Part 5

“Mr. Pitt, having an exaggerated idea of the value of a human life, is greatly upset by our accident. I appreciate his condition. If his philosophy were less tainted with sentimentality——”

“I might smile over the loss of a young, hopeful life? Thank you, that is a mental level which I hardly hope to achieve.”

I went out on deck and climbed up to the wireless house. Pierce greeted me with a sorry shake of the head.

“Gee! That was a dirty shame about poor Larson. He was the only white man in the crew. If anything had to happen why couldn’t it happen to one of the bums?”

I saw that Pierce knew nothing that might make him suspect that Larson’s disappearance was not accidental and I told him hurriedly of the conversation between Riordan and Brack which I had overheard last night.

“Oh, my God!” he groaned. “The dirty dogs! Young Larson, as nice a lad as you ever talked with, against Brack, and that gorilla, Garvin! Oh, they’re a fine bunch of crooks, the bunch in this crew. As fine a bunch o’ crooks as ever went to sea to duck the police. Brack and Riordan picked ’em, you know, in San Fran’. Wilson’s all right, and besides him I think they made just one mistake in their picking.”

“How so?”

“The nigger they got at Seattle. He’s a crook, too, but he certainly has got it in for Garvin.”

The rest of that day was a trying one to me. Save for Pierce, Wilson and myself, not a soul on board seemed to have a single serious thought about Larson’s disappearance. The weather had cleared; the wind had shifted to the south and was only a gentle breeze; the sun was shining; and to the rest of the company life aboard the _Wanderer_ seemed like a holiday.

Chanler seemed both elated and impatient. At times he lolled in a deck-chair and chaffed me good humoredly, and the next moment he would be up, pacing the promenade nervously.

“Gad! Time goes slow, doesn’t it, Gardy?” he exclaimed half a dozen times during the day. “Well, we’ll have a little something to break the monotony soon. The _City of Nome_ will overtake us about nine tomorrow morning.”

And Captain Brack, as he heard, smiled secretively; and I wondered what joke he might be keeping to himself.

Next morning at dawn a rush of feet outside my stateroom put an end to my efforts to sleep. I dressed and went on deck. A seaman came hurrying past, running toward an excited group gathered on the after-deck. I shouted to ask the cause of the excitement.

“We’ve run a man down in an open boat at sea,” he called back, “and he’s lousy with gold!”

XII

I followed the man, caught by the electricity of excitement which seemed to dominate all on deck.

On the after-deck of the _Wanderer_, near the rail, was a long settee, and about this eight or nine men were grouped closely. In the half light of dawn their figures loomed bulkily and strangely alike. As I drew near I made out Captain Brack, Riordan and Garvin. Pierce was there, too, I saw on closer scrutiny, in the center of the throng, apparently as excited as any of them.

A black figure, dripping wet, was lying on one end of the settee. I saw that it was a man, and that Dr. Olson was bending over him, a bottle of brandy in his right hand.

“He’s coming to again,” said the doctor. “He’ll be all right.”

No one paid any attention; not a man turned to look. They were bending over something that lay on the other end of the settee, and so eager were their attitudes that I, too, paid no attention to Dr. Olson, or the man he was nursing, but crowded in among the close-pressed shoulders for a sight of what the magnet might be.

“Go-o-old!” the pugilist, Garvin, was repeating in awe-stricken whispers.

“Go-o-old! My Gawd! Look at it. And he said there was barrels of it—barrels—where that comes from!”

A water-soaked canvas bag, roughly slit open, was spread out on the settee. What appeared to be a score or so of small pebbles was lying on the canvas, beside what seemed to me to be a handful of sand; but at that moment the first rays of the sun reached the _Wanderer’s_ decks, the pebbles and sand began to gleam dully, and I saw that I was looking at a pile of gold nuggets and gold dust.

“Two men to carry him below, cap’n,” came Dr. Olson’s voice from the other end of the settee. “He’s all right; in surprisingly good condition; but we’ve got to strip him and get dry clothes on him.”

Not one of us turned our heads. The others were fascinated by the gold, and I was fascinated by the expression on their faces. Each face bore the same expression; to a man they had dropped such masks of civilization as they possessed, and greed, pure, primitive greed, shone frankly from their strangely lighted eyes.

Life—raw and crawling! Brack’s words flashed through my mind. He was right, then. Raw and crawling! It was the first time I had viewed the souls of men, naked and unashamed of their nudity, and the vision was appalling.

“Schwartz—Dillon,” Captain Brack spoke over his shoulder. “To the doctor. Jump!”

The two men named withdrew reluctantly. I heard them marching behind, bearing the dripping man below, but I did not turn to look. My eyes were on Garvin. He was standing so that I had a fair view of his eyes and his unbandaged mouth, and I stared in fascination, as one is fascinated by something grewsome, which one has not believed possible.

I became conscious that somebody was watching me. It was Brack. He was smiling.

“Raw and crawling, Mr. Pitt,” he said, reading my thoughts like print. “You wouldn’t believe it when I told you; but there it is, all over Garvin’s face. Now what do you say?”

Garvin swung his head around viciously.

“What’s the matter with my face?” he snarled.

“It is the face of a frankly carnivorous animal with a bone in sight,” laughed Brack, “and it does not please our friend, Mr. Pitt.”

“Oh, him!” said Garvin, turning back. “To —— with him.”

“To —— with everybody!” growled another man. “Look at it—gold! And he said he just scraped that up with his bare hands.”

“And it’s only a few hundred miles away—the place he got it.”

“And we’re going up north hunting bones, for thirty a month! ——!”

“Enough!” With a swoop of his hands Brack gathered the gold into the bag and stuffed it into his pocket. “Get out! Get below!”

He swept them out of sight with a commanding gesture. They went, but they looked back with threats in their excited faces.

* * * * *

“You have seen it now, Mr. Pitt,” Brack said, turning to me. “What do you say now—is not life raw and crawling?”

“As an exhibition of the primal instinct of greed the spectacle was quite worth seeing,” I replied. “Now tell me what it was all about?”

“This!” said he, striking the bag of gold in his pocket. “All about this. For this the man whom we picked up in an open boat a short time ago risked and all but lost his life. For this the men of the crew are ready to cut the throats of any one who opposes them. And why? Because it is gold. Because it is power; because it means the gratification of all that is encompassed in—life.

“So you see what is behind life, with all its veneer and politeness, Mr. Pitt. The primal instincts, as you expressed it—raw and crawling. You must excuse me now; I must go down and see the man we picked up. If he should happen to die it would not be right to let the secret of the source of this gold die with him. Besides, I want Olson to save him. He can take Larson’s place in the crew.”

I walked to the bow of the _Wanderer_ and back. A new atmosphere seemed to have descended upon the yacht. The movements of the men of the watch, the sullen, slovenly manner in which they attended to their duties, reeked with menace. It seemed to me that the decks of the _Wanderer_ merely hid a cauldron of seething elements, ready to explode and destroy.

Then Wilson came on deck to take the watch in Captain Brack’s absence, and at the sight of his trig seaman’s figure I felt assured. There was one man at least who had not lost his sense of duty toward ship and owner. The yacht might be a mad-house, surcharged with dangerous greed, but Wilson would do his duty as if nothing were out of the way.

“Yesterday morning we had news of losing a man, this morning we pick one up,” I said.

“Yes sir,” he said, and looked at me narrowly.

“A strange coincidence.”

“Yes sir.” He looked at me again, and turned his eyes out over the sea.

“Mr. Pitt,” he said after awhile, “yesterday you spoke of Larson’s disappearance as if you believed it might have been something besides an accident, and that things were not as they should be aboard. Well, now I know that you are right; things are not as they should be on this yacht.”

“What have you discovered?”

He took his time about replying.

“That man never was picked up in an open boat at sea, Mr. Pitt,” he said quietly. “The land where he claims to have come from is about six hundred miles away. No small boat could have lived five minutes in the storm we have been having, and that storm was stronger farther north.”

He spoke as if he were stating an ordinary fact, and his calmness helped me to control myself.

“What does it mean, then, Wilson?” I asked as easily as I could.

“I don’t know, sir. I’m a seaman; I can’t follow such a queer course. I only know that this man was not picked up, after a long voyage as he claims; because his boat could not have lived through.”

“Captain Brack must know that, too?”

“Any seaman who has sailed these waters in Springtime knows that, sir.”

“Yet Brack seemed to accept the man’s story as true. Oh!” I gasped as I saw him smile. “Then it was Captain Brack who claimed to have picked him up?”

“I can’t discuss that, sir; Captain Brack is my superior. But I know that what I have told you is the truth; and I thought it right you should know.”

“Why do you tell me, Wilson? Mr. Chanler is the owner.”

“Yes sir.” He hesitated a moment, then added: “You are near to the owner. You’ll tell him if you see fit.”

XIII

Chanler was in fine fettle that morning. He arose early, snatched a cup of coffee for breakfast and came out to pace the deck, frequently turning his glasses on the horizon over the yacht’s stern.

“Greetings and salutations, Gardy!” he exclaimed as we met. “Down with the long face, up with the merry-merry! Hang it, Gardy, get enthused. Can’t you see I’m actually not bored this morning?”

Captain Brack soon appeared with a detailed account of the new man’s adventures. The man had been one of the crew of a sealing schooner which had been blown far off its course and lost the Autumn before with all hands, save our man and one companion.

Clinging to an upturned boat they had been driven ashore in an inlet which appeared on no map of Alaska to that date, a region so secluded that the man called it the “Hidden Country.” The pair had wintered precariously. With the beginning of the Spring break-up they had discovered that in the upper reaches of a river running into the inlet they had but to turn up the sand and find gold in quantities unheard of.

Rendered desperate by lack of food, they had set forth in their open boat in hope of somehow striking the first steamers going North. The man’s companion had died of hardships two days before. They had called the inlet Kalmut Fiord, after the wrecked sealer; it was so well hidden behind an island that a thousand boats might sail past and never guess of its existence, never know there was a hidden country there in which nature had hoarded a great amount of the stuff men prize above all other things material.

“By Jove!” cried Chanler, as Brack finished. “Sounds like a book, doesn’t it? Have the beggar up, cappy, and let’s have a look at him; let’s see the gold and hear his story.”

We were sitting on the long settee in the stern at the time. A couple of hands were working near by, polishing brass work.

As word was sent below to bring the miner up, the number of men near by gradually increased to half a dozen, and half of these loafed around boldly, making no pretense at being occupied. They looked at Chanler and myself with hard, insolent eyes. They did not fancy the notion of going bone-hunting for wages while fortunes waited to be dug from the sands of the nearest shore.

I looked idly back over the yacht’s wake. On the horizon appeared what seemed to be a peculiar cloud. I watched it curiously, and saw that with each minute the cloud grew larger. It became a long smudge on the horizon, and I was about to call Chanler’s attention to it, when——

“_City of Nome_ overhauling us, sir!” megaphoned Pierce from the wireless house. “They say: ‘Heave to. Have passenger for you.’”

“Ah, ha!” cried Chanler springing up, for the moment his blasé countenance flushing with life. “Never mind about the gold-hunter, cappy. We’ll have him another time. Just have Riordan shut down, will you, and lay to for our passenger?”

He started for his state-room, when, seeing the men lounging about, he added:

“Send ’em below, cappy. They look tough; they’d give any one a bad impression. Simmons! Come here.”

Not a man moved. No order was given as he had requested. Captain Brack laughed shortly and went forward to the engine-room telephone.

The men smiled with an evil showing of teeth at Chanler’s retreating back. When he had disappeared in his stateroom they spat generously upon the _Wanderer’s_ immaculate deck, lounged over to the rail and stood looking back toward the rapidly approaching steamer. I stared at them with a sickening weakness at my knees.

I scarcely noticed the steamer. For what had just taken place told as plainly as words that Chanler no longer was master of his own yacht, that the men, and Brack, had thrown off the cloak and were in open revolt.

The _City of Nome_ came to a stop a good distance away to port. A boat, well loaded with baggage, and with four oarsmen and an officer in place, was swung briskly out from the davits and dropped into the water. A slender, be-capped figure, sheathed in a coat that reached from chin to ankles, flashed down the ladder and leaped to a seat in the stern. Along the rail of the _City of Nome_ ranged crew and passengers, waving and shouting farewells. The passenger in the boat stood up bowing, cap in hand, and at that a sharp-eyed seaman near me blurted out:

“Well, I’ll be ——! It’s a woman—a girl!”

Wilson was standing near our lowered ladder, looking through his glasses, and I hurried to him.

“Was the man right, Mr. Wilson?” I asked. “Is it a woman?”

“Yes sir,” said he and handed me his glasses.

I placed them to my eyes, swept the sea until I picked up the boat, and let the glasses rest on the passenger in the stern.

The seaman was right; it was a girl. She was probably twenty-one or two, and she was laughing. I had but a glimpse of her face, for as the men pushed off from the steamer she leaned forward and spoke to the officer in charge. The men stopped rowing. One of them let go his oar and crawled forward, and the girl took his place and swung the long oar in a fashion that brought cheer after cheer from the watching passengers and crew.

Chanler now emerged from his stateroom and took the glasses from my hand. For several seconds he studied the girl in the boat as she swung herself easily against the oar.

“Gad!” he whispered excitedly. “Gad!”

He looked around and saw the men gathered aft.

“Wilson,” he commanded, “drive that bunch below. Where’s Brack? On the bridge? All right.”

I moved away, but he called: “No, Gardy, you stay right here; you look civilized. I need you. Stay and get introduced.”

I remained, but my interest was all for Wilson as he walked briskly toward the lounging men. Brack had been ordered to send the men below, and he had gone forward laughing, and the men had remained. Would they obey the command of the second officer?

Wilson’s first order was given in a tone too low for us to hear. In reply the men grinned at him, and Garvin, through his bandages growled—

“Who the —— are you?”

Wilson’s voice raised itself slightly.

“I am one officer on board that you can’t talk back to or get chummy with,” he said. “Get below or, by glory, I’ll show you what it means to give slack to an officer. Move there! You—Garvin! Get below!”

And they went. Bad men that they were, and in revolt, they were not able to defy Wilson when his blood was up. Chanler looked up at the bridge, puzzled.

“I told cappy to send them below,” he said. “Why didn’t he do it?”

“He gave no order at all,” I volunteered.

George looked at me unsteadily, his tongue wetting his lips.

“He didn’t give any order—after I told him to?”

“No.”

He looked up at the bridge again, hesitated, and smiled carelessly.

“Oh, well, what’s the difference? Here’s the boat. Ah! By gad!”

The boat was alongside our grating and the girl was springing out. A seaman offered to assist her, and she laughed and ran up the swaying stairway. Half-way she stopped and threw back her head, looking up at us.

“Yo-hoo, George!” she called and came running up the rest of the way, landing on the deck with a leap.

“Oh, George!” she cried. “Isn’t it glorious!”

She turned to the rail and waved her farewells to the sailors in the boat. They touched their hats and rowed away, their eyes upon her.

“And what a beautiful yacht you’ve got, George. And, oh! This wonderful sea! Isn’t it all splendid!”

She paused and looked at George carefully. The animation of her countenance disappeared for a moment; something she saw disappointed her.

“You—you’re not—looking quite as well as you were, George,” she said slowly.

“I’ve been awf’ly lonesome, Betty,” he replied. “I—it was awf’ly good of you to come.”

“Good of me? Why, it was a privilege. It was too sweet of your sister to invite me to come.”

“No, no! Don’t—don’t say that. I—” He stopped confused. “Betty, I was desperate to see you—just see you, you understand.”

She reached out and took his hand impulsively.

“You poor boy! And your sister, Mrs. Payne——”

Chanler was tugging at his collar.

“Here, here! I’ve forgotten,” he interrupted nervously, “Here’s Gardy—Miss Baldwin, Mr. Gardner Pitt.”

And Miss Beatrice Baldwin looked at me squarely for the first time. Her look was frankly appraising. We shook hands. I do not remember that we spoke a word. She looked up at George Chanler’s drink-hardened face; her eyes turned again to me, and after awhile she looked away.

There was a tiny up-flaring of lace about her neck. It was this picture that stuck in my mind: the delicate femininity of the lace collar, its suggestion of defenselessness, and, rising out of it, the firm, white neck, the slightly tanned face, girlishly delicate, but with the look on it of the outdoor girl who is not afraid.

Miss Baldwin was not afraid. She stood firmly upright; for my eyes, dropping in confusion, saw how the red rubber soles of her tan shoes gripped the deck, and the strong slim ankles above them. Her chin was almost childishly round, her hair was dark and wavy, and her mouth seemed eager to smile. Yet there was a seriousness about her frank eyes which told that while on the surface she might be a laughing, romping girl, in reality the woman was full grown.

There was a moment of silence while she looked out to sea and I looked at the deck; and then the men come rushing back on deck. They had been reinforced by two or three of their fellows, and with Garvin at their head they came marching forward in determined fashion.

At the sight of Miss Baldwin they paused. Some remaining shred of respect for womanhood held them, and they stood, a compact, menacing mob, some twenty feet away, undecided on their next move.

“Come along, Betty, I’ll show you to your stateroom,” said Chanler hurriedly.

He led the way toward the unoccupied owner’s suite, the suite which from the beginning had been furnished for her coming.

Miss Baldwin hesitated.

“But where’s Mrs. Payne, George?” she called.

Chanler paused and looked away. “Well, you see, Betty, I was crazy to see you, and—and, Sis’ took ill, and—” He pulled himself together in desperation. “She didn’t come with us, Betty, that’s all there is to it.”

Miss Baldwin had stopped at the cabin door.

“Then I am the only woman on board?” she asked.

“Yes.”

I expected her to shrink, to demand that she be sent back to the City of Nome.

Instead, she looked around calmly, looked out upon the sea, at the rough faces of the men who were staring at her curiously, at the free sweep of the _Wanderer’s_ deck and said with quiet resignation—

“Oh, how jolly!”

XIV

Captain Brack and Riordan had joined the men by the time Chanler returned from showing Miss Baldwin to her stateroom. The entire crew of the _Wanderer_ now was assembled, and Chanler ran his eyes nervously over the group.

“Cappy,” he said, “what is the meaning of this?”

Brack stepped forward.

“Mr. Chanler,” he said solemnly, “it has become necessary to tell you that this crew will not go to Petroff Sound—directly, at least.”

Chanler looked around. The men were standing in a semicircle about him, watching him menacingly.

“What do you mean?” he demanded. “Do you mean that you refuse to fulfil your contract?”

Brack shrugged his shoulders.

“Oh, for myself, I don’t say,” he said. “Perhaps I would be willing to go to Petroff Sound, even after picking up this gold-hunter. But that doesn’t matter. I can’t sail the _Wanderer_ without the crew, and the crew refuses to go any place but to the hidden country at Kalmut Fiord, where this man’s gold came from.”

“That’s what we said,” supplemented Garvin. “Give us boats and grub, if you want to, and turn us loose; or go with us in the yacht. But we ain’t goin’ bonehuntin’ when there’s gold laying round loose so close by.”

An inarticulate growl came from the rest of the men. Too stupid to put their plans in words they uttered a single, primitive sound which told better than Garvin’s words what was working in their primitive minds. They had seen gold; they had been told there was enough of it to make them all rich; their sluggish desires had been aroused, and consequently they growled.

They were white men, as to skin, but they were savages at heart. And into this company Chanler had brought Miss Baldwin.

“Cappy,” said Chanler, falling back into his blasé manner, “what are you trying to do? Do you mean to tell me that you’re letting this crew walk over you? D’you mean to tell me that you no longer can run ’em? Come, come! I won’t have such poppycock.”

Riordan now stepped forward.

“It is not only the crew that wants to quit, Mr. Chanler,” said he. “I’m through, too. Here is our proposition: Kalmut Fiord, where this miner came from, is about three days’ sailing due north. We want to go there and take a look. If you’ll let the yacht go there, and we find there’s no gold there, we’ll go on with you to Petroff Sound, and there’s only a week lost, which you can dock from our pay. If you won’t let the yacht go there—well, we’re going there anyhow.”

Chanler laughed his dry, cynical laugh.

“Cappy,” said he, “this is what they call mutiny in stories, isn’t it?”

“No, sir,” said Brack promptly. “Mutiny is the refusal of seamen to obey their captain. None of these men has refused to obey me.”

“Hah? Come again, cappy.”

“I have given them no orders which they have refused to obey.”

“You mean—you’re in with ’em, eh?”

“I mean that it would be a crime against us for this expedition to continue on its original course without first investigating, at least, the story which the miner has told. There may be much gold there; certainly there is some. You have more money than you need, Chanler; we haven’t enough to make our lives comfortable.”

“This voyage is a pastime to you; to us it’s a means of making a living. The bones at Petroff Sound will keep. I have this suggestion to make: that we alter the course of the yacht and go to Kalmut Fiord. There will be more credit for you if you lead the way to a new gold field than if you come back with a hold full of old bones. And it will be much easier and pleasant, I assure you.”