THEY had fixed to row ashore after breakfast but fishing held them till afternoon. Candon, not keen on the business of climbing over rocks, remained behind to finish tinkering at the engine which he had almost got into working order.

Usually there is a big swell running here, but to-day there was only a gentle heave lifting the long green vine tendrils of the kelp. It was like rowing over a forest. On the beach they left the boat to the two Chinamen who had rowed them off and, Hank leading the way, they started to the right towards the great sand spit that runs into the sea for half a mile or more.

A Farallone cormorant, circling in the blue above, seemed to watch them; it passed with a cry, leaving the sky empty and nothing to hear but the wash of the sea on the beaches and far off an occasional gull’s voice from the spit. Reaching a great forward leaning rock, they took their seats in the shade of it to rest and light their pipes. The sand lay before them, jutting into the kelp-oily sea and beyond the kelp the blue of the kuro shiwo. The Wear Jack was out of sight, the horizon seemed infinitely far and of a world where men were not or from whence men had departed for ever.

“Say, Bud,” said Hank, leaning on his side with a contented sigh, “ain’t this great!”

“Which?” asked Bud.

“The lonesomeness. Listen to the gulls, don’t they make you feel just melancholy.”

“Do you like to feel melancholy?”

“Depends on the brand, same as whisky. Say, it’s funny to think that the cars are running down Market Street and Tyrebuck sitting in his office and J. B.—he’s sitting at his luncheon by this. Wonder what they said when they found us gone? Well we’ve had the laugh on them to start with.”

“I hope they won’t have the laugh on us at the finish,” said George.

“Don’t,” said Hank, “it makes me feel doddery to think of us going back like dogs with our tails down and no Dutchman—hell! no, you don’t see me back in ’Frisco empty-handed, never. Was you ever laughed at, Bud?”

“Heaps of times.”

“Laughed at in the papers?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s what I mean. I’ve been, and I know.”

“What was the business?”

“Oh, it was a girl.”

“What did she do?”

“It wasn’t what she did so much as what she said. It was this way. I was in Pittsburg one rainy day and I fell in with a girl; she wasn’t more’n eighteen and down on her luck. She asked me the way to somewhere or another and that’s how we started off. She’d had nothing to eat that day and I took her into a coffee shop and stuffed her up with buckwheat cakes and truck and then she told me her story. Said she had to meet her father at the station that evening and he was old and infirm and they had to look for rooms. Well, it seems, somehow or another, I was mug enough to help her look for rooms and stand as a reference and lend her twenty dollars, and when the police stepped into the rooms I got for them that night and took the grey wig and patch over his eye off her father he was Sam Brown, the biggest tough out of N’ York, with five thousand dollars’ worth of stolen diamonds on him. I managed to clear myself, but the press had got the story and I tell you, Bud, I was guyed out of Pittsburg and it hurt worse than kicking.”

“They don’t go in for sentiment in Pittsburg.”

“Nope, steel goods.”

“Well, come along,” said George, “this isn’t prospecting the island.”

They got up and shook the sand from themselves and started along the spit; then, returning, they began to climb. The Wear Jack came into view, anchored beyond the kelp, then as they got higher and above the promontory that hid the next bay, they saw the Chinese junk of the night before. She was anchored a little way out. On the sands of the bay stood three strange looking little pyramids, tents evidently, and about the tents people were moving.

“Now what in the nation are those Chinks doing?” said Hank. He unslung his binoculars he had brought with him and leveled them at the far-off tents.

“Chinks—one of them’s building a fire; they’ve got a boat up on the sand. Abalone hunters, most likely, making a camp here for the fishing. Say, Bud, I believe they’re hatchet men.”

“What are hatchet men?”

“Pirates turned inside out and painted to look like fishermen—just robbers, abalone poachers and smugglin’ if they can get a chance, wickedest lot out of hell,—I’m judging by the look of them. Have a squint.”

He handed the powerful glasses to George who leveled them in the direction of the bay.

The field of sight suddenly swarmed with Chinamen moving against the glitter of white sand. Small, dingy-looking men, wearing big straw hats,—a fire had been lit and the white smoke curled upwards against the tents. Near one of the tents a Chinaman was working over a heap of what looked like abalones.

“Hullo!” cried George.

“What’s up?” asked Hank.

“There’s a white man with them, he’s just come out of one of the tents—a long thin looking devil. What on earth’s he with them for?”

Hank took the glass.

“Sure enough there is,” said Hank, “look at his hair all hanging over his face. He looks to be bossing the Chinks. It’s plain now what they are. Smugglers, opium or dope of some sort. I’ve heard the trade’s in the hands of whites, they run it into Santa Barbara plugged into abalone shells. Bud! Say! Bud! There’s a girl! She’s just come out of the right-hand tent with a little chap after her, looks like a Mexican. She’s a white—looks like a lady—she’s crying, she’s got her handkerchief to her face—Bud, this gets me!”

George snatched the glass.

Hank was right. There was a girl amidst the horrid crowd. She was no longer crying, she had taken her seat on the sand in a dejected sort of manner and seemed watching the others as they moved about at their work. Even at that distance, it was obvious that she was of a different class from the rest.

“Well, I’m damned,” said George.

“Look! that beastly big chap seems jawing at her.” Hank snatched the glass.

He saw the long man standing in front of the girl whom he seemed to have ordered to her feet; he seemed angry about something. Then the unfortunate girl turned and went off towards one of the tents. She seemed about to enter it when she collapsed, cast herself on the sand and lay, her face hidden on her arm.

“Hell!” cried Hank.

He shut the glass, thrust it into its case and started off down the rocks, George following.

“Where are you going to?” cried George.

“Bust up that hive,” cried Hank. “That’s white slave, clean white slave. Come along to the ship and fetch Candon and the guns. This is better than Vanderdecken.”

Tumbling, slipping, clawing at bushes, whooping like a red Indian, he led the way, George labouring behind, till they reached the beach where the boat of the Wear Jack lay, the two Chinks close by it on the sand, smoking and playing fan-tan. The boat was shoved off.

“You mean fighting them?” asked George. His throat was dry and his lips were dry. He had seen the Great War and bursting shells and had risked his life a dozen times, but all that seemed nothing to the imminent attack on that horrid crowd over there on the beach beyond sight.

“Oh, Lord, no,” said Hank, a devilish look on his lantern face, and a new light in his eyes. “I’m going to cuddle them. Lay into it, you jade-faced sons of perdition. ’Nuff! in with your oars and claw on.”

They tumbled over the rail of the Wear Jack, Hank shouting for Candon. They found him below coming out of the engine place with a lump of cotton waste in his hand.

“Come into the saloon,” cried Hank. “B. C., we’re up to the eyes in it. Wacha think, we’ve struck a gang of Chinese white slavers with a girl in tow.” He explained.

As he talked, George noticed the effect on Candon. He leaned forward as he sat, pulling at the hairs of his beard; his eyes changed in colour, darkening as the pupils spread. When Hank had finished, Candon leaned back, sought mechanically in his pocket, found his pipe and put it between his teeth, but he did not light it.

“They’re white slavers,” said Hank.

“Sure,” said Candon. The anger consuming him was no less visible for the calm that covered it. Then he broke out. “There you have things as they’re going on, and your beautiful laws, where are they? I tell you, boys, white women are being snatched off to China every week that goes, and white men are helping. It’s all part of a business mixed up with opium smuggling and dope selling. Well, we’ve gotta get that girl from them. Question is, how?”

“Land right away and go for them. I’ve got the guns,” said Hank, going to a locker and producing the armaments for the voyage, three Lugger automatics. “Here’s the persuaders and the Chinks will help.”

“One minute,” said Candon. He was thinking hard, nearly biting through the pipe stem. Then he spoke. “It’s getting on for sun-down. Better wait till the dark comes, then we can rush them. They’ll think it’s the police if we do it proper and they won’t be able to count our numbers—how’s the wind?”

“Dropped dead.”

“Good, there’s no fear of them putting out before we fix them, they’ll stay here to-night, sure. Once we get the girl on board, we can put off, wind or no wind, for I’ve got the engine fixed. You see, if we put up a fight right away we’ll have all those Chinks they have with them on top of us. You said they were hatchet men, didn’t you? Fight like hornets; whereas in the dark—why a Chink in the dark is no good, specially if he doesn’t know what’s attacking him. Now, my plan is, bust their camp up sudden, yelling and shooting over them; if they show fight, drill them, but it’s a thousand to one they’ll quit and scatter, thinking it’s the police. Nail the girl, get her aboard here and shove off.”

“I’m with you,” said George.

Hank demurred for a moment; he would have preferred to attack right away; then, after a little discussion, he fell in with the others.