SOME days later towards noon, the Heart of Ireland, with the north-west wind and a flooding tide, was making to enter the Golden Gate.

It was a perfect day. Tamalpais, on the port bow, showed clear against a diamond-bright blue sky; astern lay the sea of adventure and romance, blue as when first sighted by Balboa.

Hank was at the wheel and feeling pretty nervous of the bar, when Candon, who had just come on deck, came aft.

“I’ll take you in,” said Candon. He took the spokes, and Hank, walking to the starboard rail, stood close to George watching the land.

Then they moved a bit more forward to talk.

“What’s T. C. doing?” asked Hank.

“Down below,” said George, “getting things together. She’s not likely to come up till he’s off.”

“You’ve fixed things up with him?”

“Yep. We’ll drop anchor off Tiburon, I’ll row him ashore in the dinghy. Wouldn’t take money. Says he’s got twenty dollars and it’s all he wants. Lord, Hank! I’d give twenty hundred dollars if this hadn’t happened, twenty thousand, for I liked him. I did. What is it makes men run crooked who were built to run straight?”

“Search me,” said Hank.

The Heart began to take the tumble of the bar. They thrashed through and then came the old familiar places, Line Point, the Presidio, the Bay, breezed up and showing the same old ships and traffic, the ferry boats running like pond insects, the junks, the steamers with rust-red funnels, the pleasure yachts, the oyster boats.

As they drew on to Tiburon, a white steam yacht passing in the distance sent the music of a band along the breeze. It was playing “Suwanee.” Closer in now, Hank went below. Hank, for all his leathery old face, was far more emotional than George, and his mind, for all his will power, would keep jumping over the barrier of B. C.’s atrocious act to the old days when he had loved B. C. as a man and brother.

Tommie was in the after cabin and invisible, and Hank, alone, sat down at the table and leaned his arms on it, staring at the grains in the wood and listening. Leaning like this, suddenly a tear that seemed in an awful hurry raced down his right cheek; he did not know it. He was talking to himself, repeating the same words over and over again.

“Damn scoundrel. Damn scoundrel. Damn scoundrel.”

Then, suddenly, the way fell off, a voice on deck gave an order, and the sound of the anchor chain rasped through the ship. The anchor was down.

Other sounds came that told him what was going on, then silence.

He came up. There was no one on deck but Jake chewing and spitting over-side. Away on the water, making for the wharf, was the dinghy, George rowing, Candon in the stern. Hank stood watching for a moment, calling up in his mind the day when, talking to George in the cabin of the Wear Jack, Candon first came on board. He could see him plainly as he stood in the doorway, huge, friendly looking, with those eyes, the clear, blue, truthful eyes of a child. He called up all those discussions of an evening when George was ashore and Candon hiding from McGinnis and his men, those long talks covering the world and men and women—including Ella Wheeler Wilcox. The thing made him feel frightened as though the solid deck beneath his feet were threatened to dissolve. B. C. had been in earnest during those conversations, dead earnest, yet look what he had done. If that were so, how was he, Hank, to make sure he wasn’t as bad as B. C.? Good one moment, bad the next? He tried to recall all the mean things he had ever done, going right back to his childhood. He couldn’t remember anything in particular except nicking some apples off a stall. Then he gave up thinking, and came below, where he found Tommie who had finished putting things straight. She looked pale and pretty miserable and Hank’s heart went out to her, so that he might have revealed what was in it only for his recollection of Zillah backed by Candon. Providence also helped, for at that moment, through the open ports, he heard a quick running launch checking her speed and coming washing alongside. A voice hailed Jake.

“It’s the Port man,” said Hank. He darted up to the companion way, looking over and saw the Port Authority man. It was old Captain Scudder, a friend.

“Hullo, Hank!” cried Scudder. “Lord bless my soul, where have you sprung from? Where’s the old Wear Jack?”

“Come on board,” said Hank, helping him up. “Come along down—this is better’n beans. Thought it might be some chap I didn’t know.”

“Got the Dutchman?” asked Scudder as he came down the companion way.

“Well, you might almost say I have,” replied Hank, “but I’ll tell you the yarn.”

Tommie had retired into the after cabin and they sat down whilst Hank, knowing the man he was speaking to, gave his story, with big cuts but all essentials.

“So you see,” finished Hank, “McGinnis is down and out, can’t come back to ’Frisco with the fear of us on top of him. He was Vanderdecken practically speaking. But I’ve got some of his money and this old schooner to hand over to his wife if he’s got one.”

“Well, if you ask me he’s got a widow, if I know anything of those Mexicans,” replied Scudder. “Yes, he had a wife, she lives in Lincoln Street, and we’ll fix it with her. Listen, there’s a boat come alongside.”

It was George returned. He came down and took a hand whilst they debated matters with Scudder.

“Take my advice,” said the captain, “and keep your heads shut. You piled and lost the Wear Jack and came home in a schooner that happened along. Tell that to your friends. I’ll smother the yarn as far as my side lies and I’ll look after Jake. There is no use in stirring up trouble. Why, it might mean a dust-up with Mexico. Don’t bother about being kidded at not bringing Vanderdecken home. He’s half forgot, there’s an election on—you know ’Frisco. As for that movie company and the show of theirs you bust up—Wallack and Jackson it was—there was a big story about it in the papers—but Wallack and Jackson is bust themselves. A week ago they went, with half a dozen others.”

“Well, that’s a comfort,” said Hank, forgetting Tommie, and her means of livelihood.

Then Scudder heaved himself up and took his leave, and Tommie came out of the after cabin.

“Say,” said Hank, suddenly remembering the importance of Scudder’s news and recognising the gravity of it to her, “Old Scudder, the Port man has been here and we’ve fixed everything up all right, but he’s brought bad news. Your show has bust.”

“Which?” asked Tommie.

“Jackson and what’s-his-name.”

“I don’t wonder,” said Tommie, “it has been going a long time. Well, it doesn’t matter to me, I’ve been careful and put by. I’ve thirty thousand dollars laid by with Aunt Coulthurst. She lives in Montgomery Street and I’m tired of the movies anyway. I want real life and I’m going to get it.”

“How?” asked Hank.

“Ranch.”

“Where?”

“Where I was born. Texas. There’s air there, and life.”

“Sure,” said Hank.

“I’ll buy a ranch and run it. It’s a better life than being thrown out of windows for fools to look at or dropping from aËroplanes.”

“Sure,” said Hank.

“Well,” said Tommie, taking her seat for a moment on a bunk side and speaking as if in a reverie, “I suppose this is the end of our trip. It’s been queer, and we’ve had tight shaves but I wouldn’t have missed it for earths. It’s taught me more than I ever knew and it’s made me have no fear in striking out for myself in life. I was never afraid of things, but I used to be frightened of life and what was to come the day after next, and I guess that’s clean gone.”

“What are you going to do now, when you get ashore?” asked George.

“I’m going to Aunt Coulthurst; 16, Montgomery Street is her address, and don’t you forget it, and come and see us, won’t you?”

“Sure,” said Hank.

“Come Sunday. You’ll love her and—and—” finished Miss Coulthurst, with a catch in her voice, “I want her to thank you, for you’ve both been very—very—good to me.”

Hank seemed swallowing something.

“We’ll come with pleasure,” said George.

There was a pause, during which George took a letter from his pocket and gave it to Hank. It was a letter Candon had given him at parting; it had been written on the voyage with the stylograph pen he had borrowed and it was addressed to Hank Fisher.

“’Scuse me,” said Hank, and as Tommie rose to get her hat before going, he opened the letter and began to read.

He hadn’t been reading long when his jaw began to drop, he stopped dead and stared before him, took up the letter again, then handed it to George.

“That does me,” said Hank. “Read it—read it out—read it.”

Tommie stood by whilst George read out the letter. This is a verbatim copy:

George paused for a moment.

“That shows you what jumping at conclusions too quickly, comes to. Here’s the best fellow on earth, seems to me, and we—at least I did—yes, I did, I wrote him off as a scoundrel right from the beginning—almost.”

“We didn’t,” cried Tommie. “I didn’t, I know I felt there must be something that took him away. I never gave up hope till I saw you all standing on the deck of the Wear Jack and that you were scarcely speaking to him, and that he didn’t seem to be explaining things—I don’t know if I even quite gave up then—oh, dear!”

Her agitation made Hank blaze up.

“Why in the nation,” he cried, “couldn’t he have explained.”

“You called him a scoundrel,” said George. “He saw we’d marked him down without trial, and he was that sort.”

“Which sort?”

“The sort that will kill you if you hit its pride, even if it has to kill itself. I expect that time in the foc’sle with Jake was pure hell’s delight to him, feeling he was making us miserable and being miserable himself. I expect he’s gloating at this present minute over us reading this letter and being unable to get at him to make things up. Gloating with pleasure, yet in hell all the time.”

“Why, Bud,” said Hank, “you’re talking as if you knew the man’s mind inside out.”

“Maybe, I do,” said Bud. “Maybe I’m not such a fool as I look, but I take him as a discontented man who’s made a mess of his life, and nicking on him and calling him names like that just at that moment, finished the business.”

Tommie nodded. All the same she guessed the case to be a bit more complicated than that.

“Go on reading,” she said.

George went on.

“I sat down on one of the couches thinking what to do and I heard the Chinks pow-wowing away on deck. Talking maybe of how to get rid of me. Time went on and the clock went round to twelve, that’s two hours after I boarded her, then Charlie came to the skylight and hailed me. He said they’d taken the ship and had got the stuff we were digging for. He asked me would I navigate her if they let me out. I told him to go to hell. He went off and time went on and then I heard them handling the halyards and getting in the hook. They didn’t shout at their work, went silent as cats. Then I felt the ship under way.

“Morning came. I daren’t sleep or they’d have been down on me, but I had food from the lazarette and there was water in the swinging bottle.

“Charlie came again that day to know if I would help work the ship. He said they meant to beach her on the Panama coast at a place they knew and offered me a share in the boodle. I told him I’d fire the ship first and he went away.

“That night, about three hours after dark as far as I could guess, for the clock had run down and I hadn’t bothered to wind it, and they’d taken the chronometer with the charts on deck, a smash came and I knew the fools had piled her. I heard them shouting and pow-wowing. The sea was smooth and I knew they could easy get away if they didn’t foul the boat in lowering her. They got her over all right and I heard them putting their dunnage in, grub and water, too, if they weren’t crazy. Then I heard nothing more. They’d gone.

“The lamp was still alight. I’d put it out in the day time and lit up before dark; all the same, there wasn’t much oil in her. So I set to on the cabin hatch working with my knife. I left off to get one of the automatics to see if I couldn’t smash up the wood by firing, when, just taking it, I felt a draught of air blowing towards the skylight. I’d thought of getting out by the skylight, but the Chinks had thought of it too, and they’d overlaid it with ropes, but that draught blowing towards it gave me a jog and I made down along to the galley. The galley hatch was open.

“The Chinks must have opened it before running away, reckoning that if anything turned up and they were caught it would be lighter for them if they hadn’t killed me.

“I got out on deck, couldn’t see the boat. Then I opened the cabin hatch and let the air in.

“Then I had some grub and laid down and went asleep. I dreamt I heard a boat coming alongside. I tumbled out and came on deck and found my pals.

“You know the rest.”

“Bob Candon.”