THEY had fixed to row ashore after breakfast but fishing held them till afternoon. Candon, not keen on the business of climbing over rocks, remained behind to finish tinkering at the engine which he had almost got into working order.
Usually there is a big swell running here, but to-day there was only a gentle heave lifting the long green vine tendrils of the kelp. It was like rowing over a forest. On the beach they left the boat to the two Chinamen who had rowed them off and, Hank leading the way, they started to the right towards the great sand spit that runs into the sea for half a mile or more.
A Farallone cormorant, circling in the blue above, seemed to watch them; it passed with a cry, leaving the sky empty and nothing to hear but the wash of the sea on the beaches and far off an occasional gull’s voice from the spit. Reaching a great forward leaning rock, they took their seats in the shade of it to rest and light their pipes. The sand lay before them, jutting into the kelp-oily sea and beyond the kelp the blue of the kuroshiwo. TheWear Jackwas out of sight, the horizon seemed infinitely far and of a world where men were not or from whence men had departed for ever.
“Say, Bud,” said Hank, leaning on his side with a contented sigh, “ain’t this great!”
“Which?” asked Bud.
“The lonesomeness. Listen to the gulls, don’t they make you feel just melancholy.”
“Do you like to feel melancholy?”
“Depends on the brand, same as whisky. Say, it’s funny to think that the cars are running down Market Street and Tyrebuck sitting in his office and J. B.—he’s sitting at his luncheon by this. Wonder what they said when they found us gone? Well we’ve had the laugh on them to start with.”
“I hope they won’t have the laugh on us at the finish,” said George.
“Don’t,” said Hank, “it makes me feel doddery to think of us going back like dogs with our tails down and no Dutchman—hell! no, you don’t see me back in ’Frisco empty-handed, never. Was you ever laughed at, Bud?”
“Heaps of times.”
“Laughed at in the papers?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s what I mean. I’ve been, and I know.”
“What was the business?”
“Oh, it was a girl.”
“What did she do?”
“It wasn’t what she did so much as what she said. It was this way. I was in Pittsburg one rainy day and I fell in with a girl; she wasn’t more’n eighteen and down on her luck. She asked me the way to somewhere or another and that’s how we started off. She’d had nothing to eat that day and I took her into a coffee shop and stuffed her up with buckwheat cakes and truck and then she told me her story. Said she had to meet her father at the station that evening and he was old and infirm and they had to look for rooms. Well, it seems, somehow or another, I was mug enough to help her look for rooms and stand as a reference and lend her twenty dollars, and when the police stepped into the rooms I got for them that night and took the grey wig and patch over his eye off her father he was Sam Brown, the biggest tough out of N’ York, with five thousand dollars’ worth of stolen diamonds on him. I managed to clear myself, but the press had got the story and I tell you, Bud, I was guyed out of Pittsburg and it hurt worse than kicking.”
“They don’t go in for sentiment in Pittsburg.”
“Nope, steel goods.”
“Well, come along,” said George, “this isn’t prospecting the island.”
They got up and shook the sand from themselves and started along the spit; then, returning, they began to climb. TheWear Jackcame into view, anchored beyond the kelp, then as they got higher and above the promontory that hid thenext bay, they saw the Chinese junk of the night before. She was anchored a little way out. On the sands of the bay stood three strange looking little pyramids, tents evidently, and about the tents people were moving.
“Now what in the nation are those Chinks doing?” said Hank. He unslung his binoculars he had brought with him and leveled them at the far-off tents.
“Chinks—one of them’s building a fire; they’ve got a boat up on the sand. Abalone hunters, most likely, making a camp here for the fishing. Say, Bud, I believe they’re hatchet men.”
“What are hatchet men?”
“Pirates turned inside out and painted to look like fishermen—just robbers, abalone poachers and smugglin’ if they can get a chance, wickedest lot out of hell,—I’m judging by the look of them. Have a squint.”
He handed the powerful glasses to George who leveled them in the direction of the bay.
The field of sight suddenly swarmed with Chinamen moving against the glitter of white sand. Small, dingy-looking men, wearing big straw hats,—a fire had been lit and the white smoke curled upwards against the tents. Near one of the tents a Chinaman was working over a heap of what looked like abalones.
“Hullo!” cried George.
“What’s up?” asked Hank.
“There’s a white man with them, he’s justcome out of one of the tents—a long thin looking devil. What on earth’s he with them for?”
Hank took the glass.
“Sure enough there is,” said Hank, “look at his hair all hanging over his face. He looks to be bossing the Chinks. It’s plain now what they are. Smugglers, opium or dope of some sort. I’ve heard the trade’s in the hands of whites, they run it into Santa Barbara plugged into abalone shells. Bud! Say! Bud! There’s a girl! She’s just come out of the right-hand tent with a little chap after her, looks like a Mexican. She’s a white—looks like a lady—she’s crying, she’s got her handkerchief to her face—Bud, this gets me!”
George snatched the glass.
Hank was right. There was a girl amidst the horrid crowd. She was no longer crying, she had taken her seat on the sand in a dejected sort of manner and seemed watching the others as they moved about at their work. Even at that distance, it was obvious that she was of a different class from the rest.
“Well, I’m damned,” said George.
“Look! that beastly big chap seems jawing at her.” Hank snatched the glass.
He saw the long man standing in front of the girl whom he seemed to have ordered to her feet; he seemed angry about something. Then the unfortunate girl turned and went off towards one of the tents. She seemed about to enter it whenshe collapsed, cast herself on the sand and lay, her face hidden on her arm.
“Hell!” cried Hank.
He shut the glass, thrust it into its case and started off down the rocks, George following.
“Where are you going to?” cried George.
“Bust up that hive,” cried Hank. “That’s white slave, clean white slave. Come along to the ship and fetch Candon and the guns. This is better than Vanderdecken.”
Tumbling, slipping, clawing at bushes, whooping like a red Indian, he led the way, George labouring behind, till they reached the beach where the boat of theWear Jacklay, the two Chinks close by it on the sand, smoking and playing fan-tan. The boat was shoved off.
“You mean fighting them?” asked George. His throat was dry and his lips were dry. He had seen the Great War and bursting shells and had risked his life a dozen times, but all that seemed nothing to the imminent attack on that horrid crowd over there on the beach beyond sight.
“Oh, Lord, no,” said Hank, a devilish look on his lantern face, and a new light in his eyes. “I’m going to cuddle them. Lay into it, you jade-faced sons of perdition. ’Nuff! in with your oars and claw on.”
They tumbled over the rail of theWear Jack, Hank shouting for Candon. They found him below coming out of the engine place with a lump of cotton waste in his hand.
“Come into the saloon,” cried Hank. “B. C., we’re up to the eyes in it. Wacha think, we’ve struck a gang of Chinese white slavers with a girl in tow.” He explained.
As he talked, George noticed the effect on Candon. He leaned forward as he sat, pulling at the hairs of his beard; his eyes changed in colour, darkening as the pupils spread. When Hank had finished, Candon leaned back, sought mechanically in his pocket, found his pipe and put it between his teeth, but he did not light it.
“They’re white slavers,” said Hank.
“Sure,” said Candon. The anger consuming him was no less visible for the calm that covered it. Then he broke out. “There you have things as they’re going on, and your beautiful laws, where are they? I tell you, boys, white women are being snatched off to China every week that goes, and white men are helping. It’s all part of a business mixed up with opium smuggling and dope selling. Well, we’ve gotta get that girl from them. Question is, how?”
“Land right away and go for them. I’ve got the guns,” said Hank, going to a locker and producing the armaments for the voyage, three Lugger automatics. “Here’s the persuaders and the Chinks will help.”
“One minute,” said Candon. He was thinking hard, nearly biting through the pipe stem. Then he spoke. “It’s getting on for sun-down. Better wait till the dark comes, then we can rush them.They’ll think it’s the police if we do it proper and they won’t be able to count our numbers—how’s the wind?”
“Dropped dead.”
“Good, there’s no fear of them putting out before we fix them, they’ll stay here to-night, sure. Once we get the girl on board, we can put off, wind or no wind, for I’ve got the engine fixed. You see, if we put up a fight right away we’ll have all those Chinks they have with them on top of us. You said they were hatchet men, didn’t you? Fight like hornets; whereas in the dark—why a Chink in the dark is no good, specially if he doesn’t know what’s attacking him. Now, my plan is, bust their camp up sudden, yelling and shooting over them; if they show fight, drill them, but it’s a thousand to one they’ll quit and scatter, thinking it’s the police. Nail the girl, get her aboard here and shove off.”
“I’m with you,” said George.
Hank demurred for a moment; he would have preferred to attack right away; then, after a little discussion, he fell in with the others.
THEY came on deck.
It wanted little more than two hours to sunset and the eastern sky had taken that look of distance which only comes when the sun is low in the west.
Hank, who was the first on deck, called to the others and pointed over the sea. Something white was shearing through the water over there, something that showed up at once through the glass as a high power motor launch.
“Boys,” cried Hank, “it’s the police, it’s the cops sure as certain, and we’re done out of it.”
Candon took the glass.
“Don’t look like a police boat to me,” said he, “and I only see two fellows on her. Of course, there may be a dozen hid away. Looks more like to me that it’s a contrabander done up as a pleasure launch. We can’t see anything from here. Let’s take the boat and push out so that we can get a sight of the next bay.”
“They’ll spot us,” said Hank.
“They’ll spot theWear Jackanyhow,” saidCandon. “The boat doesn’t matter, they’ll think we’re fishing.”
The boat was still alongside. Led by Candon, they got in and pushed off.
Half a mile out the next bay had opened enough to show them the junk at anchor and the tents on the beach. The launch, the blue water shearing from her forefoot, was approaching the junk.
Hank, watching through the glass, reported: “They’re clawing on. There’s only one Chink on the junk, he’s handing over parcels and taking things aboard. You’re right, B. C., it’s no police affair; it’s contraband sure enough. Bend over the gunnel, you two, and pretend to be fishing. Now the launch is putting off back to the coast. Well, that settles it.”
“Where are they out from?” said Hank.
“Oh, Santa Barbara,” said Candon, “sure thing.”
They watched the launch making back to the coast, then they took to the oars and put back for the schooner.
“Well,” said George, who was at the yoke lines, “it gets me how these sorts of things are let pass by the law.”
“Oh, that’s nothing,” said Hank, with a laugh. “Why, girls are disappearing every week in ’Frisco, they get inveigled into Chinatown and that’s all. They get taken off to Canton and sold as slaves to mandarins or worse.”
“But how do the Chinks manage to get them out of America?” asked George.
“You’ve seen it,” said Candon. “You said there were two white men with those Chinese—that’s how. The traffic wouldn’t stand a minute without the help of whites. Money, that’s what’s the mischief, money and the damned capitalistic system that makes money king. Lord, I want to get at those chaps, I’m sufferin’ to get at those chaps.” He stopped rowing. Hank, equally excited, also rested on his oar till George cut in and they resumed.
THEY came alongside theWear Jackjust as the fires of sunset began to pale beyond the peak of San Nicolas.
“Come down below, boys,” said Candon.
They followed him to the cabin, where they took their seats, whilst he filled and lit a pipe. Then, with the pipe in his mouth, he sat with his arms resting on the table and his eyes fixed straight before him.
George and the rat trap inventor spoke not a word. They had come to recognise B. C. as the better man in a lot of ways, and they had, unconsciously or sub-consciously, chosen him for their leader in this business that very plainly meant life or death. They were about to attack a hornets’ nest, every hornet man-size and armed with a little hatchet instead of a sting. They had no side arms, nothing but the Luggers. On the leader everything would depend and they felt they could depend on Candon.
“We’ve got an hour and a half before we need stir,” suddenly spoke B. C., “and I’ve got the plan of how to work this business all laid out inmy head. Maybe you’ll leave it at that for I’ve taken notice that too much talking muddles things. You’re willing to take my word to go when the time comes and follow me?”
“Yes,” said Hank.
Candon slipped the old Waltham he wore from its chain and laid it on the table before him.
“That being so,” said he, “I want half an hour’s talk with you two on something that’s got nothing to do with this business. Don’t put in any questions or say a word till I get through. For the last three days I’ve been keeping my head shut against my better feelings, and only for the fact that the whole three of us may be laid out before morning, I’d have gone on, maybe, keeping it shut against my will, so to say, for you are two of the whitest men I’ve ever fell in with. Boys, I’ve let you down cruel. I promised you the Dutchman and you shall have him and I promised to lead you to where he’d stowed his takings and that promise holds. All the same, I’ve not been straight with you. I’ve got to make things straight, right away or bust, that’s how I feel. Well, here’s the start. We’re after a man by the name of Vanderdecken; that’s not his name, the tom-fool newspapers put it on him, but let it hold for a minute while I tell you. This fellow was no Dutchman; American born he was, of decent parents, but born wild and took his hook to sea when he wasn’t more’n fourteen. Now seeing we’re hunting him I want to give you hischaracter’s far as I can get it and show you maybe he’s not such a shark as people have made out and was born for something better than the inside of a penitentiary where he’s sure going when we have him lugged back to ’Frisco.
“So, I’m telling you, he hadn’t been at sea more’n a year when he saved two men’s lives from drowning and he hadn’t been more’n three years when he got a berth as fourth officer aboard a Cape Horner. After that he rose steady, educating himself in sea practice and land ways, reading everything he could lay his claws on. Maybe it would have been better if he’d kept his eyes shut and worked along blind like most chaps. But he couldn’t stop thinking. I reckon thinking ruins more men than drink. The world seemed all upside down to him with the rich bugs a-top same as the fleas on a dog’s back.”
“So they are,” said Hank. “Heave ahead.”
“Well,” went on the other, “he rose, not having any use for liquor and being a good practical sea-man, till he got his master’s ticket and command of a full rigged packet in the Shireman line, then he lost his ship through no fault of his and got fired. The Shiremans had a down on him over stores he’d condemned as not fit for dogs, let alone able seamen, and they’d got wind he was a socialist, and they crabbed him all over the shipping companies’ offices. Y’know they’re all hand in glove with their secret reports and so on, and Vanderdecken couldn’t go into a company’soffice unless it was to be shown out. Having to eat he went back to the foc’sle—that was in Liverpool, and worked his way to ’Frisco. From there he got to Nome and struck it rich in the Klondyke and got robbed. Then he began to float up and down through more traverses than I’ve time to tell you of till the Big War came and he heard of the Lusitania. That drove him clean bughouse and he got across the pond and joined up with the British in the submarine fight and got blown up in drifters till he was nearly deaf. Then back he came to ’Frisco, which was his port of choice, and more’n a year ago, he joins up with McGinnis in working theHeart of Irelandon all sorts of jobs down the coast, shark fishing, sea scraping and contraband. He was a pretty sick man, was Vanderdecken, with the world and the way it had used him, but it wasn’t till prohibition came along that he rose. The hull place went dry and they chucked the liquor down the drains in Santa Barbara, all that wasn’t hid away in rich men’s cellars. Vanderdecken wasn’t a drinking man, but one day at Santa Barbara he saw a lot of money bugs in white ducks popping champagne corks on a yacht and that blew him up. He went to Pat McGinnis and said he, ‘Look here, Pat, I’ve got a notion, let’s lay for a yacht and collar their drink and chuck it overboard.’ Pat didn’t seem to see the use of that, nor how it would bring him profit, but he turned it over in his thick head and the idea came to him of holdinga yacht up and robbing it. He worked up the idea and put it before Vanderdecken who fell in with it like a fool, on the condition that the drink should be hove over. Vanderdecken wasn’t after plunder, but he’d gone bughouse on getting even with the champagne guys, and he had to fall in with the other and pretend he was. Then, when everything was fixed up, Pat got cold feet, not from virtue but fright, and nothing would have been done if Vanderdecken hadn’t taken hold of the business and gingered the chaps up. He took command of the whole business and then the fun began, and when it began Vanderdecken found himself as keen on taking the valuables as on dousing the drink. But there wasn’t much in it. D’you know for all the hullaballoo that’s been raised, only three yachts were raided, that’s a fact. It was a business that wouldn’t bear much repeating and only one haul was really lucky, for the fellow had his wife aboard and all her diamonds and jewels; anyhow, taking it all together, the plunder didn’t amount to more’n ten or fifteen thousand dollars leaving the jewels aside, and they might be worth ten thousand. No knowing till they were sold. But there was a lot of fizz and claret sent to hell, but you never heard of that. The yacht owners kept that dark, they didn’t want to be laughed at for one thing, and another, the rich folk are mortally afraid of the poor folk suddenly rising and batting them over the head on the drink question, and I’ve just beenthinking, boys, that when Vanderdecken’s led back to ’Frisco, there’ll be no penitentiary for him lest the rich man’s cellar business should be brought too much to notice, and the guys who are poor and dry may say, ‘Let’s do what Vanderdecken had the guts to do’. However, after the last holdup, theHeart of Irelandmade for the Bay of Whales and Vanderdecken and McGinnis cached the takings, and Vanderdecken changed the cache unknown to McGinnis. Getting towards ’Frisco, Vanderdecken showed his hand by hinting, like a fool, that the stolen boodle ought to be returned to its owners. That roused McGinnis’ hair and the bristles on the hull crowd. They thought they were going to be done. They let Vanderdecken ashore, but a man went with him to watch him and the first thing Vanderdecken heard was that you two were going out in a schooner to hunt for him. He knew he’d never get away from ’Frisco and McGinnis without a knife in his back, so, giving the chap that was with him the slip, he hoofed it for Sullivan’s wharf, and dropped aboard theWear Jack. Boys, I’m Vanderdecken!”
THEY had guessed it for the last few minutes of the yarn. To gauge the effect upon them, one must remember that they were out to hunt the narrator, fearing to be guyed if they did not catch him. What would the guying be like when the real fact was known? The fact that they had been sailing to hunt for Vanderdecken with Vanderdecken on board, and not only on board but acting as sailing master. It was the sort of joke that becomes immortal, like the joke about Handy Andy throwing the wash jug out of the window instead of the water, the sort of story that would preserve the protagonists in ridicule, not for years but for ages.
And yet there was no spark of anger in the mind of Hank, or in the mind of George. Candon, by his confession and story and evident regret for the business, had drawn their teeth; also in the last few days he had taught them to like and admire him, and in some extraordinary way he had in the last few minutes made them feel that their affairs were subordinate to his and that they were only side characters in a story that was his.
All the same in the mind of each lay the fact that they had been done brown and the conviction that B. C. must now never be taken by the police even if they had to shoot him.
Hank was the first to speak.
“Well,” said he, “it’s a Kid Lewis of a punch, there’s no denying it, and if it was all from your own shoulder, B. C., I’m not saying I wouldn’t have hit back, but there’s more in this than a man can see. Maybe I’m talking through my hat, but seems to me it’s curious. Me putting out on this show and J. B. advertising me and you coming into ’Frisco on top of the advertisement and taking it up. Well, there’s no use in talking, let’s clean the slate. I’m not sure if an expedition was putting out to collar Hank Fisher, I wouldn’t join it same as you did, specially if I had the McGinnis crowd after me. What do you say, Bud?”
“Oh,” said George, “what’s the good of talking. Forget it.”
“That’s easy said,” put in Candon, “mind you, I don’t blame myself for joining in with you same as I did, you were after me, anyhow, and I didn’t know you from Adam, but it was a low-down trick making you sign that contract, binding you to put me ashore with five thousand dollars in my pocket after handing you over the Dutchman, which was myself. That’s what’s been getting me the last few days. It was just the same with the yacht business. I started out only to douse the liquor, but when it came to stripping thediamonds and money off those ducks I was as keen as McGinnis, then when the thing was done and the stuff safely hived, I was mortal sorry for myself. I’ve got a black streak in me and that’s the truth, nigger black, and there’s no use talking.”
“No matter,” said Hank. “Forget it. You’ve got a damn big white streak in you, B. C. I reckon we’re all pretty much striped if it comes to that—anyhow what we’ve got to do now is save that girl and get the boodle. You can skip when we’ve collared the stuff—it’ll be something to bring back to ’Frisco anyhow.”
“I’m going back with you to ’Frisco,” said Candon, “I’m not afraid to face the music.”
“Well, there’s time enough to talk about that,” put in the other. “The thing is now to get the girl. Time’s up and we’ve got to start. What’s your plan?”
“Rush them,” said Candon. “Three of our Chinks will be enough with us to help in the shouting, go and pick three of them, will you? Then we’ll row ashore, leave the boat beached, crawl over those rocks ’tween us and the next bay, get right up to the edge of their camp and stampede them, shouting like ballyhoos and firing over their heads. One of us had better look after the girl and pick her up and waltz off with her, I reckon I’m the strongest, maybe, and I’ll do the snatching—don’t use more than two rounds apiece when you let off over their heads, you’llmaybe want the rest if the hatchet men show fight.”
“That’s clear,” said Hank. “I’ll go pick the Chinks.”
He left the cabin and the two others turned their attention to the Lugger pistols, emptied the magazines, oiled them, tried the mechanism and refilled them. Then with the pistols and extra ammunition they came on deck.
The waning moon had not yet risen, but the stars were beginning to blaze, and against them the peak of San Nicolas with its cloud top looked like a giant with a turbaned head. Through the windless night the wash of the waves on the beach came clear, rhythmical, slumbrous like the pulse of the sleeping sea.
Hank had got his men into the boat, he took the pistol handed to him by Candon and the ammunition, then, with a glance at the deck where Charley was in charge, he led the way overside and the boat pushed off.
“You’re sure of the Chinks?” asked George in a whisper as they rowed.
“Sure,” replied Hank. “I’ve told them they’ve only got to shout and I’ll give five dollars to the chap that shouts the loudest. I tipped them that these guys have got an American girl with them and that the American Government will plaster them with dollars if we get her away—Oh, they’re right enough. Now, not a word out ofyou all when we get to the beach. Just follow B. C. and hold your breath for the shouting.”
The boat grounded on the soft sand and they tumbled out, hauled her up a few feet and Hank, taking a small lantern he had brought with him, lit it and placed it on the sands close to the bow. Then they started. Europe in the van, Asia in the rear.
The rocks were soon reached. The rocks just here are easy to negotiate, great flat-topped masses rising gradually from the bayside to a summit that falls as gradually to the sands of the bay beyond.
When they reached the summit the blaze of two fires on the beach showed out close together, their light blending in an elliptical zone, beyond which the tents hinted of themselves.
“The Chinks are round one, the white men by the other,” said Candon. “Couldn’t be better for we’ve got them divided. Now then, you two, follow me and do as I do—and for the love of Mike don’t sneeze. Got your guns handy? That’s right.”
He began the descent. Then when they reached the sands he got on hands and knees.
Scarcely had he done so than the notes of a guitar came through the night from the camp of the white slavers and the first words of a song. They could not make out the words, but they could tell at once that the singer was neither American nor English. That high nasal voicespoke of Spain where the cicadas shrill in the plane trees in the heat-shaken air.
“Dagoes,” said Hank.
“Come on,” said Candon.
Then, had anyone been watching, across the sands towards the zone of fire-light, six forms might have been seen crawling, liker to land crabs than the forms of men or beasts.
The Chinks around their fire were broken up into parties playing games and smoking. By the white man’s fire sat the guitar player on a camp stool, the light full on his sharp profile, another man leaning on his elbow lay smoking cigarettes, and a woman seated on the sand, an elderly-looking woman of Jewish type, was engaged in some sort of needlework, and her hand as it moved, seemed covered with rings.
George thought he had never beheld a more sinister looking trio. The girl was nowhere to be seen.
George, Hank and Candon put their heads together.
“She’s in one of the tents,” whispered B. C., “tied up for the night most like.”
“Shall we rush them now?” asked Hank.
“Yep, get your guns ready. Look! There’s the girl! Now then, boys!”
The girl who had just left the most seaward of the tents stood for a moment with the vague light of the fire touching her. She was very small. To George, in that half moment, she seemed only achild, and the sight of her contrasted with her captors came to them as though timed to the moment.
The beach blazed out with noise, the ear-splitting explosions of the Luggers and the yells of the attackers swept the man on the sands to his feet. George saw, as one sees in a dream, the whole of the Chinese casting cards and dice and flying like leaves driven by the broom of the wind. He had a vision of Hank downing the cigarette smoker, then he got a smash on the head from a guitar and was rolling on the sands with a man who was shouting “Hell, hell, hell!” punching him to silence whilst the woman with nails in his neck was trying to strangle him, screaming all the time till Hank dragged her off, crying, “We’ve got the girl—come on—come on! We’ve got the girl!” Then the nightmare shifted and he was running, Candon in front of him with something on his shoulder that struggled and fought and screamed for help, then he was stumbling over rocks, Hank helping him, Hank laughing and whooping like a man in delirium, and shouting to the stars: “We’ve got the girl! We’ve got the girl!”
Then came the glow-worm glimmer of the lamp by the boat, and the boat with them all crowding into it, Chinks and all, and the musky smell of the Chinks, the push off and a great silence broken only by the oars and Candon’s voice crying,“Lord! she’s dead!” and Hank’s voice, “No, she ain’t, only fainted.”
TheWear Jack’sside with Charley showing a lantern, the getting on board with their helpless bundle, and the vanishing of Candon with her down the companion way to the saloon, then and only then did things shake back to reality whilst Hank took both George’s hands in his. “Bo, we’ve done it,” said Hank.
“We sure have,” said George.
Which was a fact—if they only had known.
MEANWHILE the Chinks with absolute imperturbability and under the orders of Charley, were getting the boat on board. As it came on deck Candon appeared.
“She’s come to,” said Candon. “I’ve stuck her in the bunk in the after cabin, but she’s so rattled she won’t speak—just lays there. Hurry up with the anchor, you boys. Listen!”
From shoreward through the night came sounds, far-away shouting and then the throb of a gong.
“Those guys are collecting the hatchet men,” cried Hank, “they’ll maybe try and cut us off from the next bay—there was a boat on the sands. Lord! and I’ve dropped my Lugger.”
“I’ve got mine,” said George.
“Mine’s in the cabin,” said Candon, “get the windlass going and I’ll start the engine. Give me a call when the mud hook’s up and look slippy.” He dived below and as he dived a loose bunt of sail puffed out and a breeze from the nor’west laid its fingers on the cheek of Hank.
“Wind’s coming,” cried Hank. “Leave the windlass, get to the halyards. Hi! Charley there, look alive, man. Your throat and peak halyards—Bud, lay forward and get the gaskets off the jib.” He rushed to the hatch of the engine room. “Candon, below there! Wind’s coming, I’m getting sail on her, that damned junk will lay for us sure and I’m not trusting the engine any.” He rushed back to the wheel and stood whilst the mainsail, fore and jib were got on her. Then came the sound of the winch and the anchor came home whilst the slatting canvas filled and Hank turned the spokes of the wheel setting her on a course south by east.
Candon’s head bobbed up from below.
“I can’t get the durned thing to go,” said he.
“Never mind,” said Hank, “the wind’s freshening.”
As he spoke it breezed up strong, the mainsheet tautened and the boom lifted as the sails bellied hard against the stars and theWear Jackleaned over to it, boosting the ebony water to snow.
Candon took the wheel from Hank.
“It’s bad luck we have to run right past them,” said he as the next bay opened, showing the junk lit up as if for a festival and the fires on the beach.
“They’ll have had time to collect their wits and man the junk and they’ll know it’s not the police.”
“Oh, we’ve got the heels of them,” said Hank.
“Hope so,” said the other. “Look! they’re getting sail on her.”
In the dim light the vast lug sail of the junk could be seen rising and even before it fully took the wind, she was moving.
“They’re rowing!” cried George. “Look! they’ve got the sweeps out!”
Candon looked. The fag end of a moon rising over the hills of California showed now clearly the junk putting out to sea ahead of them, the flash and movement of the sweeps, the great lubberly lateen sail being trimmed and the foam dashing from the bow.
“They’ve got us,” said Hank, “get your guns ready if it comes to boarding. Where’s yours, B. C.?” “Down in the cabin?—one sec.” He dived below. Then he came up again. “Cabin door’s bolted.”
“Whach you say?” cried Candon.
“Cabin door’s bolted, can’t get in—”
“Maybe it’s stuck,” said Candon. “Don’t bother with it, we’ve no time for fiddling, lay hold of something to bat these chaps with if they try and board. Hell! but she’s racing,—that junk.”
She was. Urged by wind and oars, making ahead to hit the course of theWear Jackat an acute angle, she seemed bound to do it.
“What’s her game?” asked George.
“Foul us, get broadside on and board us,” replied Candon.
“How’d it be to put her about and get her on a wind?” asked Hank.
“No use, going about would give her lengths—those junks shoot up into the wind like all possessed and the sweeps help—Leave her to me.”
TheWear Jackkept on.
Racing now almost parallel—the junk ahead with sweeps drawn in, the two boats held only half a cable length apart. They could see the junk’s deck swarming, the hatchet men, now that they had got their courage were voicing it, and yells like the strident sound of tearing calico came mixed with the wash of the waves and the beating of a gong. Closer they got, still closer, theWear Jackgaining under a strengthening flaw of the wind. Then, with a shout and with a lightning movement, Candon, to the horror of the others, put his helm hard over. TheWear Jackchecked, shied just like a horse, and with a thunder of slatting canvas, and rattling blocks, plunged at the junk, ramming her abaft the chunky mast. The fellow at the steering sweep shifted his helm to get clear, the junk forged to starboard and the bowsprit of theWear Jack, like a clutching hand, snapped stay after stay bringing the great sail down like a Venetian blind over the crowd on deck.
“We’re free,” shouted Candon, “bowsprit’s half gone. No matter, get forward, Hank, and clear the raffle!”
Then as theWear Jackforged ahead, the KiroShiwo drifting her faster than the junk, the wind took her sails.
“They aren’t sinking, are they?” cried George.
“Sinking—nothing,” replied B. C., turning his head. “They’ll get back ashore with their sweeps. If they were, it’d be a good job. What’s the damage, Hank?”
“Bob stay gone,” came Hank’s voice. “Bowsprit seems all right—Lord, it’s a miracle.”
Then he came aft having set Charley and the Chinks on repairs.
“B. C.,” said Hank, “you’re a marvel. What put it into your nut to do it?”
“It came to me,” said the other, “they’d have done it to us in another tick, got fast and downed us. Hit first—that’s my motto.”
“Well,” said Hank, “you’ve done it.”
Away back in the moonlight across the heave of the sea, they could make out the dismasted wreck floundering like a drunken thing, listing to starboard with the weight of her broken wing,gastados, out of the running—done for.
GEORGE and Hank went forward to superintend the work of the Chinks on the bowsprit; Candon, at the wheel and well content with the work of the night, felt thirsty. There was no one to fetch him a drink, tea was what he fancied and thinking of tea made him think of the tea things which were in the cabin. Then he remembered what Hank had said about the cabin door being closed.
It occurred to him now that the girl had bolted the door. No doubt the poor creature was half crazy with fright. It had not occurred before to the ingenuous and benevolent B. C. that the girl must look on her new captors as more terrible than even the white slavers. The yelling and the shooting, the stampeding of the camp, the way she had been seized, caught up and carried off—why, what must she think of them! Up to this he had been too busy to think himself. It was only now, as Hank would have said, that the thing suddenly hit him on the head like an orange.
“Hank!” shouted B. C.
“Coming,” replied Hank. He came aft.
“I’m thinking of the girl down below, it’s she that’s most likely fastened the door, she’s most likely scared out of her life the way we’ve took her off and not knowing who we are.”
“Sure,” said Hank.
“She nearly tore my head off as I was carrying her—I remember getting a cat out of a trap once, it acted just the same—scared—”
“Listen,” said Hank, who was standing close to the cabin skylight.
The skylight was a bit open and fastened from inside; through the opening came sounds as of someone moving about.
“She’s moving,” said B. C. “She’s got over her fright. Down with you, Hank, and get her story, tell her I’ll be down when George comes aft, tell her she’s as safe with us as she’d be with her gran’mother.”
Hank descended.
Candon heard him knock—then his voice.
“Halloo there.”
Silence.
“Halloo there.”
Then came a determined little voice.
“Clear off—I’ve got a pistol—”
Candon, listening, remembered the Lugger pistol he had left on the cabin table.
Then Hank’s voice.
“Don’t be scared, com’n’ open the door, don’t be scared.”
The voice: “I’m not a person to be scared—you ought to know that.”
Down below the perplexed Hank, standing before the closed door, was at pause for a moment. Why ought he to have known that? Was she mad after all?
“Well, open the door anyhow,” said he. “Don’t you know we’re your friends. Good Lord, don’t you know what we’ve risked getting you away from that lot? Come on—all the food and stuff’s in the lockers and lazarette and we’re clean perishing for something to eat.”
“That’s good,” said the voice, “you’ll have to perish till morning, then we’ll talk. Now go away, please.”
“Whach you say?”
“Scatter.”
A long pause. Then Hank’s voice, angry. “I tell you what—I wish to the Lord we’d left you there.”
And the voice: “You’ll be wishing it more when you’re in the penitentiary.”
Then Candon could almost hear the perplexed Hank scratching his head. A long pause. Then Hank:
“But for the Lord’s sake, you don’t think we want to do you any harm?”
The voice: “Then what did you want to do?”
Hank: “Get you away from that lot.”
The voice: “What for?”
Hank: “Whatfor—why to save you fromthem—to save you body and soul—didn’t youknowthey were taking you to perdition,—clean perdition.”
Then the voice, after a moment’s pause: “I don’t know whether you’re toughs or religious cranks. It doesn’t matter. Anyhow this door doesn’t open s’long as it’s dark. Now clear, come again in the morning and, if you take my advice, steer straight for Santa Barbara. If you put me ashore safe by morning maybe I’ll try and help you with the police, but I don’t promise—now clear.”
Hank cleared.
On deck he found George who had come aft. “She’s gone bughouse,” said Hank, “or else she was one of them, helping in the contraband.”
He recounted the dialogue. “She’s got that Lugger pistol and seems to me, boys, she’s got the game. It’s worse than Pittsburg. Called me a religious crank. Anyhow she’s got us, got the grub under her thumb unless we make out with the rice and truck the Chinks feed on.”
“I can’t make it out,” said George. “I’d have sworn by the look we got at her, through the glass, that she was a prisoner with those scamps. D’y’ remember the way she carried on, went and threw herself down on the ground with her face hidden in her arm?”
“Seems to me,” said Hank, “we’ve been reading into the situation more than was in it. She was no prisoner. She was one of them—daughtermost likely of that Jew woman I hauled off you—well, I wish we’d left her alone—and to think of the size of her sitting up and crowing like that.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” said George, “it’s the day of the flapper. She most likely was running that show. It’s part of the new world—the millennium that was to come after the war!”
Candon alone said nothing. The thing had hit him even harder than Hank. The knight errant in him was flattened out, at least for the moment. He remembered the cat he had released from the trap and how it had clawed him—but it had taken milk from his hand immediately after and become his friend, whereas this creature—! Then it came to him out of his own mind—for Hank’s words had produced little effect on him—that the truth was he had released her from no trap. She was part and parcel with those scoundrels, a vicious girl made vicious no doubt from bad association. This conviction suddenly coming to his mind produced an uplift.
“Boys,” said B. C. suddenly, “we’ll tame her. There’s something moving in this more than we can see. Anyhow, we’ve got her away from those ginks to start with.”
“That’s true,” said Hank, his mind taking suddenly the colour of Candon’s. But George was of rougher stuff than these idealists. He went to the skylight and cautiously tried to peep, but could see nothing, then he listened but could hear nothing. He came back to the others.
“She’s lying down, most likely, can’t see her or hear her—it’s all very well talking of taming—what do you think this show is? I didn’t start out to tame girls, don’t know how to begin, either,—I know, it’s as much my fault as yours—we shouldn’t have mixed up in the business—and I tell you we are in a tight place. That crowd will swear anything against us and she’ll back them. She talked of the police. That’s just so, all these white slavers and dope sellers and contrabanders are hand in glove with the police. They couldn’t do their business else; we should have left them alone.”
“Now that’s clean wrong,” said Hank. “Doesn’t matter a rap if the girl’s a tough, we saved her, anyhow. We did the right thing and she can’t make it wrong by being wrong herself.”
“That’s a fact,” said Candon.
“Maybe,” replied George. “All the same she’s done us out of our bunks, and what are you going to do with her, anyway? Here you are tied up with a girl, you’ve taken her from her mother, if that old Jew woman was her mother, ripped her clean out of her environment, she’s on our hands. If she doesn’t go back to that lot, what are we to do with her?”
Hank got peppery. “Why in the nation didn’t you think of that before we took her,” asked he.
“Why you know well enough,” answered the other, “we thought that lot had stolen her away from her people, naturally I thought we’d puther back again with her people, whereas, now, look where we are. Suppose even we do tame her, as you call it, and she goes straight, who’s to feed her and keep her?”
“Why, Bud,” said Hank, “we’ll manage somehow. Look at you with all your dollars, what better use could you make of a few of them, and we’ll help.”
“Yes, we’ll help,” said Candon, forgetting the fact that he was due for either the penitentiary or hoofing it to Callao from the Bay of Whales. “We’ll help and the three of us will make out somehow.”
The millionaire said nothing for a moment. He was about to fly out at the cool way these benefactors of humanity were disposing of his credit and coin. Then he calmed down and said nothing and went forward to get some of the “rice and truck the Chinks feed on” for his companions, also a beaker of water.
The weather was warm, so warm that sleeping on deck was no penance and Charley being called to the wheel theWear Jackand her strange cargo snored on south—ever south—under the night of stars.
HANK and Candon were asleep, whilst George stood as officer of the watch. A great blaze of light fanning up beyond the coast hills showed theWear Jackunder all plain sail and the gulls following her, royal terns and loons and black-headed gulls, whilst far above a Brandt’s cormorant formed an escort in the blue, wheeling, dropping as though to pierce the deck, and then passing off with a cry, northward, towards the vanished islands.
Away over there to the east, fog held the lower hills and made a country of rolling snow to the sea edge, a country now white, now golden as the great sun rose above it, now breaking here and there, and now flying before the wind like the banners of a shattered army.
At eight o’clock, when they had breakfasted somehow out of materials supplied by Charley, Hank suddenly took the wheel of affairs.
Not a sound had broken the ominous silence down below and up to now the barred-out men had not spoken a word on the matter.
“It’s lucky for us we have a crew of Chinks,” said Hank suddenly and apropos of nothing, “the Chinks don’t know and if they did they wouldn’t care. If we took our breakfast standing on our heads it would be all the same to them. Well, see here, you fellows, what we going to do? We have to get done with this business right now. I’ve got a stiff back sleeping in the scuppers and I don’t propose to feed for the rest of my natural on this Chow junk. Seeing I did the talking last night, I propose going down to prospect and have a parley.”
“Right!” said the other two with a sudden brightening, as though a burden had been lifted from them.
“If she won’t open,” said Hank, as he got on his long legs, “I’ll bust that door in. You keep your ears skinned at the hatch and come along down if there’s trouble.”
They moved up close to the hatch and Hank went down. They heard his knock and almost immediately on the knock a clear voice say: “Yes?”
Then Hank: “It’s come day now, will you open? I want to have a word with you.”
The voice: “Yes. I will open, on one condition, that after I have drawn the bolts you will wait till I give the word before you come in.”
“Right.”
“If you don’t, I’ll shoot.”
“Right.”
They heard the bolts being drawn. Then, after a moment, giving her time to get to the other end of the cabin, they heard her cry, “Come in.”
Then her voice: “Well?”
Silence.
The voice: “Well—what on earth is the matter with you? Can’t you speak?”
Hank: “I’m clean knocked out. Suffering Moses!”
The voice: “I don’t want to know anything about Moses and his sufferings, I just want to know who you are, the name of this ship, and what you mean. Don’t come nearer!”
Hank: “I’m not—Can’t you see I’m hit? This has been a mistake.”
The voice: “I should think so.”
Hank: “Now I see you in the light of day, the whole thing has jumped together in my head—Lord! what a mistake.”
The voice: “Well?”
Hank: “I’ll get on deck for a moment if you don’t mind. I’m hit.”
The voice: “So you have said. Well, get on deck and recover yourself and be quick about it—if it’s a mistake you’ve got to mend it and get me back—go on.”
Hank came on deck, he beckoned to the others and led them forward.
“Boys.”
“Goon!”
“Boys, it’s Tommie Coulthurst.”
The awful silence that followed this crushing announcement lasted for full twenty seconds, a silence broken only by the slash of the bow wash, the creak of a block and the cry of the gulls.
Then George said: “Oh, Lord!”
“You ain’t mistaken?” asked Candon feebly. Hank did not even reply.
“But we’ve busted their ship,” said George, as if protesting against the enormity of the idea that had just put itself together in his brain, “and I nearly did for that gink with the guitar.”
“I know,” said Hank, “and I downed that other chap and hauled that Jew woman off you by the left leg—well, there we are. “What’s wrong with this cruise anyhow?”
“I dunno,” said George. “My head’s turned inside out. Down with you, Hank, and get her up—get her up, we’ve gotta try and explain. Down with you.”
Hank started aft on a run and vanished. A minute later a deck chair appeared at the hatch, followed by Hank. After Hank came a little hand holding a Lugger pistol, and then the head and body of Tommie Coulthurst.
She looked smaller even than by the firelight, small but so exquisitely proportioned that you did not bother about her size. She had no hat, her steadfast seaweed brown eyes were fixed on the men before her and the strange and extraordinary thing was that her face as she gazed at them brought them comfort of a kind.
For Tommie’s face, though small enough, had nothing small in it. It was good to look upon as Truth and Honesty and Courage could make it and Beauty had lent a hand.
Hank put out the chair.
“Will you sit down,” said Hank.
Before sitting down she took a glance round at the deck and the Chink at the wheel. Then as though the pistol were bothering her, she threw it into the scupper. She seemed to have read everything in the situation and found no danger.
“Well,” said she, “what on earth is it all?”
“It’s a mistake,” said Hank.
“So you have told me—but seems to me we are getting further from Santa Barbara, we are going down the coast, aren’t we?”
“We are,” said George, “and I’ll put the ship about right away if you like—only I’d ask you to listen to us first and a few miles more or less don’t matter.”
“Go on,” said Tommie.
George, who had recovered his wits sooner than the others, had seized on an idea. Maybe it was Tommie’s face that inspired it.
“The whole of this business is a most awful mix-up,” he began. “First I’d better tell you who we are. My name’s Du Cane. George Harley du Cane. This is Mr. Hank Fisher, and this is Mr. Candon. I don’t know if you have read in the papers of a yacht putting out from San Franciscoto catch Vanderdecken, the man who has been raiding yachts?”
“Yes,” said Tommie, “I know about it.”
“Well, this is the yacht. We got along down to San Nicolas and going ashore we saw a Chinese camp. We spotted you through a glass and came to the conclusion you were in the hands of Chinese white slavers. We made up our minds to rescue you.”
“Good Lord!” said Tommie, sitting forward in her chair with wide pupils.
“And seems to me we did it,” said George. “Can you imagine anything more horrible?”
Tommie’s mouth was open, relaxed, yet in a way rigid. She seemed in the grip of petrified laughter.
“Not only that,” went on George, “but we knocked the mast out of that junk. She chased us and we rammed her. What was she? Part of your show?”
Tommie’s mouth had suddenly closed itself, laughter had vanished and her eyes shone.
“Yes, part of our show.”
“And those were real Chinks—hatchet men?”
“Yep—we always work with real stuff.”
“We ought to have recognized you,” went on George, “we’ve seen you often enough in the pictures and the press, but the distance was too big, besides looking from a distance you gave us the impression—we saw you throw yourself down.”
“I was showing Mr. Althusen a pose,” said Tommie.
“Althusen?”
“The producer.”
“Was that the man playing the guitar by the fire?”
“Yep.” Her eyes still blazed strangely. Hank thought she was going to fly out at them.
“He smashed his guitar on me,” said George. “It’s awful.”
“I think it’ssplendid!” said Tommie.