of the Chinamen on the lookout brought Blood and Harman tumbling up from the cabin. Yes, it was the island, right enough, and Harman through his glass could make out the tops of palm trees where the sea shimmered.

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

“I reckon,” said he, “the pa’ms is as plentiful there as the hairs on a bald man’s head. Why, there ain’t any pa’ms!”

Blood swore and closed the glass with a snap.

Even at that distance the poverty of the place in copra shouted across the sea, but it was not till they had drawn in within sound of the reefs that the true desolation of this fortunate island became apparent.

The place was horrible. A mile and a half, or maybe two miles, long by a mile broad, protected by broken reefs, the island showed just one grove of maybe a hundred trees; the rest was scrub vegetation and sea birds.

Strangest and perhaps most desolate of all the features was a line of shanties, half protected by the trees, shanties that seemed gone to decay.

Then, as the _Heart_ hove to and lay sniffing at the place, appeared a figure. A man was coming down the little strip of beach leading from the shanties to the lagoon.

“Look!” said Harman. “He’s pushin’ off to us in a boat. Say, Blood, d’you see any naked Kanaka girls crowned with flowers waitin’ to dance round us?”

“Rafferty’s sold us a pup,” said Blood.

“It’s easy to be seen. We’ll wait. Let’s see.”

The boat, a small one, was clearing the reef, opening and making toward them, the man sculling her looking over his shoulder now and then to correct his course.

Close up, she revealed herself as an old fishing dinghy, battered with wear.

Alongside, the man in her laid in his oars, caught the rope flung to him by Harman, and made fast.

He was a pale-faced, lantern-jawed, dyspeptic-looking person, and he was chewing, for the first thing he did after scrambling on deck was to spit overboard. The next was to ask a question.

“What’s your name?” said he, saluting the afterguard with a nod, and sweeping the deck with his eyes--eyes like the wine-coloured, large, soulless eyes of a hare.

“_Heart of Ireland_, out of Frisco--what’s yours?” replied Harman.

“Gadgett,” replied the hare-eyed man. “I came out thinking maybe you were bringing news of my schooner, the _Bertha Mason_. She’s overdue from Sydney. I’m owner here. This island’s mine, leased from the Australian government.” Then, with another look round the deck: “What in the nation are you doing down here anyway?”

“Makin’ fools of ourselves,” replied Harman, “unless we’ve mistook your place for a big copra island that ought to lay in your position. You haven’t heard tell of such an island hereabouts?”

“Look at your charts,” said Gadgett. “This place is only marked on the last British Admiralty charts. There’s nothing round here but water from the Change Time Line to Johnston Island. You’ve come a thousand miles out for copra.”

“What’s your venture here, may I ask?” put in Blood.

“Shell,” replied Gadgett, leaning now against the starboard rail and cutting himself a new plug of tobacco. “I’ve been working this island six years, and had her nearly stripped of shell last spring, but I’ve hung on to clear the last of it. There isn’t much, but I thought I’d take the last squeeze. My schooner is overdue, and when it comes I’m going to clear out for good.”

“Say,” said Harman, “did a chap called Rafferty call here last spring?”

Gadgett turned his eyes to Harman.

“Yes, a chap by that name was here in a schooner. I’ve forgot her name. Blown out of his course by weather, he was, and called for water.”

“Well, now, listen,” said Harman. Then he told the whole story we know.

Gadgett was a good listener. You could feel him putting his hands into the pockets of the yarn, so to speak, and weighing the contents, nodding his head the while, but not saying a word. When it was finished, he took from his pocket the knife with which he had cut the tobacco, opened it, and began cutting gently at his left thumb nail.

“Well,” said he, “it’s pretty clear you two gentlemen have been sold. Brought wheelbarrows here and onion seed and pots and pans; might as well have brought an empty hold for all the trade to be done in this place, for when I’m gone, with the few Kanakas I have with me--they are fishing over on the other side just now--there’ll be nobody here but sea gulls. Rafferty--I see him clear--a big-featured man he was, a questioning chap, too. Well, there’s no doubt about it; he slung you a yarn. But what made him do it?”

“What made him do it!” said Blood. “Why, to guy us all over Frisco and to get right with us over a deal we had with a cousin of his by the name of Pat Ginnell. I’m Irish myself, and I ought to have known how they stick together. No matter, there’s no use in crying over spilt milk. Can we come into your lagoon for a brush-up?”

Gadgett assented. There was a broad fairway, and he steered the _Heart_ himself, the boat following streamed on a line. When the anchor was down, he asked them ashore, and as they were rowing across to the beach said Gadgett: “Do you gentlemen know anything of oyster fishing--shell?”

“No,” said Harman.

“That’s a pity,” said Gadgett, “for if you’d been disposed and knew the business you might have cared to stick here. I put down spat this spring on the whole floor of this lagoon, and the place will be thick with oysters by Christmas. I’d have sold you the remains of the lease--over forty years to run--for a trifle. There’s money to be made here--if you cared to take the thing on.”

“No,” said Harman, rather shortly. “We’re not open to any trade of that sort.”

“Well, there was no harm in mentioning it,” said Gadgett.

He took them up to the frame house in the cocoanut grove, where he lived, and stood drinks. Then he showed them the godown where shell was stored and the Kanakas’ shanties.

Then Blood and Harman went off for a walk by themselves to explore the horrible desolation of the place.

Said Harman, when they were alone: “Skunk--he’s been tryin’ to do us, him and his spat! I know all about oysters, shell and pearl. Why, this place won’t be no use for another fifty years after the way he’s scraped it. He looks on us as a pair of mugs, wanderin’ about with a cargo of wheelbarrows--which we are. But we ain’t such mugs as to pay him good money for lyin’ yarns.”

They walked to the only eminence on the island, a rise of ground some hundred feet above the sea level, and there they stood breathing the sea air and watching the gulls and listening to the eternal song of the surf on the reef.

Then they came back to the beach and hailed the schooner for a boat, which presently put off and took them on board.

Once on deck, Mr. Harman made a dive below into the cabin, and Blood, following him, found him in the act of uncorking a bottle of whisky.

“I’m fair let down,” said Harman, mixing his drink. “It’s not Rafferty, nor the dog’s trick he’s played us, nor the sight of this blasted place that’s enough to give a dromedary the collywobbles. It’s that chap with the yalla eyes. I heard him laffin’ to himself when he went into the house, laffin’ at us. I’ve never been laffed at like that, but it’s not so much that as the chap. He’s onnatural.”

“I want to get back to Frisco and scrag Rafferty,” said Blood, taking hold of the bottle. “That’s all _I_ want.”

“You’ll have to scrag the whole of Frisco, then,” said Harman, “for the place is rockin’ with laughter now, from the China docks to Meiggs’. It’s the wheelbarrows that have done us; they’ll be had against us everywhere, and not a bar you’ll go into but you’ll be asked: Is your wheelbarrow outside? I don’t want to go back to Frisco, I tell you I don’t. I want to get to some place where I can sit down and cuss quiet. Lord, but that chap has had us lively!”

There was no doubt of that fact. Rafferty, with that fatal sense of humour for which he had a reputation of a sort, had well avenged his kinsman, Ginnell, put a hundred dollars into his own pocket, and made Blood and Harman forever ridiculous to a certain order of minds. And his whole working material had been just the recollection of this forsaken island--nothing more than that.

IV

Gadgett’s schooner, the _Bertha Mason_, came into the lagoon that night under a full moon lifting in the east. Blood and Harman had not gone to bed, and they were treated to a lovely sight which left them unimpressed.

Nothing could be more perfect in the way of a sea picture than the schooner fresh from the sea spilling her amber light on her water shadows to the slatting of curves and the sounds of block and cordage, moving like a vision with just way enough on her to take her to her anchorage.

Then the lagoon surface reeled to the splash of the anchor, the shore echoes answered to the rumble-tum-tum-tum of the chain, and the _Bertha Mason_ swung to her moorings, presenting her bow to the outward-going current and her broadside to that of the _Heart_.

“Blast the blighters!” said Harman. Then the two went below to their bunks.

Next morning there were salutations across the water from one schooner to the other. The fellows on the _Bertha Mason_ were at work early getting the shell on board, and the Chinese crew of the _Heart_ were busy fishing. During the day there was little communication between the two vessels, and at night there was no offer of the Bertha Masonites to come aboard, yet it was their duty to pay first call as the _Heart_ was a visitor.

“They’re a stand-off lot,” said Harman. “They’re turnin’ up their noses. I s’pose, because we have a crew of chinkies. Well, they can keep to themselves, for all I care. When’re we goin’ to put out?”

“I don’t want to leave before them,” said Blood. “Besides, there are repairs to be done, and we want to fill up with water. They won’t keep us long.”

Harman said nothing. He wanted to be off, but he felt as Blood did; his enmity against the Gadgett crowd made him want to hold on, pretending to care nothing, and that enmity was increased next morning. The _Bertha Mason_, dragging her anchor a bit on the strong incoming current, came near to foul the _Heart_. Hartman used language to which came a polite inquiry as to how he was off for wheelbarrows.

“Gadgett’s told,” said he to Blood, after making suitable answer to the query. “They’re laffin at us. The yarn will be all over Sydney now; they’ll be tellin’ it in N’ York before they’ve done with it. We’ll have to change our names and sink the _Heart_ to clear ourselves. Well, I’m goin’ off fishin’. Gadgett said there was good fishin’ from the rocks on the other side of the island. I can’t stick here doin’ nuthin’. The deck’s burnin’ my feet.”

He rowed ashore with lines and fish that the Chinese had caught for bait. It was five o’clock in the evening, and the _Bertha Mason_, her cargo stowed, was preparing to leave when he returned.

Blood was down below when Harman came tumbling down the companionway. He was flushed, and looked as though he had been drinking, though his legs were steady enough, and there was no smell of alcohol.

“Blood!” shouted Harman. “We’re made! Where’s your pocketbook? Gimme it! Come on, haste yourself; come with me and try to look like a fool. Gimme the pocketbook, I tell you, and don’t ask no questions; I’m fit to burst, and there’s no time. They’re handlin’ the sails on that bathtub. Up with you and after me!”

He seized the pocketbook, which had fifteen hundred dollars in it, the remains of their money, and rushed on deck, followed by Blood.

The boat was still by the side, with two Chinamen in her. They got in and rowed to the _Bertha Mason_.

Next moment they were on the deck of the _Bertha_, facing Gadgett.

“Mr. Gadgett,” said Harman, “when you talked of having put down oyster spat in the lagoon, did you mean pearl-oyster spat?”

“Of course,” said Gadgett, scenting vaguely what was coming.

“And will them oysters have pearls in them by next Christmas?”

“Of course they will,” replied the other. “Not every oyster, but most of them will.”

“You talked of selling the remains of the lease of the place,” said Harman. “Well, we’ve come to buy. What would you want for it?”

“Two thousand dollars,” said Gadgett. They went below to bargain, and in five minutes, anxious to be done with the fools and get away, Gadgett came down to five hundred dollars.

He knew well that not only was the place stripped by him, but that lately it had been giving out. Oysters are among the most mysterious denizens of the sea, and shell lagoons “give out” for no known reason. The oysters cease to breed--that is all. Gadgett would have sold the remains of his lease for five dollars, for five cents, for a cent. He would have given it away--to an enemy.

He got five hundred dollars for it and reckoned that he had crowned his luck.

Harman went below and examined the lease. It included all rights on the island above and underground, and all rights to sea approaches and reefs.

Gadgett had a government stamp for the new contract. He was a man who always foresaw, and in five minutes Harman and Blood found themselves in possession of Matao for a term of forty-four years, with an option of renewal for another twenty years on a year’s notice.

Then Harman, with this in his pocket, came on deck, followed by Blood, and as they stood saying good-bye to Gadgett the fellow in command began giving the order to handle the throat and peak halyards.

As they rowed off, the jib was being set, and when they reached the _Heart_, the sound of the windlass pawls reached them, and the rasp of the anchor chain being hove short.

“What is it?” said Blood, who knew Harman too well to doubt that they had got the weather gauge on Gadgett.

“Wait till they’ve cleared the lagoon--wait till they’ve cleared the lagoon!” said the other. “I’m afraid of thinkin’ of it lest that chap should smell the idea and come back and murder us. Oh, Lord, oh, Lord! Will they never get out?”