After the Penguin job, Captain Blood and Billy Harman, that simple sailorman, had come back to Frisco, the very port of all others one might fancy they would have avoided, but Billy had been a power in Frisco, and, reckoning on his power, he had taken the Captain back with him.

“There’s no call to be afraid,” said Billy; “there was more in that job than the likes of us. Why, they’d pay us money to tuck us away. Whatser use freezin’ round N’ York or Boston? There’s nothin’ to be done on the Eastern side. Frisco’s warm.”

“Damn warm!” put in the Captain.

“Maybe; but there’s ropes there I can pull an’ make bells ring. Clancy and Rafferty and all that crowd are with me, and we’ve done nothin’. Why, we’re plaster saints to the chaps that are walkin’ round in Frisco with cable watch chains across their weskits.”

They came back, and Billy Harman proved to be right. No one molested them. San Francisco was heaving in the throes of an election, and people had no time to bother about such small fry as the Captain and his companion, while, owing to the good offices of the Clancys and Raffertys, Billy managed to pick up a little money here and there and to assist his friend in doing likewise.

Then things began to get slack, and to-day, as bright a morning as ever broke on the Pacific coast, the Captain, down on his luck and without even the price of a drink, was hanging about a wharf near the China docks waiting for his companion.

He took his seat on a mooring bitt, and, lighting a pipe, began to review the situation. Gulls were flitting across the blue water, whipped by the westerly wind blowing in from the Golden Gate, a Chinese shrimp boat with huge lugsail bellying to the breeze was blundering along for the upper bay, crossing the bows of a Stockton river boat and threatening it with destruction; pleasure yachts, burly tugs, and a great four-master just coming in with the salt of Cape Horn on her sun-blistered sides—all these made a picture bright and moving as the morning.

It depressed the Captain.

Business and pleasure have little appeal to a man who has no business and no money for pleasure. We all have our haunting terrors, and the Captain, who feared nothing in an ordinary way, had his. When in extremely low water, he was always haunted by the dread of dying without a penny in his pocket. To be found dead with empty pockets was the last indignity. His Irish pride revolted at the thought, and he was turning it over in his mind now as he sat watching the shipping.

Then he caught a glimpse of a figure advancing toward him along the quay side.

It was Mr. Harman.

“So there you are,” said he, as he drew up to the Captain. “I been lookin’ for you all along the wharf.”

“Any news?” asked the Captain.

Mr. Harman took a pipe from his pocket, and explored the empty bowl with his little finger; then, leaning against the mooring bitt, he cut some tobacco up, filled the pipe, and lit it. Only when the pipe was alight did he seem to hear the Captain’s question.

“That depends,” said he. “I don’t know how you’re feelin’, but my feelin’ is to get out of here, and get out quick.”

“There’s not much news in that,” said Blood. “I’ve had it in my head for days. What’s the use of talking? There’s only one way out of Frisco for you or me, and that’s by way of a fo’c’s’le, and that’s a way I’m not going to take.”

“Maybe,” said Harman, “you’ll let me say my say before putting your hoof in my mouth. News—I should think I had news. Now, by any chance did you ever sight the Channel Islands down the coast there lying off Santa Barbara? First you come to the San Lucas Islands, then you come to Santa Catalina, a big brute of an island she is, same longitude as Los Angeles; then away out from Santa Catalina you have San Nicolas.”

“No, I’ve never struck them,” replied Blood. “What’s the matter with them?”

“The Chinese go there huntin’ for abalone shells,” went on Harman, disregarding the question. “I’m aimin’ at a teeny yellow bit of an island away to the north of the San Lucas, a place you could cover with your hat, a place no one ever goes to.”

“Well?”

“Well, there’s twenty thousand dollars in gold coin lyin’ there ready to be took away. Only this morning news came in that one of the See-Yup-See liners—you know them rotten old tubs, China owned, out of Canton, in the chow an’ coffin trade—well, one of them things is gone ashore on San Juan, that’s the name of the island. Swept clean, she was, and hove on the rocks, and every man drowned but two Chinee who got away on a raf’. I had the news from Clancy. The wreck’s to be sold, and Clancy says the opinion is she’s not worth two dollars, seein’ the chances are the sea’s broke her up by this. Well, now look here, I know San Juan, intimate, and I know a vessel, once ashore there, won’t break up to the sea in a hurry by the nature of the coast. There’s some coasts will spew a wreck off in ten minutes, and some’ll stick to their goods till there’s nuthin’ left but the starnpost and the ribs. It’s shelvin’ water there and rocks that hold like shark’s teeth. The Yan-Shan—that’s her name—will hold till the last trumpet if she’s hove up proper, which, by all accounts, she is, and there’s twenty thousand dollars aboard her.”

“Well?” said Blood.

“Well, if we could crawl down there—you an’ me—we’d put our claws on that twenty thousand.”

“How in the nation are you going to rig out a wrecking expedition on two cents, and suppose you could buy the wreck for two dollars—where’s your two dollars?”

“I’m not goin’ to buy no wrecks,” replied Harman, “nor fit out no wreckin’ expeditions. What I want is something small and easy handled—no steam, get her out and blow down on the northwest trades, raise San Juan and the Yan-Shan, lift the dollars, and blow off with them. Why, it’s as easy as walkin’ about in your slippers!”

The Captain sighed.

“As easy as getting into the penitentiary,” said he. “First of all, you’d have to steal a boat, and Frisco is no port to steal boats in; second, there’s such things as telegraphs and cables. You ought to know that after the Penguin job. Then if we were caught, as we would be, you’d have the old Penguin rising like a hurricane on us. She’s forgotten now, I know, but once a chap gets in trouble everything that’s forgotten wakes up and shouts.”

“Maybe,” said Harman, “and maybe I’d be such a fool as to go stealin’ boats. I’m not goin’ to steal no boats. But I’m goin’ to do this thing somehow, and once I set my mind on a job I does it. You mark me. I’m fair drove crazy to get out of here and be after somethin’ with money on the end of it, and once I’m like that and sets my think tank boilin’, there’s fish to fry. You leave it to me. I ain’t no fool to be gettin’ into penitentiaries. Well, let’s get a move on; there’s nothin’ like movin’ about to keep one’s ideas jumpin’.”

They walked along the wharf, stepping over mooring hawsers, and pausing now and then to inspect the shipping. There is no port in the world to equal San Francisco in variety and charm. Here, above all other places, the truth is borne in on one that trade, that much abused and seemingly prosaic word, is in reality another name for romance. Here at Frisco all the winds of the world blow in ships whose voyages are stories. Freighters with China mud still clinging to their anchor flukes, junks calling up the lights and gongs of the Canton River, schooners from the islands, whalers from the sulphur-bottom grounds, grain ships from half the world away, the spirit of trade hauls them all in through the Golden Gate, and, over and beyond these, the bay itself has its romance in the ships that never leave it—junks and shrimp boats, the boats of Greek fishermen, yachts, and all sorts of steam craft engaged on a hundred businesses from Suisun Bay to the Guadeloupe River.

Wandering along, Blood and his companion came to Rafferty’s Wharf. Rafferty’s Wharf is a bit of the past, a mooring place for old ships condemned and waiting the breaking yards. It has escaped harbour boards and fires and earthquakes, healthy trade never comes there, and very strange deals have been completed in its dubious precincts over ships passed as seaworthy yet held together, as Harman was explaining now to Blood, “by the pitch in their seams mostly.”

As they came along a man who was crossing the gangway from the tank saw Harman and hailed him.

“It’s Jack Bone,” said Harman to Blood. “Walk along and I’ll meet you in a minute.”

Blood did as he was directed, and Harman halted at the gangway.

“You’re the man I want,” said Bone. “Who’s your friend?”

“Oh, just a chap,” replied Harman. “What’s up now?”

Bone took him by the arm, and led him along in an opposite direction to that in which Blood was going. Bone was the landlord of the Fore and Aft Tavern, half tavern, half sailors’ boarding house, situated right on Rafferty’s Wharf and with a stairway down to the water from the back premises. His face, to use Harman’s description of it, was one grog blossom, and what he did not know of wicked wharfside ways could scarcely be called knowledge.

“Ginnell is layin’ about, lookin’ for two hands,” said Bone. “He’s due out this evenin’, and it’s five dollars apiece for you if you can lay your claws on what he wants. Whites, they must be whites; you know Ginnell.”

Harman did.

Ginnell owned a fifty-foot schooner engaged sometimes in the shark-fishing trade, sometimes in other businesses of a more shady description. He had a Chinese crew, and, though the customhouse laws of San Francisco demanded only one white officer on a Chinese-manned boat, Ginnell always made a point of carrying two men of his own colour with him.

Being known as a hard man all along the wharfside, he sometimes found a difficulty in supplying himself with hands.

“Yes, I know Ginnell,” replied Harman. “Him and his old shark boat by repitation. I’ve stood near the chap in bars now and again, but I don’t call to mind speakin’ to him. His repitation is pretty noisy.”

“Well, I can’t help that,” said Bone. “I didn’t make the chap nor his repitation; if he had a better one, I guess ten dollars wouldn’t be lyin’ your way.”

“Nor twenty dollars yours,” laughed Harman.

“That’s my business,” said Bone. “The question is, do you take on the job? I’d do it all myself only there’s such a want of sailormen on the front. It’s those durned Bands of Hope and Sailors’ Rests that sucks ’em in, fills ’em with bilge in the way of tracks and ginger beer, and turns ’em out onfit for any job onless it’s got a silver-plated handle to it. Mouth organs an’ the New Jerusalem is all they cares for onct them wharf missionaries gets a holt on them. I tell you, Billy Harman, if they don’t get up some by-law to stop these chaps propagatin’ their gospels and spoilin’ trade, the likes of me and you will be ruined—that’s a fac’. Well, what do you say?”

All the time Mr. Bone was holding forth, Harman, who had struck an idea, was deep in meditation. The question roused him.

“If Ginnell wants two chaps,” said he, “I believe I can fit him with them. Anyhow, where’s he to be found?”

“He’ll be at my place at three o’clock,” said Bone, “and I’ve promised to find the goods for him by that.”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Harman, “I’ll find the chaps and have them at your place haff past three or so; you can leave it safe in my hands.”

“You speak as if you was certain.”

“And certain I am. I’ve got the chaps you want.”

“Now look here,” said Bone, “don’t you take on the job unless you’re more than sure. Ginnell isn’t no boob to play up and down with; he’d set in, mostlike, to wreck the bar if he thought I was playin’ cross with him.”

“Don’t fret,” said Harman. “I’ll be there, and now fork out a dollar advance, for I’ll have some treatin’ to do.”

Bone produced the money. It changed hands, and he departed, while Harman pursued his way along the wharf toward his friend.

Blood was sitting on an empty crate.

“Well,” said he, as the other drew up, “what business?”

Harman told every word of his conversation with Bone, and, without any addition to it, waited for the other to speak.

“Well, you’ve got the dollar,” said Blood at last, “and there’s some satisfaction in that. I’m not the chap to take five cents off a chap by false pretenses same’s you’ve done with Bone, but Bone’s not a man by all accounts; he’s a crimp in man’s clothes, and if all the old whalemen he’s filled with balloon juice and sent to perdition could rise up and shout, I reckon his name’d be known in two hemispheres.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Harman. “What was that you were saying about false pretenses? I haven’t used no false pretenses. They ain’t things I’m in the habit of usin’ between man and man.”

“Well, what have you been using? You told me a moment ago you’d agreed to furnish two hands to this chap’s order for five dollars apiece and a dollar advance.”

“So I have.”

“And where’s your hands?”

“I’ve got them.”

“In your pocket?”

“Oh, close up!” said Harman. “I never did see such a chap as you for wearin’ blinkers; can’t you see the end of your nose in front of you? Well, if you can’t, I can. However, I’ll tell you the whole of the business later when I’ve turned it round some more in my head. What I’m after now is grub. Here’s a dollar, and I’m off to Billy Sheehan’s; you come along with me—a dollar’s enough for two—and you can raise your objections after you’ve got a beefsteak inside of you. Maybe you’ll see clearer then.”

The Captain said no more, but followed Harman. Far better educated than the latter, he had come to recognise that Harman, despite his real and childlike simplicity in various ways, had a mind quicker than most men’s. He would often have gone without a meal during that wandering partnership which had lasted for nearly a year but for Harman’s ingenuity and power of resource.

At Sheehan’s they had good beefsteak and real coffee.

“Now,” said Harman, when they had finished, “if you’re ready to listen to reason, I’ll tell you the lay I’m on. Ginnell wants two hands. I’m goin’ to offer myself for one, and you are goin’ to be the other.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Blood. “You mean to say I’m to sign on in that chap’s shark boat. Is that your meaning?”

“I said nuthin’ about signin’ on in shark boats. I said we two has got to get out of here in Ginnell’s tub. Once outside the Gate we’re all right.”

“I see,” said Blood. “We’re to scupper Ginnell and take the boat—and how about the penitentiary?”

“I’m blest if you haven’t got penitentiaries on the brain,” said Harman. “If you leave this thing to me, I’ll fix it so that there’ll be no penitentiaries in the business. Of course if we were to go into such a fool’s job as you’re thinkin’ about, we’d lay ourselves under the law right smart. No, the game I’m after is deeper than that, and it’s Ginnell I’m goin’ to lay under the law. Now I’ve got to run about and do things an’ see people. I’ll leave you here, and here’s a quarter, and don’t you spend it till the time comes. Now you listen to me. Wait about till haff past three, and at haff past three punctual you turn into the Fore and Aft and walk up to the bar and lay your quarter down and call for a drink. You’ll see me there, and if I nod to you, you just nod to me. Then I’ll have a word in private with you.”

“Is that all?” said the Captain.

“That’s all for the present,” said Harman, rising up. “You’ll be there?”

“Yes, I’ll be there,” said Blood, “though I’m blest if I can see your meaning.”

“You will soon,” replied the other, and, paying the score, off he went.

He turned from the wharves up an alley, and then into a fairly respectable street of small houses. Pausing before one of these, he knocked at the door, which was opened almost immediately by a big, blue-eyed, sun-burned, good-natured-looking man some thirty years of age and attired as to the upper part of him in a blue woollen jersey.

This was Captain Mike, of the Fish Patrol.

“Billy Harman!” said Captain Mike. “Come in.”

“No time,” said Harman. “I’ve just called to say a word. I wants you to do me a favour.”

“And what’s the favour?” asked the Captain.

“Oh, nothin’ much. D’you know Ginnell?”

“Pat Ginnell?”

“That’s him.”

“Well, I should think I did know the swab. Why, he’s in with all the Greeks, and there’s not a dog’s trick played in the bay he hasn’t his thumb in. Him and his old shark boat. Whatcher want me to do with him?”

“Nothin’,” replied Harman, “and maybe a lot. I want you just to drop into the Fore and Aft and sit and smoke your pipe at haff past three. Then when I give you the wink you’ll pretend to fall asleep. I just wants you as a witness.”

“What’s the game?” asked Captain Mike.

Harman told.

Had you been watching the two men from a distance, you might have fancied that there was a great joke between them from the laughter of Captain Mike and the way in which Harman was slapping his thigh. Then the door closed, and Harman went off, steering north through a maze of streets till he reached his lodgings.

Here he packed a few things in a bundle and had an interview with his landlady, a motherly woman whose income was derived from a washtub and two furnished bedrooms.

Among the other belongings which he took with him was a box of quinine tabloids. These he placed in the pocket of his coat, and, with the bundle under his arm, departed.

It was five minutes past three when he entered the dirty doggery misnamed the Fore and Aft, and there before the bar behind which Bone was serving drinks stood Ginnell.

Pat Ginnell, to give him his full name, was an Irishman of the sure-fwhat type, who might have been a bricklayer but for his decent clothes and sea air and the big blue anchor tattooed on the back of his left hand. There was no one else in the bar.

“Here’s the gentleman,” said Bone, when he sighted Harman. “Up to time and with the goods to deliver, I dare say. Harman, this is the Captain; where’s the hands?”

“Well,” said Harman, leaning his elbows on the bar, “I believe I’ve got them. One of them’s meself.”

“D’you mean to say you’re up to sign on with me?” asked Ginnell.

“That’s my meanin’,” said Harman.

Ginnell looked at Bone. Then he spoke.

“It won’t do,” said he. “I know you be name, Mr. Harman; you’re in with Clancy and that crowd, and my boat’s too rough for the likes of you.”

“You needn’t fear about that,” said Harman. “I’ve done with Clancy. What I’ve got to do is get out of Frisco and get out quick. The cops are after me; there you have it. I’ve got to get out of here before night—do you take me—and I’m so pressed to get out sudden I’ll take your word for ten dollars a month without any signin’.”

Ginnell’s brow cleared.

“What are you havin’?” said he.

“I’ll take a drink of whisky,” replied Harman.

The bargain was concluded.

“And how,” said Ginnell, “what about the other chap?”

Harman wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“I’ve made an arrangement with a chap to meet me here,” said he. “He’ll be in in a minute.”

“What’s he like?” asked Ginnell.

“Like? Why, I’ll tell you what he’s like; he wouldn’t sign on in your tub for a hundred dollars a month.”

“Faith and you’re a nice sort of chap,” said Ginnell. “Is it playin’ the fool with me you are?”

By way of reply Harman took the box of quinine tabloids from his pocket, opened it, showed the contents, and winked.

Bone and Ginnell understood at once.

“One of those in his drink will lay him out for an hour,” said Harman, “without hurtin’ him. Put one in your weskit pocket, Bone—and how about your boat?”

“She’s down below at the stairs,” replied the landlord, putting the tabloid in his waistcoat pocket. “I’ll go and call Jim to get her ready—a moment, gentlemen.” He vanished into a back room, and they heard him shouting orders to Jim; then he returned, and as he passed behind the bar who should enter but Captain Mike!

The Captain walked to the bar, called for a drink, and without as much as a glance at the others took it to a seat in a far corner, where he lit a pipe. Several wharf habituÉs loafed in, and soon the place became hazy with tobacco smoke and horrible with the smell of rank cigars.

“Well,” said Ginnell, “where’s your man? I’m thinkin’ he’s given you the slip, and be the powers, Mr. Harman, if he has, it’ll be the worst for you.”

The brute in Ginnell spoke in his growl, and Harman was turning over in his mind the fate of any unfortunate who had Ginnell for boss when the swing door opened and Blood appeared.

“That’s him,” said Harman. “You leave him to me.”

Blood was not the sort of man to frequent a hole like the Fore and Aft, and he frankly spat when he came in. He was in a temper, or rather the beginning of a temper, and Harman seemed to have some difficulty in soothing him. They had a confabulation together near the corner where Captain Mike, his glass and pipe on the table before him, was sitting, evidently asleep, and then Blood, seeming to agree with some matter under discussion, allowed himself to be led to the bar.

“This is me friend, Captain Ginnell,” said Harman. “Captain, this is me friend, Michael Blood. Looking for a ship he is.”

“I can’t offer him a ship,” said Ginnell, “but I can offer him a drink. What are you takin’, sir?”

Blood called for a whisky.

The quinine tabloid popped into the bottom of the glass by Bone dissolved almost immediately, nor did Blood show that he detected the presence in his drink. He loathed quinine, and this forced dose added to the flood of his steadily rising temper without, however, interfering with his powers of self-control.

He was a good actor, and the way he clutched at the bar ledge shortly after he had finished his drink left nothing to be desired.

“Let him lay down,” said Harman.

“I can’t leave the bar,” said Bone, “but if the gentleman cares to lay down in my back room he’s welcome.”

Blood, allowing himself to be conducted to this resting place, Ginnell followed without drawing the attention of the others in the bar.

Arrived in the back room, Blood collapsed on an old couch by the window, and, lying there with his eyes shut, he heard the rest.

He heard the whispered consultation between Harman and the other, the trapdoor being opened, Jim, the boatman, being called. And then he felt a hand on his shoulder and Ginnell’s voice adjuring him to rouse up a bit and come along for a sail.

Helped on either side by the conspirators, he allowed himself to be led to the trapdoor.

“We’ll never get him down them steps,” said Harman, alluding to the stairs leading down to where the boat was swaying on the green water that was swishing and swashing against the rotten piles of the wharf.

“This is the way it’s done,” said Ginnell, and, twitching Blood’s feet from under him, he sent him down the stairway like a bag of meal to where Jim was waiting to receive him.

At half past six o’clock that day the Heart of Ireland—that was the name of Ginnell’s boat—passed the tumble of the bar and took the swell of the Pacific like a duck.

Ginnell, giving the wheel over to one of the Chinese crew, glanced to windward, glanced back at the coast, where Tamalpais stood cloud-wrapped and gilded by the evening sun, and then turned to the companionway leading down to the hole of a cabin where they had deposited their shanghaied man.

“I’m goin’ to rouse that swab up,” he said; “he ought to be recovered by this.”

“Go easy with him,” said Harman.

“I’ll be as gentle with him as a mother,” replied the skipper of the Heart of Ireland, with a ferocious grin.

Harman watched the unfortunate man descending. He had got shoulder deep down the ladder when he suddenly vanished as if snatched below, and his shout of astonishment and the crash of his fall came up simultaneously to the listener at the hatch.

Then came the sounds of the fight. Harman had seen Blood fighting once, and he had no fear at all for him. If he feared for any one, it was Ginnell, who was crying now for mercy and apparently receiving none. Then of a sudden came silence, and Harman slipped down the ladder.

Blood, during his incarceration, had ransacked the cabin and secured the Captain’s revolver. He was seated now, revolver in hand, on Ginnell’s chest, and Ginnell was lying on the cabin floor without a kick or an ounce of fight in him.

“You haven’t killed him?” asked Harman.

“I don’t know,” replied Blood. “Speak up, you swab, and answer! Are you dead or not?”

“Faith, I don’t know,” groaned the unfortunate. “I’m near done. What are you up to? What game is this you’re playin’ on me? Is it murder or what?”

“Let me talk to him,” said Harman. “Pat Ginnell, you’ve doped and shanghaied a man—meanin’ my friend, Captain Blood—and I’ve got all the evidence and witnesses. Captain Mike, of the Fish Patrol, is one; he came to the Fore and Aft be request and saw the whole game. That means the penitentiary for you if we split. You’ll say I provided the dope. Who’s to prove it? When I told you the cops were after me I told a lie. Who’s to prove it? I wanted you and your old tub, and I’ve got ’em. Say a word against me and see what Clancy will do to you. You shanghaied me friend, and now you’re shanghaied yourself in your own ship, and you’ll never dare to have the law on us because, d’you see, we’ve got the law on you. The Captain there has got your revolver, the coolies on deck don’t care, they never even turned a hair when they heard you shoutin’. Now my question is, do you intend to take it quiet, or would you sooner be hove overboard?”

“Faith and there’s no use in kicking,” replied the owner of the Heart of Ireland. “I gives in.”

“Then up on your feet!” said Blood, rising and putting the revolver in his pocket. “And up on deck with you! You’re one of the hands now, and if you ever want to see Frisco again, you’ll take my orders and take them smart. You’ll berth aft with us, but your rating is cabin boy, and your pay. Up with you!”

Ginnell went up the ladder, and the others followed.

Ginnell showed to the light of day two black eyes and the marks on his chin of the frightful uppercut that had closed the fight.

He looked like a beaten dog as Blood called the crew, in order to pick watches with Harman.

“I take the chap that’s steering,” said Blood.

“And I takes Pat Ginnell,” said Harman.

They finished the business, and dismissed the hands, who seemed to see nothing strange in the recent occurrence among the whites, and who were thronging now to the fo’c’s’le for their supper, their faces all wearing the same Chinese expression, the expression of men who know everything, of men who know nothing.

Then, having set a course for the San Lucas Islands, and while Ginnell was washing himself below, Blood, with his companion, leaned on the rail and looked at the far-away coast dying out in the dusk.

“Seems strange it was only this mornin’ I projected gettin’ out like this,” said Harman, “and here we are out, with twenty thousand dollars ahead of us, if the Yan-Shan hasn’t broke up, which she hasn’t. ’Pears to me it was worth a dose of quinine to do the job so neat with no bones broke and no fear of the law at the end of it.”

“Maybe,” said the Captain.

He whistled softly to the accompaniment of the slashing of the bow wash, looking over toward the almost vanished coast, above which, in the pansy blue of the evening sky, stars were now showing like points of silver.