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.

“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.

However, we weren’t out to admire the view and we held on, at least Buck did, till we were near level, as far as I could make out, with Reeds and aiming for Red Rock, the wind holding well. We passed a Stockton boat and an old brig coming down from Benicia or somewhere up there. Then away ahead and coming along square as a haystack I sighted a Chinese junk. Buck let go the sheet and, lighting a lantern he’d brought with us, ran it up.

“What are you doing that for?” I asked him.

“Show you in a minute,” says Buck. “Give us the boat-hook.”

I handed it along and he told me to have the oars handy and then we sat whilst the junk came along at a six-knot clip, boosting the water and the great eyes in the bow of her showing in the moonlight as if they were staring at us, but not a soul to be seen or a light on deck.

She snored along to starboard of us not more than ten yards away, black as thunder against the moon, and she was showing us her stern when something went splash over her side, followed by something else as if two chaps had gone a dive, one after the other.

On top of that and almost at once a Holmes light was thrown over and went floating along, blazing and smoking and showing a man’s head squatting beside it.

“Man overboard,” I says.

“Row,” says Buck.

I turned my head as I rowed and saw the junk going along as if nothing had happened, and then I saw the thing in the water wasn’t a man’s head but a buoy. We closed with the buoy and Buck grabs it with the boat-hook and brings it on board. It had a rope tied to it and he hauls it in, hand over hand, till up came a bundle done round with sacking. He hooks it over the gunnel and into the boat.

“That’s done,” said he.

“It is,” said I.

I didn’t say a word more. We got the sail on her and put her on the starboard tack, heading straight for Angel Island.

Then we shoved through Racoon Straits. It was getting along for morning now and I felt stiff and beat, with no heart in me or tongue to tell Buck what I was thinking of him for dragging me into a business like this, only praying we might get out of it without being overhauled.

We had Tiburon lights to starboard now and a bit to port the riding light of the old Greyhound, when, all of a sudden, we see a light running along towards us and heard the noise of a propeller like a sewing machine in a hurry.

“Police boat,” says Buck.

My heart rose up and got jammed in my throat, and I hadn’t more than swallowed it down when they were alongside of us, and there was Buck sitting in the stern sheets with the bundle under his legs, and a chap in the police boat playing a lantern on him.

Then the chap laughed.

“Oh, it’s only you, Buck,” says he. “What are you out for this time of night?”

“Smuggling opium,” says Buck.

The chap laughed. He was Dennis, well known to us both, and he shut his lantern and gave us the news that he was after some Chink smugglers who had their quarters at Valego and, fearing their shop was to be raided, were due to run some stuff into Tiburon that night according to his information.

“Well, we’ve just come down from San Quenton,” says Buck, “and I didn’t sight anything, only a big junk that passed us, making as if she was going to Oakland—Good luck to you.”

Off they went and five minutes after we were tying up to the Greyhound.

We got the stuff on board, right down here where we are sitting now, and he undoes the sacking and there stood six cans of Canton opium, worth Lord knows what a can.

I got the whisky out and had a big drink before I could get my hind legs under me to go for him.

“Well,” I said, “this is a nice night’s work. S’pose Dennis hadn’t been in that police boat? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Don’t you see you’ve been trading on your good name, for if Dennis hadn’t believed in you, we’d both be in quad now with the shackles on us—And look what you’ve done to the Greyhound.”

“What have I done to her?” he fires.

“Done to her,” I says. “Why, you’ve made her disrespectable, that’s what you’ve done to her.”

“Lord, is this the first shady job she’s been in?” says he. “Why, look at those guns we run—what’s the difference?”

“Guns aren’t dope,” I says, “and whites aren’t Chinks. You’ve been hand in fist with Chinks over this, but there’s no use talking. It’s done.”

I knew it was the wife at the back of him. That was the cause of it all, so I didn’t rub it in any more. I remembered Newall’s words about her and the men she’d done in, and I saw as plain as paint that laundry of hers was only a blind for the Lord knows what. I just had another drink, and then I asked him what he was going to do with the stuff now he had it on board. He said he was going to stick it in the lazarette for a few days till things were quiet and then he’d get it ashore, can by can, and he’d do it all himself and not ask me to help him.

Then we got the stuff into the lazarette and had a snooze, and somewhere about noon next day he goes ashore, leaving me on board.

I couldn’t eat nor sit still, couldn’t do anything but smoke and walk the deck. I reckon when a man’s in trouble there’s nothing better than tobacco, it gives him better advice than all the friends in the world.

There I was with that stuff in the lazarette and who knew what moment some gink or another would give the show away and the police would be aboard. I wasn’t thinking of myself so much as Buck, and after him I was thinking of his wife and wishing I had her aboard to drown her.

But worry as much as I liked, I couldn’t see a way out; the only way was to break him off from her and get him away, for this was only the beginning of things and I knew it would end in perdition for him. She’d managed to get some power over him with those mulberry eyes of hers, and how to loose it was beyond me.

I slept aboard that night and somewhere getting along for morning, I sat up in my bunk with a plan full made in my head. I must have been thinking it out in my sleep, or maybe it was the Almighty put it into my mind, but it was a peach. Question was, could I work it?

First thing I did was to make a dive for the lazarette and get those opium tins out; getting them on deck I dumped them one by one, and every splash I said to myself: “There goes a bit of that damn woman.” It was just before sun up and there was nobody to see.

“Now,” I says to myself, “the old Greyhound’s a clean ship again and Buck will be a clean man before dark if I have to break the laundry up and her on top of it.”

Getting on for breakfast time I sent Taute ashore for some things and did the cooking myself, then, towards noon, I rowed ashore and took the ferry for ’Frisco.

I was as full of nerves as a barber’s cat. It wasn’t what I was going to do that rattled me, but the knowing that if I didn’t pull it off, Buck would be ruined for life.

When I got to the laundry I couldn’t go in. I walked up and down the street saying to myself: “Bill, you’ve gotta do it; no use hanging in irons, you’ve got old Buck to think of. Make yourself think what you’re going to say is true, now or never, in you go, give her the harpoon.”

In I goes. The head woman said they were upstairs, and up I went.

They’d finished their dinner and Buck was smoking a cigar, the woman was still at the table, peeling an apple.

“Buck,” I says, “it’s up, the police are after you. I’ve run all the way to tell you. Dennis has given me word and you’ve still time to save yourself if you’re quick.”

The woman gives a squeal and flings the apple on the table.

“Great Scott!” says Buck.

Then I turns on his wife and gives her the length of my tongue for leading him into the business, and she ups and gives me the lie, saying she had nothing to do with it, winking at him to back her, which the fool did, but so half-hearted you could see he wasn’t telling the truth.

“Well,” I said, “it doesn’t matter, the question is now to get him out of ’Frisco. Dennis has given me three hours to get the Greyhound out with him on board her and save him from the penitentiary. Has he any money?”

“I’ve got his money,” says she. “Buck, stir yourself,” she says. “I’ll pack a bag for you and here’s the notes you give me to keep.” She goes to the safe and unlocks it and takes out a bundle done up in brown paper, and he stuffs it in his pocket, and she packs his bag and off I drags him.

Out in the street I told him to wait a minute, and ran back, and there she was in the room locking the safe.

“I ought to have told you,” said I, “they’re after you too; clear out of ’Frisco, git by the next train or they’ll have you.”

“Who’s give me away?” she cries.

“The Chinks,” says I; and at that she let a yelp out of her, and falls on the sofa in a dead faint. I opened the safe and there I sees a parcel the identical of the one she’d given Buck, and I put it in my pocket after a squint at the contents. Then I put her feet up, and lit out to where Buck was waiting for me in the street, and catching him by the arm I dragged him along down to the wharves where Taute was waiting with the boat. We got over to the Greyhound, and then the three of us set to work to get that schooner out of the bay, a six men’s job, but we done it.

All the time we were handling her and getting across the bar I was thinking hard enough to split my head open. Outside I came to a conclusion.

“Buck,” I said, “you’re free of her now.”

“Who?” says he.

“Your wife,” says I.

Then I told him all I’d done. I thought he’d have knifed me. He was for putting back right away till I played my last card. I was only working on suspicion but I was right.

“Put your hand in your pocket,” I said, “and pull out that bundle of notes your wife gave you. If the tally is right, I’ll go straight back with you and apologise to her.”

He pulls out the parcel and opens it. It was full of bits of newspaper and old washing bills. Then I pulls out the other parcel I’d nicked and there were his notes.

Brent relit his pipe.

“He never saw her again,” said Brent. “When we put back to ’Frisco, the laundry was shut and she gone. He didn’t want to see her either. The old Greyhound was enough for him after his experience of women—and now she’s going too.”

We sat for a while in silence and tobacco smoke, then Brent looked up. The coughing and churning of a tug came through the open skylight and the hot hazy atmosphere of the cabin.

“That’s them,” said Brent.

We came on deck. Then we climbed on to the wharf whilst Scott’s men went aboard, true undertakers’ assistants, callous, jovial, red-faced, gin-breathing. We watched the tow rope passed and the mooring ropes cast off, the tow rope tighten and the bowsprit of the Greyhound turning for the last time from land. We watched the smashed-up water of the harbour streaming like a millrace under the bat-bat-bat of the tug paddles and the stern of the Greyhound with the faded old lettering turned towards a wharf for the last time.

As the vision faded, Brent heaved a deep sigh, thinking maybe of his partner and old times.

“Well,” he said, turning away, “that’s the end of her. What gets me is that the other one may be alive and kicking her heels and enjoying herself—no knowing, it’s those sort that live longest, seems to me.”