Part 2

“Well, you don’t think they’d go leaving it on the beach,” replied Davis.

“Didn’t you get out of her what ship they were taking it off on?” asked Harman.

“No,” said Davis, “I didn’t, she don’t know herself, but she’s going to find out.”

“Bud,” said Harman, “give us the straight tip, I’m not wantin’ to prod into your ‘amoors,’ but how far have you nobbled her into this business?”

“Well, as you ask me, I’ll tell you,” replied Bud. “She’s fell into it head first, and up to the heels of her boots, given me the whole show and location all but the name of the hooker which she don’t know yet.”

“You mean to say she’s workin’ for you to collar the stuff?”

“Yep.”

“But where does she come in?”

“She’s coming with us if we can pull off the deal.”

“Oh, Lord!” said Harman. “A petticut—I knew there must be some fly in the ’intment—it was too good to be true. A million dollars rollin’ round waitin’ to be took and a petticut—I’ve never known one that didn’t mess a job it was wrapped up in.”

“It’s a million to one it don’t come off,” said Davis, removing his boots before turning in, “but there’s just one chance, and that’s her.”

Next morning Mr. Harman did not go ashore. He spent his time fishing over the side, fishing and smoking and dreaming of all sorts of different ways of spending dollars. Now he was rolling round ’Frisco in a carriage, and a boiled shirt with a diamond solitaire in it, calling at the Palatial for drinks. Now he was in the train of quality eastward bound for N’York, smoking a big cigar. He did not delude himself that the deal would come off, but that didn’t matter a bit. The essence of dreams is unreality. There was a chance.

Davis went ashore about eleven o’clock, and did not return till two in the afternoon. When he came back he was a different man. He seemed younger and brighter, and even better dressed, though he had not changed his clothes. Harman, watching him row up to the ship, noticed the difference in him even before he came on board.

He swept him down to the cabin, and before letting him speak, poured out drinks.

“I see it in your mug,” said Harman. “Here, swaller that before handin’ out the news. Cock yourself on the bunk side. Well, what’s the odds now?”

“Twenty to one on,” said Davis, “or a hundred—it’s all the same. It’s as good as done. Bo, we got it.”

“Don’t say!” said Billy.

“Got it, saddle and bridle an’ pedigree and all. She’s given it all in and to-night’s the night.”

“Give us the yarn,” said the other.

“There’s nothing to it; simple as shop-lifting. The stuff will be down at the coast here about dark; it will be taken off soon as it arrives and shipped on board the _Douro_. She’s lying over there, and I’ll point her out to you when we go up. Then, when the stuff is aboard, she’ll put out, but not till sun up. They don’t like navigating those outlying reefs in the dark, moon or no.”

“Yes,” said Harman.

“Well,” said Davis, “our little game is to wait till the stuff is aboard, row off, take the Douro, and push out with her. You and me and eight Kanakas ought to do it, there’s no guardship, and the fellows on the _Douro_ won’t put up much of a fight. You see, they’re not on the fighting lay; it’s the steal softly business with them, and I reckon they’ll cave at the first shout.”

“Where does the girl come in?” asked Billy, after a moment’s pause.

“There’s a place called Coimbra seven mile south down the coast,” said Davis, fetching a chart from the locker. “Here it is. That point. I’ve only to put out a blue light and she’ll put off in a boat. Pereira’s brother lives down at Coimbra, and she’s going to-night to stay with him. She’ll be on the watch out from one on to sunrise, and she’ll easy get taken out in one of the night fishermen’s boats.”

To all of which Mr. Harman replied, “Damn petticuts!” He was biting his nails. He was no feminist. That is to say, he had an inborn conviction that women tended to spoil shows other than tea parties and such like. Why couldn’t this rotten girl have kept out of the business? What did she want coming along for? Seeing that she was letting down her people for the love of Davis, it seemed pretty evident that she was coming along also for the love of him, but Harman was not in the mood to consider things from the girl’s point of view.

However, there was no use complaining. With the chance of a million dollars for nothing, one must expect a few thorns, so he kept his head closed whilst Davis, taking him on deck, drew a lightning sketch of the plan of campaign.

First they had to shift the _Araya’s_ moorings so as to get closer to the _Douro_, then they had to put the Kanakas wise, and more especially Taute the cook and leader, then they had just to lay low, wait for midnight, and pounce.

“Righto,” said Mr. Harman, “and if we’re shiftin’ moorin’s, let’s shift now.”

They did, not drawing too noticeably near the _Douro_, but near enough to keep watch on her. Near enough to count the sun-blisters on her side with a glass. She was of smaller tonnage than the _Araya_ and ketch-rigged. She had never been a beauty, and she wasn’t one now; she had no charms to mellow with age.

Night had fallen on Buenodiaz, and the band on La Plazza had ceased braying. Eleven o’clock was striking. Cathedral and churches tinkling and tankling and clanging the hour; a drunken crew had just put off for the grain ship lying farther out, and silence was falling on the scene, when, whizz-bang, off went the fireworks.

“Damn the place!” cried Harman, whose nerves were on edge. “It’s clangin’ and prayin’ and stinkin’ all day and closes down only to go off in your face—some saint’s day or ’nuther, I expect.”

Davis said nothing. He was watching the blue and pink of bursting rockets and the fiery, fuzzy worms reflecting themselves in the harbour.

They had seen several boats stealthily approaching the _Douro_. Everything seemed going to time and the wind was steady.

An hour passed during which Buenodiaz, forgetting saints and frivolity, fell asleep, leaving the world to the keeping of the moon.

Convents, churches and cathedral were chiming midnight when the Kanakas, having crowded into the boat of the _Araya_, Davis and Harman got into the stem sheets and pushed off.

As they drew close, the _Douro_, with her anchor light burning, showed no sign of life, bow to the sea on a taut anchor chain, she rode the flooding tide, she seemed nodding to them as she pitched gently to the heave of the swell, and as they rubbed up alongside and Harman grasped the rail, he saw that the deck was clear.

“Down below, every man Jack of them,” he whispered back at Davis. “I can hear ’em snoring. Foc’s’le hatch first.”

He led the way to the foc’s’le hatch and closed it gently, turning at a stroke the foc’s’le into a prison. Then they came to the saloon hatch, stood and listened.

Not a sound.

“They’re all in the foc’s’le,” whispered Harman. “Just like Spaniards, ain’t it? No time to waste, we’ve gotta see the stuff’s here; give’s your matches.” He stepped down, followed by the other, reached the saloon, and struck a light.

Yes, the stuff was there, a sight enough to turn a stronger head than Harman’s, boxes and boxes on the floor and on the couch, evidently just brought on board and disposed of in a hurry, and all marked with the magic name: Juan Diaz.

Harman tried to lift one of them. It was not large, yet he could scarcely stir it. Then with eyes aflame and hammering hearts, they made up the companion way, closed the hatch, and, while Davis got the canvas on her, Harman stood by to knock the shackle off the anchor chain.

As town and mole and harbour dropped astern, the _Douro_ close-hauled and steered by Davis, Harman standing by the steersman, saw the helm going over and found they were heading north.

“And how about pickin’ up that girl?” asked Billy, “Coimbra don’t lay this way.”

“Oh, I reckon she’ll wait,” replied Davis.

“You’re givin’ her the good-bye?”

“Seems so,” said Davis.

Hannan chuckled. Then he lit a cigar. If girls chose to fall in love and trust chaps like Davis, it wasn’t his affair.

At sunrise he slipped down to see after some food. Davis heard him hammering down below, and knew that he was sampling the gold, he smiled with the full knowledge that it was there and that Billy couldn’t get away with it, when up from the saloon dashed Billy.

Like a man demented, he rushed forward, opened the foc’s’le hatch and shouted down it to the imprisoned Spaniards.

“Come up, you blighters,” cried Mr. Harman. Then he dived down, found emptiness and returned on deck.

He held on to the rail as he faced Davis.

“Ten thousand dollars’ worth of trade and ship,” said Harman, “that’s what we’ve given them for a stinkin’ ketch and a couple o’ hundred weight of sand. Sand an’ pebbles that’s what’s in them boxes. You and your girls! No, you can’t put back, they’d jug us for stealin’ this bum boat. Take your gruel and swaller it! Why, bless your livin’ innocence, the whole of that garlic factory was in it, it’s my belief, from the Port Doctor up, and they’ll be havin’ fireworks to-night to celebrate.”

Billy paused, spat into the sea.

“No,” said he, turning his remarks to the universe in general. “It don’t pay. Runnin’ crooked don’t pay—nohow.”

II—MANDELBAUM

What would you do were you to find yourself on a stolen sixty-ton ketch off the middle coast of Chile with a crew of Kanakas, less than ten days’ provisions on board, no money to speak of, and a healthy and lively dread of touching at a Chile port?

That was the exact position of Mr. William Harman and his friend, Bud Davis, one bright morning on board the ketch _Douro_ and thirty miles nor’-west of Buenodiaz—about.

The _Douro_ was heading west-nor’-west, the morning was perfect, the Pacific calm, and Billy, seated on the hatch cover, was expressing the opinion that running straight was the best course to adopt in a world where reefs were frequent and sharks abundant.

“No,” said he, “runnin’ crooked don’t pay, nohow. There ain’t enough softies about to make it pay, ain’t enough mugs about, as I’ve told you more’n once. Happy I was on Papaleete beach and then you comes along that night and says, ‘Let’s take Penhill’s ship,’ says you. ‘There she lays, the _Araya_, sixty-ton schooner, and he drinkin’ himself blind at the club and he can’t touch us,’ says you, ‘for he’s mortal afraid of what I know about him. It’s as safe as cheeses,’ says you, and off we put and out we took her—safe as cheeses, seein’ Penhill couldn’t touch us, weren’t we?”

“Oh, close up,” said Davis.

“I ain’t rubbin’ it in, I’m just tellin’ you. Nobody couldn’t touch us, and bold we put into Buenodiaz, reckonin’ to sell her on the hoof, cargo and all, and she worth ten thousand dollars if she was worth a bean, and then what happens? Pereira offers to buy her, cargo and all, and while you were dickerin’ with him, his daughter hands you that yarn about the _Douro_ havin’ a million dollars in bar gold on board of her, and what does we do?” Mr. Harman’s voice rose a tone or two. “We leaves ten thousand dollars’ worth of ship and cargo and rows over to this old tub, boards her, lifts the hook, cracks on sail and puts out to find nothin’ in them boxes but sand an’ pebbles—half a ton of beach, that’s what them darned turkey bustards had landed on us in swop for a schooner and cargo worth ten thousand dollars if she was piled, let alone ridin’ at her moorings in Buenodiaz harbour.”

“Well,” said Davis, “you needn’t shout it. You were in it as well as me. I guess we were both fools, but we haven’t come off empty-handed—we’ve got a ship under our feet, though we’re in a bad way, I’ll admit. Can’t you see the game that’s been played on us? This hooker is worth four thousand dollars any day in the week; they’ve let us run off with her, they set her as a trap for us, but they’ll want her back. If we put into any Chile port, we’ll be nabbed and put to work in the salt mines while these blighters will get their ship back.”

“Sure,” said Harman, “but we ain’t goin’ to.”

“How d’ye mean?”

“We ain’t goin’ to put into no Chile port.” Davis sighed, rose, went below and fetched up the top of one of the gold-boxes, then with a stump of pencil he drew a rough map of South America, indicating the appalling coast-line of Chile while the ingenuous Harman looked on open-mouthed and open-eyed.

“There you are,” said the map-maker, “a hundred thousand miles long and nothing but seaboard and there we are—nothing but the Horn to the south and Bolivia to the north, and the Bolivians are hand in fist with the Chilians, and, moreover, there’s sure to be gunboats out to look for us. That’s why I’m holding on west. We’ve got to get to sea and trust in Providence.”

“Well,” said the disgusted Harman, “I reckon if Providence is our stand-by and if it made Chile same’s your map shows her, we’re done for. There ain’t no sense in it; no, sir, there ain’t no sense in a country all foreshore stringed out like that, with scarce room for a bathin’ machine, and them yellow-bellied Bolivians at one end of it and the Horn at the other. It ain’t playin’ it fair on a man, it ain’t more nor less than a trap, that’s what I call it, it ain’t more nor less than——”

“Oh, shut up,” said Davis, “wasting your wind. We’re in it and we’ve got to get out. Now I’ve just given you our position: we’re running near due west into open sea, with only ten days’ grub, nothing to strike but Easter Island and the mail line from ’Frisco to Montevideo. We’ve the chance to pick up grub from a ship; failing that, either we’ll eat the Kanakas or the Kanakas will eat us. I’m not being funny. How do you take it? Shall us hold on or push down to Valparaiso and take our gruel?”

“What did you say those mines were?” asked Harman.

“Which mines?”

“Those mines the Chile blighters put chaps like us to work in.”

“Salt mines.”

Mr. Harman meditated for a moment. “Well,” said he at last, “I reckon I’ll take my chance on the Kanakas.”

The _Douro_ had nothing about her of any use for navigation but the rudder and the compass in the binnacle and the tell-tale compass fixed in the roof of the saloon. Pereira, when he had baited her as a trap for the unfortunates to run away with, had left nothing of value. He and the beauties working with him reckoned to get her back, no doubt, as Davis had indicated, but they knew that the fox sometimes manages to escape, carrying the trap with him, so they left nothing to grieve about except the hull, sticks, strings, canvas, bunk bedding and a few tin plates and cooking implements.

So she was sailing pretty blind with nothing to smell at but the North Pole, to use Davis’ words as he spat over the side at the leaping blue sea, while Harman, leaning beside him on the rail, concurred.

The one bright spot in the whole position was the seventeen hundred dollars or so of the _Araya’s_ ship money still safe in Davis’ pocket.

It proved its worth some six days later when, close on the San Francisco-Montevideo mail line, they flagged a big freighter and got provisions enough to last them for a month, then, “more feeling than feet under them,” to use Harman’s expression, they pushed along, protected by the gods of Marco Polo, and the early navigators, untrusting in a compass that might be untrustable through blazing days and nights of stars, smoking—they had got tobacco from the freighter—yarning, lazing and putting their faith in luck.

“Anyhow,” said the philosophic Harman, “we ain’t got no dam chronometer to be slippin’ cogs or goin’ wrong, nor no glass to be floppin’ about and frightenin’ a chap’s gizzard out of him with indications of cyclones and such, nor no charts to be thumbin’, nor no sextan’ to be squintin’ at the sun with. I tell you, Bud, I ain’t never felt freer than this. I reckon it’s the same with money. Come to think of it, money’s no catch, when all’s said and done with, what between banks bustin’ and sharks laying for a chap, not to speak of women and sich, and sore heads an’ brown tongues in the morning. Money buys trouble, that’s all I’ve ever seen of it, and it’s the same all through.”

“Well, that wasn’t your song on the beach at Papaleete,” said Davis, “and seems to me you weren’t backward in making a grab for that gold at Buenodiaz.”

“Maybe I wasn’t,” replied the other, and the conversation wilted while on the tepid wind from the dark-blue sea came the sound of the bow wash answered by the lazy creak of block and cordage.

No longer steering west, but northward towards the line, the _Douro_ brought them nights of more velvety darkness and more tremendous stars, seas more impossibly blue, till, one dawn that looked like a flock of red flamingoes escaping across an horizon of boiling gold, Bud, on the look-out, cried “Land!” and the great sun leaping up astern stripped the curtain away with a laugh and showed them coco-nut trees beyond a broken sea, and beyond the coco-nut trees a misty blue stillness incredibly wonderful and beautiful, till, in a flash, vagueness vanishing, a great lagoon blazed out, with the gulls circling above it, gold and rose and marble-flake white.

Before this miracle Harman stood unimpressed.

“We’d have been right into that darned thing in another hour if the sun hadn’t lifted,” said he, “unless maybe the noise of the reef would have fended us off—hark to it!”

They could hear it coming up against the wind, a long, low rumble like the sound of a far-off train, and now, as the _Douro_ drew in, they could see the foam spouting as the flood tide raced through the passage broad before them, and showing the vast harbour of the lagoon.

“The opening seems all right,” said Davis.

“Deep enough to float a battleship,” replied the other, “and no sign of rocks in it. Shove her in.”

The _Douro_ did not require any shoving. Driven by the wind and tide she came through the break like a gull, and as the great lagoon spread before them they could see the whole vast inner beach with one sweep of the eye.

It was an oval-shaped atoll, a pond, maybe, four miles from rim to rim at its broadest part, heavy here and there with groves of palm and jack-fruit trees, and showing a village of grass-roofed houses by the trees on the northern beach, where, on the blinding white sands, canoes were lying, and from which a boat was just putting off.

“They’ve sighted us,” said Davis.

“Seems so,” replied Harman, running forward to superintend the fellows who were getting the anchor ready, while the _Douro_, shaking the wind out of her sails, lost way, and the hook fell in ten-fathom water, the rumble of the chain coming back in faintest echoes from the painted shore.

The boat drew on. It was manned by Kanakas naked as Noah, and steered by a white man. A huge man with a broad and red and bulbous face, who came on board leg over rail without a word of greeting, gazed around him with a pair of protruding light-blue eyes, and, then, finding his voice, addressed Harman:

“Where the blazes have _you_ blown in from?” asked the stranger.

“Gentlemen,” said Clayton, for Clayton was his name, and they were all down below sampling a bottle of rum wangled by the genius of Harman out of the purser of the freighter, “Gentlemen, I’m not divin’ into your business. A ship in ballast without charts or chronometer, not knowing where she is, and not willin’ to say where she comes from, may be on the square and may be not.”

“We ain’t,” said Harman bluntly.

“That bein’ so,” said Clayton, quite unmoved, “we can deal without circumlocuting round the show, and get to the point, which is this: I’m wantin’ your ship.”

“Spread yourself,” said Davis, “and tip the bottle.”

Clayton obeyed.

“I’m willin’ to buy her of you,” said he, “lock, stock, barrel and Kanakas, no questions asked, no questions answered, only terms.”

“What’s your terms?” asked Harman.

Clayton raised his head. The wind had shifted, and, blowing through the open port, it brought with it a faint, awful, subtle, utterly indescribable perfume. Far above the vulgar world of stenches, almost psychic, it floated around them, while Harman spat and Davis considered the stranger attentively and anew.

“Oysters,” said Davis.

“Rotting on the outer beach,” said Clayton. “That’s my meaning and my terms. Gentlemen, if you ain’t plum’ fools, the smell of them oysters will be as a leadin’ light to bring you a fortune as big as my own.”

“Open the can,” said Harman.

“Which I will,” replied the other. “I’m straight’s a gun barrel I am, and I don’t want to beat round no bushes, and it’s just this way, gents. The hull of this lagoon is a virgin oyster patch full of virgin oysters, pearl breedin’ and sound, with no foot-and-mouth disease to them. Oloong-Javal is the Kanaka name of the atoll, and it’s on no charts. No, sir, it’s a sealed lagoon, and I struck it two years ago runnin’ from Sydney to Valparaiso, master of the _Sea Hawk_, with a Chink crew and a cargo of chow truck, put in here for water, spotted the oyster shop, and kept my head shut. Found orders at Valparaiso to ballast and get on to Callao, but I didn’t go to no Callao. I cut loose, fired the mate as a drunk and incapable, which he was, laid out the ship’s money on diving dresses and a pump, hawked back here, landed the equipment, and started in on the pearling.”

“And the Chinks?” asked Harman.

“Comin’ to them, they curled up and died of eating the lagoon fish in the poisonous season, couldn’t keep them off it—you know what Chinks are—and as for the hooker, why sinkin’ gets rid of a lot of trouble, and I took her outside the reef and drilled her.”

“Well, you are a one,” said Harman, shocked, yet intrigued, and vaguely admiring.

“I don’t say that I’m not,” replied Clayton. “I reckon we’re all in the same boat, and plain speaking is best among gentlemen, but cuttin’ all that, let’s get down to tin-tacks. I’ve been working a year and I haven’t skinned more than a patch of the beds. All the same, I’ve made my pile, and I want to enjoy it, I want to have my fun, and if you’re willing I’ll swap the location and the mining rights for this hooker and her crew. I want to get home, and home’s Kisai Island, up north in the Marshalls—and that’s what’s waitin’ for me and has been waitin’ for me three years.”

He took a photograph from his pocket and handed it to the others. It was the photo of a Kanaka girl under a palm tree on a blazing beach.

“Oh, Lord, a petticut!” said Harman in a doleful voice at this sight of ill omen. “A petticut!”

“There ain’t no petticoat about her,” said Clayton—as indeed there was not—“unless the missionaries have been gettin’ at her with their tomfoolery. Oti is her name, and there she sits waitin’ for me, which if she isn’t and has gone and got spliced, I reckon I’ll bust her husband. Well, gents, which is it to be for you, floatin’ round loose in this cockroach trap or a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of pearls to be took for the working?”

“And how are we to get away supposing we stick here and pearl?” asked Davis.

“That’s not for me to say,” replied Clayton. “Something will blow along most likely and take you off, or you can rig up a canoe and make for the Paumotus. I’m just offerin’ the deal, which many a man would jump at, more especial as this old ketch of yours seems to smell of lost property. I ain’t insinuating. I’m only hintin’.”

Davis swallowed the suggestion without sign of taking offence, then he said: “I’ll step on deck with my friend Harman and have a word with him. I won’t be more’n five minutes.”

On deck, Harman suddenly clapped himself on the head. “We’ve left that ballyhoo alone with the rum-bottle,” said he.

“Never mind,” said Davis, “we’re better dry. Now get your nose down to this business while I turn the handle. First of all we want to get rid of the ship; second, we want pearls, not for personal adornment, so to speak, but for profit; third, I believe the chap’s yarn, and, fourth, I vote we close on his offer. What you say?”