THE street was blazing with the morning light, and, turning a corner, a puff of wind from the bay hit George in the face. It carried with it a scent of tar, oakum and bilge, and it was like the breath of the great god Adventure himself, the god of morning and unknown places and strange happenings.

It felt good to be alive, and the clearing up of a ratty old yacht with Hank Fisher, seemed the joyfullest business on earth. Hank had hit a big nail on the head. Money would have spoiled this show—just as it spoils most shows.

They passed along the wharf till they reached Sullivan’s. Hank dumped his bundle and came to the side and George, following him, saw Jake.

Jake was fishing.

“Hullo,” said Hank.

“Hullo,” said Jake.

“Caught anything?” said Hank.

“Naw—fish ain’t bitin’.”

“Well, I’m sorry for that, for I’ve taken over the fishing rights. Jake, you’re fired, the yacht’s mine, I’ve taken her over and you’ve got to get.”

“Y’ mean to say you’ve bought her?”

“Nope. Mr. Tyrebuck has loaned her to me. It’s all the same, you’ve got to get. Here’s his letter, want to read it?”

He dropped the typewritten letter down and Jake spelled over it. Then he said: “And how about the pay due to me, you goin’ to settle?”

“Nope—McCallum’s will pay you. Better go to them, they’ll be glad to see you for I told them what you said about her.”

“And what did I say about her?”

“Told me her spars were carrots and her planking mush.”

“That’s a damned lie,” said Jake, “and if there’s law to be had in ’Frisco, I’ll have you for it, b’gob.”

“Told me she’d open out first beam sea—now then, you dog-eyed squateroo, get your dunnage and clear, pronto.”

George had never seen Hank heated until this. His eyes blazed and his lean face filled with venom as he looked down on the man who had tried to crab the Wear Jack.

Jake tried to meet his gaze, failed, collected his dunnage, drew in his fishing line and scrambled ashore.

“If there’s law to be had in ’Frisco, I’ll have you for this,” cried he.

Hank dropped the bundle of overalls on to the deck and they followed it.

“Swab,” said Hank.

Then they put on the overalls. Hank started his cleaning up with an axe. There was an axe lying in the starboard scuppers, and, seizing it, he made for the old dinghy.

“Go hunt for a mop,” he cried to the other. “I saw one down below. Can’t dump this old bath tub into the harbour as she is or there’ll be trouble. B’sides I want exercise.”

He began to set the rotten planks flying with the axe, whilst George fetched the mop, also a bucket, which, under the direction of the perspiring Hank, he fastened to a rope so that they could dip up water for deck swilling. The remains of the dinghy overboard, they turned to on the raffle; rope ends, dead and done blocks, old newspapers, bits of coal.

“Why, look you here,” said Hank, holding up one of the blocks, “look at the size of it. It must have belonged to a three-master as old as the ark. That guy’s been hunting the wharves for old raffle to dump aboard her and make a litter; stick it in the sail room for evidence if he starts any law bother. Now, gimme that bucket.”

The swilling and swabbing of the deck began and continued till the dowels showed up in the planking. Then they rested and smoked cigarettes. It was now noon, and George, as he sat on the coaming of the cabin skylight, resting and watching the planking dry in the sun, felt uplifted. Since leaving the army he hadn’t done a hand’s turn of honest work, simply because he could not find any work to do. There are a surprising number of rich people out of work owing to no fault of their own, unemployed men and women with big bank balances starving for employment. The war was a simple Godsend to these. It supplied them with a reason and an initiative. Hank had supplied George with both these things.

Then, now that the decks were cleared up, the Wear Jack began to speak to him as only a ship can speak to a man. She was no longer a dirty hulk but a live thing awakening from sleep, a thing with the mobility of a bird, a sister of the sea and the wind. He had been on many a yacht and many a steamboat as guest or passenger, but this was the first ship he had ever got close to. The work with the mop and bucket, the knowledge that he would soon be helping to rig her and handle her, the sight of her now that she was cleaning up, the very smell of her, all combined to work the charm. He went below to heave the old block into the sail room and when he came on deck again Hank was up like a cat in the rigging, hunting for rotten ratlines, a knife between his teeth.

At one o’clock Farintosh appeared with the sandwiches; at five o’clock they knocked off. They had cleared and cleaned the deck, made an overhaul of the rigging, cleared and cleaned the cabin, and cleaned the bathroom and lavatory.

“I’ll start on the rigging to-morrow,” said Hank. “It’s all sound but a few ropes and ratlines—Christopher!”

“What?”

“I’ve fired the watchman and who’s to look after her?”

“Oh, she won’t hurt.”

“Won’t hurt! Why, if you fell asleep on these wharves, they’d have your back teeth before you woke and you wouldn’t feel them pulling them. Why, these hooligans, if they didn’t strip her, they’d camp in her, and then she’d be no more mortal use till she was boiled. No. I guess I’ll have to stick to her.”

“Stick to her!” cried George, “you mean to say, sleep here?”

“Yep. What’s wrong? The old bunk bedding will do me and the nights are warm. To-morrow I’ll get a man to look after her for a few hours in the evening whilst I get my dunnage aboard. Come along ashore with me while I get some grub and a toothbrush.”

He slipped out of his overalls and they climbed ashore.

“She won’t take any harm for an hour or two by herself,” said Hank.

They found a street of shops boasting a drug store. Here Hank bought his toothbrush, then he bought a German sausage, some bread, six small apples and two bottles of tonic water, also an evening paper from a yelling newsboy. Then he remembered that he would want a candle to read the newspaper by and went into a ships chandler’s to buy one, leaving George outside.

George glanced at the paper, then he spread it open hurriedly and stood reading it, heedless of the passersby or the people who jostled him. Hank, coming out of the store with his candle, looked over George’s shoulder and this is what he read, in scare headlines across a double column of print:

HANK FISHER OF
THE BOHEMIAN
CLUB GOES AFTER
THE DUTCHMAN

Joe Barrett Loses on the Deal But Comes
Up Smiling at Josh Tyrebuck
and Bud du Cane

Then came the details. The dollar tossed at the Bay Club, which gave Hank two thousand dollars’ worth of goods for nothing, the loan of the Wear Jack by Tyrebuck and George du Cane’s participation in the business.

George felt as though all his clothes had suddenly been stripped off him there in the street. Hank whistled.

Then he said: “That’s Barrett. Lord, I might have known. He didn’t toss fair, he wanted me to win, and now, look! He’s got the goods, five thousand dollars’ worth of advertising for a thousand dollars’ worth of bully beef and canned t’matoes. It won’t cost him more than that, for he’s giving me the stuff at retail prices. And now it will be all over the town and all over the waterside.”

“Curse him,” said George. His lips were dry. There was a jocular tone in that confounded press notice that cast a blight on everyone concerned except Joe Barrett. Joe, though he was the only loser of money in the business up to the present was, in some extraordinary way, put on a pedestal as a sport, whilst the others ran round the plinth like figures of fun.

“It’s him and his publicity man, Josh Scudder, who’ve done it,” said Hank. “I can tell Josh’s hand in it—it’s his style. Well, there it is, it can’t be helped. I’d planned to slip out quiet and come back with a brass band playing Dutchland under alles and Vanderdecken in leg irons; now the blanket’s stripped off us clean. We’ll be laughed at from Hell to Hoboken if we don’t make good. We’re on the toboggan full speed, no use grabbing at the snow. There’s only one way out—we’ve gotta get the Dutchman.”