THE Kuro Shiwo current drives northward up the coast of Japan, crosses the Pacific and comes down the Pacific Coast of America, bathing the Channel Islands and giving them their equable temperature. This great current is a world of its own; it has its kelp forests, where the shark hides, like a tiger, and its own peculiar people, led by the great swordfish of Japan. Japan not only sends her swordsmen of the sea to keep this moving street-like world, she lends her colours, in blues vivid and surprising as the skies and waters of her shadowless pictures.

One morning, shortly after sunrise, George, fast asleep in his bunk, was hauled out by Hank to “see the Islands.” He tumbled out and, just as he was, in his pyjamas, followed on deck.

Between the Kuro Shiwo and the wind the Wear Jack was making a good ten knots. Pont Concepcion on the mainland lay almost astern, and the sun, with his feet still on the mountains beyond Santa Barbara, was chasing to death a fog whose last banners were fluttering amidst the foot hills.

Away ahead, like vast ships under press of sail, rode the San Lucas Islands, San Miguel, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, their fog-filled caÑons white in the sunlight.

Later in the morning, with the San Lucas Islands far astern, San Nicolas showed up like a flake of spar on the horizon to the south; to the sou’-east appeared a trace of the mountains of Santa Catalina.

Candon, who was on deck talking to George, pointed towards Santa Catalina. “Looks pretty lonely, don’t it?” said he. “Well, that place is simply swarming with millionaires. Say, you’re something in that way yourself, aren’t you? So I ought to keep my head muzzled, but you’ll understand. I’m not going against you, but things in general. I reckon if you’d ever roomed in Tallis Street, ’Frisco, you’d know what I mean. I’ve seen big poverty and when I see millionaires sunning themselves, it gets my goat—now you know what I’m gettin’ at.”

“Look here, B. C.,” said George, “cut it out. Most of the millionaires I know live on pap and pills and work like gun mules—”

“Do you?” asked Candon laughing.

“No, I don’t, but I expect I will some time; anyhow, one fool exception doesn’t count. What I’m getting at is this, chaps like you and Hank get it in your heads that the bigger a man’s pile is, the more he enjoys himself. It’s the other way about, seems to me; also that the rich man lives in a world of his own with laws of his own—”

“So he does,” said the other. “Now you listen to me. When Prohibition started, how did the poor man stand? Dry, that’s how he stood, looking at the other people with their cellars full of drink. They knew the law was coming and they laid in.”

“That’s true,” said George.

“It is,” said Candon, “and some day, maybe, I’ll tell you a yarn about how it hit me once.”

Hank came on deck and stood with eyes shaded, looking at the ghost of Santa Catalina on the sky line. “There she is,” said Hank. “You can almost see the flags waving and hear the bands playing. Bud, didn’t you ever go fishing down that way? I reckon it was that place gave Vanderdecken his first pull towards thievery, seeing the water is thick with Bank Presidents and Wheat Cornerers only waiting to be collected for ransom. Say, B. C., if you know anything about old Vanderdecken, tell us why he didn’t hold the folks he caught to ransom as well as picking the diamonds and money off them. That’s what I’d have done. I would sure. Hullo!”

A leaping tuna, as long as a man and curved like a sword, left the sea on the starboard bow, showed its colours to the sun, and vanished with a splash.

“Tuna,” said Candon.

“Well, what’s he doing here?” asked Hank, “he’s out of his waters, this ain’t the tuna grounds.”

“How do you know?” asked George.

“Lord, oughtn’t I to know,” replied Hank. “Why I was on the fish commission ship on this section of the Pacific Coast, sounding and dredging and taking specimens of the fish and the weeds and Lord knows what all. That was five years ago, but I reckon the tuna grounds haven’t altered since then.”

“They lie south of San Clemente, don’t they?” said Candon.

“They do not, you’re thinking of albacore. The tuna grounds are east of Santa Catalina mostly, close to Avalon. Why, I know all that place’s well as I know my own office. I’ve got a hellnation memory for facts and I could reel off to you the lie of the fishing grounds most all along the coast. Right from Rocky Point on the mainland the fish begin running in shoals. Benito you get mostly at Rocky Point, then albacore; but if you strike out for the Islands you’ll begin to get big things.”

“Whales?” asked George.

“Whales mostly stick to the Santa Barbara channel, there aren’t many now, but you get killers and sulphur bottoms and gray whales—sharks, too.”

Hank lit a cigarette and leaning on the port rail looked across the water to the east. Then he came forward a bit and looked ahead.

Away ahead and a bit to westward something showed. It was San Nicolas, San Nicolas no longer sharply defined like a flame of spar, but with its head in a turban of new-formed cloud. This island, eight or nine miles long, forms the western outpost of the Channel Islands. Unprotected, like them, by Port Concepcion, it receives the full force of wind and weather.

The others came close to Hank.

“That’s her,” said Hank, “that’s San Nicolas. Ever been ashore there, B. C.?”

“Not such a fool,” said Candon. “I’ve cruised about these waters a good bit, but I’ve never met a man who wanted to put his foot there. It’s all wind and sand for one thing.”

“Well,” said Hank, “I’ve been thinking, from what I know of the place, that Vanderdecken may have used San Nicolas for one of his ports of call. What do you say, B. C.?”

“Who knows?” said Candon.

“Did you land on San Nicolas?” asked George.

“Oh yes; we were hanging off the kelp beds three or four days.”

“I’d like to land there,” said George.

“Well, it’s easily done,” said Hank. “We could tie up the kelp for the matter of that, only I’m afraid the Wear Jack’s a bit too big. She might drag out. Away down, further south, the kelp vines run to a thousand foot long and you could most moor a battleship to them, but it’s different here. However, we can anchor if you want to. What do you say, B. C.?”

“I’m with you,” said Candon. “We have plenty of time and a day won’t matter.”

“Not a cent,” said George.

Candon went and leaned on the starboard rail. For the last two days, in fact, ever since he had given away the whereabouts of Vanderdecken’s cache, he had seemed at times depressed. Sometimes he would be in high good spirits and sometimes moping and silent. Hank had noticed it first and he spoke of it now as he and George went forward to the bow, where they hung watching the boost of the water and the foam gouts like marble shavings on lazalite.

“Notice B. C. has the dumps again,” said Hank. “I wonder what’s working on him? Maybe he feels himself a skunk leading us on to old man Vanderdecken.”

“He said that was all right,” said George, “said he was acting perfectly straight and that the man was his enemy. Y’know, I believe in B. C.”

“So do I,” said Hank, “but what in the nation’s he moulting about, that’s what I want to know. I take it it’s just sensitiveness; even though the Dutchman is his enemy, he don’t like giving him away. I can understand it.”

“I can’t quite make him out,” said George, “he’s intelligent and has fine ideas about things, yet he always seems to have lived pretty rough—”

“And what’s the harm of that,” cut in Hank. “Why, it’s the guys that have lived pretty rough as you call it that are the only educated citizens as far as I can make out. They’ve had their noses rubbed into the world. Why look at me—I’m not saying I’m much, but all I’ve learned of any good to me hasn’t come out of class-rooms or colleges. Mind you, I’m not against them, I don’t say they’re no use, but I do say what makes a man is what he rubs against.”

“He seems to have been rubbing against some pretty queer characters to judge by the Heart of Ireland lot,” said George.

“That’s my point,” said Hank. “They’ve turned him respectable. There’s many a man would have gone to the bad only he’s been frightened off it by the toughs he’s met. They’re better than Sunday school books. I know, for I’ve been there.”

An hour later, San Nicolas was plain before them and an hour before sunset Beggs Rock was on the starboard bow and only a mile away. San Nicolas, itself close to them, now showed its peak, nine hundred feet high with its changeless turban of cloud, rosy gold in the evening glow. From the peak the island spilled away showing cleft and caÑon and high ground treeless and devoid of life.

They cast anchor just outside the kelp ring. The sun was just leaving the sea. Nothing showed but the brown lateen sails of a Chinese junk, standing in shore about two miles away. She rounded a promontory and vanished from sight.

“That’s a Chow fishing boat,” said Hank. “They go scraping along all down this coast, hunting for abalones and turtle and whatever they can lay their hands on.”

“That’s so,” said Candon, “I’ve met in with them right down to the Gulf of California and beyond. It’s against the law to take abalones in most places round here, but much they care.”

“They’d lay hands on any old thing,” said Hank. “Wonder what that crowd is doing here?”

The morrow was to tell him.