Captain Brent came down to the Karolin as she was lying by Circular Wharf, on some business connected with some gadget or another he was trying to sell on commission. Some patent dodge in connection with a main sheet buffer, I think it was—anyhow, Dolbrush, the owner and master of the Karolin, though an old friend, refused to speculate; the thing to his mind “wasn’t no use to him,” and he said so without offence to the salesman.

Brent really carried on this sort of business more for amusement than profit; he had retired from the sea with enough to live on, and it gave him something to do of a morning, pottering round the wharves, boarding ships and boring master mariners, mostly known to him, with plans and specifications of all sorts of labour and life saving devices—he worked for Harvey and Matheson—which they might use or recommend to owners.

He had been, in his time, the finest schooner captain that ever sailed out of Sydney Harbour, a vast man, weather-beaten and indestructible-looking as the Solander Rock, slow of speech but full of knowledge, and, once started on a story, unstoppable unless by an earthquake. He had been partner with Slane, Buck Slane of the Paramatta business; he was Slane’s Boswell, and start him on any subject he was pretty sure to fetch up on Slane. He and Slane had made three or four fortunes between them and lost them.

Putting the main sheet buffer in his pocket, so to speak, he accepted a cigar, and the conversation moved to other matters till it struck Chinks—Chinks and their ways, clean and unclean, and their extraordinary methods of money-making; sham pearls, faked birds——

“There’s nothing the Almighty’s ever made that a Chink won’t make money out of,” said Dolbrush. “Give ’m a worked-out mine or an old tomato tin and he’ll do something with it—and as for gratitude——”

“I’ll tell you something about that,” cut in Brent. “I’ve been to school with them, there’s nothing about them you can tell me right from Chow coffins to imitation chutney. Why me and Slane hit up against them in our first traverse and that was forty years ago. Sixty-one I was yesterday and I was twenty-one when I fell in with Buck. It don’t seem more than yesterday. We’d put in to ’Frisco Bay and were lying at Long Wharf, foot of Third and Fourth Streets. Buck was Irish, as you’ll remember, a fine strapping chap in those days, with blue eyes and black hair, and we’d come from Liverpool round the Horn and we didn’t want to see the ocean again for a fortnight, I tell you. Buck had skipped from Tralee or somewhere or another, and he had forty pounds in his pocket, maybe he’d got it from robbing a bank or something, I never asked, but there it was, and no sooner was the old hooker tied up than he proposed we’d skip, him and me, and try our luck ashore. I hadn’t a magg, but he said he had enough for both, that was Buck all over, and we skipped, never bothering about our dunnage.

“Buck had an uncle in ’Frisco, well to do and a big man in Ward politics. O’Brien was his name if I remember right, and he was reckoned to be worth over a hundred thousand pounds, so Buck said, but he fixed to let him lie, not being a cadger; and we got a room with a widow woman who kept lodgers in Tallis Street and set out to beat up the town and see the sights. There were sights to be seen in ’Frisco, those days, more especial round the dock sides, and the place was all traps, the crimps were getting from fifty to seventy dollars a head for able seamen, and most of the bars and such places were hand in fist with them, but we steered clear of all that, not being given to drink, and got home early and sober with our money safe and our heads straight.

“We’d come to the conclusion that ’Frisco was a bit too crowded for us, and we fixed to try for the Islands. Those days there was money out there. Why, in those days the guano deposits hadn’t been spotted on Sophia Island, and there it was lying, a fortune shouting to be took; copra was beginning to bud, and blackbirding was having the time of its life; China was eating all the sharks’ fins and bÊche de mer she could stuff, and then you had the shell lagoons, shell and pearl. ’Frisco was crazy over them, and we heard yarns of chaps turned millionaires in a night by striking an atoll and ripping the floor out. They were true yarns. In those days the Admiralty charts and the Pacific Directory were years behind the times, and there were islands being struck time and again that had never been heard of before.

“We tried round the wharves for a likely ship, but from Long Wharf to Meiggs’ there was nothing but grain carriers cleaning their bilges and Oregon timber schooners unloading pine.

“One day, Buck, who’d been out up town by himself, came home halooing. ‘Mate,’ says he, ‘our fortunes are made.’ Then he gave his yarn. He’d been poking round by China Town when, coming along a street—Alta Street it was—he saw a bunch of Chinks at a corner, two young chaps and an old father Abraham of a Chink with horn spectacles on him. They were standing on the loaf when Buck sighted them, talking, and then they began quarrelling, and the two young chaps set on father Abraham and began pulling him about and kicking him, till Buck sent them flying and rescued the old chap, who was near done in. Then he helped him home. Fong Yen was his name, and he had a little hole of a bird shop just inside China Town by a Chow restaurant. He was real bad, knocked about by those brutes, and full of gratitude; he offered Buck his pick of the birds, but Buck was no bird fancier. Then says Fong: ‘I’ll give you something better than birds,’ and he goes to a drawer in a lacquer box and hunts about and finds a bit of paper. ‘It was given me by my son,’ says he, ‘to keep. He was killed in the riots down at the docks last month; you have been as good as a son to me, take it, it’s a fortune.’ Then he explained. It was the latitude and longitude of a virgin shell island written down by his son who’d been a sailor on one of the Chinese bÊche de mer boats. The boat was wrecked and all hands lost with the exception of this chap, who had kept the secret and had been saving up money to go and skin the island when he was killed. Poor old Fong couldn’t work the thing himself; he had no relations, and to give or sell that paper to any of the China Town lot would simply be getting his throat cut, maybe, to keep his head shut on the matter and get the purchase money back. He was quite straight with Buck on this, and told him he was giving him something that was no use to himself now his son was dead, but if Buck chose to give him a few dollars to buy opium with, he wouldn’t be above taking it. Buck takes out his roll and peels off two ten-dollar bills and promises him a pull out of the profits.

“Buck showed me the paper. There was nothing on it but the latitude and longitude of the place and a spot that looked to me like a blood mark. We got hold of a chart from a ship master we’d chummed in with and found the position north-east of Clermont Tonnerre in the Low Archipelago. I said to Buck, ‘It’s all very well—but how are we going to get there? It’s about as much use to us as to the Chink. S’pose we pull some guy in to put up the dollars for a ship, do you think he won’t want the profits? If I know anything of ’Frisco, he’ll want our skins as well. That old Chink was on the right side of the fence, he knew ’Frisco and knew he hadn’t a dog’s chance of getting a cent out of it.’ Buck hears me out, then he says, ‘Do you suppose,’ he says, ‘that when I paid out good money for this thing I had no idea how to work it, do you suppose I have no man to back me?’

“‘Who’s your man?’ says I.

“‘My uncle,’ says he.

“I’d clean forgot the rich uncle. Then I began to see that Buck wasn’t such a fool as I thought him. I knew the way the Irish stick together, and old Pat O’Brien being one of the biggest bugs in the town I began to see the light, as the parsons say, and Buck asking me to go with him that night and lay for the old chap, I agreed.

“Pat lived on Nobs Hill, and we fixed nine o’clock as the time to call on him, reckoning he’d be in then and maybe in a good humour after his dinner. We easy found the place, for everyone knew Pat, but the size of it put us off, till Buck took courage at last and pushed the bell.

“A darkie in a white shirt front opened and showed us across a big hall into a room all hung with pictures, and there we sat shuffling our feet till the door opened again and in come Pat, a little old, bald-headed chap in slippers with the butt of a cigar stuck up in the corner of his mouth, more like Mr. Jiggs in the comic papers than anyone else I’ve seen.

“He never said a word whilst Buck gave his credentials. Then:

“‘You’re Mary’s son,’ said he. ‘You’ve got her eyes. How long have you been in this town?’

“‘A fortnight,’ says the other.

“‘Why didn’t you call before?’ asks Pat.

“‘Didn’t like to,’ said Buck. ‘I was hard up and I didn’t want to cadge on you.’

“‘Why did you call to-night?’ he asks.

“Buck tells him and shows the paper. Pat ordered in cigars—we weren’t having drinks—then he put on a pair of old spectacles and looks at the paper back and front.

“Buck puts him wise on the business, and when the old man had tumbled to it, he asked Buck right out whether he was crazy to think that a Chink would give away an oyster shell let alone a shell lagoon, but when he heard the facts of the matter, and how Buck had risked being knifed to save Fong being kicked to death, he came round a bit in his opinions.

“‘Maybe I’m wrong,’ he says, ‘and here’s a spot of blood on the paper. You haven’t noticed that, have you? Looks as if the thing had been through the wars. Well, leave it with me for the night to sleep on and call again in the morning, and now let’s talk about the old country.’

“Then the old man sticks the paper in a drawer and begins to put Buck through his paces. Pat hadn’t been in Tralee for forty years, but there wasn’t a street he’d forgotten or a name, and he took Buck through that town by the scruff of his neck, cross-questioning him about the shops and the people and the places, and as he sat there with his old monkey face screwed up and his eyes like steel gimlets boring holes in us, I began to understand how he’d come to be a millionaire; then he got on family matters, and by the end of the talk he’d come to understand that Buck was his nephew all right and we lit, promising to call on him in the morning.

“‘Our fortunes are made,’ says Buck.

“‘Wait a bit,’ says I.

“Next morning we were on the doorstep to the tick and the darkie showed us in.

“‘Well, boys,’ says Pat, coming into the room dressed to go out, with a plug hat stuck on the back of his head and the butt of another cigar in the corner of his mouth. ‘Well, boys,’ says he, ‘you’re up to time and I’m waiting to meet you on this proposition; it’s not that I want to be into it,’ he says, ‘but for the sake of me sister Mary—God rest her soul—I’m going to give you a chance in life. I’m a bit in the shipping way myself, and I’ve got a schooner lying off Tiburon waiting for cargo, and I’ll give you the use of her to run down to the Islands, and,’ says he, ‘if you get the better of that Chink I’ll give you the schooner for keeps.’

“‘What do you mean by getting the better of him?’ asks Buck.

“‘Well,’ says Pat, ‘it’s in my mind, thinking things over, that he’s maybe got the better of you. Maybe I’m wrong—but there it is, and how do you like the proposition?’

“We liked it all right, but he hadn’t finished and goes on:

“‘Whilst you’re on the job,’ he says, ‘you can take a cargo for me down to Malaka to Sanderson, a chap I deal with, and bring back a cargo of copra; you won’t want any cargo space for pearls, and Malaka is on your way there or back.’

“We didn’t mind that and said so.

“I’d told Pat I was pretty well up in navigation, and we all starts out together to look at the schooner, taking the ferry boat over to Tiburon and Pat giving us his ideas as we went.

“Us two would be the afterguard, with five or six Kanakas for crew.

“The Greyhound was the name of the schooner, and she was lying a bit out from the wharf, and Pat has the hellnation of a fight with a waterman as to the fare for rowing us off and back, beats him down from two dollars to one dollar fifty, and asked Buck to pay as he hadn’t any change.

“I was thinking it was easy to see how Pat had become a millionaire till we stepped on the deck of the Greyhound, and then I had no time to think of anything but the dirt. It wasn’t dirt you could sweep off her, it was ground in, if you get me; all the deck-bears and holystones from here to Hoboken wouldn’t have made those decks look respectable; it was like a woman with a bad complexion, even skinning would be no use.

“‘She’s been in the oil business,’ says Pat.

“‘I can smell it,’ says I, and we goes below after prodding the sticks and taking notice of the condition of the standing rigging. Down below it was dirtier, and the smell rose up like a fist and punched us in the nose. I don’t know if you’ve ever been below decks in one of them old Island schooners fitted with Honolulu cockroaches, and the effulgences of generations of buck Kanakas and Chinks, to say nothing of mixed cargoes—sort of dark brown smell—but we weren’t out to grumble, and Pat having showed us over, we all went ashore and put back for ’Frisco, Buck paying the fare.

“We parted from Pat on the landing stage, and next morning the Greyhound was brought over to Long Wharf for her cargo. It took a fortnight getting the stuff aboard and hiring the Kanakas. Pat gave us a diving dress and pump that could be rigged in any boat; he borrowed them, or got them somewhere cheap, and then he gave us his blessing and twenty dollars for ship’s money, and we signed on, me as master, Buck as mate—seeing I was the navigator at a dollar a month, nominal pay—and six Kanakas as hands.

“Day before we started we were sitting in the cabin going over the list of stores when a long, thin chap by name of Gadgett came on board. He was a ship’s chandler and when he found no orders he opened out about Pat, not knowing he was Buck’s uncle, asking us what screws we were getting and didn’t we know the Greyhound was condemned, or ought to be, but that she was certain to be insured for twice her value, and then he lit.

“When he’d gone I said to Buck: ‘Look here,’ I said, ‘I’m not grumbling, but it seems to me your uncle doesn’t stand to lose over this game. He’s got a captain and first officer for nothing. He’s dead certain we’re on a mug’s game, and he’s used our cupidity after pearls so’s to make us work for him, and he not paying us a jitney.’

“‘How do you make that out?’ he asks.

“‘Well,’ I said, ‘look at him. I reckon, without disrespect to you, that if there was an incorporated society of mean men he’d be the President. Did he even pay you back those dollars he borrowed from you? Not he. Well, now, do you think if he had any idea we were going to pull this thing off he wouldn’t have asked for a share? Course he would. He didn’t ask, even on the off chance, for if he had we might have asked for our screws as master and mate. Another thing. It’s on the charter that we can call at Malaka on the way out or back; if he had any idea of us touching this pearl island it’s my opinion he’d have bound us to call there on the way out.’

“‘Why?’ asks Buck.

“‘Because,’ I says, ‘this cargo of stuff we’ve got aboard is a darned sight more perishable than the cargo of copra we’re to bring home; if we strike that island we’ll be there months and months diving and rotting oysters with this stuff lying aboard with the rats and the roaches and weevils working over it. Do you see? If he had the faintest idea we had a million to one chance he’d have bound us to call at Malaka on the out trip. No, he’s just took us for a pair of chump fools and is working us as such.’

“‘Well, if he has I’ll be even with him,’ says Buck.

“‘Another thing,’ I went on, ‘do you remember he said he’d give you the schooner if you got the better of that Chink? Those words jumped out of him that first morning, showing how little he thought of the business. He never repeated them; afraid of putting us off. Buck, I’m not saying anything against your relations, but this old chap gives me the shivers, him with a million of money in the Bank of California and you with nothing, and him using you. It’s not me I’m thinking of, but you, Buck.’

“‘Never mind me,’ says Buck.”

Dolbrush produced drinks and Brent, having refreshed himself and lit a new cigar, proceeded.

“Well, I was telling you—next morning we howked out and by noon that day we were clear of the bar, taking the sea with the Farallones on the starboard beam and all plain sail set. The Greyhound was no tortoise, and for all her dirt she was a dry ship, but that day when we came to tackle the first of the ship’s stores we’d have swapped her for a mud barge and penitentiary rations. Pat must have got the lot as a present, I should think, to take it away. I never did see such junk; it wasn’t what you might call bad, but it was faded, if you get me; not so much stinkin’ as without smell to it—or taste.

“‘All shipowners are bad, and Pat’s a shipowner,’ I says, ‘but there’s no doubt he’s given you a chance in life for the sake of his sister Mary—God rest her soul—the chance of getting ptomaine poisoning if you don’t die first of jaw disease breaking your teeth over this damn bread.’

“‘I’ll be even with him yet,’ says Buck.

“We did some fishing, for we had tackle on board, and that helped us along over the line, and one morning twenty-seven days out from ’Frisco we raised an outlier of the Marqueses. Coming along a week later we raised the spot where pearl island ought to have been—we’d labelled it Pearl Island before sighting it, and that was maybe unlucky—anyhow, there was no island to meet us at noon that day and no sign of one inside or outside the horizon.

“‘That Chink sold you a pup,’ says I to Buck.

“‘Maybe it’s your navigation is at fault,’ says he.

“‘Maybe,’ says I, wishing to let him down gentle, but feeling pretty sure the navigator wasn’t born that could find that island.

“We stood a bit more to the south with a Kanaka in the crosstrees under a reward of ten dollars if he spotted land that day, and towards evening the wind dropped to a dead calm and we lay drifting all that night, the wind coming again at sun up and breezing strong from the south west.

“We put her before it, both of us pretty sick at thinking how Pat was right and how he’d landed us and used us for his purpose. We weren’t mean enough dogs to think of spoiling the cargo or piling the schooner; we just took our gruel, fixing to lay for him with our tongues when we got back, and as for the Chink, well. Buck said he’d skin that Chink if he had to bust up China Town single-handed to do it.

“He was talking like that and it was getting along for eight bells, noon, when the Kanaka look-out signals land, and there it was right ahead, but nothing to be seen only a white thumb-mark in the sky from the mirror blaze of a lagoon.

“Then the heads of cocoanut trees poked up all in a row, and I turns to Buck and we gripped hands.

“‘It’s a hundred and more miles out,’ said I, ‘but I reckon it’s not the island that’s out but me and my navigation; that old Chink was no liar. It’s the Island. Must be, for there’s nothing on the chart for five hundred miles all round here.’

“Well, we’ll see,” said Buck.

“We held on steady, and then the reef began to show, and coming along presently we could hear the boom of it. We couldn’t see a break in it, and getting up close we shifted our helm a bit and came running along the north side, the gulls chasing and shouting at us, the reef foam dashing away only a hundred yards to starboard, and the wind that was filling our sails bending the cocoanut trees.

“I felt like shouting. We could see the lagoon, flat as a looking-glass over beyond the reef that was racing by us; then we came on the break, and putting out a bit we came in close hauled with no tumble at the opening seeing it was slack water.

“It was a fairish big lagoon, maybe four miles by six or so, and since the Almighty put the world together you’d have said we were the first men into it. It had that look. Not a sign of a native house; nothing but gulls. It was fifty-fathom water at the break—made deep by the scouring of the tides; then it shoaled up to twenty and ten, and we dropped the hook in seven-fathom water close on to the northern beach. Not a sign of an oyster. The floor just there was like a coloured carpet with coral, and the water was so clear that every coloured fish that passed had a black fish going along with it—which was its shadow.

“We dropped the boat and pulled off, and we hadn’t got two cable lengths to the west of where the Greyhound was lying when we struck the beds, acres of them.

“I’ve seen the Sooloo fisheries and the Australian, but I reckon the Pearl Island oysters could have given them points as to size. Somewhere about six hundred pairs to the ton they ran, and that’s a big oyster.

“‘Well,’ said Buck, ‘here we are and here we stick. We’ve anchored on top of a fortune and if it takes ten years we’ll hive it.’ That was all very well saying, but we’d got the question of grub to consider, but we soon found we needn’t worry about that; there was fish and turtle and bÉche de mer and cocoanuts, bread-fruit on the south side and taro, to say nothing of oysters. Having fixed that matter, we set to work. Those Kanakas hadn’t signed on for diving after oysters, but stick a Kanaka in the water and it’s all he wants; besides, we gave them extra pay in the way of stick tobacco, axing open a lot of old Pat’s tobacco cases, sure of being able to pay him out of the pearl money; then we worked like grigs in vinegar, and at the end of the first week’s work we hadn’t found one pearl. The way we did was to put each day’s takings out on the beach in the sun; the sun opened them better than an oyster knife.

“‘Well, this is bright,’ says Buck one day as we were going over the heap. ‘Luck’s clean against us,’ he says, and no sooner had he spoke the words, a whopper of a pearl ’s big as a pistol bullet jumped into his fist out of an oyster he was handling. It wasn’t a big oyster neither. My, that pearl was a beauty; it turned the scale at forty grains I reckon, and it wasn’t the last.

“We were six to seven months on that job, and I never want to strike another pearl lagoon. Me and Slane had at last to do most of the diving, for the Kanakas got sick of it. We looked like Guy Fawkes. When we sailed into that lagoon we were spry young chaps clean-shaved and decently dressed; when it had done with us we were bearded men, men black with the sun and salt water and ragged as Billy be Dam. I tell you we were spectacles. Satan never fixed up such a factory as a pearl lagoon when you have to work it short-handed and on the secret. You can’t stop, not if you only get a pearl in a thousand oysters, you can’t stop. It’s always the one pearl more that does you. It’s like the gambling rooms. Till one day I says to Buck: ‘I’m done.’

“‘I was only waiting for you to say it,’ said Buck. ‘I’ve been done this last week only I wouldn’t give in.’

“We’d got together two hundred and thirty-two pearls and some seeds—the king of the lot was a roseleaf pink pearl; there were two golden pearls that were a perfect match pair, half a dozen blacks, a few yellow that weren’t no use, and the balance white. We’d been looking up prices before we started and got some tips from a man who was in the know, and we reckoned our haul was thirty or forty thousand dollars. You see it was virgin ground, and the things had time to grow to size without being disturbed.

“I ought to have told you the diving dress was no use. Pat had got it from some old junk shop or another, and the pump was as bad, but the water being shallow it didn’t matter much, though if the thing had been in order we’d have got the job through a couple of months earlier.

“We lit from that place never wanting to see an oyster again, and leaving tons of shell on the beach worth, maybe, five to six hundred dollars a ton. We didn’t want it. We laid our course for Malaka and raised it ten days later, a big brute of a copra island with Sanderson in pyjamas on the beach and a schooner loading up in the lagoon. He didn’t want Pat’s cargo, said it was four months overdue, and he had cleared the last of his copra and had enough trade to carry on with. We didn’t mind, seeing our contract was to call there out or back with no time limit specified, and we were mighty glad Pat had been done in the eye, seeing how he’d served us. There was nothing to do but cart the stuff back to ’Frisco, and dropping Malaka, we made a straight run of it, raising the Farallones in twenty-eight days and laying the old hooker off Tiburon without a spar lost or a scratch on her.

“I said to Buck: ‘What are you going to give that Chink? You promised him a suck of the orange, didn’t you?’

“‘I’m going to give him a thousand dollars,’ said Buck, ‘when I’ve cashed the pearls and settled with Pat. I’m a man of my word, and there’s no luck in breaking a promise.’

“I was with him there.

“We landed with the stuff in a handkerchief and made straight for Patrick O’Brien’s business office. We’d cleaned ourselves a bit, but we still looked pretty much scarecrows, but when we’d shown that handkerchief of pearls to the old man he didn’t bother about our looks.

“I told him how, through my bad navigation, we’d missed the island at first, and then struck it by chance.

“‘Well,’ says Pat, ‘you’re the only men in ’Frisco that’s ever got the better of a Chink so far as to get something out of him for nothing, for twenty dollars is nothing against that hatful of pearls. The schooner is yours, Buck, and from what I hear of the cargo you can dump it in the harbour or sell it for junk.’

“Then when we’d cleaned ourselves and got some decent clothes, he took us off to the Palatial and gave us a big dinner. Now that chap was the meanest guy in small things you could find in California, yet he’d lost a cargo and a schooner and instead of cutting up rough he seemed to enjoy it. Buck being his nephew, I suppose he was proud of being done by him and seeing him successful.

“The next day, having cashed in half the pearls. Buck says to me: ‘Come on,’ he says, ‘and we’ll settle up with father Abraham.’

“Off we starts and gets to the place, and there was the bird shop sure enough beside a Chow restaurant, but there was no father Abraham.

“A young Chink was in charge, and when Buck asks for Fong Yen he said there was no such person. Then he seemed to remember, and said that Fong had sold the shop and gone back to China.

“‘Why, that’s him inside there,’ said Buck, and makes a dive into the shop, but there was no one there. Fong must have done a bunk through a back door or something—anyhow he was gone.

“Then all of a sudden there comes up a big master mariner looking man along the street, drops anchor before the bird shop and calls out asking for Ming Lu. The young Chink came out and asks what he wants, saying there was no such person as Ming Lu.

“‘Say, brother,’ says Buck, jumping at the truth, ‘was Ming Lu, by any chance, an old gendarme in spectacles?’

“‘He was,’ says the crab, and then he spun his story. He’d been walking along Alta Street three months ago when he saw three Chinks at a corner, an old boob in spectacles and two young ones. As he came up with them they started quarrelling, pulling the old chap about and kicking him cruel, and Blake, that was the guy’s name, started in like a whole-souled American to save the antiquity from ruin.

“He helped Ming back to his bird shop, and the old chap near drowned him in gratitude, and gave him a chart of a pearl island his son, that had been murdered in a tong dust-up the month before, had discovered when a sailor in one of the Chinese bÊche de mer boats, that had been wrecked, with all hands lost but his precious son.

“Blake gave him ten dollars to buy opium with, and being a schooner owner, lost three months hunting for that island which wasn’t there.

“It was the same island that had been wished on us—Buck pulled out his chart and they compared—exactly the same, spot of blood and all. The things must have been lithographed by the dozen and Lord knows how many mugs had fallen to the gratitude trap; which no one but a Chink could ever have invented, if you think over the inwards and outwards of it.

“Then Buck told out loud so that Fong, if he was listening, could hear, how we had fallen on a pearl island, by chance, and how, thinking it was bad navigation that had made us out in our reckonings, he was bringing a thousand dollars to Fong as a present out of the takings according to promise. Then he pulls out his roll and gives the thousand dollars to Blake as a make up. The young Chink ran in at the sight of this, and, as we walked off arm in arm for drinks, I heard sounds from the upper room of that bird shop as if Fong was holdin’ on to something and trying not to be sick.

“Then as we were having drinks the question came up in Buck’s head as to whether he was entitled to that schooner seeing that Fong had managed to get the better of him at the go off. He put it to Blake, and Blake, who was a great chap for backing horses when ashore, says: ‘Go off be damned,’ he says. ‘It’s the finish that matters. You did him on the post,’ he says—and we concluded to leave it at that.”