AT seven the next morning the digging began. At six, when Hank turned out of the tent, the aspect of the beach had changed. A north wind, rising before midnight, had blown steadily and strongly unheard and unheeded by the snoring sleepers in the tents. It died out after dawn.
Hank called George to look. Here and there away across the sands white spots were visible, some like the tops of gigantic mushrooms. One quite close to them showed as the top of a whale’s skull. Further on a huge rib hinted of itself. There were little sand-drifts on the windward side of the tents.
“Wind’s been shifting the sand,” said George, “it’s all over me.” His hair was full of sand and his pockets. Hank was in the same condition. Tommie came out of her tent blinking at the sun.
“Say, I’m all sand,” cried Tommie.
“Wind’s been blowing,” said Hank; “look at the bones.”
The sand seemed lower over the cache.
Candon gave it as his opinion that it was at least a foot lower. Then without more ado they began to dig, using the two spades and one of the shovels improvised by Hank.
Candon, Hank and one of the Chinks were the diggers. They had divided themselves into two gangs, George, Tommie, and the other Chink forming the second gang; and they, having seen the work started, went off to prepare breakfast.
After breakfast they started again, working in two shifts of half an hour each, and keeping it up till eleven. Then they knocked off, fagged out but somehow happy. The middle of the day was too hot for work and after dinner they slept till three, knocking off finally somewhere about six. A hole ten feet broad from north to south, eight feet from east to west, and nearly three feet deep was the result of their work, the excavated stuff being banked north and south, so that if the wind blew up from either quarter, there would be less drift of sand into the hole. Hank watered these banks as far as he could with water from the spring in the cliff to make the sand “stay put”; then they went off to supper.
T. C. had worked in her way as hard as any of them, taking as a sort of personal insult any suggestion that she was overdoing herself. Dog-tired now, she was seated on the sand by the middle tent reading an old ChicagoTribunethat George had brought ashore, whilst the others prepared supper.
“Lord,” said Hank, as he knelt building up the fire. “If I haven’t forgot to send for your book.” He looked towards the boat on the beach and half rose to his feet.
“I’m not wanting it,” said Tommie. “This is good enough for me, I’m too tired for books—tea’s what I want.”
She dived into the paper again, emerging when supper was announced with the gist of an article on the League of Nations between her teeth. T. C. had strong political opinions, and her own ideas about the League of Nations. She did not favour the League and said so.
Hank, opening a can of salmon and hit in his ideals, forgot it, waved it in the air and started to do battle with Tommie. That was Hank all over; heart-punched, lying on his back with Cupid counting him out, he saw for a moment only the banner of universal peace and brotherhood waving above him.
“But it isn’t so,” cried Hank. “There’s no Monroe doctrines in morality. America can’t sit scratching herself when others are up and doing. Why the nations have got war down, down, right now, kicking under the blanket, and it only wants America to sit on her head tokeepher down.”
“America’s got to be strong before she does anything,” fired Tommie. “How’s she to be strong if a lot of foreigners sitting in Geneva can tell her to do this or that? Why they’d cut her fists off.”
“Strong,” cried Hank. “Why armies and navies aren’t strength. Love of man for man—”
“Mean to tell me you could love Turks?”
“Ain’t talking of Turks.”
“Greeks then—Portugueses—say, tell me straight—do you love niggers?”
The sight of Tommie “het up” and with sparkling eyes gave the struggling hero such another heart punch that he collapsed, lost sight of the banner of brotherhood and went on opening the can of salmon.
“Maybe I’m wrong and maybe you’re right,” said he, “it’s a big question. Pass me that plate, will you, Bud?”
Candon had said nothing. He had deserted his co-idealist like a skunk, and seemed engaged in re-reviewing the League of Nations by the light of Tommie.
Half an hour after supper the whole lot of them were snoring in their tents, pole-axed by sleep.
NEXT day passed in labour, another two feet being added to the depth.
At ten o’clock on the morning after as the Tommie-Chink-Bud shift were taking on digging, Hank, shaking sand from his clothes, called out to the others to look.
Down from the southern defile in the cliffs a small procession was coming on to the beach. First came a man in a broad-brimmed hat, then another leading a mule, and another following after.
“Mexicans,” said George.
“Sure,” said Hank. “Look! they’ve seen us, they’ve stopped, now they’re going on, right down to the sea edge. Wonder what they’re after?”
The Mexicans, having reached the sea edge, began to wander along it coming in the direction of the tents. Every now and then they stopped to gather something.
“Seaweed,” said Hank. “Look, they are shoving it into a sack on the mule.”
“Well, come on,” said Tommie. She jumped into the sand pit and began to dig, Bud and theChink following her. Hank rolling a cigarette, sat down and watched the seaweed gatherers.
The tide was half out and they were following it, walking along the extreme edge of the water. Then he saw them stop and take something from the mule’s back.
“Shovels,” said Hank to himself. As chief engineer of the business, Hank, from the first, had been impressed by the fact that the deeper they went the harder the work would be, simply because the sand had to be flung out of the pit. The first few feet in depth it was easy enough, but the depth already gained was beginning to tell, and the banks of excavated stuff to north and south made matters worse by increasing the height over which the sand had to be flung.
“B. C.!” suddenly cried Hank, springing to his feet. “Shovels!”
Candon, who was lying on his back with his hat over his face, resting for a moment, sat up.
Hank was gone, running full speed and whooping as he ran.
He reached the sea edge and caught up with the beach-combers who were digging for huge clams just when a bank of sand and mud touched the true sand. Close to them now, they showed up as three tanned, lean, hard-bitten individuals, carrying big satisfactory heart-shaped Mexican shovels, and looking all nerves and sinews, with faces expressionless as the face of the mule that stood by with its two sacks bulging, one evidentlywith provender, the other with gathered sea-weed.
“Hi, you jossers,” cried Hank, “want a job, hey? Mucho plenty dollars, dig for Americanos.” He made movements as of digging and pointed towards the sand hole.
“No intende,” replied the tallest of the three.
“Come on,” said Hank, taking the long man by the arm and leading the way. He had remembered that Candon said he could talk Spanish.
The others were all out of the sand hole watching, and halfway up Candon and George joined Hank.
“Here’s your dredging machine,” cried Hank. “Look at the shovels, ain’t they lovely? Get at them, B. C., and ask their terms.”
Candon spoke with the long man, seeming to explain matters.
“Five dollars a day each,” said Candon. “They say they’ll work all day for that.”
“Fifteen dollars,” said Hank. “Take’em on, it’s cheap. We can get rid of them before we strike the stuff, take’em on for one day, anyhow.”
Candon concluded the bargain. Then he led the beach-combers to the hole and explained matters. They understood, then, having consulted together like experts, they took the matter into their own hands, asking only that the others should set to work and remove the banks of refuse to north and south of the hole.
“Well,” said Hank as they sat at dinner that day, “give me Mexicans for work. A raft ofniggers couldn’t have moved the dirt quicker’n those chaps. Why, we’ll be down to bed rock by to-night.”
“I gingered them up,” said Candon, “told them if they got down to what I wanted to find by tonight, I’d give them ten dollars extra apiece. But they won’t do it.”
By six o’clock that evening, however, the job was nearly done. Candon reckoned that only a few hours more work would find the stuff, unless a heavy wind blew up in the night and spoiled things.
He paid the hired men off with dollars supplied by George and then they sat down to supper, the beach-combers camping near by and having the time of their lives with canned salmon, ship’s bread and peaches supplied for nothing.
Tommie had fallen in love with the mule. It had eaten half a ChicagoTribuneblowing about on the sands and she was feeding it now with wafers, which the brute took in a gingerly and delicate manner, as though chicken and asparagus had been its up-bringing, instead of old gasoline cans and esparto grass.
“She’s made friends with that mule,” said George.
“She’s made friends with Satan,” said Hank. “Look at her talking to those greasers as if she knew their lingo.”
“She’s making them laugh,” said Candon.
An hour after supper the beach was at peace. Even the mule had fallen into the frame of the picture.
It was lying down by its sleeping masters. Away out across the water, the amber light of theWear Jackshowed beneath the stars.
An hour passed. Then things changed. The mule was lying dreaming, maybe, of more wafers, and in the starlight, like shadows, the forms of the three Mexicans, each with a shovel over its shoulder, were passing towards the sand-hole.
“ROUSE up, Hank!”
Hank, snoring on his back, flung out his arms, opened his eyes, yawned and stared at the beautiful blazing morning visible through the tent opening.
“Lord! it’s good to be alive!” said Hank. He dressed and came out.
Candon was tinkering at the fire. The mule, on its feet now, was standing, whilst Tommie was feeding it with dried grass taken from the provender bag, the Mexicans, sitting like tired men, were smoking cigarettes, whilst the four mile beach sang to the crystal waves and the white gulls laughed.
It was a pretty picture.
Tommie came running to the heap of stores by the middle tent, chose a couple of tins, wrapped up some biscuits in a bit of newspaper and presented the lot to the Mexicans.
“They look so tired,” said she, as they sat down to breakfast.
“Well they ought to be,” said Hank, “seeingthe way they’ve been digging. Boys, I reckon they ought to have a bonus.”
“They’ve had fifteen dollars,” said the practical George, “and their grub.”
“Maybe,” said Hank, “but they’ve done fifty dollars’ worth of work, seeing how we’re placed. I vote we give them five dollars extra.”
“I’m with you,” said Candon.
“Ten,” said Tommie.
“I’ve only a ten dollar bill left on me,” said George. “Don’t matter, give it to them.”
Tommie took the note and, leaving her breakfast, tripped over to the Mexicans. Then she came back.
Half an hour later, armed only with the spades and Hank’s improvised shovel, they set to work.
“Let’s borrow the greasers’ shovels,” said George.
“I’d rather not,” said Candon, “they’ll be going off the beach soon, and I’d rather they weren’t here when we strike the stuff, we’ll be soon on it now.”
“What’s the matter with the sand?” asked Hank as he contemplated the floor of the hole. “Looks as if it had been beaten down with a shovel.”
“Shovel—nothing—” said George, “it’s their flat feet, come on!”
By half past eleven o’clock, Candon reckoned that the depth required had been reached if not passed.
“We’ll get it this evening,” said he, “as sure’s my name’s Bob Candon.”
“Hope so,” said George.
As they turned to the tents for dinner and siesta, they found that the Mexicans were still on the beach a bit to the southward, strolling along by the sea edge. Then they came back northwards.
“I wish those greasers would go,” said George.
When they turned in for the mid-day siesta, the beach-combers seemed to have made a little camp for the purpose of rest and cigarette smoking half-way between the sea edge and the southern defile in the cliffs.
George slept, at first the sleep of the just, then began the sleep of canned kippered herrings and 80° in the shade. Tyrebuck was buried alive somewhere on the beach and they were trying to locate him without treading on him; then, having seemingly given up this quest, they were seated playing cards with Hank’s late partner, the lady who could put a whole potato in her mouth. They were playing a new sort of game which the ingenious Hank had invented and which he called Back to Front. That is to say they were holding their cards so that each player could only see the backs of his own hand and the fronts of his partner’s hand. It was bridge, moreover, and they were playing for potato points. How long this extremely intellectual game lasted, it is impossible to say. It was suddenly interrupted.
Hank outside the tent had seized his foot and seemed trying to pull his leg off.
“Come out!” cried Hank. “She’s gone!”
“Gone! Who’s gone?”
“Tommie. They’ve stolen her.”
Candon, already awakened and out, was running around looking at the sand as if hunting her foot steps.
The raving Hank explained that, unable to sleep, he had come out and found the Mexicans gone. Some premonition of evil had made him glance at Tommie’s tent opening. Not being able to see her, he looked closer. She was gone. They had stolen her.
“After them!” cried George.
Aroused from a fantastic dream he found himself faced with something almost equally fantastic. The size of Tommie made a lot of things possible. Visions of her, captured and strangled and stuffed into one of the bags on the mule’s back, rose before him, though why or for what purpose the greasers should commit such an act was not clear.
The going was hard over the sand till they reached the defile in the cliffs towards which the mule tracks seemed to lead. Here the way led gently uphill over broken rocky ground till they reached a low plateau where, under the unchanging sunlight, the landscape lay spread in humps and hollows to the hills away to the east. Rock, sagebrush and sand, cactus, sand, sagebrush, it lay before them; but of Tommie, the mule or hercaptors, there was no trace or sign. The sand here was no use for tracking purposes, it was beach sand blown up by west winds and lay only in places, rock was the true floor, rock rising sometimes six feet in camel humps obstructing the view.
Candon climbed one of these kopjes, shaded his eyes and looked. Then he gave a shout.
“Got ’em,” cried Candon, “right ahead. After me, boys!”
He came tumbling down and started at full speed, taking a track that led due east between the hillocks, till, rounding a boulder, away ahead of them, they saw the mule and its companions slowly winding their way in a south-easterly direction—but not a trace of Tommie.
They closed up rapidly, the Mexicans turned at the shout of Hank, then, as if a bomb shell had burst amongst them, they scattered, leaving the mule to its fate and running south, sou’east and east.
“Mule first,” cried Hank.
Through the canvas of the great bulging sack of sea-weed on the mule’s back, he could see the small corpse of Tommie, strangled, maybe, doubled up, done for.
The mule, left to itself, had begun to feed on a patch of grass as tough looking as bow-string hemp. It cocked an eye at the oncomers and continued feeding till they got close up to it.
“Look out!” yelled Hank.
The heels of the brute had missed him by inches.
They scattered, picking up rocks by instinct and instinctively planning and carrying out their attack without word of common counsel. It was the primitive man, no doubt, aroused by rage; at all events the mule, mechanically grazing, got, next moment, a whack on its rump with a rock that made it squeal and wheel only to get another on its flank. It flung its heels up as if trying to kick heaven.
“Stand clear,” cried Hank. The sack, provender and shovels had fallen to the ground and the mule, seeing an open course and impelled by another rock, was off.
Hank flung himself on the sack. There was no Tommie in it, only seaweed. Candon, recognising this, made off, running after the Mexicans, but something was protruding from the provender bag that was not provender. Hank pulled it out. It was a parcel done up in oil cloth and tied clumsily with tarred string.
“Lord!” cried George. “The boodle!”
The shock of the discovery almost made them forget Tommie for a moment.
“Hounds,” said Hank. “They must have been digging last night after we turned in.”
“And they’ve opened it,” said George. “Look at the way it’s tied up again—and that knot’s a granny. Oh, damn! What’s the use of bothering? We haven’t got her. Hank, clutch a hold of thedamned thing and hide it somewhere and come on. Scatter and hunt.”
Candon had made off due east. They heard his voice shouting, “Hi, there, hi there! Tommie! Ahoy there!” Then Hank, throwing the parcel at the foot of a prominent upstanding rock, made off south and Bud north.
The eagle of the Simaloa hills, having fed its young that morning, had returned to its watch tower and from there she saw the hunt. She saw Hank overtaking and kicking a Mexican, Bud chasing another Mexican, Candon pursuing a third. Philosophising, perhaps, on the craziness of human beings, she saw the chase of the Mexicans relinquished and the pursuers each now seemingly in pursuit of something else.
An hour later Hank, returning to the rock where he had flung the bundle, found Bud.
“She’s not here,” said Hank, “but she can’t be anywhere else—I’m done—there’s nothing for it but to hike back and get all the Chinks and comb this place. It’s not the Mexicans. She’s maybe wandered out here alone and fallen off a rock or into a hole or got sunstroke. Come on and fetch the Chinks.”
“Where’s B. C.?”
“I dunno. Chasing away there somewhere—come on.”
He caught up the bundle and they started, the most dejected pair of human beings in Mexico at that moment. They couldn’t speak. They camethrough the defile in the cliffs and there on the sands lay the new beached boat, and on the sands the tents, and half in and out of her tent, sitting with her head in the shade and her feet in the sun, Tommie reading a book.
Hank dropped the bundle and ran towards her, shouting as he ran and waving his arms.
BUD saw her spring up, evidently fancying some danger was upon them, then he saw Hank seizing her and jumping her round in a sort of dance.
When he reached them, Hank had flung himself down on the sand and was laughing.
“He’s gone crazy,” said Tommie, laughing despite herself. “Where on earth you been?”
“Been!” cried George. “Hunting Mexico for you, thinking you were lost. Where haveyoubeen?”
“Me—only to get my book. I took the boat when you two were asleep and I got back here a few minutes ago and found you all gone.”
“Well,” said Bud, sitting down on the sand. “I was asleep when Hank pulled me out by the leg, saying you were gone and the Mexicans had stolen you, then we all started off to chase them and hunt for you.”
“But didn’t you see the boat was gone?” asked she.
“I only saw you were gone,” said Hank, “and the Mexicans.”
“Hank told us they’d boned you and made off with you,” put in George. “I took it for gospel and started right off.”
Hank snorted. “What else was a body to think. It gets me. Say, people, what’s wrong with this cruise anyhow. Look at it.”
The idea that his own frightful imagination had not only launched the whole expedition, but had dragged Tommie in, broken up a picture show and wrecked a junk, to say nothing of the latter business, never dawned on him or his companions, nor the premonition that his imagination had not done with them yet.
“Where’s B. C.?” asked Tommie suddenly.
“Hunting away still,” replied George.
“What’s in that bundle?”
“Oh, the bundle—why it’s the boodle; the greasers must have dug it up, for we found it in the sack on the mule.”
“The jewels!”
“Yep.”
“My!” said Tommie, her eyes wide and the colour coming to her cheeks. “Whydidn’t you tell me?” She seized on it.
“I’ll help,” said Hank, “you’ll dirty your fingers with the string.”
“Bother my fingers.”
She had the string off and then, unwrapping the oilskin cover, came on sack cloth. Opening this unskilfully the whole contents shot out on her knees and the sand. Diamond rings, ten silverspoons, a diamond necklace, blazing, huge and vulgar, a diamond hair ornament like a tiara, a ring set with rubies, another with emeralds, a woman’s wrist watch set with diamonds, and a silver pepper pot. Twenty or thirty thousand dollars’ worth of plunder, at least, and shouting with individuality. One could see the fat woman who once wore the necklace and tiara, almost; no wonder that the pirates had determined to give them a year to cool amidst the sands of the Bay of Whales.
“My!” said Tommie again, her eyes glittering as she gathered the things together carefully, spread the sack cloth and put them out.
She brooded on them without another word, picking them up one by one, trying the rings on, holding up the necklace for all to admire, even the Chinks, who had drawn close and who seemed to understand that these were the things for which they had been digging.
Then she put the lot on for fun, the tiara that nearly came over her ears, the necklace that nearly came down to her waist, the rings that hung loose on her fingers. Then, making a fan out of an old piece of paper, she got up and promenaded the sands, gathering up imaginary skirts and looking disdain upon her recent friends, till even the Chinks laughed.
Then, all at once, she quitted fooling, became preternaturally grave and, sitting down again, did the things up in the sack-cloth and oil skin.
George thought that she heaved a sigh as she tied the string. Hank noticed that she made a reef knot with her capable fingers and the fact gave him another little heart punch.
“They’re worth a lot,” said George.
“Thousands and thousands of dollars,” said Tommie. “Here, take them and hide them somewhere safe.”
Hank took the bundle. “I’m going to take them right aboard,” declared he, “and shove them in the locker with the ship’s money. I won’t trust them another minute on this beach.”
“Why, don’t be a fool,” said George, “we’ll all be going aboard when Candon comes, we’ve done our work here.”
“It’s just on sundown,” said Hank, “and if he’s not here in another half hour, we’ll have to stick the night. Can’t get all these tents moved in the dark, and I’m not going to leave ’em. It’s ten to one we’ll stick till morning, and I’m not going to have those jewels stay the night with us. Something would happen sure. Maybe those greasers would come back with more men to help them.”
“Not they. They won’t stop running till next week.”
“All the same these things have played us a good many tricks and I want to stop their game.”
“Are you superstitious?” asked Tommie.
“Not a bit, only I’ve got a hunch that they’re better on board.”
“Oh, then, take them, take them,” said George, “if you must. And see here, you’d better bring off those two automatics and some cartridges in case we don’t get off to-night and those scamps make trouble.”
“Sure,” said Hank.
Off he started calling the Chinks to man the boat, whilst George and Tommie set to and began to build the fire.
Tommie, every now and then, took a glance towards the cliffs as though the absence of Candon were worrying her. When Hank came back he found them seated by the fire with the supper things spread, but no Candon.
“Hasn’t B. C. come back?” asked Hank, sitting down.
“No,” replied George.
The thought that he was still hunting for Tommie and that they had returned and were seated comfortably beginning their supper, came not only to the pair of them, but evidently, by her manner, to Miss Coulthurst. They tried to explain that they had come back not to give up the hunt, but to get the Chinks to help to comb the place, but the explanation seemed to fall rather flat.
“I hope to goodness nothing has happened to him,” said George, weakly.
“Maybe you’d better go and see,” suggested Tommie.
Hank jumped to his feet.
“Come on,” he cried. George was scramblingup also when a hail came from towards the cliffs and they saw the figure of B. C. in the first of the starlight, coming towards them across the sands.
He spotted the figure of Tommie long before he reached them, and concluded that the others had found her and brought her back.
Walking like a man dead beat, he came up to them and cast himself down to rest on the sand.
“Thank God,” said he.
“Where you been?” asked George.
“Been! Half over Mexico, kicking greasers, hunting—giv’s a drink. Say—” to Tommie, “where did they find you?”
Tommie’s only answer was a little squirt of laughter.
“She’d never gone,” said Hank. Then he told the whole story.
Candon said nothing. Not one of them guessed the revolution that had suddenly taken place in his dead tired mind. Beyond the bald fact that he had made a fool of himself hunting for hours for something that was not there, stood the truth that fate had worked things so that whenever he moved towards a decent act he got a snub on the nose from somewhere. His attempt to return those jewels to their proper owners had brought the whole McGinnis crowd on top of him and had made him start on this mad expedition; his attempts to rescue Tommie from the white slavers had made him ridiculous, anyhow to himself;this wild search of the last few hours had made him ridiculous in the eyes of his companions.
One thing called up another till the hell broth in his mind, the feeling of “damn, everything” was almost complete. What completed it was Tommie’s spurt of laughter. That was fatal.
He said nothing but began eating his supper with the rest. Then Hank, suddenly remembering the jewels, broke out, “Say! I forgot, we’ve got a surprise for you. I’ll give you a hundred guesses and I’ll bet you won’t tell what it is.”
“It’s the boodle,” cut in George.
Then they told.
Candon showed neither pleasure nor surprise, he went on eating.
“Well, where is it?” said he at last.
“On the yacht,” said Hank. “I rowed over and stowed it away, just before you came.”
“You rowed over and stowed it away. What did you do that for?”
“Safety.”
“Safety—did you expect I was going to steal it?”
“Lord! B. C.,” said Hank, “what’s getting at you?”
“Nothing,” said Candon, suddenly blazing out: “Well, as you have taken the stuff on board, you can take it back to ’Frisco without me. The expedition’s ended. You start off back to-morrow, I stay here. I’ve fulfilled my part of the contract. I’ve brought Vanderdecken on board your shipand I’ve brought you to the stuff and you’ve got it. In the contract I was to receive so much money down. I don’t want it. I can hoof it down to Mazatlan and get work among the Mexicans. You can leave me one of the automatics and some cartridges, that’s all I want.”
George sat aghast; so did Hank.
It was as if B. C. had turned inside out before their eyes.
“Look here,” said George at last, “that’s nonsense. We are all good friends. Vanderdecken has nothing to do with us or that boodle. Good Lord! What’s come to you?”
“It’s come to me that I’m sick of the show,” said B. C. “I’ve done my part, the expedition is over as far as I’m concerned and I stay here. You’ll be leaving early in the morning?”
“Sun-up,” said Hank.
“Well, you can leave a couple of days’ grub for me and one of the automatics in case I have any trouble with these fellows. That’s all, but I’ll see you in the morning before you start.”
They saw he was in earnest and in no temper for discussion, neither of them spoke.
Then Candon, having finished, got up and walked down to the beach.
Tommie had not said a word.
George was the first to speak.
“What ails him, what in the nation’s got into his head?”
“Search me,” said Hank, in a dreary voice,“unless it’s this expedition. I was saying before he came back there was something wrong with it, has been from the start. I dunno—well, here we are, and how are we to leave him without money or anything? Why, I’ve got as fond of that lad as if he was my own brother and he turns like that on us.”
“Maybe he’s tired,” said Tommie, “and if you talk to him in the morning, you’ll find him different.”
“I don’t believe it,” said George, “he means what he says. Question is, what’s turned him on us?”
“Turned him on us? Why, my taking those rotten diamonds off to the ship—what else? I didn’t know he’d take it like that, how could I?”
“Then go and explain,” said George, “go and tell him you’re sorry.”
“Me! what’s there to be sorry for?”
“Well, it was a fool’s game, anyhow.”
“Which?”
“Carting that stuff off on board.”
“We ain’t all as clever as you, I know,” said Hank. “S’pose those Mexicans come down to-night on us, you’ll see if it was a fool’s game getting the valuables off first. I tell you we ought to have cleared off this evening, it’s plain not safe sticking here the night. Wewouldhave cleared only for B. C., fooling about.”
“He was looking for me,” quietly put in Tommie.
Hank, squashed for the moment, was silent, then he said: “Well, maybe, but there we are, in about as dangerous a fix as people could be, and you talk of fools’ games.”
“By the way,” said George, “have you brought off those automatics?”
“Those which—automatics—Lord, no—I forgot, clean. How’s a chap to be remembering things, running backwards and forwards from that damned ship? Clean——”
“Well, it’s not the first thing you’ve forgotten, and if you’re so anxious about the Mexicans, you’d better go and fetch them.”
“Me! I ain’t going to fetch and carry any more. Go yourself.”
“Pistols aren’t any use,” said Tommie, suddenly as if awaking from a reverie. “If those people come, there’ll be so many of them it won’t be any use firing at them and if any of them were shot, we might get into trouble.”
“Seems to me we’re mighty near it.”
“Mighty near which?” asked a voice.
Candon had returned and was standing just outside the fire zone. He seemed in a slightly better temper.
“Why, Hank here has forgot to bring off the automatics,” said George, “and he’s afraid of those Mexicans coming down on us in the night.”
“Lord, I hadn’t thought of that,” said B. C. almost in his old voice. “Well, I’ll go off andfetch them. I’ve got to fetch a couple of things I’ve left in my locker anyway.” He turned.
“Fetch the ammunition if you’re going,” said George.
“Sure.”
They heard him calling the Chinks, then the boat put off.
“Seems he’s still bent on quitting,” said Hank.
George yawned.
If the air of the Bay of Whales could be condensed and bottled, morphia would be a drug in the drug market. It had the two men now firmly in its grip. They determined to turn in without waiting for B. C., and Tommie, retiring to her tent, seemed as heavy with sleep as the others. She was not. She did not undress but just lay down on a blanket, her chin in the palms of her hands and gazing out on the starlit beach as though hypnotized.
She was gazing at Candon.
He was the only man she had ever thought twice about, he was different from the others, she could not tell how. The fact that he was Vanderdecken did not make this difference, nor the fact that he had picked her up and literally run away with her, nor the fact that he had beautiful blue eyes. He was just different and she felt that she would never meet anyone like him again.
Yet he was going to leave them. Instinctively she knew why. That outburst when they found the cache sanded over gave her some knowledgeof his temperament; and the fact that he had almost killed himself hunting for her gave her some hint of his care for her. And she had laughed at him.
She remembered how he had said: “Thank God!” on finding her safe.
She rose and came out of the tent on to the sands. She had come to the determination that if he stayed behind here on the morrow, it would not be her fault, and, coming down to the sea edge, she sat down on the beach to wait for the returning boat.
The sound of the waves on the long beach came mixed with the breath of the sea. The reefs spoke sometimes and the wind, blowing from the north-west, stirred the sand with a silken whispering sound that would die off to nothing and then return.
Sometimes she fancied that she could hear the creak of oars, and, rising, strained her eyes to catch a glimpse of the coming boat. Nothing. She could not see the anchor light of theWear Jackowing to the faint sea haze, and taking her seat again on the sands, she resumed her watch whilst the time passed and the stars moved and the tide went further out.
Then she rose. Candon was evidently remaining for the night on theWear Jack; there was no use in waiting longer. Still she waited, standing and looking out to sea.
At last, she turned and came back to the tents.
She would see him in the morning, but the others would be there. It would be quite different then. The moment had passed and gone, and would not return.
Arrived at her tent, she undressed and got into her pyjamas and crawled under a blanket which she pulled over her head. Then, safely hidden, and with her face in the crook of her arm, she sniveled and sobbed, remembered she had not said her prayers and said them, sniffed some more and fell asleep. Poor Tommie. She did not know what she wanted but she knew she wanted it. She felt she had lost something but she did not know it was her heart.
THE sun got up and struck the hills of Sinaloa, the plains of sagebrush, rock and sand, the sea.
The Bay of Whales, lit from end to end and shouting with gulls, faced an ocean destitute of sign of ship or sail.
George awoke in the tent and gazed for a moment lazily at the honey-coloured patch on the sail cloth above his head, where the sun was laying a finger. He heard the waves on the beach and the crying of the gulls, the wind through the tent-opening came fresh and pure, and he knew it was good to be alive. Alive in a clean world where the wind was a person and the sun the chief character after God’s earth and sea. Then Candon came blowing into his mind and he remembered the incidents of the night before and how B. C. had gone off the handle over something, he could not guess what, and how he had planned to leave them that day. All this he remembered in the first few seconds of waking—and then he recognised that Candon was not in the tent and that his blanketswere carefully rolled up and stowed for the day. He must have got up early and gone out; probably he was building the fire.
He gave the sleeping Hank a dig, and woke him up.
“Hank,” said George.
“Yep?”
“I’ve been thinking of B. C.”
“What’s the matter with B. C.?”
“Wake up, you old mud turtle. He’s leaving us to-day and we’ve just got not to let him go.”
“Oh, ay,” said Hank, remembering things. Then he yawned frightfully, blinked and looked around.
“Where’s he gone?”
“He’s got up early—outside somewhere. Say, we’ve got to keep him—have a straight talk with him. He’s one of the best for all his queer ways.”
“Sure,” said Hank.
Fully awake now, he rose and slipped into his clothes, George following suit. Hank was the first out. He stepped on to the sand, looked round for Candon and then looked out to sea.
“JumpingMoses!”
“What’s wrong?” cried George, coming out. “What are you——Goodgosh!” He had followed the pointing of Hank’s finger. TheWear Jackwas gone.
Almost at the same moment came Tommie’s voice from her tent door. “Why, where’s the ship?”
“Gone,” said Hank. “Drifted—sunk—but what in the nation could have sunk her? How could she have drifted? Oh, hell! It can’t be that B. C. has bolted with her—say—Bud——”
“It is,” said George, “bolted with her and the boodle. We’ve been stung—that’s all.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Tommie. Her little face looked like a piece of chalk and she was holding on to the tent flap.
“There you are,” said Hank. “Nor I. B. C. couldn’t do it, that’s all. He couldn’t do it.”
“He’s done it,” said George. “He was sore about your taking the stuff off to the ship because he intended bunking with it himself—can’t you see?”
“Maybe those Chinks have taken the ship,” said Hank.
George shook his head. “We’d have heard him shout with the wind blowing that way. Besides, they couldn’t. Not one of them has any notion of navigating her. Can’t you see? He’s got the boodle. He’s meant to do this all along when the stuff turned up and he’s done it.”
“I tell you that chap’s a white man,” began Hank, furiously.
“In spots,” said George, “or in streaks—as he said himself. He runs straight for a while,wantsto run straight and then goes off the other way about. He’s a socialist, grand ideas and a slung shot in his pocket.”
“Socialist, so’m I.”
“No you’re not, you’re Hank Fisher.”
Hank went off a few yards and sat down on the sand and folded his arms and brooded. His good soul had been hit and hit hard. Even while defending Candon, he recognised the logic of the situation, pointing to the almost unbelievable fact that Candon, yielding to his worst nature, had bolted. Bolted, leaving them stranded on that beach.
He could not but recognise that for a man in Candon’s position, leaving morality aside, the move was a good one. His return to San Francisco was impossible, McGinnis would merely turn evidence against him. Leaving the Vanderdecken business aside, there was the wrecking of the junk; theWear Jackherself was attainted. All sorts of new ideas began to turn somersaults in Hank’s mind as this fact burst fully for the first time on his intelligence.
“Bud,” he shouted, “come here and sit. Where’s T. C.? Call her. Sit down.”
They came and sat down.
“Folks,” said Hank, “here’s a new tangle. Hasn’t it ever struck into you that the oldJack’sn’more use to us than an opera hat to a bull. Those movie men don’t know her name, but they know her make and that she went south, see? And every yacht coming up from the south anythink like her will be overhauled by the coastguard, see? Well, suppose we’d put back in her, getting along for the Islands, the coastguardwould have been sure to board us, they’d have found T. C. aboard and we’d have been dished, straight.”
“I hadn’t thought it out like that before,” said George. “I thought we could have slipped up to ’Frisco and then told some yarn.”
Tommie said nothing. The colour had almost returned to her face, but she seemed like a person slightly dazed. No wonder. Despite, or maybe partly because of his confession to her, partly because of his evident care for her and partly because of her newborn affection for him, she would have trusted B. C. with anything, her life, her money, anything—this man who had betrayed her, betrayed Bud and Hank, taken their ship and left them stranded on a hostile beach.
“Well, we couldn’t,” said Hank. “The fact is theWear Jackwas no use to us and maybe it was Providence that made B. C. let us down.”
“Maybe,” said Tommie, catching at straws, “she drifted away.”
“That’s what I thought first,” said George, “but she couldn’t. She was anchored fast. If she had, why she could have put back. What’s the good of supposing, when the thing’s clear as paint. He was boss of the ship, the Chinks always looked to him for orders, they’d do whatever he told them, and when he went aboard last night and told them to knock off the shackles and drop the anchor chain, they wouldn’t grumble. If they thought anything, they’d think it was part ofsome move in the game and we were in it. We’ve made several big mistakes, but the biggest was letting that guy be boss.”
“Well, he was boss, anyhow,” said the ingenuous Hank. “He was the best man of us three in the practical business and I’m not saying he wasn’t the best in brains. He couldn’t run straight, that’s all; if he could he might have been President by this.”
They all sat silent for a minute, then George sprang to his feet.
“Breakfast,” said George.
Not another word was spoken of Candon. It was as though he had been expelled from their minds as from their society.
But they could not expel the situation he had created. Though theWear Jackwas no use for taking them back to San Francisco, it could have taken them somewhere—anywhere from that beach where the fume of the sea and the sun and the silence and desolation and the blinding sands and mournful cliffs had already begun to tell upon them now that the place was a prison. Then there were the Mexicans to be thought of. If those men whom they had kicked and man-handled and robbed of their booty were to return with a dozen others, what would happen? How could two men and a girl put up any sort of fight? And the dreadful thing was Tommie. Tommie, who had stuck to them because she was a brick, who, to save them from a ridicule almost as bad as disgrace,had insisted on going on. If she had turned back, she might have been safe at Los Angeles now instead of here. This thought hit Bud almost as badly as Hank.
It did not seem to hit Tommie at all. There were moments during the preparation of breakfast when the throat muscles of the redoubtable T. C. made movements as though she were swallowing down the recollection of Candon, but, the meal once begun, she seemed herself again.
As they ate, they discussed the situation in all its bearings. They had provisions enough for three weeks, according to Hank’s calculations. He suggested that they should hang on just there for a day or two, and then, if nothing turned up in the way of a ship, that they should “hike” down the coast towards the town “that fellow” had spoken of.
“What was the name of it?” asked George.
“Search me,” replied Hank, “but it don’t matter, the name, it’s a town anyhow.”
“And suppose, while we’re hanging on here, those Mexicans come at us?” asked George.
Hank had forgotten the Mexicans.
“If they do,” said he, “we’ll have to fight them, that’s all. We’ve got the spades, and two Americans are a match for a dozen greasers, and there’s not likely to be that number.”
George got up and walked off down to the sea edge. He seemed to be thinking things over.
Hank found himself alone with Tommie.
“You meant three Americans,” said she.
“Sure,” said Hank, “you’d put up as good a fight as any of us, I believe.”
Hank had never dealt much with women-kind, except maybe in that horrible business liaison of his with Mrs. Driscoll, and though he had read the “Poems of Passion” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox he had no language at all to garb his sentiments with, if you can dignify with the title of sentiment a desire to eat Tommie.
He heaved a deep sigh and began tracing patterns on the sand with his finger. The rat trap inventor was at fault, his ingenuity could not assist him, the civilized man who believed in the sanctity of womanhood and the primitive man who wanted to make a meal of T. C. were at war, but the primitive man was the stronger and was preparing to speak and make a fool of himself when a yell came from George.
“Ship!”
They sprang to their feet and came running to the water’s edge. They could see nothing; then, following his pointing, away on the sea line, they saw what looked like the wing of a fly.
“It’s theWear Jack,” said Hank, “no, it ain’t—her canvas wouldn’t show as dark as that.”
“How’s she bearing?” asked George.
“Coming right in, I believe. She’s got the wind with her; that’s her fore canvas. There’d be more spread if she was sideways to us ortacking against the wind. Yes, she’s coming right for us.”
“Good,” said George.
There was silence for a moment, a silence more indicative than any words could be of the relief that had come to their minds. It was suddenly shattered by Hank.
“She’s theHeart of Ireland.”
“What you say?” cried George.
“She’s theHeart of Ireland.”
“How do you know?”
“Lord! how do I know? I know. I feel it. What else can she be? Why she’sdue. She’s just had time to mend herself and put out. What other boat would be putting into this God-forsaken place? And she seems about the size of theHeart. We’ll soon see. I’ve got the specification down in my head, that fellow gave it to me—two topmast, fifty-ton schooner, broad beam and dirty as Hades. Those are her beauty marks—we’ll soon see.”
“But she’d have passed theWear Jack,” said George.
“Not if theJackwent south. And anyhow they’d have passed in the night; wouldn’t have seen each other.”
“What are we to do?” asked Tommie.
“I’m thinking,” said Hank. He looked round, brooded for a moment, and then stood looking out to sea. His ingenuity was at work. Then he spoke.
“There are no caves in these cliffs or we might hide there. No use scattering inland. First of all, if these chaps find nothing but the tents they’ll think us gone and they’ll go off with the tents and grub and everything. Then where would we be? We’ve got to hide and watch for chances.”
“Where?” asked George.
Hank pointed to the big rock before-mentioned, shaped like a pulpit, that stood close to them by the sea edge.
“There, standing close up to it, we can dodge them when they’re coming ashore. Then when they land we can shift round to the north side of it, see?”
“I see,” said George, “but where’s the use? Suppose we manage to hide entirely from them, where’s the use? They’ll take the tents and stores as you said—and where will we be?”
“Now see here,” said the rat trap man. “It’s ten to one the whole crowd will come ashore, leaving only a couple of guys to look after the ship. They’ll beach the boat, leaving a man to look after her and scatter up to the tents, see?”
“Yes.”
“Well, there’s a chance that we may be able to make a dash for the boat, knock the chap on the head, push her off and get to the schooner.”
“Good!” cried Tommie.
“And suppose there’s a lot of fellows on the schooner?” asked George.
“Oh, suppose anything. What do you think this show is? If I know anything of that crowd, it’s our lives we are playing for and the chances are a hundred to one against us. It all depends where they beach the boat. Come along, it’s time to get to eastward of that rock.”
Hank, picking up a water beaker and a cup, they moved off to the rock and put it between them and the sea.
Before taking shelter, Hank shaded his eyes and looked out to sea.
“It’ll take them near an hour to get in,” said he.
Half an hour passed and then the thirst began. Used as they were to the sun, they had never before experienced the ordeal of sitting still with the sun’s rays beating on them. Fortunately they wore panamas and the wind from the sea licked round the rock every little while, bringing a trace of coolness. Hank poured out the water and they drank in turn every now and then. He insisted on wetting Tommie’s head occasionally. They talked in whispers and scarcely at all, listening—listening—listening. Time passed, bringing gulls’ voices, the beat of the little waves on the beach, the silky whisper of the sand, then suddenly far away—
Rumble-tumble-tum-tum-tum.
The sound of an anchor chain running through a hawse pipe.
They looked at one another.
“That’s the killick,” murmured Hank. “It’s them right enough, they’ve come right in knowing the ground, they wouldn’t have been in so quick if they hadn’t been used to the place. Listen!” He had no need to tell them to listen.
Time passed and the beach talked but no sound came from the sea but the sound of the small waves.
Tommie suddenly nudged Hank. She nodded towards the cliffs. On the sky edge of the cliffs something black showed, then it withdrew.
“Men,” whispered Tommie.
“Mexicans,” murmured Hank. The eerie feeling came to him that behind those cliffs, in the gullies, men were swarming: that Sinaloa had beaten up its bandits and desperadoes, just as he had expected it would, and that the call of the diamonds like the call of a corpse in the desert was bringing the vultures. They would connect this new crowd just about to land with the treasure business. If they showed themselves too soon, then McGinnis and his men would be frightened off. McGinnis was bad, but the Mexicans were worse. Hank did not often say his prayers, but he prayed just then that cunning might be granted to the greasers not to shout before the game was corralled.
He needn’t.
There came far away voices from the sea and the creak of oars—nearer.
“Get your hind legs ready,” whispered Hank.
Crash! the oars were in. Then came a burst of yells as though a pack of demons had suddenly been unleashed and unmuzzled.
Hank sprang to his feet. Leading the others, he dodged round the north side to the seaward side of the rock. A hundred and fifty yards away to the south a big boat had been beached. It lay unattended. Like a pack of hounds on a hot scent the McGinnis crowd were racing up towards the tents. You could have covered them with a blanket. Blind to everything but loot and vengeance, a trumpet would not have turned them.
Hank seized Tommie by the hand and started.
It was a hundred and fifty yards from the rock to the boat, the going good over a strip of hard sand uncovered by the ebbing tide.
From the boat to the nearest tent was about a hundred yards, the going bad over soft friable sand.
They had made fifty yards unnoticed, when Tommie tripped and fell. Hank picked her up and flung her on his shoulder.
The ruffians, racing from tent to tent hunting, cursing, rooting about, saw nothing till Pat McGinnis himself, turning from Tommie’s tent empty like the rest, saw the whole of Hank’s cards on the table—so to speak.
All but the ace of trumps.
He whipped it from his belt, aimed, took a long shot on chance, and, leading the others, raced back for the sea edge.