HANK had dropped Tommie into the boat and was striving with George to push off, when the crack of the revolver came followed by the bizz of the bullet, yards out.
“Shove her—shove her,” cried Hank. The huge brute of a scow had settled herself comfortably in the sand as if she meant to take up her residence there. Tommie, tumbling out of the boat nearly as quickly as she had been thrown in, put her shoulder to the stem; Hank and George at either gunnel clutched hard. Hank gave the word and they all heaved together. Next moment they were on board her and she was water-borne.
Hank seized one of the ash sweeps and using it as a pole drove her half a dozen yards, she slued round sideways, but George in the bow had a sweep out now and with a stroke pulled her nose round whilst Hank took his seat.
As they got away on her, McGinnis, leading the hunt, was only twenty yards from the sea. He was holding his fire, as were the others, till theyreached the water’s edge, when the bang of an old musket that might have landed with Padre Junipero made the echoes jump alive.
The attackers wheeled.
Down through the two defiles and fanning out on the sands, pouring like ants, came the countryside for all it was worth, half a hundred beggars and landed proprietors, zambos and terzerons, yellow men and men who were almost black, armed with anything and everything and led by the “Dredging Machine.” A fellow who had tumbled in his hurry was picking himself up. It was his musket that had gone off by accident.
“Pull!” shouted Hank.
They were saved. The McGinnis crowd, like a pack of wild dogs chased by wolves, were racing along the water edge towards the south horn of the bay; the Mexicans, faced by the facts of the sand and a proposition in Euclid, had paused for half a moment. The direct line towards the south horn of the bay was hard going over the soft sand, but it was shorter than making direct for the hard beach. Two sides of a triangle being longer than the third, they took the shorter way.
The rowers as they rowed watched the race, and saw plainly that McGinnis and his merry men were making good. Then they turned their attention to the ship ahead. She was swinging to the current broadside on to them, a frowsy looking two-topmast schooner, theHeart of Irelandsure enough.
“Wonder how many chaps are on board,” said George.
“We’ll soon see,” replied Hank.
As they drew closer they saw a man leaning on the rail and watching them through a pair of binoculars. He seemed the only person on the ship.
Closer now, the old schooner began to speak of her disreputability. The paint, in Hank’s words, was less paint than blisters, the canvas, hurriedly stowed, was discoloured and patched—old stuff re-done by the hand of McGay, that stand-by of small ship owners in these days when a new mainsail for a small boat costs anything from two hundred dollars. Built in 1882 as a trading schooner, she had been built a bit too small, but she had looked honest when the fitters and riggers had done with her; honest, clean and homely, in those first days one might have compared her to a country girl starting for market with a basket a bit too small.
In two years this simple trader had changed her vocation; in thirty-five years she had done pretty much everything that a ship ought not to do, run guns, run gin and opium, fished in prohibited waters, and in some extraordinary way she bore the stamp of it all. If some ship lover had seen theMary Burton—that was her first name—and theHeart of Ireland, which was her last, he might have been excused, if a moral man, for weeping.
“Ahoy!” cried Hank, as the boat came alongside grinding the blisters off her. “Fling’s a rope there—why! Good Lord! It’s Jake.”
It was. Jake, looking just the same as when Hank had fired him off theWear Jack, only now, instead of a fur cap, he was wearing a dingy white Stetson with the brim turned down. He had come along with the McGinnis crowd, partly because he wanted a job and partly because he wanted to see the downfall of Hank. As a matter of fact he had seen the triumph of Hank, if you can call it a triumph, for he had been watching the whole of the proceedings from start to finish. Recognising the inevitable he made no bones but flung the rope.
“Well, you scoundrel,” said Hank, as he came on deck, “what you doing here?”
“What you doin’ yourself?” said Jake.
“I’ll jolly soon show you,” said Hank, who had no time to waste in verbal explanations. Seizing the scamp by the shoulders, he turned him round in some extraordinary way and giving him a shove that sent him running forward two yards. “Get the gaskets off the jib and look slippy about it—quick now or I’ll be after you. Bud, I’m going to leave the boat. There’s a dinghy aboard and that scow would clutter up the decks too much. Cut her adrift and come on. Clap on to the throat an’ peak halyards, now then, all together, yeo ho!”
Mainsail and foresail took the wind at last. And what a mainsail it was, after the canvas oftheWear Jack, dirty as a dishcloth and patched where a pilot mark had once been. And what sticks after the spars of theJack, from the main boom, that had seen better days, to the gaff, with its wooden jaws bound to creak like a four-post bedstead!
“Now the winch,” cried Hank. “Clap on to the winch and roust her out.”
He took the wheel, whilst Jake, Tommie and Bud clapped on to the winch, and, as he stood listening to the music of the chain coming in, he cast his eyes away towards the south horn of the bay where the McGinnis crew could be seen moving slowly now towards the bay beyond, followed by the Mexicans, evidently half-beaten, but still doggedly in pursuit.
“She’s out of the mud!” cried George.
Hank turned the spokes of the wheel, and theHeart, with all her canvas thrashing, took the wind, got steerage way on her, and, as the anchor came home, lay over on the starboard tack.
She had been anchored to north of the break in the reefs and this course would take her diagonally through the break.
Hank, who had bitten off a piece of plug tobacco, stood, working his lantern jaws as he steered. Gulls raced them as they went and the breeze strengthened up, whilst block, spar and cordage creaked to the boost of the waves and the slap of the bow wash. They passed the horn of the northern reef by a short ten yards, the out-goingtide and the south-running current foaming round the rocks like destruction gnashing at them. Then, lifting her bowsprit, theHearttook the great sea, dipping and rising again to the steadily marching swell.
Hank held on. The wind was breezing up strong from the southwest and he was keeping her close hauled. A few miles out, with Mexico a cloud on the sea line and the reefs a memory, he spun the wheel and laid her on a due westerly course.
He called Jake.
“You can steer?”
“Sure,” said Jake.
“Then catch hold and keep her as she is.” He stood watching whilst Jake steered.
That individual, despite the shove he had received, seemed to bear no malice. Absolutely unperturbed he stood with his hands on the spokes, chewing, his eye wandering from the binnacle to the luff of the mainsail.
“Whar’s theJack?” he suddenly asked, turning to spit into the starboard scupper.
“What were you doing with that gang?” countered Hank.
“Me! Them guys? Why, you saw what I was doin’, keepin’ ship, whiles they went ashore. What wereyoudoin’ with them?”
“Mean to tell me you don’t know why they went ashore?”
“Me! nuthin’. I’m only a foremast hand,signed on ’cause I was out of a job. I saw you all scatterin’ about on shore, then you comes off and takes the ship—that’s all I know.”
“Look here,” said Hank. “D’you mean to tell me you didn’t put the McGinnis crowd on to us before we left ’Frisco? D’you mean to say you weren’t on the wharf that night when Black Mullins dropped aboard and peeked through the skylight and saw Mr. Candon?”
“Me. Which? Me! N’more than Adam. You’re talkin’ French.”
“Don’t bother with him,” said George. “Come on down below and let’s see what it’s like.”
They left the deck to Jake, still chewing, and came down the companion way to the cabin, where McGinnis and his afterguard had dwelt.
Bunks with tossed blankets appeared on either side; aft lay the captain’s cabin, door open and an oilskin swinging like a corpse from a nail; above, and through the atmosphere of must and bad tobacco, came the smell of theHeart, a perfume of shark oil, ineradicable, faint, but unforgettable, once smelt.
George opened the portholes and Tommie took her seat on a bunk edge, looking round her but saying nothing.
A cheap brass lamp swung from the beam above the table, the table was covered with white marbled oilcloth, stained and stamped with innumerable ring marks from the bottoms of coffee cups; about the whole place was that atmosphereof sordidness and misery that man alone can create.
Tommie sat absorbing it, whilst Hank and George explored lockers and investigated McGinnis’ cabin. Then she rose and took off her coat.
She stripped the oilcloth from the table, said, “Faugh!” rolled it up and flung it on the floor.
“Say!” cried she, “isn’t there any soap in this hooker?”
“Soap!” cried Hank, appearing from McGinnis’ cabin, carrying the log book and a tin box. “I dunno. Jake will know.”
“Go up and send him down. You can take the wheel for a minute whilst I get this place clean—Goodness!”
“You wait,” said Hank.
He went on deck, followed by George, and next minute Jake appeared.
Despite Tommie’s get-up, he had spotted her for a girl when she came on board. Not being a haunter of the pictures he had not recognised her; what she was, or where she had come from, he could not imagine—or what she wanted of him. He was soon to learn.
“Take off your hat,” said Tommie. “Now, then, get me some soap and a scrubbing brush, if there is such a thing on this dirty ship.”
“Soap!” said Jake.
“Yes, soap.”
He turned and went on deck and came back in a minute or so with a tin of soft soap and a mop.
“I said scrubbing brush.”
“Ain’t none.”
“Well, we’ll have to make the mop do. Now go and fetch a bucket of water.”
“Ain’t enough on board for swillin’.”
“There’s enough in the sea. We must make it do. Go on and don’t stand there scratching your head.”
Hank, leaving George at the wheel and coming down half an hour later to see what was going on, returned jubilant.
“She’s working that gink like a house maid, he’s washed the table an’s scrubbing the floor and she’s stripping the blankets off the bunks. She’s going to make him wash them. She’s a peach.”
The tin box with the ship’s money, some thousand dollars, and the log lay on the deck. He placed them on one side and then stood erect and walked to the rail. He gazed aft at the far-away shore as if visualising something there.
“Bud.”
“Yep?”
“Nothing’s ever got me like she has, right by the neck. I reckon it’s a punishment on me for having invented rat traps.”
“Oh, don’t be an ass.”
“Easy to say that.”
“Have you told her?”
“Lord, no.”
“Well, go down and tell her and get it over, same as sea sickness.”
“Bud, I could no more tell her than I could walk into a blazing fiery furnace like those chaps in the Scriptures.”
“Why?”
“Because, Bud—well, there’s two reasons. First of all she’d laugh at me, maybe.”
“She would, sure.”
“And then—there’s a girl—”
“Yes.”
“A girl—another girl.”
“Mrs. Driscoll?”
“Oh. Lord, no, she ain’t a girl. This one I’m telling you of is running a little store of her own in Cable Street, kind of fancy work business—I’ve known her a year. O’Brien is her name, Zillah O’Brien. She’s running a fancy work—”
“I know, you’ve told me; are you engaged to her?”
“Well, we’ve been keeping company,” said Hank, “and it amounts to that.”
“You mean you are—then you’ve no right to bother about Tommie.”
“It’s she that’s bothering me.”
“Well, you may make your mind easy. So far as I can see she’s harpooned—that fellow harpooned her.”
“B. C.?”
“Yep, remember her face when he ran away? And ever since she hasn’t been the same—”
Hank was silent for a moment.
“But, Bud, she couldn’t care for him after the way he’s landed us?”
“No, but she cared for him before, and maybe she cares for him still, Lord only knows—women are funny things. Anyhow, you’ve no right to think of her with that other girl in tow. Why, Hank, you’ve always been going on about women being saints and all that and now, you old double-dealing—”
“It isn’t me,” said Hank. “I guess it’s human nature. But I’ll bite on the bullet—after all it’s not so much as a girl I care for her, but just for herself.”
“Well, bite on what’s her name as well—Beliah—”
“Zillah.”
“All the same, keep thinking of her—and catch hold of the wheel. I want a quiet smoke.”
Half an hour later Jake wandered on deck with the mop and the bucket. He look subdued, and a few minutes later Tommie’s head and shoulders appeared.
“The place is pretty clean now,” said T. C. “Maybe some of you will get at where the food’s stowed and find out what we can have to eat. I’m going along to the galley to get the fire on.”
THE wind held steady all that day and half the following night, then it died to a tepid breeze just sufficient to keep steerage way on the schooner.
Hank was the first up in the morning, relieving George at the wheel.
After supper, on the night before, they had made a plan, based on the fact that there were provisions on board enough for a three months’ cruise for four people. This plan was simple enough. They would put out far to avoid the Islands and any bother of complications. Hank’s idea was to strike a course nor’west to a point midway between Honolulu and San Francisco, and then make directly for the city of the Golden Gate. They would tell Tyrebuck the truth, but it would be no sin to delude the gaping public with a Hank constructed yarn, sure that McGinnis or his relations would never dispute it. The only bother was that Tyrebuck would want his ten thousand dollars. If theWear Jackhad been wrecked, all would have been well, for the insurancepeople would have paid, but they had just lost her, as a person might lose a horse or a motor car.
“Of course,” said Hank, “there was no agreement with him. Who’d have ever imagined such a thing as our losing her like that? All the same, I’ve got to pay old man Tyrebuck, it’s a debt of honour. I’ll have to mortgage the trap that’s all.”
“I’ll go half,” said George.
“No, you won’t. I was the borrower, this expedition was mine. If I’d got the twenty-five thousand reward, I’d have stuck to it.”
“Say,” said George.
“Yep.”
“You told me you’d written a story once.”
“What about it?”
“Well, write the whole of this expedition up and sell it to a magazine, if you want money.”
“B’gosh!” said Hank, “that’s not a bad idea—only it would give the show away.”
“Not a bit, pretend it’s fiction.”
“It sounds like fiction,” said Tommie. “I don’t mind. You can stick me in as much as you like.”
“I’ll do it, maybe,” said Hank.
But there was another point. Wallack’s and their wrecked junk, and Tommie and her story. The public would want to know the particulars of her abduction and Wallack’s would want compensation. Althusen and Moscovitch and Mrs.Raphael would not be behindhand in their wants, either.
“Leave it to me,” said Miss Coulthurst. “When we get to San Francisco, just let me slip on shore, and I’ll take the first train to Los Angeles and I’ll fix it. I’ll tell old Wallack the whole truth. He won’t want compensation. I guess the advertisement he’s had will be enough for him, and the film wasn’t damaged; the reel was safe in one of those tents.”
They left it at that, ignorant of the new development impending.
Hank took the wheel and George snuffed out the binnacle lights. It was day, though the sun had not yet broken the morning bank on the eastern horizon.
“There’s a big rock on the port bow,” said George, “away over there. It’s the Santander, I believe—remember? It’s on the chart.”
“Where’s Jake?”
“Right,” said Hank. “Where’s Jake? I let him turn in ten minutes ago, he’s in the focs’le.”
“Well, I’ll go and make some coffee,” said George. “Keep her as she goes.”
He disappeared, and Hank, left alone, stood at the wheel, the warm wind gently lifting his hair and his hawk eyes wandering from the binnacle to the far off rock and from the rock to the sea line.
Ten minutes passed and then George appeared, a cup of coffee in his hand.
“Shove her on the deck for a minute,” said Hank, “and have a look with those binoculars. Something funny about that rock, seems to me.”
George placed the cup on the deck, fetched the old binoculars Jake had been using the day before, and leveled them at the rock.
“Ship piled on the north side,” said George. “I can see the masts; some sort of small hooker or another. It’s the Santander rock, can’t be anything else, there’s nothing else of any size marked down just here but the Tres Marias Island, and they are to the south.”
“Well, we’ll have a look at her,” said Hank. “There’s maybe some poor devils on board. She’s flying no signals, is she?”
“No, she’s signal enough in herself.”
Just then Tommie came on deck.
She had a look through the binoculars and then went off to the galley with George to see about breakfast. There were plenty of provisions on theHeart; McGinnis and his crew had evidently plenty of cash or credit, to judge by the condition of the lazarette and store room, and when Tommie and George had satisfied their wants, Hank, giving them the deck, came down.
When he returned on deck, the schooner was closing up with the rock and the wreck was plainly visible to the naked eye, with the gulls shouting around her.
The Santander rock, shaped and spired like a cathedral, runs north and south, three hundredyards long, two hundred feet high, caved here and there by the sea and worn by wind and rain into ledges and depressions where the gulls roost—where they have roosted for ten thousand years.
It is the top of a big submarine mountain that rises gradually from the depth of a mile. Quite in shore, on the northern side, the lead gives a depth of only twenty fathoms, gradually deepening, as you put away, by five fathoms to the hundred yards, till suddenly the lead finds nothing. There must be a sheer, unimaginable cliff just there, some three quarters of a mile high!
It was on the north side of this great rock, which is at once a monstrous and a tragic figure, that the wreck was skewered, listing to starboard, her sticks still standing but her canvas unstowed. The crew had evidently piled her there, perhaps in the dark.
Now, drawing close to her, that stern seemed familiar, and the fact that she was a yacht became apparent. It was Hank who voiced the growing conviction in their minds.
“Boys!” cried Hank, “she’s theWear Jack!”
George and Tommie were the only boys on that deck beside himself, but Tommie did not laugh. She heaved a deep breath and stood with her hands on the rail and her eyes fixed on the wreck.
“She is,” said George. “Look at her paint. Lord, this is lovely, that fellow has piled her.”
“And got off in the boat,” said Hank. “Theboat’s gone. They’d have easy lowered her over the starboard side.”
“What are you going to do?” asked the other. “Shall we board her?”
“Sure,” said Hank. “Roust out Jake and get ready to drop the hook if we can find anchorage. Get the lead ready.”
George ran to the foc’sle and rousted out Jake who came on deck rubbing his eyes.
“Why there’s the—oldJack,” cried he. “Piled!” He clapped his hand on his thigh, then fetched the lead at the order of Hank and hove it.
Forty fathoms rocky bottom, was the result. Then, as they came slowly up, the depth shoaled.
“Get ready with the anchor,” cried Hank. He brought theHeartalong till they were almost abreast of the wreck, and at a safe distance, then, in thirty fathoms, the anchor was dropped and theHeartslowly swung to her moorings.
The dinghy was lowered and Hank and George got in.
Yes, it was theWear Jackright enough, lying there like a stricken thing, the gentle list bringing her starboard rail to within a few feet of the blue lapping swell. Gaffs brought down on the booms, booms unsupported by the topping lifts, boat gone, she made a picture of desolation and abandonment unforgettable, seen there against the grim gray background of the rock.
“Well, he’s made a masterpiece of it,” saidHank as they tied on and scrambled on board. “He sure has.”
They were turning aft along the slanting deck when up through the cabin hatch came the head and shoulders of a man, a man rubbing sleep from his eyes. It was Candon.
CANDON—deserted by the Chinks just as he had deserted his companions on the beach.
“It’s him—the scoundrel,” cried Hank.
Candon, as startled as themselves, wild-eyed and just roused from profound sleep, standing now on deck staring at Hank, took the insult right in his teeth.
He drew back a bit, glanced over, saw theHeartand turned to George.
“What’s this?” said Candon. “Where the hell have you come from?”
“Where you left us stranded on that beach,” replied George. “Where you left us when you beat it with the ship and the boodle.”
Candon’s face blazed up for a second. Then he got a clutch on himself and seemed to bottle his pride and his anger. He folded his arms and stared at the deck planking without speaking. He rocked slightly as he stood, as though unsure of his balance. He seemed to have no sense of shame. Caught and confronted with his deed, he did not seem even to be searching for excuses.There was a frown on his brow and his lips were compressed.
Suddenly he spoke.
“Well,” said Candon, “you’ve given me a name, what more have you to say?”
“Nothing,” said George.
Candon turned, spat viciously over the rail and laughed, an odious sneering laugh that raised the bristles on Hank.
“It’s easy to laugh,” said Hank, “but it’s no laughing matter to us. We’ve lost theWear Jack, we’ve lost the boodle, we’ve lost our time, and we’ve been played a damn dirty trick, about as dirty as the trick the Chinks seem to have played on you.”
Candon was not laughing now. He had turned to the starboard rail and was standing looking at theHeart. Tommie on the deck was clearly visible. She was looking at theWear Jack; then she turned away and went below, as though to escape from the sight of him.
Candon gripped the rail tighter and heaved a deep breath. He turned to the others.
“So I’ve played you a dirty trick,” said Candon. “Well, if I hadn’t you’d have suspected me all the same, you’d never have said to yourselves maybe he didn’t, let’s ask him——”
“Ask him,” said Hank. “What’s the use, but I ask you now—Did you take that boat and go off to theWear Jackfor those automatics, leaving usthere on that beach without pistols or means of fighting if the Mexicans came?”
“I did,” said Candon, a curious light in his blue eyes.
“Did you sail off and leave us there?”
“I did.”
“Well then, there’s no use talking.”
“Not a bit,” said George.
“You finished?” asked Candon.
“Yep.”
“Well then, that’s Pat McGinnis’ boat, he’s been down to the bay, must have been or you wouldn’t have collared it. What’ve you done with him?”
“That’s nothing to you,” said Hank.
“A minute,” said George. “We’ve left him and his men there and we collared his boat, but we played the game he forced on us, and we played it straight.”
“So you say,” said Candon. “How’m I to know?”
“You suspect us!” fired Hank.
“And why not? You suspected me, the whole three of you jumped on me like this directly you came on board, never asked a question, not you, because you weren’t true friends, hadn’t the makin’s of friendship in you, never asked for reasons.”
Hank flushed. “Good Lord!” said he, “you mean to say you had a reason for leaving us like that?”
“No, I hadn’t,” replied the other, “but that’s nothing. It’s nothing if I’m the biggest blackguard on earth, as I intend to be. What’s the good of being honest when you’re written down a rogue out of hand the first traverse that seems suspicious—even if you are a rogue. Why, God bless my soul, them diamonds, you wouldn’t trust them on the beach with me, you must take and shove them aboard theJack.”
“I never thought of you,” said Hank. “I was thinking of the Mexicans coming down on us.”
“Maybe,” said Candon. “So you say, but how’m I to know.” He spoke with extraordinary bitterness. To George the whole thing was beyond words, the evidence of a mentality bordering on the insane. Here was a man guilty of the betrayal of his companions, guilty of leaving them marooned on a hostile beach, yet not only unashamed but highly indignant that they should have suspected him and declared him guilty offhand. It was true there was something in what he said; they had taken his action as the action of a rogue almost from the first, but they could not have done otherwise.
He was determined to put this point right. “Look here,” he said, “we might have thought you put off for some reason other than making away with that boodle, if you hadn’t said you were going to leave us.”
“I said I was going to stick in Mexico,” replied Candon. “But there’s no use in talking any more.Question is, what to do now. I can’t stick here and I don’t want to go on theHeart, unless I berth forward and help to work the ship. You can put me ashore somewhere.”
“You’ll have to berth with Jake,” said Hank. “He’s the fellow that was on the quay that night we put off and gave the show away to McGinnis.”
“He’ll do,” said Candon, “I reckon he’s good enough for me.”
“Well, you’d better get your things then,” said George.
They went down into the cabin one after the other, Candon leading.
The first things that struck Hank’s eyes, were the automatic pistols lying on the tray shelf where he had seen them last.
Hank went to his bunk where he had hid the diamonds. The parcel was gone.
“I suppose the Chinks took the boodle as well as the boat,” said he.
“That’s so,” replied Candon.
“Seems to me you didn’t make much of a fight, seeing you had those pistols.”
“I didn’t make any fight at all.”
Hank sniffed. George said nothing. They were busy now collecting their property. The Chinks had touched nothing but the diamonds. Hadn’t time, most likely, to think of anything but escape from the wreck, and the chance of being found by some ship on the vessel they had helped Candon to run away with.
“What made you show them the diamonds?” asked Hank, as he stuffed Tommie’s possessions into a bag.
“I didn’t,” said Candon.
“Then who told them?”
“The man who brought them on board.”
“That was me. I said nothing.”
He remembered how Tommie had put the things on and how the two Chinks had seen her. They had rowed him off with the package and might have given the news to the others. However, it didn’t matter much and he was inclined for no more talk with B. C. He felt he had lowered himself already by speaking of the matter at all to the fellow.
Then they put the dunnage on deck and transshipped it in two journeys to theHeart. Tommie was on deck again when Candon came on board. She just nodded to him, and then turned to help getting the things down to the cabin. Candon’s lot went into the foc’sle. Then he, Jake and George set to on the windlass, getting the anchor chain in.
It was the queerest and weirdest business, for B. C. showed neither shame nor irritation nor anger. A tremendous placidity seemed to have fallen upon him, almost a mild cheerfulness. He worked away and spoke to no one, he might have been an absolute stranger, a new hand just signed on.
When theHeartwas under way, Hank andGeorge picked watches. Hank had first call and picked Jake. George said nothing. Candon had fallen to him automatically.
Then Candon went down into the foc’sle to arrange his things and see after his bunk and with Hank at the wheel, the schooner lay again on her old course, the far-off crying of the gulls round Santander rock following them like the voice of mockery.
THEY had left Cancer far behind, they had rejected Hank’s first idea of steering out towards Honolulu and then making aboard for ’Frisco, they were taking the shortest way possible home, shaving the Channel Islands and almost careless about being stopped. They wanted to finish the voyage as quickly as possible. Candon there in the foc’sle made his presence felt right through the ship. It was as though he had died and his ghost were haunting them. He never spoke unless in reply to orders. He seemed living in a world of his own, a silent secretive world where emotions were not. They began to appreciate the fact that they had shipped in San Francisco, not an ordinary sailor man with blue eyes, but a personality absolutely outside the ambit of ordinary experience.
“It’s getting on my spine,” said Hank one day, as he sat in the fusty cabin smoking with George. “The man seems gone dead, no shame or nothing, just as if he’d never seen us before; unless he gets an order, and then he jumps to it.”
“It’s got on T. C.’s spine, too,” said George. “Damn him, she’s not the same. I see her staring in front of her sometimes as if she was looking at ghosts. She never laughs and she’s off her feed.”
“He’s worse than a cargo of skeletons,” said Hank, “and I’ve noticed T. C. I’m not thinking any more of her, Bud, in that way, but it gets me to see her crumpled. What are women made of, anyhow? Seems to me if they once get gone on a man they go clean mushy for good—and such a man! Why, I heard Jake joshing him in the foc’sle only yesterday—Jake—and he took it like a lamb. Gets me.”
He got up and took some little photographs from a locker. They had salved George’s kodak and developer from theWear Jack, and Hank, just before starting, had taken half a dozen snaps of theJacklying piled on the rocks. He had done this for no sentimental reasons, but as evidence whereby Tyrebuck could collect his insurance money. He looked at them now with glowing satisfaction. They were the only bright spots in this new business.
“Well,” said he, “there’s one thing. I won’t have to pay Tyrebuck his ten thousand. Luck’s been playing pretty dirty tricks on us, but she’s let up for once, unless she piles us same as she did theJack.”
Keeping as they were, well to outward of the longitude of Guadeloupe, there was little fear of them hitting anything except a derelict. Theypassed and were passed by vessels, tanks and great four-masters, battered by Cape Horn or making south to meet him. The traffic has increased now-a-days in the waters between Panama and San Francisco; it has decreased between Panama and the Horn, and is decreasing. The Horn, that frightful criminal standing there facing the ceaseless march of the mountainous waves, and countered by the canal, has come to recognise the hatred of man. Day by day the ships that pass him grow fewer, till a day may come when they cease, leaving him in loneliness forever.
On the day that they passed the latitude of Santa Catalina Island out of sight far to starboard, an incident occurred.
Hank had already noticed the attitude of Jake towards Candon. Jake had evidently been putting two and two together, and arriving at conclusions not far wrong. The attitude of the after-guard towards B. C. completed the matter.
On this day, Hank, coming up to relieve George at the wheel, found Tommie talking to George; at the same moment Jake rose from the foc’sle hatch to relieve Candon. Candon’s back was turned to Jake who wished to pass him.
“Now then, you big stiff,” cried Jake, “shift yourself, will you?”
Then the explosion came.
Candon wheeled. Next moment Jake, caught by the waistband, went flying over the port rail,tossed away like a rag doll; the next, Candon was after him; the next, theHeart of Ireland, answering to the helm, was turning and coming up into the wind with all her canvas thrashing.
“Over with the dinghy,” cried George, giving the wheel to Tommie, and letting go the halyards.
Tommie, without a word, watched, as the two men got the dinghy afloat. Then she was alone.
She ran to the rail for a moment and saw away on the lifting swell, the heads of Candon and Jake close together, Candon evidently supporting the other and the boat making straight for them.
Ten minutes later the boat was back and Jake, half drowned, was being hauled on board, Candon helping. Then Candon took him down to the foc’sle to revive him. TheHeartwas put on her course again and the incident was closed.
Next day, Jake, subdued, went on with his work and Candon with his, absolutely as though nothing had happened.
The day after that, with the American coast showing to starboard and San Francisco not far ahead, Candon spoke to Hank.
“May I ask for the loan of your stylographic pen?” said Candon.
“Sure,” said Hank. “Do you want some paper?”
“I was going to ask for some,” said the other.
Hank went below and fetched up a wad of note paper, some envelopes and the pen.
“Thanks,” said Candon, and went off to the foc’sle. It was his watch below.
SOME days later towards noon, theHeart of Ireland, with the north-west wind and a flooding tide, was making to enter the Golden Gate.
It was a perfect day. Tamalpais, on the port bow, showed clear against a diamond-bright blue sky; astern lay the sea of adventure and romance, blue as when first sighted by Balboa.
Hank was at the wheel and feeling pretty nervous of the bar, when Candon, who had just come on deck, came aft.
“I’ll take you in,” said Candon. He took the spokes, and Hank, walking to the starboard rail, stood close to George watching the land.
Then they moved a bit more forward to talk.
“What’s T. C. doing?” asked Hank.
“Down below,” said George, “getting things together. She’s not likely to come up till he’s off.”
“You’ve fixed things up with him?”
“Yep. We’ll drop anchor off Tiburon, I’ll row him ashore in the dinghy. Wouldn’t take money.Says he’s got twenty dollars and it’s all he wants. Lord, Hank! I’d give twenty hundred dollars if this hadn’t happened, twenty thousand, for I liked him. I did. What is it makes men run crooked who were built to run straight?”
“Search me,” said Hank.
TheHeartbegan to take the tumble of the bar. They thrashed through and then came the old familiar places, Line Point, the Presidio, the Bay, breezed up and showing the same old ships and traffic, the ferry boats running like pond insects, the junks, the steamers with rust-red funnels, the pleasure yachts, the oyster boats.
As they drew on to Tiburon, a white steam yacht passing in the distance sent the music of a band along the breeze. It was playing “Suwanee.” Closer in now, Hank went below. Hank, for all his leathery old face, was far more emotional than George, and his mind, for all his will power, would keep jumping over the barrier of B. C.’s atrocious act to the old days when he had loved B. C. as a man and brother.
Tommie was in the after cabin and invisible, and Hank, alone, sat down at the table and leaned his arms on it, staring at the grains in the wood and listening. Leaning like this, suddenly a tear that seemed in an awful hurry raced down his right cheek; he did not know it. He was talking to himself, repeating the same words over and over again.
“Damn scoundrel. Damn scoundrel. Damn scoundrel.”
Then, suddenly, the way fell off, a voice on deck gave an order, and the sound of the anchor chain rasped through the ship. The anchor was down.
Other sounds came that told him what was going on, then silence.
He came up. There was no one on deck but Jake chewing and spitting over-side. Away on the water, making for the wharf, was the dinghy, George rowing, Candon in the stern. Hank stood watching for a moment, calling up in his mind the day when, talking to George in the cabin of theWear Jack, Candon first came on board. He could see him plainly as he stood in the doorway, huge, friendly looking, with those eyes, the clear, blue, truthful eyes of a child. He called up all those discussions of an evening when George was ashore and Candon hiding from McGinnis and his men, those long talks covering the world and men and women—including Ella Wheeler Wilcox. The thing made him feel frightened as though the solid deck beneath his feet were threatened to dissolve. B. C. had been in earnest during those conversations, dead earnest, yet look what he had done. If that were so, how was he, Hank, to make sure he wasn’t as bad as B. C.? Good one moment, bad the next? He tried to recall all the mean things he had ever done, going right back to his childhood. He couldn’t remember anything in particular except nicking some apples off a stall.Then he gave up thinking, and came below, where he found Tommie who had finished putting things straight. She looked pale and pretty miserable and Hank’s heart went out to her, so that he might have revealed what was in it only for his recollection of Zillah backed by Candon. Providence also helped, for at that moment, through the open ports, he heard a quick running launch checking her speed and coming washing alongside. A voice hailed Jake.
“It’s the Port man,” said Hank. He darted up to the companion way, looking over and saw the Port Authority man. It was old Captain Scudder, a friend.
“Hullo, Hank!” cried Scudder. “Lord bless my soul, where have you sprung from? Where’s the oldWear Jack?”
“Come on board,” said Hank, helping him up. “Come along down—this is better’n beans. Thought it might be some chap I didn’t know.”
“Got the Dutchman?” asked Scudder as he came down the companion way.
“Well, you might almost say I have,” replied Hank, “but I’ll tell you the yarn.”
Tommie had retired into the after cabin and they sat down whilst Hank, knowing the man he was speaking to, gave his story, with big cuts but all essentials.
“So you see,” finished Hank, “McGinnis is down and out, can’t come back to ’Frisco with the fear of us on top of him. He was Vanderdeckenpractically speaking. But I’ve got some of his money and this old schooner to hand over to his wife if he’s got one.”
“Well, if you ask me he’s got a widow, if I know anything of those Mexicans,” replied Scudder. “Yes, he had a wife, she lives in Lincoln Street, and we’ll fix it with her. Listen, there’s a boat come alongside.”
It was George returned. He came down and took a hand whilst they debated matters with Scudder.
“Take my advice,” said the captain, “and keep your heads shut. You piled and lost theWear Jackand came home in a schooner that happened along. Tell that to your friends. I’ll smother the yarn as far as my side lies and I’ll look after Jake. There is no use in stirring up trouble. Why, it might mean a dust-up with Mexico. Don’t bother about being kidded at not bringing Vanderdecken home. He’s half forgot, there’s an election on—you know ’Frisco. As for that movie company and the show of theirs you bust up—Wallack and Jackson it was—there was a big story about it in the papers—but Wallack and Jackson is bust themselves. A week ago they went, with half a dozen others.”
“Well, that’s a comfort,” said Hank, forgetting Tommie, and her means of livelihood.
Then Scudder heaved himself up and took his leave, and Tommie came out of the after cabin.
“Say,” said Hank, suddenly remembering theimportance of Scudder’s news and recognising the gravity of it to her, “Old Scudder, the Port man has been here and we’ve fixed everything up all right, but he’s brought bad news. Your show has bust.”
“Which?” asked Tommie.
“Jackson and what’s-his-name.”
“I don’t wonder,” said Tommie, “it has been going a long time. Well, it doesn’t matter to me, I’ve been careful and put by. I’ve thirty thousand dollars laid by with Aunt Coulthurst. She lives in Montgomery Street and I’m tired of the movies anyway. I want real life and I’m going to get it.”
“How?” asked Hank.
“Ranch.”
“Where?”
“Where I was born. Texas. There’s air there, and life.”
“Sure,” said Hank.
“I’ll buy a ranch and run it. It’s a better life than being thrown out of windows for fools to look at or dropping from aëroplanes.”
“Sure,” said Hank.
“Well,” said Tommie, taking her seat for a moment on a bunk side and speaking as if in a reverie, “I suppose this is the end of our trip. It’s been queer, and we’ve had tight shaves but I wouldn’t have missed it for earths. It’s taught me more than I ever knew and it’s made me have no fear in striking out for myself in life. I was never afraid of things, but I used to be frightenedof life and what was to come the day after next, and I guess that’s clean gone.”
“What are you going to do now, when you get ashore?” asked George.
“I’m going to Aunt Coulthurst; 16, Montgomery Street is her address, and don’t you forget it, and come and see us, won’t you?”
“Sure,” said Hank.
“Come Sunday. You’ll love her and—and—” finished Miss Coulthurst, with a catch in her voice, “I want her to thank you, for you’ve both been very—very—good to me.”
Hank seemed swallowing something.
“We’ll come with pleasure,” said George.
There was a pause, during which George took a letter from his pocket and gave it to Hank. It was a letter Candon had given him at parting; it had been written on the voyage with the stylograph pen he had borrowed and it was addressed to Hank Fisher.
“’Scuse me,” said Hank, and as Tommie rose to get her hat before going, he opened the letter and began to read.
He hadn’t been reading long when his jaw began to drop, he stopped dead and stared before him, took up the letter again, then handed it to George.
“That does me,” said Hank. “Read it—read it out—read it.”
Tommie stood by whilst George read out the letter.This is a verbatim copy: