Captain Michael Blood and Billy Harman, having received ten thousand dollars for services rendered to Henry Clay Armbruster, and having cashed the check, held a consultation as to what they should do with it.

Harman was for filling up their schooner, the Heart of Ireland, with trade and starting off for the islands in search of copra. Blood, tired of the sea, for a while demurred. He said he wanted to enjoy life a bit.

“And who’s to stop you?” replied the open-minded Harman. “A thousand dollars is all we want for a bust, and a week to do it in. I’ve took notice that the heart is mostly out of a bust by the end of a week, after that it’s a fair wind and followin’ sea for the jimjams with an empty hold when you fetches them. Let’s lay our plans and work cautious, for, when all’s said and done, it’s no great shakes to wake jailed with empty pockets, robbed of your boots by the bar drummers you’ve been fillin’ with booze.

“Booze ain’t no use,” continued Mr. Harman, finishing his glass—they were celebrating the occasion in a bar near the China docks. “Look at the chaps that sell it, and look at the chaps that swallow it—one lot covered with di’monds and the other lot with their toes stickin’ out of their boots. We’ve got to work cautious and keep takin’ soundings all the time, for riches is rocks, as I heard a chap once sayin’ in a temp’rance meetin’ on the Sand Lot. Twenty year ago it was, but the sayin’ stuck in my head—have another?”

They failed to “work cautious” that night. Flushed with prosperity and unaccustomed drinks, they found themselves playing cards with professional gamblers, who relieved them of five thousand dollars in an hour and twenty-five minutes.

“Riches is rocks.” There was never a truer saying; and next morning, not being altogether fools, they determined to thank God the whole of their little fortune was not gone and to set to work to retrieve their losses.

Now, it had become known all about the waterside that the Heart of Ireland was back. The fate of Ginnell, her original owner, who had been jugged for gun running, was still fresh and pleasant in the mind of the public; and the authorities, who boarded the Heart on the morning after the gambling adventures of Blood and Harman, would have had a lot of things to say to those two had not Harman already made things straight with the “Clancy crowd,” that amiable political ring whose freemasonic friendship and protection was never invoked in vain by even the least of its members. So it came about that after friendly conversation and cigars the authorities rowed off, and scarcely had they gone when a boat with a big, fat man in the stern came sculling up.

“That’s Mike Rafferty,” said Harman to his companion. “He’s a cousin of Ginnell’s. Now what in the nation does he want with us?”

Rafferty hailed Harman by name and came aboard. Rafferty knew everything about them, from the fact that they were flush of coin to the fact that they were in a kind of lawful-unlawful possession of his cousin’s schooner.

He talked quite openly on these matters, but of the fate of his Cousin Ginnell he said nothing, with the exception of a dark hint that wires were being pulled in his favour.

Harman was equally explicit.

“He jugged us in the cabin of this ship,” said Harman, “and made off on the derelick we struck down the coast there; he gave us a present of her. That we stick to, and if I ever lay hands on Pat Ginnell I’ll give him a present that’ll stick to him for the rest of his nacheral.”

“Aisy, now,” said Rafferty; “don’t be losin’ your hair. I know the swab, and, though I’m workin’ in his favour, bein’ cousins, I’ve me own down on him. He sold me a pup over the last cargo of oil he brought in, and if it wasn’t for the disgrace of the family I’d l’ave him lie without raisin’ a finger to better him. What I’ve come about is bizness. I hear you’ve been talkin’ of copra.”

Harman had, in various bars, and he made no trouble about admitting the soft impeachment.

“Well,” said Rafferty, “it’s become a poor business, what with them Germans and missionaries and such. You go to any of the islands with trade, and see what you’ll get. I’ve worked the Pacific since I was a boy the height of me knee, and I know it. There’s not an island, nearly, I’m not acqueented with, not a reef, begob; you ask any one, and they’ll tell you.”

Harman knew this to be a fact. Rafferty, who was no good age, had been engaged in blackbirding, in copra, in opium smuggling, in all the in-and-out ways of life that the blue Pacific held or holds open to man.

“Heave ahead,” said he.

“Well,” said Rafferty, “this is me bizness with you. Pay me fifty dollars down and ten per cent of the takin’s, and I’ll put you on to an island where you’ll fill up with copra for a few old beads and baccy pipes. It’s a vargin island out of trade tracks; you won’t find any Dutchman there, and the Kanaka girls come dancin’ round you with nuthin’ on them but flowers. You won’t find any Bibles nor crinolines sp’ilin’ the people there. I marked it down last year when I was comin’ up from south of the line, with a never-mind cargo. But I left the sea last spring, as maybe you know, else I’d have taken a ship down there meself. Fifty dollars down and ten per cint on the takin’s, and I’ll put you on the spot.”

Harman begged time to consider the matter, and Rafferty, after drinks and conversation of a political nature, took his departure, leaving his address behind.

“Now, you see how crookedness don’t pay,” said Harman, as he watched the boat row off. “Pat Ginnell was so good at bestin’ he bested his own relations. I remember that bizness about the shark oil; Rafferty was givin’ Ginnell his name over it in every bar in Frisco, and now Rafferty’s spoilin’ to get his own back by usin’ the Heart. Funny them Irish are, for he’s tryin’ with the other hand to get him clear of jail for the sake of the family. Jail’s hell to an Irishman. I’ve always took notice of that—no offence to you.”

Blood looked away over the blue waters of the bay. “It is,” said he, “and, bad as I hate Ginnell, if I could turn the lock to let him out, I’d do it to-morrow—and scrag him the moment after. Jail’s not natural to a man. If a man’s not fit to live loose, kill him, if you want to; if you want to make him afraid of the law, cut the skin off him with a cat-o’-nine-tails, but to stick him in a cage—and what’s jail but a cage?—is to turn him into a brute beast. And it never betters him.”

Harman concurred. Sailors have a way of getting at the truth of things because they are always so close to them; and these two, discussing penal matters on the deck of the Heart of Ireland, might have been listened to with advantage by some of the law officers of the nations.

Then they had drinks, and later in the day they called on Rafferty at his office in Ginnis Street.

They had come to the decision to take his offer. A soft island was well worth paying for. Cayzer, the owner of the great Clan line of steamers, made his fortune by knowing where to send his ships for cargo, and, though Harman knew nothing of the owner of the Clan line, he was keenly alive to the truth of this matter.

“So you’ve come to agree with me,” said Rafferty. “Well, you won’t be sorry. Now, how will you take it—fifty dollars down and a ten-per-cent royalty to me on the takin’s, or would you sooner make a clean deal and pay me a hundred and fifty down and no royalties? For between you and me there’s a lot of sea chances to be taken and the old Heart is not as young as she used to be.”

Blood and Harman took a walk outside to consult, and determined to make a “clean deal.”

“I don’t want to be payin’ no royalties,” said Harman; “let’s cut clear of the chap and pay him a hundred down; he’ll take it.”

He did, after an hour’s bargaining and wrangling and calling the saints to observe how he was being cheated.

Then, the hundred dollars haring been paid, he gave them the location of the island on the chart which Harman had brought.

To be almost precise, the island was situated in the great quadrilateral of empty sea southwest of Honolulu, bounded by the International Date Line to westward, latitude 10° north to southward, longitude 165° to eastward, and the Tropic of Cancer to northward.

Having paid a hundred dollars for the information, Blood and Harman left Rafferty’s office and that very afternoon began to purchase the trade for their new venture.

II

A fortnight later, with a full Chinese crew and Harman at the helm, the Heart shook out her old sails, and, picking her anchor out of the mud, lay over on a tack that would take her midway between Alcatras and Bird Rock. It was a bright and lovely morning, with a west wind blowing, and Harman whistled softly to himself as he shifted the helm under Alcatras and the slatting sails filled on the tack for Black Point. She was catching the full breath of the sea here and heeled with the green water a foot from the starboard gunwale as she made the reach for Lime Point, then on the port tack she felt the first Pacific sea, taking the middle channel.

After fighting the tumble of the thirty-six-foot water of the bar, Harman, having set their course, relinquished the wheel to one of the Chinamen and joined Blood.

In buying the trade, they had received some tips from Rafferty. “Now,” said that gentleman, “there’s no use in takin’ hats to Paris or coals to Newcastle. If you’re going to trade with a place, you must take the things that’s wanted there. I was sayin’ you could get all the copra you wanted for baccy pipes and beads—that was only me figure of speech. Them chaps on Matao—the name of the island—want stuff different from that, I took note when I was there, thinkin’ to trade some time with them. They’re no end keen on diggin’ the land and growin’ things, and they traded me a lot of fish and shells for a packet of onion seed. They want stuff that’s not grown there natural—onions, potatoes, and garden seed in general. You might take some spades and wheelbarras and not be amiss; and tinware, pots, and pans, and so on.”

Harman took this useful tip, and the Heart was well provisioned with things useful in the way of agriculture. He was talking now with Blood on the stowage; the wheelbarrows were exercising his mind, for there is nothing more awkward to stow, or, in its way, more likely to be damaged, and they had seven of them. It was a feature of Harman’s make-up that he sometimes didn’t begin to bother about things till it was impossible to put them right, and Blood hinted so in plain language.

“What’s the good of talkin’ about it now?” said he. “We worked the thing out ashore, and what’s done is done. You got them cheap, and if the Kanakas don’t take to them they’ll always fetch their price in any port.”

“That’s what’s bothering me,” said Harman; “for if the Kanakas don’t want them and we fill up with copra, we’ll have to dump the durned things, for we won’t have stowage room for them.”

“Wait till we’ve got the copra,” replied Blood.

Then they stood watching the Californian coast getting low down on the port quarter and a big tank steamer pounding along half a mile away making to enter the gates.

“Wheelbarrows or no wheelbarrows, you may thank your God you’re not second mate on that,” said Blood.

Harman concurred.

III

They had favourable winds to south of Bird Island, which is situated north of Nilihau and Kaula in the Hawaiian group, then came a calm that lasted three days, leaving the old Heart groaning and whining to the lift of the swell and the grumbling of Harman, hungry for copra.

“There’s somethin’ about this tub that gets me,” said he. “Somethin’ always happens just as we’re about to make good. I believe Pat Ginnell’s put a curse on her.”

“Oh, close up!” said Blood. “How about Armbruster? I reckon she’s lucky enough; it’s the fools that are in her that have brought any bad luck there’s been going.”

“Well, we’ll see,” replied the other.

As if to disprove his words, an hour later the wind came; and three days later, nosing through the great desolation of blue water between Sejetman Reef and Johnston Island, the Heart of Ireland raised the island. It was midday when the sea-birdlike cry of one of the Chinamen on the lookout brought Blood and Harman tumbling up from the cabin. Yes, it was the island, right enough, and Harman through his glass could make out the tops of palm trees where the sea shimmered.

He held the glass glued to his eye for a moment, and then handed it to Harman.

“I reckon,” said he, “the pa’ms is as plentiful there as the hairs on a bald man’s head. Why, there ain’t any pa’ms!”

Blood swore and closed the glass with a snap.

Even at that distance the poverty of the place in copra shouted across the sea, but it was not till they had drawn in within sound of the reefs that the true desolation of this fortunate island became apparent.

The place was horrible. A mile and a half, or maybe two miles, long by a mile broad, protected by broken reefs, the island showed just one grove of maybe a hundred trees; the rest was scrub vegetation and sea birds.

Strangest and perhaps most desolate of all the features was a line of shanties, half protected by the trees, shanties that seemed gone to decay.

Then, as the Heart hove to and lay sniffing at the place, appeared a figure. A man was coming down the little strip of beach leading from the shanties to the lagoon.

“Look!” said Harman. “He’s pushin’ off to us in a boat. Say, Blood, d’you see any naked Kanaka girls crowned with flowers waitin’ to dance round us?”

“Rafferty’s sold us a pup,” said Blood.

“It’s easy to be seen. We’ll wait. Let’s see.”

The boat, a small one, was clearing the reef, opening and making toward them, the man sculling her looking over his shoulder now and then to correct his course.

Close up, she revealed herself as an old fishing dinghy, battered with wear.

Alongside, the man in her laid in his oars, caught the rope flung to him by Harman, and made fast.

He was a pale-faced, lantern-jawed, dyspeptic-looking person, and he was chewing, for the first thing he did after scrambling on deck was to spit overboard. The next was to ask a question.

“What’s your name?” said he, saluting the afterguard with a nod, and sweeping the deck with his eyes—eyes like the wine-coloured, large, soulless eyes of a hare.

“Heart of Ireland, out of Frisco—what’s yours?” replied Harman.

“Gadgett,” replied the hare-eyed man. “I came out thinking maybe you were bringing news of my schooner, the Bertha Mason. She’s overdue from Sydney. I’m owner here. This island’s mine, leased from the Australian government.” Then, with another look round the deck: “What in the nation are you doing down here anyway?”

“Makin’ fools of ourselves,” replied Harman, “unless we’ve mistook your place for a big copra island that ought to lay in your position. You haven’t heard tell of such an island hereabouts?”

“Look at your charts,” said Gadgett. “This place is only marked on the last British Admiralty charts. There’s nothing round here but water from the Change Time Line to Johnston Island. You’ve come a thousand miles out for copra.”

“What’s your venture here, may I ask?” put in Blood.

“Shell,” replied Gadgett, leaning now against the starboard rail and cutting himself a new plug of tobacco. “I’ve been working this island six years, and had her nearly stripped of shell last spring, but I’ve hung on to clear the last of it. There isn’t much, but I thought I’d take the last squeeze. My schooner is overdue, and when it comes I’m going to clear out for good.”

“Say,” said Harman, “did a chap called Rafferty call here last spring?”

Gadgett turned his eyes to Harman.

“Yes, a chap by that name was here in a schooner. I’ve forgot her name. Blown out of his course by weather, he was, and called for water.”

“Well, now, listen,” said Harman. Then he told the whole story we know.

Gadgett was a good listener. You could feel him putting his hands into the pockets of the yarn, so to speak, and weighing the contents, nodding his head the while, but not saying a word. When it was finished, he took from his pocket the knife with which he had cut the tobacco, opened it, and began cutting gently at his left thumb nail.

“Well,” said he, “it’s pretty clear you two gentlemen have been sold. Brought wheelbarrows here and onion seed and pots and pans; might as well have brought an empty hold for all the trade to be done in this place, for when I’m gone, with the few Kanakas I have with me—they are fishing over on the other side just now—there’ll be nobody here but sea gulls. Rafferty—I see him clear—a big-featured man he was, a questioning chap, too. Well, there’s no doubt about it; he slung you a yarn. But what made him do it?”

“What made him do it!” said Blood. “Why, to guy us all over Frisco and to get right with us over a deal we had with a cousin of his by the name of Pat Ginnell. I’m Irish myself, and I ought to have known how they stick together. No matter, there’s no use in crying over spilt milk. Can we come into your lagoon for a brush-up?”

Gadgett assented. There was a broad fairway, and he steered the Heart himself, the boat following streamed on a line. When the anchor was down, he asked them ashore, and as they were rowing across to the beach said Gadgett: “Do you gentlemen know anything of oyster fishing—shell?”

“No,” said Harman.

“That’s a pity,” said Gadgett, “for if you’d been disposed and knew the business you might have cared to stick here. I put down spat this spring on the whole floor of this lagoon, and the place will be thick with oysters by Christmas. I’d have sold you the remains of the lease—over forty years to run—for a trifle. There’s money to be made here—if you cared to take the thing on.”

“No,” said Harman, rather shortly. “We’re not open to any trade of that sort.”

“Well, there was no harm in mentioning it,” said Gadgett.

He took them up to the frame house in the cocoanut grove, where he lived, and stood drinks. Then he showed them the godown where shell was stored and the Kanakas’ shanties.

Then Blood and Harman went off for a walk by themselves to explore the horrible desolation of the place.

Said Harman, when they were alone: “Skunk—he’s been tryin’ to do us, him and his spat! I know all about oysters, shell and pearl. Why, this place won’t be no use for another fifty years after the way he’s scraped it. He looks on us as a pair of mugs, wanderin’ about with a cargo of wheelbarrows—which we are. But we ain’t such mugs as to pay him good money for lyin’ yarns.”

They walked to the only eminence on the island, a rise of ground some hundred feet above the sea level, and there they stood breathing the sea air and watching the gulls and listening to the eternal song of the surf on the reef.

Then they came back to the beach and hailed the schooner for a boat, which presently put off and took them on board.

Once on deck, Mr. Harman made a dive below into the cabin, and Blood, following him, found him in the act of uncorking a bottle of whisky.

“I’m fair let down,” said Harman, mixing his drink. “It’s not Rafferty, nor the dog’s trick he’s played us, nor the sight of this blasted place that’s enough to give a dromedary the collywobbles. It’s that chap with the yalla eyes. I heard him laffin’ to himself when he went into the house, laffin’ at us. I’ve never been laffed at like that, but it’s not so much that as the chap. He’s onnatural.”

“I want to get back to Frisco and scrag Rafferty,” said Blood, taking hold of the bottle. “That’s all I want.”

“You’ll have to scrag the whole of Frisco, then,” said Harman, “for the place is rockin’ with laughter now, from the China docks to Meiggs’. It’s the wheelbarrows that have done us; they’ll be had against us everywhere, and not a bar you’ll go into but you’ll be asked: Is your wheelbarrow outside? I don’t want to go back to Frisco, I tell you I don’t. I want to get to some place where I can sit down and cuss quiet. Lord, but that chap has had us lively!”

There was no doubt of that fact. Rafferty, with that fatal sense of humour for which he had a reputation of a sort, had well avenged his kinsman, Ginnell, put a hundred dollars into his own pocket, and made Blood and Harman forever ridiculous to a certain order of minds. And his whole working material had been just the recollection of this forsaken island—nothing more than that.

IV

Gadgett’s schooner, the Bertha Mason, came into the lagoon that night under a full moon lifting in the east. Blood and Harman had not gone to bed, and they were treated to a lovely sight which left them unimpressed.

Nothing could be more perfect in the way of a sea picture than the schooner fresh from the sea spilling her amber light on her water shadows to the slatting of curves and the sounds of block and cordage, moving like a vision with just way enough on her to take her to her anchorage.

Then the lagoon surface reeled to the splash of the anchor, the shore echoes answered to the rumble-tum-tum-tum of the chain, and the Bertha Mason swung to her moorings, presenting her bow to the outward-going current and her broadside to that of the Heart.

“Blast the blighters!” said Harman. Then the two went below to their bunks.

Next morning there were salutations across the water from one schooner to the other. The fellows on the Bertha Mason were at work early getting the shell on board, and the Chinese crew of the Heart were busy fishing. During the day there was little communication between the two vessels, and at night there was no offer of the Bertha Masonites to come aboard, yet it was their duty to pay first call as the Heart was a visitor.

“They’re a stand-off lot,” said Harman. “They’re turnin’ up their noses. I s’pose, because we have a crew of chinkies. Well, they can keep to themselves, for all I care. When’re we goin’ to put out?”

“I don’t want to leave before them,” said Blood. “Besides, there are repairs to be done, and we want to fill up with water. They won’t keep us long.”

Harman said nothing. He wanted to be off, but he felt as Blood did; his enmity against the Gadgett crowd made him want to hold on, pretending to care nothing, and that enmity was increased next morning. The Bertha Mason, dragging her anchor a bit on the strong incoming current, came near to foul the Heart. Hartman used language to which came a polite inquiry as to how he was off for wheelbarrows.

“Gadgett’s told,” said he to Blood, after making suitable answer to the query. “They’re laffin at us. The yarn will be all over Sydney now; they’ll be tellin’ it in N’ York before they’ve done with it. We’ll have to change our names and sink the Heart to clear ourselves. Well, I’m goin’ off fishin’. Gadgett said there was good fishin’ from the rocks on the other side of the island. I can’t stick here doin’ nuthin’. The deck’s burnin’ my feet.”

He rowed ashore with lines and fish that the Chinese had caught for bait. It was five o’clock in the evening, and the Bertha Mason, her cargo stowed, was preparing to leave when he returned.

Blood was down below when Harman came tumbling down the companionway. He was flushed, and looked as though he had been drinking, though his legs were steady enough, and there was no smell of alcohol.

“Blood!” shouted Harman. “We’re made! Where’s your pocketbook? Gimme it! Come on, haste yourself; come with me and try to look like a fool. Gimme the pocketbook, I tell you, and don’t ask no questions; I’m fit to burst, and there’s no time. They’re handlin’ the sails on that bathtub. Up with you and after me!”

He seized the pocketbook, which had fifteen hundred dollars in it, the remains of their money, and rushed on deck, followed by Blood.

The boat was still by the side, with two Chinamen in her. They got in and rowed to the Bertha Mason.

Next moment they were on the deck of the Bertha, facing Gadgett.

“Mr. Gadgett,” said Harman, “when you talked of having put down oyster spat in the lagoon, did you mean pearl-oyster spat?”

“Of course,” said Gadgett, scenting vaguely what was coming.

“And will them oysters have pearls in them by next Christmas?”

“Of course they will,” replied the other. “Not every oyster, but most of them will.”

“You talked of selling the remains of the lease of the place,” said Harman. “Well, we’ve come to buy. What would you want for it?”

“Two thousand dollars,” said Gadgett. They went below to bargain, and in five minutes, anxious to be done with the fools and get away, Gadgett came down to five hundred dollars.

He knew well that not only was the place stripped by him, but that lately it had been giving out. Oysters are among the most mysterious denizens of the sea, and shell lagoons “give out” for no known reason. The oysters cease to breed—that is all. Gadgett would have sold the remains of his lease for five dollars, for five cents, for a cent. He would have given it away—to an enemy.

He got five hundred dollars for it and reckoned that he had crowned his luck.

Harman went below and examined the lease. It included all rights on the island above and underground, and all rights to sea approaches and reefs.

Gadgett had a government stamp for the new contract. He was a man who always foresaw, and in five minutes Harman and Blood found themselves in possession of Matao for a term of forty-four years, with an option of renewal for another twenty years on a year’s notice.

Then Harman, with this in his pocket, came on deck, followed by Blood, and as they stood saying good-bye to Gadgett the fellow in command began giving the order to handle the throat and peak halyards.

As they rowed off, the jib was being set, and when they reached the Heart, the sound of the windlass pawls reached them, and the rasp of the anchor chain being hove short.

“What is it?” said Blood, who knew Harman too well to doubt that they had got the weather gauge on Gadgett.

“Wait till they’ve cleared the lagoon—wait till they’ve cleared the lagoon!” said the other. “I’m afraid of thinkin’ of it lest that chap should smell the idea and come back and murder us. Oh, Lord, oh, Lord! Will they never get out?”

The anchor of the Bertha Mason was now rising to the catheads; she was moving. As she passed the reef opening, she ran up her flag and dipped it, then the Pacific took her.

“Come down below,” said Harman.

Down below, not a word would he say till he had poured out two whiskies, one for himself and one for Blood.

Then he burst out:

“It’s a guano island. Yesterday, when I went fishin’, I took notice of signs, then I prospected. All the top part is one solid block of guano—nuff to manure the continent of the States. That chap has been sittin’ five years on millions of dollars and playin’ with oyster shells. Oh, think of Rafferty—and the wheelbarrows! Think of his long, yellow face when he knows!”

“Are you sure?” said Blood.

“Sure—why, I’ve a workin’ knowledge of guano. Sure—o’ course I’m sure! Come ashore with me, and I’ll show you.”

They went ashore, and before sunset Harman had demonstrated that even on this side, where the deposit was thinnest, the store was vast.

“Think of the size of the place,” said he, “and remember from this to the other side it gets thicker. Fifty years won’t empty it.”

The sea gulls of a thousand years had presented them with a fortune beyond estimation, and Blood for the first time in his life saw himself a rich man—honestly rich.

Their joy was so great that the first thing they did on returning to the Heart was to fling the whisky bottle into the lagoon.

“We don’t want any more of that hell stuff ever,” said Blood. “I want to enjoy life, and that spoils everything.”

“I’m with you,” said Harman, “not to say I’m goin’ to turn teetotal, for I’ve took notice that them mugs gets so full of themselves they haven’t cargo room for nuthin’ else. But I don’t want no more drunks—not me.”

During the next fortnight, with the help of the wheelbarrows and agricultural implements, they took in a cargo of guano. Then they sailed for Frisco.

I never heard exactly the amount of money they made over their last sea adventure, but I do know for a fact that Rafferty nearly died from “mortification” and that Blood and Harman are exceedingly rich men.

Blood turned gentleman and married; but Billy Harman is just the same, preferring sailormen as company and taking voyages to his island to sniff the source of his wealth and for the good of his health.

Billy is the only man I have ever known unspoiled by money.