The Heart of Ireland was spreading her wings to the northwest trades, making a good seven knots with the coast of California a vague line on the horizon to port and all the blue Pacific before her.

Captain Blood was aft with his mate, leaning on the rail and watching the foam boosting away from the stern and flowing off in Parian-Marbaline lines on the swirl of the wake. Ginnell was forward on the lookout, and one of the coolie crew was at the wheel.

“I’m not given to meeting trouble halfway,” said Blood, shifting his position and leaning with his left arm on the rail, “but it ’pears to me Pat Ginnell is taking his set-down a mighty sight too easy. He’s got something up his sleeve.”

“So’ve we,” replied Harman. “What can he do? He laid out to shanghai you, and, by gum, he did it. I don’t say I didn’t let him down crool, playin’ into his hands and pretendin’ to help and gettin’ Captain Mike as a witness, but the fac’ remains he got you aboard this hooker by foul play, shanghaied you were, and then you turns the tables on him, knocks the stuffin’ out of him, and turns him into a deck hand. How’s he to complain? I’d start back to Frisco now and dare him to come ashore with his complaints. We’ve got his ship—well, that’s his fault. He’s no legs to stand on, that’s truth.

“Leavin’ aside this little bisness, he’s known as a crook from Benicia right to San JosÉ. The bay reeks with him and his doin’s; settin’ Chinese sturgeon lines, Captain Mike said he was, and all but cocht, smugglin’ and playin’ up to the Greeks, and worse. The bay side’s hungry to catch him an’ stuff him in the penitentiary, and he hasn’t no friends. I’m no saint, I owns it, but I’m a plaster Madonna to Ginnell, and I’ve got friends, so have you. Well, what are you bothering about?”

“Oh, I’m not bothering about the law,” said Blood; “only about him. I’m going to keep my eye open and not be put asleep by his quiet ways—and I’d advise you to do the same.”

“Trust me,” said Harman, “and more especial when we come to ’longsides with the Yan-Shan.”

Now the Yan-Shan had started in life somewhere early in the nineties as a twelve-hundred-ton cargo boat in the Bullmer line; she had been christened the Robert Bullmer, and her first act when the dogshores had been knocked away was a bull charge down the launching slip, resulting in the bursting of a hawser, the washing over of a boat, and the drowning of two innocent spectators; her next was an attempt to butt the Eddystone over in a fog, and, being unbreakable, she might have succeeded only that she was going dead slow. She drifted out of the Bullmer line on the wash of a lawsuit owing to the ramming by her of a Cape boat in Las Palmas harbour; engaged herself in the fruit trade in the service of the Corona Capuella Syndicate, and got on to the Swimmer Rocks with a cargo of Jamaica oranges, a broken screw shaft, and a blown-off cylinder cover. The ruined cargo, salvage, and tow ruined the syndicate, and the Robert Bullmer found new occupations till the See-Yup-See Company, of Canton, picked her up, and, rechristening, used her for conveying coffins and coolies to the American seaboard. They had sent her to Valdivia on some business, and on the return from the southern port to Frisco she had, true to her instincts and helped by a gale, run on San Juan, a scrap of an island north of the Channel Islands off the California coast. Every soul had been lost with the exception of two Chinese coolies, who, drifting on a raft, had been picked up and brought to San Francisco.

She had a general cargo and twenty thousand dollars in gold coin on board, but the coolies had declared her to be a total wreck; said when they had last sighted her she was going to pieces.

That was the yarn Harman heard through Clancy, with the intimation that the wreck was not worth two dollars, let alone the expenses of a salvage ship.

The story had eaten into Harman’s mind; he knew San Juan better than any man in Frisco, and he considered that a ship once ashore there would stick; then Ginnell turned up, and the luminous idea of inducing Ginnell to shanghai Blood so that Blood might, with his—Harman’s—assistance, shanghai Ginnell and use the Heart of Ireland for the picking of the Yan-Shan’s pocket entered his mind.

“It’s just when we come alongside the Yan-Shan we may find our worse bother,” said Blood.

“Which way?” asked Harman.

“Well, they’re pretty sure to send some sort of a wrecking expedition to try and salve some of the cargo, let alone those dollars.”

“See here,” said Harman, “I had the news from Clancy that morning, and it had only just come to Frisco; it wasn’t an hour old. We put the cap on Ginnell, and were out of the Golden Gate before sundown same day. A wrecking ship would take all of two days to get her legs under her, supposing any one bought the wreck, so we have two days’ start. We’ve been makin’ seven knots and maybe a bit over; they won’t make more. So we have two days to our good when we get there.”

“They may start a steamer out on the job,” said Blood.

“Well, now, there’s where my knowledge comes in,” said Harman. “There’s only two salvage ships at present in Frisco, and rotten tubs they are. One’s the Maryland. She’s most a divin’ and dredgin’ ship; ain’t no good for this sort of work; sea-bottom scrapin’ is all she’s good for, and little she makes at it. The other’s the Port of Amsterdam, owned by Gunderman. She’s the ship they’d use. She’s got steam winches and derricks ’nough to discharge the Ark, and stowage room to hold the cargo down to the last flea, but she’s no good for more than eight knots; she steams like as if she’s a drogue behind her, because why? She’s got beam engines—she’s that old, she’s got beam engines in her. I’m not denyin’ there’s somethin’ to be said for them, but there you are—there’s no speed in them.”

“Well, beam engines or no beam engines, we’ll have a pretty rough time if she comes down and catches us within a cable’s length of the Yan-Shan,” said Blood. “However, there’s no use in fetching trouble. Let’s go and have a look at the lazaret; I want to see how we stand for grub.”

Chopstick Charlie was the name Blood had christened the coolie who acted as steward and cabin hand. He called him now, and out of the opium-tinctured gloom of the fo’c’s’le Charlie appeared, received his orders, and led them to the lazaret.

None of the crew had shown the slightest emotion on seeing Blood take over command of the schooner and Ginnell swabbing decks. The fight that had made Blood master of the Heart of Ireland and Ginnell’s revolver had occurred in the cabin and out of sight of the coolies, but even had it been conducted in full view of them it is doubtful whether they would have shown any feeling or lifted a hand in the matter.

As long as their little privileges were regarded, as long as opium bubbled in the evening pipe, and pork, rice, and potatoes were served out one white skipper was the same as another to them.

The overhaul of the stores took half an hour, and was fairly satisfactory. When they came on deck, Blood, telling Charlie to take Ginnell’s place as look-out, called the latter down into the cabin.

“We want to have a word with you,” said Blood, as Harman took his seat on a bunk edge opposite him. “It’s time you knew our minds and what we intend doing with the schooner and yourself.”

“Faith,” said Ginnell, “I think it is.”

“I’m glad you agree. Well, when you shanghaied me on board this old shark boat of yours, there’s little doubt as to what you intended doing with me. Harman will tell you, for we’ve talked on the matter.”

“He’d ’a’ worked you crool hard, fed you crool bad, and landed you, after a six months’ cruise, doped or drunk, with two cents in your pocket and an affidavit up his sleeve that you’d tried to fire his ship,” said Harman. “I know the swab.”

Ginnell said nothing for a moment in answer to this soft impeachment; he was cutting himself a chew of tobacco. Then at last he spoke.

“I don’t want no certifikit of character from either the pair of you,” said he. “You’ve boned me ship, and you’ve blacked me eye, and you’ve near stove me ribs in sittin’ on me chest and wavin’ me revolver in me face. What I wants to know is your game. Where’s your profits to come from on this job?”

“I’ll tell you,” replied Blood. “There’s a hooker called the Yan-Shan piled on the rocks down the coast, and we’re going to leave our cards on her—savvy?”

“O Lord!” said Ginnell.

“What’s the matter now?” asked Harman.

“What’s the matter, d’you say?” cried Ginnell. “Why, it’s the Yan-Shan I was after meself.”

Blood stared at the owner of the Heart of Ireland for a moment, then he broke into a roar of laughter.

“You don’t mean to say you bought the wreck?” he asked.

“Not me,” replied Ginnell. “Sure, where d’you think I’d be findin’ the money to buy wrecks with? I had news that mornin’ she was lyin’ there derelick, and I was just slippin’ down the coast to have a look at her when you two spoiled me lay by takin’ me ship.”

It was now that Harman began to laugh.

“Well, if that don’t beat all!” said he. “And maybe, since you were so keen on havin’ a look at her, you’ve brought wreckin’ tools with you in case they might come in handy?”

“That’s as may be,” replied Ginnell. “What you have got to worry about isn’t wreckin’ tools, but how to get rid of the boodle if it’s there. Twenty thousand dollars, that’s the figure.”

“So you know of the dollars,” said Blood.

“Sure, what do you take me for?” asked Ginnell. “D’you think I’d have bothered about the job only for the dollars? What’s the use of general cargo to the like of me? Now what I’m thinkin’ is this, you want a fence to help you to get rid of the stuff. Supposin’ you find it, how are you to cart this stuff ashore and bank it? You’ll be had, sure, but not if I’m at your back. Now, gents, I’m willin’ to wipe out all differences and help in the salvin’ on shares, and I’ll make it easy for you. You’ll each take seven thousand, and I’ll take the balance, and I won’t charge nuthin’ for the loan you’ve took of the Heart of Ireland. It’s a losin’ game for me, but it’s better than bein’ done out entirely.”

Blood looked at Harman, and Harman looked at Blood. Then telling Ginnell that they would consider the matter, they went on deck to talk it over.

There was truth in what Ginnell said. They would want help in getting the coin ashore in safety, and, unless they marooned or murdered Ginnell, he, if left out, would always be a witness to make trouble. Besides, though engaged on a somewhat shady business, neither Blood nor Harman was a scoundrel. Ginnell up to this had been paid out in his own coin, the slate was clean, and it pleased neither of them to take profit from this blackguard beyond what they considered their due.

It was just this touch of finer feeling that excluded them from the category of rogues and made their persons worth considering and their doings worth recounting.

“We’ll give him what he asks,” said Blood, when the consultation was over, “and, mind you, I don’t like giving it him one little bit, not on account of the money, but because it seems to make us partners with that swab. I tell you this, Billy Harman, I’d give half as much again if an honest man was dealing with us in this matter instead of Pat Ginnell.”

“And what honest man would deal with us?” asked the ingenuous Harman. “Lord! One might think the job we was on was tryin’ to sell a laundry. It’s safe enough, for who can say we didn’t hit the wreck cruisin’ round promiscuous, but it won’t hold no frills in the way of honesty and such. Down with you, and close the bargain with that chap and tip him the wink that, though we’re mugs enough to give him six thousand dollars for the loan of his old shark boat, we’re men enough to put a pistol bullet in his gizzard if he tries any games with us. Down you go.”

Blood went.

II

Next morning, an hour after sunrise, through the blaze of light striking the Pacific across the far-off Californian coast, San Juan showed like a flake of spar on the horizon to southward.

The sea there was all of an impossible blueness, the Pacific blue deepened by the Kuro Shiwo current, that mysterious river of the sea which floods up the coast of Japan, crosses the Pacific toward Alaska, and sweeps down the West American seaboard to fan out and lose itself away down somewhere off Chile.

Harman judged the island to be twenty miles away, and as they were making six and a half knots, he reckoned to hit it in three hours if the wind held.

They went down and had breakfast, and after the meal Ginnell, going to the locker where he had stowed the wrecking tools, fetched them out and laid them on deck. There were two crowbars and a jimmy, not to mention a flogging hammer, a rip saw, some monstrous big chisels, and a shipwright’s mallet. They looked like a collection of burglar’s implements from the land of Brobdignag.

“There you are,” said Ginnell. “You never know what you may want on a job like this, with bulkheads maybe to be cut through and chests broke open. Get a spare sail, Misther Harman, and rowl the lot up in it so’s they’ll be aisier for thransport.”

He was excited, and the Irish in him came out when he was like that; also, as the most knowledgable man in the business, he was taking the lead. You never could have fancied, from his cheerful manner and his appearance of boss, that Blood was the real master of the situation, or that Blood, only a few days ago, had nearly pounded the life out of him, captured his revolver, and taken possession of the Heart of Ireland.

The schooner carried a whaleboat, and this was now got in readiness for lowering, with provisions and water for the landing party, and, when that was done, the island, now only four miles distant, showed up fine, a sheer splinter of volcanic rock standing up from the sea and creamed about with foam.

Not a sign of a wreck was to be seen, though Ginnell’s glasses were powerful enough to show up every detail from the rock fissures to the roosting gulls.

Gloom fell upon the party, with the exception of Harman.

“It’ll be on the other side if it’s there at all,” said he. “She’d have been coming up from the s’uth’ard, and if the gale was behind her, it would have taken her right on to the rocks; she couldn’t be on this side, anyhow, because why? There’s nuthin’ to hold her. It’s a mile-deep water off them cliffs, but on the other side it shoals gradual from tide marks to ten-fathom water, which holds for a quarter of a mile. Keep her as she is; you could scrape them cliffs with a battleship without danger of groundin’.”

After a minute or two, he took the wheel himself, and steered her, while the fellows stood by the halyards, ready to let go at a moment’s notice.

It was an impressive place, this north side of the island of San Juan. The heavy swell came up, smacking right on to the sheer cliff wall, jetting green water and foam yards high to the snore and boom of caves and cut-outs in the rock. Gulls haunted the place. The black petrel, the Western gull, and the black-footed albatross all were to be found here. Long lines of white gulls marked the cliff edges, and, far above, in the dazzling azure of the sky, a Farallon cormorant circled like the spirit of the place, challenging the newcomers with its cry.

Harman shifted his helm, and the Heart of Ireland, with main boom swinging to port, came gliding past the western rocks and opening the sea to southward, where, far on the horizon, lovely in the morning light like vast ships under press of sail, the San Lucas Islands lay remote in the morning splendour.

Away to port the line of the Californian coast showed beyond the heave of the sea from Point Arguello to Point Concepcion, and to starboard and west of the San Lucas a dot in the sun dazzle marked the peaks of the island of San Nicolas.

Then, as the Heart of Ireland came round and the full view of the south of San Juan burst upon them, the wreck piled on the rocks came in sight, and anchored quarter of a mile off the shore—a Chinese junk!

Harman swore.

Ginnell, seizing his glasses, rushed forward and looked through them at the wreck.

“It’s swarmin’ with chows,” cried he, coming aft “They seem to have only just landed be the look of them. Keep her as she goes, and be ready with the anchor there forrard; we’ll scupper them yet. Mr. Harman, be plazed to fetch up that lin’th of lead pipe you’ll find on the cabin flure be the door. Capt’in, will you see with Charlie here to the boat while I get the anchor ready for droppin’? Them coolies is all thumbs.”

He went forward, and the Heart of Ireland, with the wind spilling out of her mainsail, came along over the heaving blue swell, satin-smooth here in the shelter of the island.

Truly the Yun-Shan, late Robert Bullmer, had made a masterpiece of her last business. She had come stem on, lifted by the piling sea, and had hit the rocks, smashing every bow plate from the keel to within a yard or two of the gunwale, then a wave had taken her under the stern and lifted her and flung her broadside on, just as she now lay, pinned to her position by the rock horns that had gored her side, and showing a space of her rust-red bottom to the sun.

The water was squattering among the rocks right up to her, the phosphor-bronze propeller showed a single blade cocked crookedly at the end of the broken screw shaft; rudder there was none, the funnel was gone, spar deck and bridge were in wreck and ruin, while the cowl of a bent ventilator turned seaward seemed contemplating with a languid air the beauty of the morning and the view of the far-distant San Lucas Islands.

The Heart of Ireland picked up a berth inside the junk, and as the rasp and rattle of the anchor chain came back in faint echoes from the cliff, a gong on the junk woke to life and began to snarl and roar its warning to the fellows on the wreck.

“Down with the boat!” cried Ginnell. With the “lin’th of lead pipe,” a most formidable weapon, sticking from his pocket, he ran to help with the falls. The whaleboat smacked the water, the crew tumbled in, and with Ginnell in the bow, it started for the shore.

The gong had done its work. The fellows who had been crawling like ants over the dead body of the Yan-Shan came slithering down on ropes, appeared running and stumbling over the rocks abaft the stern, some hauling along sacks of loot, others brandishing sticks or bits of timber, and all shouting and clamouring with a noise like gulls whose nests are being raided.

There was a small scrap of shingly beach off which the Chinamen’s scow was lying anchored with a stone and with a China boy for anchor watch. The whaleboat passed the scow, dashed nose end up the shelving beach, and the next moment Ginnell and his lin’th of lead pipe was among the Chinamen, while Blood, following him, was firing his revolver over their heads. Harman, with a crowbar carried at the level, was aiming straight at the belly of the biggest of the foe when they parted right and left, dropping everything, beaten before they were touched, and making for the water over the rocks.

Swimming like rats, they made for the scow, scrambled on board her, howked up the anchor stone, and shot out the oars.

“They’re off for the junk,” cried Ginnell. “Faith, that was a clane bit of work! Look at thim rowin’ as if the divil was after thim.”

They were literally, and now on board the junk they were hauling the boat in, shaking out the lateen sail, and dragging up the anchor as though a hundred pair of hands were at work instead of twenty.

Then as the huge sail bellied gently to the wind, and the junk broke the violet breeze shadow beyond the calm of the sheltered water, a voice came over the sea, a voice like the clamour of a hundred gulls, thin, rending, fierce as the sound of tearing calico.

“Shout away, me boys!” said Ginnell. “You’ve got the shout and we’ve got the boodle, and good day to ye!”

III

He turned with the others to examine the contents of the sacks dropped by the vanquished ones and lying among the rocks. They were old gunny bags, and they were stuffed with all sorts of rubbish and valuables—musical instruments, bits of old metal, cabin curtains, and even cans of bully beef; there was no sign of dollars.

“The fools were so busy picking up everything they could find lying about they hadn’t time to search for the real stuff,” said Blood. “Didn’t know of it.”

“Well,” said Ginnell, “stick the ould truck back in the bags with the insthruments; we’ll sort it out when we get aboard, and fling the rubbish over and keep what’s worth keepin’.”

Helped by the coolies, they refilled the bags, and left them in position for carrying off, and then, led by Ginnell, they made round the stern of the wreck to the port side.

Now on the sea side the Yan-Shan presented a bad enough picture of desolation and destruction, but here on the land side the sight was terrific.

The great yellow funnel had crashed over onto the rocks, and lay with lengths of the guys still adhering to it; a quarter boat, with bottom half out, had gone the way of the funnel; crabs were crawling over all sorts of raffle—broken spars, canvas from the bridge screen, and woodwork of the chart house, while all forward of amidships, the plates, beaten and twisted and ripped apart, showed cargo, held, or in the act of escaping. One big packing case, free of the ship, had resolved itself into staves round its once contents, a piano that appeared perfectly uninjured.

A rope ladder hung from the bulwarks amidships, and up it Ginnell went followed by the others, reaching a roofless passage that had once been the port alleyway.

Here on the slanting deck one got a full picture of the ruin that had come on the ship. The masts were gone as well as the funnel, boats, ventilators—with the exception of the twisted cowl looking seaward—bridge, chart house, all had vanished wholly or in part, a picture made more impressive by the calm blue sky overhead and the brilliancy of the sunlight.

The locking bars had been removed from the cover of the fore hatch, and the hatch opened evidently by the Chinese in search of plunder. Ginnell scarcely turned an eye on it before he made aft, followed by the others, reached the saloon companionway, and dived down it.

If the confusion on deck was bad, it was worse below. The cabin doors on either side were either open or off their hinges, bunk bedding, mattresses, an open and rifled valise, some women’s clothes, an empty cigar box, and a cage with a dead canary in it lay on the floor.

The place looked as if an army of pillagers had been at work for days, and the sight struck a chill to the hearts of the beholders.

“We’re dished,” said Ginnell. “Quick, boys, if the stuffs anywhere, it’ll be in the old man’s cabin; there’s no mail room in a packet like this. If it’s not there, we’re done.”

They found the Captain’s cabin; they found his papers tossed about, his cash box open and empty, and a strong box clamped to the deck by the bunk in the same condition. They found, to complete the business, an English sovereign on the floor in a corner.

Ginnell sat down on the edge of the bunk.

“They’ve got the dollars,” said he. “That’s why they legged it so quick, and—we let them go. Twenty thousand dollars in gold coin, and we let them go. Tear an ages! Afther them!” He sprang from the bunk, and dashed through the saloon, followed by the others. On deck, they strained their eyes seaward, toward a brown spot on the blue far, far away to the sou’west. It was the junk making a soldier’s wind of it, every inch of sail spread. Judging by the distance she had covered, she must have been making at least eight knots, and the Heart of Ireland under similar wind conditions was incapable of more than seven.

“No good chasing her,” said Blood.

“Not a happorth,” replied Ginnell. Then the quarrel began.

“If you hadn’t held us pokin’ over them old sacks on the rocks there, we’d maybe have had a chance of overhaulin’ her,” said Ginnell.

“Sacks!” cried Blood. “What are you talking about? It was you who let them go, shouting good day to them and telling them we’d got the boodle!”

“Boodle!” cried Ginnell. “You’re a nice chap to talk about boodle. You did me up an’ collared me boat, and now you’re let down proper, and serve you right.”

Blood was about to reply in kind, when the dispute was cut short by a loud yell from the engine-room hatch.

Harman, having satisfied himself with a glance that all was up with the junk, had gone poking about, and entered the engine-room hatchway. He now appeared, shouting like a maniac.

“The dollars!” he cried. “Two dead chinkies an’ the dollars!”

He vanished again with a shout. They rushed to the hatch, and there, on the steel grating leading to the ladder, curled together like two cats that had died in battle, lay the Chinamen. Harman, kneeling beside them, his hands at work on the neck of a tied sack that clinked as he shook it with the glorious, rich, mellow sound that gold in bulk and gold in specie alone can give.

The lanyard came away, and Harman, plunging his big hand in, produced it filled with British sovereigns.

Not one of them moved or said a word for a moment; then Ginnell suddenly squatted down on the grating beside Harman, and, taking a sovereign between finger and thumb gingerly, as though he feared it might burn him, examined it with a laugh. Then he bit it, spun it in the air, caught it in his left hand, and brought his great right palm down on it with a bang.

“Hids or tails!” cried Ginnell. “Hids I win, tails you lose!” He gave a coarse laugh as he opened his palm where the coin lay tail up.

“Hids it is,” he cried; then he tossed it back into the bag and rose to his feet.

“Come on, boys,” said he, “let’s bring the stuff down to the saloon and count it.”

“Better get it aboard,” said Blood.

Harman looked up. The grin on his face stamped by the finding of the gold was still there, and in the light coming through the hatch his forehead showed, beaded with sweat.

“I’m with Ginnell,” said he. “Let’s get down to the saloon for an overhaul. I can’t wait whiles we row off to the schooner. I wants to feel the stuff, and I wants to divide it right off and now. Boys, we’re rich; we sure are. It’s the stroke of my life, and I can’t wait for no rowin’ on board no schooners before we divide up.”

“Come on, then,” said Blood.

The sack was much bigger than its contents, so there was plenty of grip for him as he seized one corner. Then, Harman grasping it by the neck, they lugged it out and along the deck and down the saloon companionway, Ginnell following.

The Chinese had opened nearly all the cabin portholes for the sake of light to assist them in their plundering, and now, as Blood and Harman placed the sack on the slanting saloon table, the crying of gulls came clearly and derisively from the cliffs outside, mixed with the hush of the sea and the boost of the swell as it broke, creaming and squattering amid the rocks. The lackadaisical ventilator cowl, which took an occasional movement from stray puffs of air, added its voice now and then, whining and complaining like some lost yet inconsiderable soul.

No other sound could be heard as the three men ranged themselves, Ginnell on the starboard, and Blood and Harman on the port side of the table.

The swivel seats, though all aslant, were practicable, and Harman was in the act of taking his place in the seat he had chosen when Ginnell interposed.

“One moment, Mr. Harman,” said the owner of the Heart of Ireland, “I’ve a word to say to you and Mr. Blood—sure, I beg your pardon—I mane Capt’in Blood.”

“Well,” said Blood, grasping a chair back, “what have you to say?”

“Only this,” replied Ginnell, with a grin. “I’ve got back me revolver.”

Blood clapped his hand to his pocket. It was empty.

“I picked your pocket of it,” said Ginnell, producing the weapon, “two minits back. You fired three shots over the heads of them chows, and there’s three ca’tridges left in her. I can hit a dollar at twinty long paces. Move an inch, either the one or other of you, and I’ll lay your brains on the table forenint you.”

They did not move, for they knew that he was in earnest. They knew that if they moved he would begin to shoot, and if he began to shoot, he would finish the job, leave their corpses on the floor, and sail off with the dollars and his Chinese crew in perfect safety. There were no witnesses.

“Now,” said Ginnell, “what the pair of you has to do is this: Misther Harman, you’ll go into that cabin behind you, climb on the upper bunk, stick your head through the porthole, and shout to the coolies down below there with the boat to come up. It’ll take two men to get them dollars on deck and down to the wather side. When you’ve done that, the pair of you will walk into the ould man’s cabin an’ say your prayers, thanking the saints you’ve got off so easy, whiles I puts the bolt on you till the dollars are away. And remimber this, one word or kick from you and I shoot; the Chinamen will never tell.”

“See here!” said Harman.

“One word!” shouted Ginnell, suddenly dropping the mask of urbanity and leveling the pistol.

It was as though the tiger cat in his grimy soul had suddenly burst bonds and mastered him. His finger pressed on the trigger, and the next moment Harman’s brains, or what he had of them, might have been literally “forenint” him on the table, when suddenly, tremendous as the last trumpet, paralyzing as the inrush of a body of armed men, booing and bellowing back from the cliffs in a hundred echoes came a voice—the blast of a ship’s siren:

“Huroop! Hirrip! Hurop! Haar—haar—haar!”

Ginnell’s arm fell. Harman, forgetting everything, turned, dashed into the cabin behind him, climbed on the upper bunk, and stuck his head through the porthole.

Then he dashed back into the saloon.

“It’s the Port of Amsterdam,” cried Harman. “It’s the salvage ship; she’s there droppin’ her anchor. We’re done, we’re dished—and we foolin’ like this and they crawlin’ up on us.”

“And you said she’d only do eight knots!” cried Blood.

Ginnell flung the revolver on the floor. Every trace of the recent occurrence had vanished, and the three men thought no more of one another than a man thinks of petty matters in the face of dissolution. Gunderman was outside; that was enough for them.

“Boys,” said Ginnell, “ain’t there no way out with them dollars? S’pose we howk them ashore?”

“Cliffs two hundred foot high!” said Harman. “Not a chanst. We’re dished.”

Said Blood: “There’s only one thing left. We’ll walk the dollars down to the boat and row off with them. Of course we’ll be stopped, still there’s the chance that Gunderman may be drunk or something. It’s one chance in a hundred billion; it’s the only one.”

But Gunderman was not drunk, nor were his boat party, and the court-martial he held on the beach in broken English and with the sack of coin beside him as chief witness would form a bright page of literature had one time to record it.

Ginnell, as owner of the Heart of Ireland, received the whole brunt of the storm—there was no hearing for him when, true to himself, he tried to cast the onus of the business on Blood and Harman. He was told to get out and be thankful he was not brought back to Frisco in irons, and he obeyed instructions, rowing off to the schooner, he and Harman and Blood, a melancholy party with the exception of Blood, who was talking to Harman with extreme animation on the subject of beam engines.

On deck, it was Blood who gave orders for hauling up the anchor and setting sail. He had recaptured the revolver.