Part 11

“There was a dog walking on the beach twenty yards off, and Tiaki cocking his eye at it took aim and let fly with the cracker, and there wasn’t any dog left after the thing had burst, only a hole in the sand.

“You could have heard them shouting at Taleka. Those chaps ran about clean bughouse, and Buck, he stood by mighty pleased with himself till all of a sudden Tiaki quiets them and gives an order and the crowd broke and made a run for the canoe houses.

IV

“‘What’s up now?’ says Buck. He wasn’t long waiting to know. Four big war canoes pushed out full of men, and making straight for the Greyhound, and Taute, who was talking to Tiaki turns and tells us we were prisoners. Tiaki, for all his underlip, was no fool, and when Taute had done translating what he had to say to us his meaning leapt up at us like luminous paint.

“You see Tiaki had always been used to look on traders as hard bargainers who’d ask a tooth for a tenpenny nail, and here we were, us two, blowing in and offering him a cargo of ammunition for nothing, so long as he’d go and bomb Sru with it. It seemed too good to be true, and he suspected a trap. Said so, right out. He was going to hold us till the business was over and everything turned out satisfactory.

“I had to swallow twice to keep that news down. A moment before we’d been free men, and there we were now like rats in a barrel, but there was no use kicking, so we sat down on the sand and watched the canoe men swarming over the _Greyhound_ and breaking out the cargo. They didn’t touch the Chinks nor loot the ship, just went for the cracker cases, bringing them off load after load and dumping them on the sand.

“Tiaki has a case opened and takes out a cracker; he’d tumbled to the mechanism, and there he stood with the thing in his hand explaining it to the population, talking away and flinging out his arms towards Taleka, evidently gingering them up for the attack on Sru. Then he gives an order sharp as the crack of a whip, and all the Marys and children and old chaps scattered off back to the village, and over a hundred of the fighting men took their seats on the beach in a big circle, whilst crackers were handed round to them and they examined the hang of the things, each man for himself.

“They were a fine lot, but differently coloured, some as dark as bar-chocolate and some the colour of coffee with milk in it, and as they sat there the women and children and old men came down from the village bringing bundles of mat baskets with them, and down they squatted by the edge of the trees going over the baskets and mending them and putting them in order.

“‘What are they up to?’ says Buck.

“‘Can’t you see?’ says I. ‘They’re going to carry the crackers in those baskets. They mean business right enough. Lord! Buck,’ I says, ‘I wish we were out of this; look at the fix we’re in. If them chaps are beaten by Sru, we’ll be done in as sure as paint—makes me sick, sitting here, and there’s our boat right before us. S’pose we make a dash right now, shove her off and get on board——’

“‘Not a bit of use,’ says Buck. ‘They’d let after us in the canoes before we’d pushed off—we’ve just got to stick and see it out. I’m sorry,’ he says; ‘it’s my fault; you were right, and if I ever get out of this I’ll steer clear of mixing up in other folks’ quarrels. I wouldn’t have done it only for the Chink.’

“‘Oh, it don’t matter,’ I says; ‘we’re in it and there’s no use in kicking.’

“I called Taute, who was standing watching the basket work and jabbering with Tiaki, and asked him for news and what he thought they were going to do with us in case things went wrong. He went to Tiaki and had a jabber, and came back to us looking pretty grey about the gills.

“Tiaki was going to attack Sru right away, starting that night and reaching Taleka next morning early; with the current the big war canoes would do the journey in seven hours. He couldn’t make a night attack because of the difficulty of getting in, but he reckoned to reach the bay just at daybreak. Then came the news that we were to go with them and lead the attack. Tiaki said as we had sold Sru the guns to attack Tiaki, it was only fair that we should lead Tiaki’s men against the guns, besides, he wanted to make sure we weren’t leading him into a trap; besides, he had often noticed white men feared nothing and were splendid fighters. He also said if we failed him facing the guns of Sru we’d have fish crackers flung at our backs.

“You see the way that durn cargo served us; the guns in front of us, the crackers at our back—we couldn’t say anything—couldn’t do anything but curse Scudder and the day we met him, and sit there watching the preparations. Women were bringing down provisions for the canoes, and the baskets were ready and being distributed. They weren’t so much baskets as bags such as the natives use for carting every sort of thing in; each fighting man had one, and then the crackers were handed round about twenty to a man. They’d place them between their legs in the canoes as they paddled; every man had a spear as well, and as they stood there getting on for sundown, each man with his basket of bombs and a spear, I’d have been proud to lead them only I was so frightened.

V

“Now the funniest thing happened.

“All that crowd of fighting men full up of pride and devilment began shouting and chanting a war song. That was all right as far as it went, but after it was over a chocolate-coloured son of a gun began making a speech, shouting and pointing towards Taleka as if to say what he wouldn’t do to Sru.

“Then a coffee-coloured devil cut in and seemed to carry on the argument.

“Taute said the chocolate men and the coffee grinders were two different races, though joined in the one tribe, and they were arguing which was the bravest.

“Other chaps cut in, and then all of a sudden they began running about, and before you could say ‘knife’ they split, the chocolate men on one side, the coffee crowd on the other, with Tiaki running about half bughouse, trying to keep order, and the row growing bigger all the time till suddenly a coffee man remembered his bag of bombs and fetches out a cracker, gives it a twist, and lets fly at the chocolate man opposite him, sending his head to glory.

“Did you ever see schoolboys snowballing each other? All over the sands they were, one chap chasing another, stooping to pick crackers from their bags and screw them tight and then letting fly, heads and arms and legs being blown away—not that we stopped to watch; we were running for the boat. Next moment we had her off, and we didn’t wait to pick up the anchor when we got aboard; we dropped the chain and shoved, leaving Sru to come over to shovel up the remains, and pleased to think that the Winchesters he’d diddled out of us wouldn’t be much use to him since the crackers had spoiled his target.

“I expect there wasn’t a dozen fighting men on that island left whole and sound, but that’s neither here or there. I was just telling you it as a case in point. There’s something in one tribe that makes for war against another tribe even if they’ve been living happily together for years. It shows clearer in savages than civilised folk, but it’s in both and it’s got to be reckoned with by anyone who wants to do away with war for good and all.”

He tapped his pipe out, and we sat watching the Pacific coming creaming in on the sands and round the rocks, the Pacific, that storm centre or Lake of Peace for the whole world, according to the way men may arrange their tribal differences and call upon intellect to balance instinct.

IX—THE OTHER ONE

I

Sydney is one of the finest towns in the world and it has the finest harbour, unless you call San Francisco Bay a harbour, it has the most hospitable people and a gaiety and push all its own, also, in the matter of temperature, when it chooses it can beat any other town except maybe Calcutta.

“A hot shop,” said Brent. He was seated at a bar adorned with coloured bottles, and a girl with peroxide of hydrogen tinted hair had just handed him a lemon squash with a hummock of ice in it.

“You aren’t looking yourself, Captain,” said the girl.

“No, my dear, I aren’t,” replied Brent, “not if I look as I feel.” He relapsed into gloom and I offered him a cigarette which he refused.

“I’m going to a funeral,” he explained.

“Sorry,” said I. “Not a near relation, I hope?”

“Well, it might be a relation, by the way I feel, but I’ve none. When a man gets to my age he leaves a lot of things astern.” He sighed, finished the last half of his drink in one mighty gulp, wiped his mouth and got off his chair.

“Walk down with me a bit of the way,” said he.

We left the bar and entered the blaze of the street. It was eleven o’clock in the morning.

“It ought to be raining,” said the Captain as we wended our way along King Street towards the wharves. “Happy is the corpse that the rain rains on, is the old saying, and she’s a corpse if ever there was one, but rain or shine, if there’s happiness for such things as corpses, she’s happy—she’s done her duty.”

“What did she die of?” I asked, by way of making conversation.

“Old age,” replied Brent. He had a black tie on, but his garb was otherwise unchanged, his mourning was chiefly expressed by his voice and manner, and as we drew closer to the whiff of the harbour and the scent of shipping he took off his panama and mopped his bald head now and then with a huge red handkerchief.

That handkerchief was always the signal of worry or perplexity with Brent, and now, right on the wharves and feeling for his state of mind, I halted to say good-bye.

“Wouldn’t you care to see her?” he asked.

“No thanks,” I replied. “I ought to meet a man at twelve and it’s after eleven now—and——”

“He’ll wait,” replied the Captain. “It’s only a step from here and she’s _worth_ seeing. Kim on.”

He took me by the arm and led me along, reluctantly enough, towards some mean-looking buildings, the relics of old days; under the bowsprit of a full rigged ship, over hawsers, and then on to a decayed slip of a wharf beside which an old schooner lay moored.

“That’s her,” said Brent.

On her counter in letters almost vanished stood the word _Greyhound_.

“The _Greyhound_,” said I, “is this the old schooner you and Slane owned?”

“The same,” said Brent. “She’s to be towed to the breakers’ yard eight bells—noon, they gave me word so that I might have a last look at her.”

So this was the funeral he was to attend. He mopped his face with the red handkerchief, contemplated the deck beneath him, heaved a sigh and then, “Come down,” said he. “I’ve told Jimmy Scott to leave me something in the cabin.”

He dropped on to the deck and I followed him. There was no watchman to guard the corpse. I looked at the standing rigging all gone to ruin and the sticks that had survived many a gale, the grimy decks that once had been white, then I dropped down to the cabin after Brent.

The ports were open and water shimmers from the harbour water danced on the maple panelling, the upholstery had been eaten by rats or roaches and a faint smell filled the place like the ghost of the odour of corruption, but there was a bottle of whisky on the table, a couple of glasses and a syphon.

“If I hadn’t met you, I’d ’a brought someone else,” said Brent, taking his seat before the funeral refreshments, “but there’s not many I’d have sooner had than you to give her a send off. You remember I told you, Buck had her from Pat O’Brien who didn’t know her qualities, no one did in those days; why, a chap by name of Gadgett come aboard first day we had her and said she ought to be condemned, said she wasn’t seaworthy and that’s many years ago.” He took the cork from the bottle and poured “Many years ago and now I’m having my last drink and smoke here where Buck and me have often sat, and him in the cemetery. Well, here’s to you, Buck—and here’s to her.” We drank and lit up.

“Well, she’s had her day,” said I, trying to say something cheerful. “It’s like a wife that has done her duty——”

The Captain snorted.

“Wives,” said he, “a ship’s all the wife I’ve ever had and I don’t want no other, it’s all the wife a sailor-man wants and if she’s decently found and run, she never lets him down. I told that to Buck once. I told him the _Greyhound_ was his lawful wife and he’d come a mucker if he took another. He wouldn’t believe me, but he found it out. You’ve never seen him. He died only four years ago and he hadn’t lost a tooth, he hadn’t got a grey hair on his head, six foot he stood and he’d only to look at a girl and she’d follow him, but he wasn’t given that way after his marriage.”

“Oh, he got married, did he?” said I. “I always fancied from what you told me of him that he was a single man.—Did she die?”

“I expect she’s dead by this,” said the Captain. “No knowing, but if she ain’t she ought to be. We fell in with her, me and Slane, the year after that dust up with Sru I told you of. We’d lost money on that job, but we’d pulled up over a deal in silver that had come our way through Pat O’Brien and Buck had thirty thousand dollars in the Bank of California, and I’d got near ten in my pocket. I didn’t trust banks. For all that money we lived quiet, not being given to drink, and we were fitting the _Greyhound_ out for a new job, when one night at a sociable we met in with Mrs. Slade. That was the name she gave herself, a fine, fresh-faced young woman, not thirty, with eyes like Cape mulberries, they had that red look in the black of them, and a laundry of her own they said was bringing in five hundred a week profit. She harpooned Buck. Clean through the gizzard. You’ve seen a chicken running about with a woman after it till she catches it and wrings its neck, that was Buck. He was no more good after she’d got the irons into him.

“One night I had it out with him. I said: ‘The Lord Almighty has given you a ship to tend and take care of, she’s been true to you and brought you in the dollars, and look at the way you’re usin’ her, why, we ought to have had her out of dock by this and the cargo half on board her, she over there at Oakland and you foolandering after a widow woman.’

“‘She’s a girl,’ says he.

“‘Well, woman or girl don’t matter,’ I says, ‘you ain’t the age for marrying, nor the sort of chap to make good at the game.’ We went at it hammer and tongs, me trying to pump sense into him like a chap trying to pump up a burst bicycle tyre, but at last, somehow or another, I began to get the better of the business and bring him to reason and by two in the morning I’d brought him to own he was a damn fool and marriage a mug’s game. I went to bed happy, and next day he turned up at noon with a flower in his coat and looking as if he’d gone queer in his head.

“What’s the matter with you?” I says.

“‘I’ve just been married,’ says he.

II

“That’s the sort of chap a woman had made of him. I’ve heard it said a woman is the making of a chap, it’s true, if she’s a good woman she’ll make a man of a fool, and if she’s bad she’ll make a fool of any man, seems to me. Jinny Slade was bad. I’ve got instincts about things and maybe that’s what made me so down on the business from the first—them mulberry eyes of hers rose my bristles, somehow or another, but now she’d fixed him there was no use talking.

“They took up housekeeping in Francis Street over the laundry, and not wishing to mix up in their hymeneal bliss, I didn’t see much of Buck for a month or more. The _Greyhound_ was out of dock and I brought her over to her moorings at Tiburon, and I’d sit here just as I’m sitting now, time and again, thinking of old times and the fool Buck was making of himself, for we’d lost the cargo a trader had promised us and our business was going to smash.

“One day I was leaning on the rail fishing with a hand line for want of something better to do when a guy comes along in a boat—Newall was his name—he’d known us for a couple of years, casual, and he’d just put off from an Oregon boat that lay anchored a bit out.

“‘How’s Buck?’ says he, resting on his oars.

“‘Buck’s married,’ I says. ‘Married this month and more.’

“‘Well, I wish him luck,’ says Newall, ‘and who’s the lady?’”

I tells him.

“‘Holy Mike,’ he says. ‘Jinny Slade—what made him do it?’

“I told him I didn’t know unless it was the devil, and then I asked what he knew about the party.

“‘Well,’ says Newall, ‘I’m a cautious man and I’m not going to lay myself open to no law court actions for deffination of character. I’m not going to say nothing about the woman except that she oughta been flung into the bay two years ago with a sinker tied to her middle, and then you wouldn’t have saved her first husband which she poisoned as sure as my name’s Dan Newall, no, nor the men she ruined in that gambling joint she run in Caird Street with a loaded r’lette wheel that’d stay put wherever you wanted by the pressin’ of a button under the table, run by a Chink it was with her money.

“‘In with the crimps she was, and if I had a dollar for every sailor-man she’s helped to shanghai I’d buy a fishin’ boat and make my fortune out of catchin’ the crabs that are feedin’ on the corpses of the men that’s drowned themselves because of her.

“‘Laundry,’ he says, ‘a laundry s’big as from here to Porte Costa, with every Chink in California workin’ overtime for a month wouldn’t wash the edges of her repitation—and Buck’s married her; strewth, but he’s got himself up to the eyes. What sort of blinkers were you wearin’ to let him do it?’

“‘I don’t know,’ I says, ‘alligator hide I should think was the sort he was wearing, anyhow. Question is what am I to do now?’

“‘Take a gun and shoot him,’ says Newall, ‘if you want to be kind to him.—Has she got any money out of him?’

“‘I don’t know,’ I says.

“‘Been married to him a month,’ he goes on. ‘She’ll have every jitney by this—well, if you’re set on trying to do somethin’ for him, get the last of his money from him if he’s got any and hide it in a hole for him before she kicks him out plucked naked.’”

Off he rowed, and pulling up my line I left the _Greyhound_ to the Kanaka watchman and took the ferry over to ’Frisco.

The laundry was banging away, the Chinks all hard at work, Mrs. Slade wasn’t home, over at St. Jo for the day, so the forewoman said, but Buck was in and upstairs, and up I went.

They’d got a fine sitting-room on the first floor with plush-covered chairs and brand new old-fashioned looking furniture and a bowl of goldfish in the window and pictures in big gold frames on the walls.

Buck was sitting in an easy chair reading a paper and smoking a cigar.

“Hullo,” he says, “here’s a coincidence, for I was just coming over to Tiburon to see you.”

“Oh, were you?” says I. “Wits jump sometimes and here I am on the same job. How’s the world using you, Buck?”

I tried to be as light-hearted as I could, but it was hard work. Buck had gone off in looks, and it was plain to see things weren’t going easy with him, you can always tell when a chap has something on his mind, and whilst he was getting out drinks I sat putting my thoughts together and only waiting to begin. I’d fixed to do a big grab, and get ten thousand dollars out of him as a loan to hide away for him against the time he got the kick out, plucked naked, as Newall had said.

He pours the whisky.

“Buck,” I says, taking the glass. “I’ve come to ask a favour of you. I want a loan.”

“How much?” asks Buck.

“Well,” I said, “I’ve ten thousand dollars of my own, as you know, and I’ve been offered a big opportunity of making a hundred thousand. Safe as houses. I want ten thousand to put with mine, I wouldn’t ask you to risk yours if I wasn’t risking mine.”

“What’s the spec.?” he asks.

“Can’t tell you that,” I said—“I’m under promise, but you know me and I give you my word of honour your money is as safe as if it was in your pocket—safer.”

“Well, I’d do it if I could,” he says, “you know me and that I’m not lying when I speak, but I can’t, haven’t got it.”

“But, Buck,” I says, “why, only a month ago you had thirty thousand dollars in the bank.”

Buck nods and goes on. “I haven’t got it to put my hand on,” he says. “My wife is keeping it for me. She says what with those New York banks going bust last spring and one thing and another, banks aren’t safe and she wants to invest it, she’s over at St. Jo to-day looking at some property.”

“Where’s she got the money?” I asks.

“In that safe,” says he.

Sure enough there was a big iron safe in the corner of the room half hid by a screen.

Seeing how the land lay, I said no more, and he changed the subject, going back to what he was saying when I first came in, how that he had been coming to see me that afternoon about a matter of business.

He wouldn’t say what the business was, but he wanted my help and he wanted it that night. He also wanted the boat of the _Greyhound_ brought over to Long Wharf.

“Just bring her over yourself,” said he. “No, we don’t want help, just you and me will manage it, and bring the mast and sail and some grub, never mind what I want her for, I’ll tell you later, it’s a paying business, as you’ll find.”

With that I took my leave of him and hiked off back to Tiburon, for the day was getting on and I had none too much time to get things together.

I was bothered and that’s the truth; Buck had gone off, wasn’t the same chap, and by his manner when he asked me to meet him with the boat, I knew it wasn’t pleasure sailing he was after. I near scratched the top off my head thinking what he could be wanting with that boat, but it was beyond me and I gave it up. Taute was the name of the Kanaka, same chap we had with us when we did that gun-running job down at Taleka, and when I got back to the _Greyhound_ I set Taute to work, getting some grub together and a new spar for a mast as the old one was sprung. Then, getting along for evening, I rowed over to Long Wharf. Long Wharf was pretty busy just then, what with wheat ships cleaning up before towing to Berkley for cargo and Oregon timber ships and such. There was a schooner lying there belonging to a chap I knew, so I just tied up to her channel-plates and crossed over on to the wharf where I sits on a bollard kicking my heels and waiting for Buck.

Along he comes just on dark, and without a word he follows me across the deck of the schooner into the boat.

Tell you I felt queer. We’d sailed pretty close to the wind together me and him, gun-running and what not, but this job seemed different, sort of back-door business with the harbour police or the Fish Patrol waiting to lay for us if we hitched up on it anywhere. I’d been used to blue water doings and big things and it got my goat to feel we were after something small and shady. It wasn’t small by any means, but, anyhow, that’s how I felt. But I said nothing, taking the oars and Buck taking his place in the stern sheets. Then we pushed off, Buck steering and making as if he was layin’ a course for Oakland. A few cable lengths out we took the wind and put up the mast, and, Buck taking the sheet, off we set still laying as if we were bound for Oakland. I’d sooner be out anywhere than in the lower bay after dark, what between them dam screeching ferry boats and the motor launches and such. Every monkey in ’Frisco with brass enough seems to have some sort or another of a launch or yacht and to spend his natural trying to run folks down. We were near cut into twice, seeing we had no light, but after a while, getting off the main track and Buck shifting his helm, we got along better.

He was steering now laying straight for Angel Island. We passed Racoon Straits and kept on, the breeze freshening hard and the boat laying over to it. The sky was clear and a big moon was coming over the hills. Wonderful fine the bay is a night like that, with all the lights round showing yellow against the moon and ’Frisco showing up against Oakland.