GEORGE and Hank went forward to superintend the work of the Chinks on the bowsprit; Candon, at the wheel and well content with the work of the night, felt thirsty. There was no one to fetch him a drink, tea was what he fancied and thinking of tea made him think of the tea things which were in the cabin. Then he remembered what Hank had said about the cabin door being closed.

It occurred to him now that the girl had bolted the door. No doubt the poor creature was half crazy with fright. It had not occurred before to the ingenuous and benevolent B. C. that the girl must look on her new captors as more terrible than even the white slavers. The yelling and the shooting, the stampeding of the camp, the way she had been seized, caught up and carried off—why, what must she think of them! Up to this he had been too busy to think himself. It was only now, as Hank would have said, that the thing suddenly hit him on the head like an orange.

“Hank!” shouted B. C.

“Coming,” replied Hank. He came aft.

“I’m thinking of the girl down below, it’s she that’s most likely fastened the door, she’s most likely scared out of her life the way we’ve took her off and not knowing who we are.”

“Sure,” said Hank.

“She nearly tore my head off as I was carrying her—I remember getting a cat out of a trap once, it acted just the same—scared—”

“Listen,” said Hank, who was standing close to the cabin skylight.

The skylight was a bit open and fastened from inside; through the opening came sounds as of someone moving about.

“She’s moving,” said B. C. “She’s got over her fright. Down with you, Hank, and get her story, tell her I’ll be down when George comes aft, tell her she’s as safe with us as she’d be with her gran’mother.”

Hank descended.

Candon heard him knock—then his voice.

“Halloo there.”

Silence.

“Halloo there.”

Then came a determined little voice.

“Clear off—I’ve got a pistol—”

Candon, listening, remembered the Lugger pistol he had left on the cabin table.

Then Hank’s voice.

“Don’t be scared, com’n’ open the door, don’t be scared.”

The voice: “I’m not a person to be scared—you ought to know that.”

Down below the perplexed Hank, standing before the closed door, was at pause for a moment. Why ought he to have known that? Was she mad after all?

“Well, open the door anyhow,” said he. “Don’t you know we’re your friends. Good Lord, don’t you know what we’ve risked getting you away from that lot? Come on—all the food and stuff’s in the lockers and lazarette and we’re clean perishing for something to eat.”

“That’s good,” said the voice, “you’ll have to perish till morning, then we’ll talk. Now go away, please.”

“Whach you say?”

“Scatter.”

A long pause. Then Hank’s voice, angry. “I tell you what—I wish to the Lord we’d left you there.”

And the voice: “You’ll be wishing it more when you’re in the penitentiary.”

Then Candon could almost hear the perplexed Hank scratching his head. A long pause. Then Hank:

“But for the Lord’s sake, you don’t think we want to do you any harm?”

The voice: “Then what did you want to do?”

Hank: “Get you away from that lot.”

The voice: “What for?”

Hank: “What for—why to save you from them—to save you body and soul—didn’t you know they were taking you to perdition,—clean perdition.”

Then the voice, after a moment’s pause: “I don’t know whether you’re toughs or religious cranks. It doesn’t matter. Anyhow this door doesn’t open s’long as it’s dark. Now clear, come again in the morning and, if you take my advice, steer straight for Santa Barbara. If you put me ashore safe by morning maybe I’ll try and help you with the police, but I don’t promise—now clear.”

Hank cleared.

On deck he found George who had come aft. “She’s gone bughouse,” said Hank, “or else she was one of them, helping in the contraband.”

He recounted the dialogue. “She’s got that Lugger pistol and seems to me, boys, she’s got the game. It’s worse than Pittsburg. Called me a religious crank. Anyhow she’s got us, got the grub under her thumb unless we make out with the rice and truck the Chinks feed on.”

“I can’t make it out,” said George. “I’d have sworn by the look we got at her, through the glass, that she was a prisoner with those scamps. D’y’ remember the way she carried on, went and threw herself down on the ground with her face hidden in her arm?”

“Seems to me,” said Hank, “we’ve been reading into the situation more than was in it. She was no prisoner. She was one of them—daughter most likely of that Jew woman I hauled off you—well, I wish we’d left her alone—and to think of the size of her sitting up and crowing like that.”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” said George, “it’s the day of the flapper. She most likely was running that show. It’s part of the new world—the millennium that was to come after the war!”

Candon alone said nothing. The thing had hit him even harder than Hank. The knight errant in him was flattened out, at least for the moment. He remembered the cat he had released from the trap and how it had clawed him—but it had taken milk from his hand immediately after and become his friend, whereas this creature—! Then it came to him out of his own mind—for Hank’s words had produced little effect on him—that the truth was he had released her from no trap. She was part and parcel with those scoundrels, a vicious girl made vicious no doubt from bad association. This conviction suddenly coming to his mind produced an uplift.

“Boys,” said B. C. suddenly, “we’ll tame her. There’s something moving in this more than we can see. Anyhow, we’ve got her away from those ginks to start with.”

“That’s true,” said Hank, his mind taking suddenly the colour of Candon’s. But George was of rougher stuff than these idealists. He went to the skylight and cautiously tried to peep, but could see nothing, then he listened but could hear nothing. He came back to the others.

“She’s lying down, most likely, can’t see her or hear her—it’s all very well talking of taming—what do you think this show is? I didn’t start out to tame girls, don’t know how to begin, either,—I know, it’s as much my fault as yours—we shouldn’t have mixed up in the business—and I tell you we are in a tight place. That crowd will swear anything against us and she’ll back them. She talked of the police. That’s just so, all these white slavers and dope sellers and contrabanders are hand in glove with the police. They couldn’t do their business else; we should have left them alone.”

“Now that’s clean wrong,” said Hank. “Doesn’t matter a rap if the girl’s a tough, we saved her, anyhow. We did the right thing and she can’t make it wrong by being wrong herself.”

“That’s a fact,” said Candon.

“Maybe,” replied George. “All the same she’s done us out of our bunks, and what are you going to do with her, anyway? Here you are tied up with a girl, you’ve taken her from her mother, if that old Jew woman was her mother, ripped her clean out of her environment, she’s on our hands. If she doesn’t go back to that lot, what are we to do with her?”

Hank got peppery. “Why in the nation didn’t you think of that before we took her,” asked he.

“Why you know well enough,” answered the other, “we thought that lot had stolen her away from her people, naturally I thought we’d put her back again with her people, whereas, now, look where we are. Suppose even we do tame her, as you call it, and she goes straight, who’s to feed her and keep her?”

“Why, Bud,” said Hank, “we’ll manage somehow. Look at you with all your dollars, what better use could you make of a few of them, and we’ll help.”

“Yes, we’ll help,” said Candon, forgetting the fact that he was due for either the penitentiary or hoofing it to Callao from the Bay of Whales. “We’ll help and the three of us will make out somehow.”

The millionaire said nothing for a moment. He was about to fly out at the cool way these benefactors of humanity were disposing of his credit and coin. Then he calmed down and said nothing and went forward to get some of the “rice and truck the Chinks feed on” for his companions, also a beaker of water.

The weather was warm, so warm that sleeping on deck was no penance and Charley being called to the wheel the Wear Jack and her strange cargo snored on south—ever south—under the night of stars.