Part 32

“I say fight back! It may be their money--somebody’s money--but what good did it do them or anybody else until you came here with your strength and your courage and your brains and got it up from the bottom of the ocean? I don’t know what the law is about such things--I don’t care. I’ve heard you and father talk, but I only know that often in this life law is one thing and justice is another.”

“There are the laws of salvage,” I told her. “We could turn this money over and wait for the courts to decide. But I’m afraid of what may happen if we do that. There’s that renegade Keedy with his lies; there are the customs men of Mexico, and all that mess of international law to complicate things. Keedy can claim partnership; the shippers can claim shares, I suppose; this one and that one can dip in their fingers; and lawyers can tie the matter up; and God only knows when it will all be untied so that we can get what we have honestly earned. We may have to fight for our liberty, for men are crazy enough to try to make us out thieves, providing they can get hold of much money by lies and injustice. I have been pounding it all out in my poor head, and I can’t seem to believe that the law is going to give us what we ought to have. For, you see, this thing isn’t like anything else that has ever happened.”

“I say fight!” she insisted, her eyes alight, her cheeks flaming under the tan. “You have fought the ocean for their sakes as well as your own--and you have won. Keep on fighting! Plan something, do something--get into some position where they will have to come to you and beg for what’s theirs. You have earned the right to make them beg. And you know you have!”

Yes, I did know it; and on that belief I had based my idea which had served for my encouragement. Her advice and her woman’s spirit in the matter heartened me. She had acted like the lady of the castle of whom I had read. She brought to me my helmet and shield, and was sending me out to battle as a brave woman should. I started to tell her more about my idea--but we were interrupted.

There was a queer noise in the direction of the ladder which led to the lower deck. It was such a prodigious puffing and wheezing and grunting that anybody might suppose that we were going to receive a visit from a hippopotamus. The Snohomish Glutton, the cook of the _Zizania_, appeared to us. I had not laid eyes on that individual for weeks. He stuck in his pantry like a hermit in a cell, reveling in the steam of food, stuffing himself even while he was cooking for others. He rolled rather than walked across the deck, and stood before us, propping up the rolls of fat which shuttered his little eyes.

“I don’t know how much there is or where you’re keeping it,” he blurted, without preface, in his tin-whistle voice. “I don’t ask questions--I stay in my pantry and mind my business. But I serve the niggers in the port alley and the whites in the starboard alley, and I hear both sides. But there’s only one side now. They said that the monkey’s tail started the row. But they’ve forgotten the row. Gold will make men forget ’most anything. They’ve got together at last. They are going to grab for it. They thought I haven’t been hearing because my eyes were shut and I seemed to be asleep.”

“What do you mean, my man?” I demanded.

“I mean that you can play checkers on that checkerboard crew now, sir. It has settled into a solid board--white and black mixed. The Russian Finn is captain. He killed my cat. I have said I would get even with him. He is captain, and they are going to drop on to that gold and run away.”

“They have planned a mutiny?”

“Mutiny and all the side dishes that go with it. I have heard. I wasn’t asleep when they thought I was. I’ve got to go back. I have duff in the pot.”

He backed to the ladder and let himself down, rung by rung, grunting more terrifically than before.

The girl leaped to her feet. She held her clenched fists above her head. Her white teeth showed beneath the crimson of her parted lips. She drove her hands down at her sides.

“Oh!” she had gasped, when her hands were above her head. When she drove them down her woman’s soul spoke its anger and horror. “Damn the name of gold!” she cried; and I would not have indorsed a milder phrase even from her.

For weeks my head had been full of seething particles of schemes relating to my central idea. I reckon it needed a shock--needed the desperate occasion of instant action--to make those particles cohere into resolve. For a moment I was stunned by the prospect of this new danger; and then a course of action came to me in a flash of inspiration--it was the result of all the thinking I had been doing, without making up my mind to act.

I hobbled to find Captain Holstrom in his state-room. I had to push him back when he had heard a dozen words of what I had reported. He had grabbed his pistols and was rushing to kill off a few prospective mutineers as an example to the others.

“You have got to do what I advise in this matter, Captain. I’ve been making plans. We’ve got not only this crew to consider, but Keedy and those he is bringing down here. He is coming. We may as well make up our minds to that. I want you to go down on the main deck as quickly as you can and order the crew to get out planks and start in making strong boxes. Privately, you and I will overhaul the junk for scrap iron, for chains and cable. Get after the men. Hustle them. Make it a hurry-up job. Busy men won’t have time to talk mutiny. And say to one of the mates, when you are giving off orders, that you are going to pack the treasure into boxes suitable for handling. Say that loud enough so that all the men will hear.”

“I’ll be joheifered if I don’t believe I’ve got to handle a lunatic as well as a mutiny,” flamed Captain Holstrom. “Are you advising me to pack up that gold so that it will be easy lugging for the crew?”

“As soon as they believe that it is going to be packed so as to be easy lugging there’ll be no mutiny until those boxes have been made. You’ve got to do as I say. You ought to have had your lesson by this time that I know what I’m talking about.”

He shuttled his eyes when I looked at him. He was remembering those past matters in which he had made a fool of himself in resisting me. I was willing to explain my plan to him, for I was not trying to humiliate Captain Holstrom. But just then I had a feeling that every moment counted. One instant more and I knew what the pricking of my mental thumbs had meant. Mate Number-two Jones came clattering along the deck from below. He shoved a red and greatly troubled face in at the door.

“Get your guns, Cap’n Holstrom,” he panted. “They’re grumbling and mumbling. It means mutiny.”

“Take your guns with you, if you like,” I told the captain. “But go down there as cool as you can. Give off your orders as if you didn’t notice anything. And be sure to throw out that hint about why you want the boxes made. This is no time to bull this game of ours.”

Captain Holstrom was no fool, and he knew when a man was in dead earnest. I pushed him and he went. I’ll have to confess that he qualified as a good actor when he arrived on the main deck.

I was looking down from the bridge, and I saw the men of the crew exchange winks and grins behind the captain’s back.

The model crew of the crack ship in all the world could not have shown such willing obedience. They went to their work on the rush. Saws rasped and hammers banged. There was clattering of iron and hum of industry.

Captain Holstrom left the work in charge of his mates, and came back to his state-room to resume his watch over the treasure. I closeted myself with him.

“Now, we’ll get down to the bed-rock of the proposition, Captain Holstrom. We have agreed--you and I--that Keedy is about due here. We don’t know who will come with him. But we can be mighty sure that they’ll be no friends of ours. We’d be playing the parts of idiots to keep that gold on board the _Zizania_. But there isn’t a harbor nearer than Acapulco where we can land it; we can’t lug it ashore on the open coast through the breakers; we can’t dodge all around the Pacific Ocean with it. Right now, there’s another complication besides Keedy and his crowd. We have still more desperate thieves right here with us. The mates and Shank are safe. To-night the five of us will get busy, pack that gold in the strong boxes, and drop it overboard.”

“Great guns!” groaned the captain. “I said you was crazy, and now I’m sure of it. Dig it all up, and then throw it away again! No, let’s not put it in the boxes. Let’s hoot and holler and cavort around the deck and heave it overboard, one ingot at a time, so as to see who can make the biggest splash. Come on--let’s have fun!” he raved.

“I am far from being crazy, Captain Holstrom,” I informed him, giving him the hard eye so steadily that he blinked. “To each box we’ll hitch chain long enough to reach to the surface. That chain will have rope cable--say ten feet of it--hitched to the end, and the rope will be buoyed to a small spar. The box and all the chain will lie on bottom. The small spar with its rope cable will swim well under the surface of the water. In case we want to raise the box we can catch the rope and spar with a rake, or else drag for it with a chain between two boats.”

“I hate to see that gold go under water again,” mourned Captain Holstrom.

“It’s that or stand by and see mutineers lug it off or lawyers divide it.”

He writhed like a speared fish when he pondered on the alternatives. I went out on deck and left him to think, confident that his slow mind would finally swing to my way of making the best of a bad matter.

The checker-board crew was at work in a real frenzy of effort. I have no doubt that each man secretly told himself that he was building his own box--and he was putting his best work into his treasure-carrier.

The summer evening was long and the crew labored on after their supper. According to my best judgment, when darkness shut down on their labors there were boxes enough for our purpose. The men went to their rest on the berth-deck in the forepeak of the steamer. Captain Holstrom had remarked, casually, in their hearing, that he would wait till next day before packing the ingots. From my post on the bridge, though the dusk had deepened, I caught a cheerful wink or two between man and man, and they went below looking like cats who had been promised a full meal of canaries.

In order to encourage general peace and confidence, the mates allowed the usual deck watch to go below and sleep, and the lazy sailors were only too glad to do so.

When they were snoring in satisfactory chorus, Captain Holstrom slid their hatch over and barred it so as to guard against a surprise by peepers. Before two bells after midnight the last box of our gold had gone gurgling down over the taffrail. The last spar winked out of sight under the surge.

“It’s gone!” groaned Captain Holstrom.

“Thank God, it has!” said I, and felt the girl’s little hand snuggle comfortingly into my unsightly fist.

XXXVI--THE TERROR FROM THE NORTH

THE next morning Captain Holstrom ordered the checker-board crew assembled on the main deck, forward. He appeared on the bridge and leaned over the rail like a candidate ready to make a stump speech. But, unlike a candidate, he had two revolvers strapped to his waist and in plain sight.

“I have a few words to say to you critters down there,” he began. “I know all about what you have been planning to do. I have watched you peeking and spying around this morning for them boxes. Well, you won’t find them. Them boxes are a good way off.” He pointed a stubby finger down at the Russian Finn. “You come up here!” he commanded. The Finn turned pale and shook his head.

“You come up here and I’ll promise that you won’t be hurt. I want you to take back a report to that gang of yours. If you don’t obey a master’s orders and come up here,” continued the captain, pulling a gun, “it will be mutiny--and I know how to deal with mutiny. I’ll shoot you where you stand.”

After a little hesitation the Finn climbed the ladder. The captain led him into the wheel-house, into all the state-rooms, and took him on a genera! tour of inspection of the upper deck.

“Now you can see with your own eyes that there isn’t any gold up here to mutiny about. You go back and tell that gang what you have seen--or, rather, what you didn’t see.” He pushed the Finn to the ladder.

“I give you all liberty to hunt over the lower part of the steamer from forepeak to rudder,” declared the captain over the rail. “You can help yourselves to all the gold you find. But I can tell you that there ain’t an ounce aboard here. That gold is stored where you can’t get it.” He swept his hand in a gesture which embraced the horizon. “If you act like men from now on until this cruise is over, you’ll be paid like lords. If you hanker for mutiny, start in and mutiny. Them who live through it will never get a cent; them who are killed can’t use gold where they will fetch up; it will be too hot to handle!” The men fell to muttering among themselves, but I could see that they had been cowed. The report of the leader made them still more melancholy. They divided at last--the blacks from the whites--and went about their tasks.

“I want to say, Sidney, that you showed good judgment,” said the captain, as he went to his state-room. “But I don’t feel like giving three cheers--not while that gold is back on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.”

Well, there was gold to the value of about a million yonder on the bottom in that wreck of the _Golden Gate_, but I had no appetite for more gold just then. I knew that I had reached the limit of my strength and courage. I had won more than two millions from the greed of that miserly ocean, and had given it back again in order to make another fight against the greed of men.

I sat on deck and endured the pains of my tortured body, and waited for the inevitable when it should come down over the horizon from the north. Half a dozen anxious days dragged past--and then it came!

A trail of blacksmoke signaled it--they were using lots of coal and were in a hurry, as that banner of black indicated. Framed in Captain Holstrom’s long telescope, it took form as a big ocean tug. She seemed to leap angrily across the sea as the surges rolled under her, and the bows churned up white yeast.

There was no hesitation in the manner in which she came on. She bore down on us with a speed which seemed to say, “Here we come to take our own!”

We counted at least a score of men aboard, using our glass. And when the tug slowed off our quarter we saw that most of the men held rifles in the hook of their arms.

“It’s what I have been expecting,” I told the captain. “They have come down here proposing to treat us as pirates. How would you feel right now with gold aboard here?”

Captain Holstrom wagged his head mournfully, and seemed to lack words with which to express his feelings.

“We are going to make fast to you,” bawled a man, with a voice like a fog-horn. “Mind how you perform.”

That was a reckless performance even for a tug in that sea, but they rigged a row of fenders and put her alongside with much clanging of bell. A dozen men leaped on board the _Zizania_. Some were guards who carried rifles. There were three men who seemed of importance. I spied Marcena Keedy on the upper deck of the tug, holding to the funnel stays. He did not venture to come on board us with the others.

“Let them do the talking,” I whispered to Captain Holstrom as the three were climbing the ladder. “Just stand on your dignity as master of this steamer.” And the captain did so in a way that highly satisfied me. He chewed a toothpick and displayed much indifference.

“I bid you welcome, gents!” he informed them, stiffly. “And you can see that I ain’t looking for trouble--otherwise I might have a few words to say about your way of boarding this steamer. If it’s ignorance of rules and etiquette, I’ll overlook it.”

“It’s business, Captain Holstrom,” snapped the spokesman, a chap who wore a hard hat and looked as though he had just closed a desk in an office. “We are from San Francisco, and represent the underwriters in the matter of the _Golden Gate_.”

“Step into the wheel-house--it’s my office,” stated the captain. He pointed to the muzzle of the first rifle, rising over the edge of the upper deck. “If those fellows come up here I shall consider it an insult to me as a peaceful man and master of this vessel.”

The man hesitated.

“We’re no pirates,” remarked Captain Holstrom.

The man gave orders to the gunmen to remain below.

“If you are not pirates,” he said, when we were assembled in the wheel-house, “you can show it by turning over to us the gold you’ve dug out of the wreck over yonder.”

The spokesman was a rather excitable fellow. He began to tap his finger on the captain’s breast. He showed documents with seals and all the other law-shark trimmings.

“You have no right to come here and operate. Have you got attorney’s powers? Have you got anything in the way of permits? No, you haven’t. That gold belongs to other people. Give it up and save trouble.”

Captain Holstrom threw a sort of helpless look at me, stifling some emotion. I realized that he was at the end of his dignity and that in about ten seconds he would begin to use his talents in the line of profanity.

“Excuse me if I say a word here,” I broke in. “I am a partner in this enterprise.”

“You’re using a polite word for this kind of a job,” sneered the man.

“You may represent the underwriters,” I said, “but to all intents and purposes the underwriters had abandoned the treasure.”

“We shall take our gold, my friend!”

“Rights or no rights?”

“You have made it a grab game, and we’re in on the grab!” He was mighty overbearing and offensive. Law was behind him, a fortune was concerned, and he was showing the usual spirit of the greedy world.

“You have full powers in this matter so far as the underwriters are concerned, have you?” I asked.

“Absolute.” He waved his papers under my nose. “Issued due and regular by the court and the United States.”

“But don’t you realize that you are not in the United States, sir?”

“There’s got to be more or less dog eat dog in this game. We happen to have the cards. If you don’t hand over that gold, we shall put a crew on board this steamer, guard it with rifles, and set this boat into waters where we have jurisdiction. I’ll be frank to say that then we can beat you in court in the lying game, because we start with law behind us, and you’re handicapped. I say this to show you that you’d better fork over.”

I was holding my temper. For the sake of my own conscience in this affair, I wanted the other side to lay all their cards on the table; in their insolence and confidence, they seemed inclined to do so, for their plain intent was to intimidate us.

“What do we get out of it for ourselves?” I inquired, meekly.

“Remember that you came down here on the sly, thinking you were going to get away with the whole thing. It hasn’t been your fault that you haven’t. I think that we can promise to keep you out of the penitentiary if you act sensible. I’m not making any rash promises.”

There we had it! Contemptuous disregard of all our rights because they thought they had the upper hand on us!

I have hinted before this that men become monsters in the presence of much gold. From my own experience I knew the insanity which gold stirs in a man. I had foreseen some such attitude as this on the part of the men who would come to claim the treasure. A grab game, eh? And success to the best man!

I looked at that fellow--at his white hands and his flabbiness--a man who had never done an honest day’s labor with grit and muscles. He had given me his code. I told him as much.

“And I thank you for giving me that code,” I went on.

I stripped the bandages off my hands. I tore the wrappings off my feet. I showed them sights which made their faces turn white. I ripped the shirt from my back and exhibited that spectacle of ragged flesh.

“You have given me your code, I say! It’s going to be a grab game. All right! Have it your way. Go hunt this steamer from top to bottom. You’re welcome! Prove that we have any of your damned gold! Go ahead!”

I hobbled out of the wheel-house and went into my state-room, and they began to hunt the _Zizania_ over. And I heard what Captain Holstrom said to them after they had finished.

“Now, gents, you have made sure that there’s nothing on my _Zizania_ that belongs to you. You’re aboard here without any rights. I just want to remark that I’ll give you five minutes to get aboard your own boat and cast off, and stay cast off’m here, yourselves. I’ve got some men who can fight--and I’ve got a two-pounder in my junk-heap. I’ll put a ball through that tug that will disturb her innards seriously.”

They went silently and grudgingly--but they went. I enjoyed the expression on Marcena Keedy’s face as the tug backed off. I came out on the upper deck and gloated down on him. They anchored their craft a little distance from us, and I could readily imagine the council of war that started among them as soon as their mud-hook bit the holding-ground.

A boat put off from the tug next day, and the three important-looking men were in it. But Captain Holstrom warned them away from us. The spokesman shouted his message. He was angry, and he still dealt in threats. In order to impress upon those gentlemen that we were not at all interested in their threats, the captain and I turned our backs on them, and after a time they bawled themselves out of breath and returned to the tug.

They kept up those tactics for most of a week. They were certainly stubborn and insolent persons, and they were fighting for big money. But the more they raved and threatened, the more at peace with myself and my conscience I felt. We were fighting for our own now, and they had established the code.

Then at last the boat came with a white flag. The spokesman politely stated that they had come to talk some business in private, and begged to be allowed to come on board.

Miss Kama was with me on deck when they climbed up the ladder. She had resumed her woman’s garb, and they stared at her in frank astonishment and admiration. She did look particularly sweet, her little cap on her curls, her sweater displaying her winsome curves of beauty.

She seemed to astonish them, I say. The next moment she astonished _me_. She walked into the wheel-house by my side, and was the first to speak.

“Gentlemen,” she said to the three, “you have seen with your own eyes how this poor boy has suffered. You can’t see how I have suffered as I have watched him do what he has done, but the marks are on my soul, I know. There is law in the world, and all that, and men are too apt to get angry in law when there is much money concerned. Can’t you all keep from being angry to-day, and be wise, and decide on what is right?”

They looked at one another and the spokesman stammered something about being over there to have a heart-to-heart talk.

“May I not stay?” she asked, wistfully. “I won’t say a word to bother you--I won’t move unless you start to quarrel--and then I’ll only remind you that there’s a lady present.” The queer little smile she gave them started the grins on their faces. The ice was broken.

Those men were human once more. The girl had given the magic touch to the conference.

We had not been getting anywhere at all, in the past, and we woke up and realized it as we stood there with the girl’s presence toning us down. It had been man’s bluff and bluster; they had arrived ready mad and I felt that I knew what ailed them outside of the mere money part of the thing.