THE DUAL PERSONALITY OF SLICK DICK NICKERSON
I.
On a certain morning in the spring of the year, the three men who wereknown as the Three Black Crows called at the office of "The President ofthe Pacific and Oriental Flotation Company," situated in an obscurestreet near San Francisco's water-front. They were Strokher, the tall,blond, solemn, silent Englishman; Hardenberg, the American, dry ofhumour, shrewd, resourceful, who bargained like a Vermonter and sailed aschooner like a Gloucester cod-fisher; and in their company, as everinseparable from the other two, came the little colonial, nicknamed, foroccult reasons, "Ally Bazan," a small, wiry man, excitable, vociferous,who was without fear, without guile and without money.
When Hardenberg, who was always spokesman for the Three Crows, had sentin their names, they were admitted at once to the inner office of the"President." The President was an old man, bearded like a prophet, witha watery blue eye and a forehead wrinkled like an orang's. He spoke tothe Three Crows in the manner of one speaking to friends he has not seenin some time.
"Well, Mr. Ryder," began Hardenberg. "We called around to see if you hadanything fer us this morning. I don't mind telling you that we're atliberty jus' now. Anything doing?"
Ryder fingered his beard distressfully. "Very little, Joe; very little."
"Got any wrecks?"
"Not a wreck."
Hardenberg turned to a great map that hung on the wall by Ryder's desk.It was marked in places by red crosses, against which were writtencertain numbers and letters. Hardenberg put his finger on a small islandsouth of the Marquesas group and demanded: "What might be H. 33, Mr.President?"
"Pearl Island," answered the President. "Davidson is on that job."
"Or H. 125?" Hardenberg indicated a point in the Gilbert group.
"Guano deposits. That's promised."
"Hallo! You're up in the Aleutians. I make out. 20 A.--what's that?"
"Old government telegraph wire--line abandoned--finest drawn-copperwire. I've had three boys at that for months."
"What's 301? This here, off the Mexican coast?"
The President, unable to remember, turned to his one clerk: "Hyers,what's 301? Isn't that Peterson?"
The clerk ran his finger down a column: "No, sir; 301 is the WhiskyShip."
"Ah! So it is. I remember. _You_ remember, too, Joe. Little schooner,the _Tropic Bird_--sixty days out from Callao--five hundred cases ofwhisky aboard--sunk in squall. It was thirty years ago. Think of fivehundred cases of thirty-year-old whisky! There's money in that if I canlay my hands on the schooner. Suppose you try that, you boys--on atwenty per cent. basis. Come now, what do you say?"
"Not for _five_ per cent.," declared Hardenberg. "How'd we raise her?How'd we know how deep she lies? Not for Joe. What's the matter withlanding arms down here in Central America for Bocas and his gang?"
"I'm out o' that, Joe. Too much competition."
"What's doing here in Tahiti--No. 88? It ain't lettered."
Once more the President consulted his books.
"Ah!--88. Here we are. Cache o' illicit pearls. I had it looked up.Nothing in it."
"Say, Cap'n!"--Hardenberg's eye had traveled to the upper edge of themap--"whatever did you strike up here in Alaska? At Point Barrow, s'elpme Bob! It's 48 B."
The President stirred uneasily in his place. "Well, I ain't quite workedthat scheme out, Joe. But I smell the deal. There's a Russian post alongthere some'eres. Where they catch sea-otters. And the skins o'sea-otters are selling this very day for seventy dollars at any port inChina."
"I s'y," piped up Ally Bazan, "I knows a bit about that gyme. They's abally kind o' Lum-tums among them Chinese as sports those syme skins ontheir bally clothes--as a mark o' rank, d'ye see."
"Have you figured at all on the proposition, Cap'n?" inquiredHardenberg.
"There's risk in it, Joe; big risk," declared the President nervously."But I'd only ask fifteen per cent."
"You _have_ worked out the scheme, then."
"Well--ah--y'see, there's the risk, and--ah--" Suddenly Ryder leanedforward, his watery blue eyes glinting: "Boys, it's a _jewel_. It's justyour kind. I'd a-sent for you, to try on this very scheme, if you hadn'tshown up. You kin have the _Bertha Millner_--I've a year's charter o'her from Wilbur--and I'll only ask you fifteen per cent. of the _net_profits--_net_, mind you."
"I ain't buyin' no dead horse, Cap'n," returned Hardenberg, "but I'llsay this: we pay no fifteen per cent."
"Banks and the Ruggles were daft to try it and give me twenty-five."
"An' where would Banks land the scheme? I know him. You put him on thatGerman cipher-code job down Honolulu way, an' it cost you about athousand before you could pull out. We'll give you seven an' a half."
"Ten," declared Ryder, "ten, Joe, at the very least. Why, how much doyou suppose just the stores would cost me? And Point Barrow--why, Joe,that's right up in the Arctic. I got to run the risk o' you getting the_Bertha_ smashed in the ice."
"What do _we_ risk?" retorted Hardenberg; and it was the monosyllabicStrokher who gave the answer:
"Chokee, by Jove!"
"Ten is fair. It's ten or nothing," answered Hardenberg.
"Gross, then, Joe. Ten on the gross--or I give the job to the Rugglesand Banks."
"Who's your bloomin' agent?" put in Ally Bazan.
"Nickerson. I sent him with Peterson on that _Mary Archer_ wreck scheme.An' you know what Peterson says of him--didn't give him no trouble atall. One o' my best men, boys."
"There have been," observed Strokher stolidly, "certain stories toldabout Nickerson. Not that _I_ wish to seem suspicious, but I put it toyou as man to man."
"Ay," exclaimed Ally Bazan. "He was fair nutty once, they tell me. Threwsome kind o' bally fit an' come aout all skew-jee'd in his mind. Forgothis nyme an' all. I s'y, how abaout him, anyw'y?"
"Boys," said Ryder, "I'll tell you. Nickerson--yes, I know the yarnsabout him. It was this way--y'see, I ain't keeping anything from you,boys. Two years ago he was a Methody preacher in Santa Clara. Well, hewas what they call a revivalist, and he was holding forth one blazin'hot day out in the sun when all to once he goes down, _flat,_ an' don'tcome round for the better part o' two days. When he wakes up he's_another person;_ he'd forgot his name, forgot his job, forgot the wholeblamed shooting-match. _And he ain't never remembered them since._ Thedoctors have names for that kind o' thing. It seems it does happen nowand again. Well, he turned to an' began sailoring first off--soon as thehospitals and medicos were done with him--an' him not having any friendsas you might say, he was let go his own gait. He got to be third mate ofsome kind o' dough-dish down Mexico way; and then I got hold o' him an'took him into the Comp'ny. He's been with me ever since. He ain't gotthe faintest kind o' recollection o' his Methody days, an' believes he'salways been a sailorman. Well, that's _his_ business, ain't it? If hetakes my orders an' walks chalk, what do I care about his Methody game?There, boys, is the origin, history and development of Slick DickNickerson. If you take up this sea-otter deal and go to Point Barrow,naturally Nick has got to go as owner's agent and representative of theComp'ny. But I couldn't send a easier fellow to get along with. Honest,now, I couldn't. Boys, you think over the proposition between now andtomorrow an' then come around and let me know."
And the upshot of the whole matter was that one month later the _BerthaMillner_, with Nickerson, Hardenberg, Strokher and Ally Bazan on board,cleared from San Francisco, bound--the papers were beautifullyprecise--for Seattle and Tacoma with a cargo of general merchandise.
As a matter of fact, the bulk of her cargo consisted of some oddhundreds of very fine lumps of rock--which as ballast is cheap by theton--and some odd dozen cases of conspicuously labeled champagne.
The Pacific and Oriental Flotation Company made this champagne out ofRhine wine, effervescent salts, raisins, rock candy and alcohol. It wasfrom the same stock of wine of which Ryder had sold some thousand casesto the Coreans the year before.
II
"Not that I care a curse,"
said Strokher, the Englishman. "But I put itto you squarely that this voyage lacks that certain indescribablecharm."
The _Bertha Millner_ was a fortnight out, and the four adventurers--or,rather, the three adventurers and Nickerson--were lame in every joint,red-eyed from lack of sleep, half-starved, wholly wet and unequivocallydisgusted. They had had heavy weather from the day they bade farewell tothe whistling buoy off San Francisco Bay until the moment when evenpatient, docile, taciturn Strokher had at last--in his ownfashion--rebelled.
"Ain't I a dam' fool? Ain't I a proper lot? Gard strike me if I don'tchuck fer fair after this. Wot'd I come to sea fer--an' this 'ere go isthe worst I _ever_ knew--a baoat no bigger'n a bally bath-tub, headseas, livin' gyles the clock 'round, wet food, wet clothes, wet bunks.Caold till, by cricky! I've lost the feel o' mee feet. An' wat for? Forthe bloomin' good chanst o' a slug in mee guts. That's wat for." Atlittle intervals the little vociferous colonial, Ally Bazan--he wasred-haired and speckled--capered with rage, shaking his fists.
But Hardenberg only shifted his cigar to the other corner of his mouth.He knew Ally Bazan, and knew that the little fellow would have jeered atthe offer of a first-cabin passage back to San Francisco in theswiftest, surest, steadiest passenger steamer that ever wore paint. Sohe remarked: "I ain't ever billed this promenade as a Coney Islandpicnic, I guess."
Nickerson--Slick Dick, the supercargo--was all that Hardenberg, whocaptained the schooner, could expect. He never interfered, neverquestioned; never protested in the name or interests of the Company whenHardenberg "hung on" in the bleak, bitter squalls till the _Bertha_ wasrail under and the sails hard as iron.
If it was true that he had once been a Methody revivalist no one, toquote Alia Bazan, "could a' smelled it off'n him." He was ablack-bearded, scrawling six-footer, with a voice like a steam siren anda fist like a sledge. He carried two revolvers, spoke of the Russians atPoint Barrow as the "Boomskys," and boasted if it came to _that_ he'dengage to account for two of them, would shove their heads into theirboot-legs and give them the running scrag, by God so he would!
Slowly, laboriously, beset in blinding fogs, swept with, icy rains,buffeted and mauled and man-handled by the unending assaults of the sea,the _Bertha Millner_ worked her way northward up that iron coast--tillsuddenly she entered an elysium.
Overnight she seemed to have run into it: it was a world of green,wooded islands, of smooth channels, of warm and steady winds, ofcloudless skies. Coming on deck upon the morning of the _Bertha's_ firstday in this new region, Ally Bazan gazed open-mouthed. Then: "I s'y!" heyelled. "Hey! By crickey! Look!" He slapped his thighs. "S'trewth! Thisis 'eavenly."
Strokher was smoking his pipe on the hatch combings. "Rather," heobserved. "An' I put it to you--we've deserved it."
In the main, however, the northward flitting was uneventful. Every fifthday Nickerson got drunk--on the Company's Corean champagne. Now that theweather had sweetened, the Three Black Crows had less to do in the wayof handling and nursing the schooner. Their plans when the "Boomskys"should be reached were rehearsed over and over again. Then came spellsof card and checker playing, story-telling, or hours of silent inertiawhen, man fashion, they brooded over pipes in a patch of sun, somnolent,the mind empty of all thought.
But at length the air took on a keener tang; there was a bite to thebreeze, the sun lost his savour and the light of him lengthened tillHardenberg could read off logarithms at ten in the evening. Great-coatsand sweaters were had from the chests, and it was no man's work to reefwhen the wind came down from out the north.
Each day now the schooner was drawing nearer the Arctic Circle. Atlength snow fell, and two days later they saw their first iceberg.
Hardenberg worked out their position on the chart and bore to theeastward till he made out the Alaskan coast--a smudge on the horizon.For another week he kept this in sight, the schooner dodging the bergsthat by now drove by in squadrons, and even bumping and butling throughdrift and slush ice.
Seals were plentiful, and Hardenberg and Strokher promptly revived thequarrel of their respective nations. Once even they slew a mammoth bullwalrus--astray from some northern herd--and played poker for the tusks.Then suddenly they pulled themselves sharply together, and, as it were,stood "attention."
For more than a week the schooner, following the trend of thefar-distant coast, had headed eastward, and now at length, looming outof the snow and out of the mist, a somber bulwark, black, vast, ominous,rose the scarps and crags of that which they came so far to see--PointBarrow.
Hardenberg rounded the point, ran in under the lee of the land andbrought out the chart which Ryder had given him. Then he shortened sailand moved west again till Barrow was "hull down" behind him. To thenorth was the Arctic, treacherous, nursing hurricanes, ice-sheathed; butclose aboard, not a quarter of a mile off his counter, stretched a grayand gloomy land, barren, bleak as a dead planet, inhospitable as themoon.
For three days they crawled along the edge keeping their glasses trainedupon every bay, every inlet. Then at length, early one morning, AllyBazan, who had been posted at the bows, came scrambling aft toHardenberg at the wheel. He was gasping for breath in his excitement.
"Hi! There we are," he shouted. "O Lord! Oh, I s'y! Now we're in fer it.That's them! That's them! By the great jumpin' jimminy Christmas, that'sthem fer fair! Strike me blind for a bleedin' gutter-cat if it eyent. OLord! S'y, I gotta to get drunk. S'y, what-all's the first jump in thebally game now?"
"Well, the first thing, little man," observed Hardenberg, "is for yourmother's son to hang the monkey onto the safety-valve. Keep y'r steamand watch y'r uncle."
"Scrag the Boomskys," said Slick Dick encouragingly.
Strokher pulled the left end of his viking mustache with the fingers ofhis right hand.
"We must now talk," he said.
A last conference was held in the cabin, and the various parts of thecomedy rehearsed. Also the three looked to their revolvers.
"Not that I expect a rupture of diplomatic relations," commentedStrokher; "but if there's any shooting done, as between man and man, Ichoose to do it."
"All understood, then?" asked Hardenberg, looking from face to face."There won't be no chance to ask questions once we set foot ashore."
The others nodded.
It was not difficult to get in with the seven Russian sea-otterfishermen at the post. Certain of them spoke a macerated English, andthrough these Hardenberg, Ally Bazan and Nickerson--Strokher remained onboard to look after the schooner--told to the "Boomskys" a lamentabletale of the reported wreck of a vessel, described by Hardenberg, withlaborious precision, as a steam whaler from San Francisco--the _Tiber_by name, bark-rigged, seven hundred tons burden, Captain Henry WardBeecher, mate Mr. James Boss Tweed. They, the visitors, were theofficers of the relief-ship on the lookout for castaways and survivors.
But in the course of these preliminaries it became necessary to restrainNickerson--not yet wholly recovered from a recent incursion into thestore of Corean champagne. It presented itself to his consideration asfacetious to indulge (when speaking to the Russians) in strange andelaborate distortions of speech.
"And she sunk-avitch in a hundred fathom o' water-owski."
"--All on board-erewski."
"--hell of dam' bad storm-onavna."
And he persisted in the idiocy till Hardenberg found an excuse fortaking him aside and cursing him into a realization of his position.
In the end--inevitably--the schooner's company were invited to dine atthe post.
It was a strange affair--a strange scene. The coast, flat, gray, drearybeyond all power of expression, lonesome as the interstellar space, andquite as cold, and in all that limitless vastness of the World's Edge,two specks--the hut, its three windows streaming with light, and thetiny schooner rocking in the offing. Over all flared the pallidincandescence of the auroras.
The Company drank steadily, and Strokher, listening from the schooner'squarterdeck, heard the shouting and the songs faintly above the wash andlap
ping under the counter. Two hours had passed since the moment heguessed that the feast had been laid. A third went by. He grew uneasy.There was no cessation of the noise of carousing. He even fancied heheard pistol shots. Then after a long time the noise by degrees woredown; a long silence followed. The hut seemed deserted; nothing stirred;another hour went by.
Then at length Strokher saw a figure emerge from the door of the hut andcome down to the shore. It was Hardenberg. Strokher saw him wave his armslowly, now to the left, now to the right, and he took down the wig-wagas follows: "Stand--in--closer--we--have--the--skins."
III
During the course of the next few days Strokher heard the differentversions of the affair in the hut over and over again till he knew itssmallest details. He learned how the "Boomskys" fell upon Ryder'schampagne like wolves upon a wounded buck, how they drank it from"enameled-ware" coffee-cups, from tin dippers, from the bottlesthemselves; how at last they even dispensed with the tedium of removingthe corks and knocked off the heads against the table-ledge and drankfrom the splintered bottoms; how they quarreled over the lees and dregs,how ever and always fresh supplies were forthcoming, and how at lastHardenberg, Ally Bazan and Slick Dick stood up from the table in themidst of the seven inert bodies; how they ransacked the place for thepriceless furs; how they failed to locate them; how the conviction grewthat this was the wrong place after all, and how at length Hardenbergdiscovered the trap-door that admitted to the cellar, where in the dimlight of the uplifted lanterns they saw, corded in tiny bales andpackages, the costliest furs known to commerce.
Ally Bazan had sobbed in his excitement over that vision and did notregain the power of articulate speech till the "loot" was safely stowedin the 'tween-decks and Hardenberg had given order to come about.
"Now," he had observed dryly, "now, lads, it's Hongkong--or bust."
The tackle had fouled aloft and the jib hung slatting over the spritlike a collapsed balloon.
"Cast off up there, Nick!" called Hardenberg from the wheel.
Nickerson swung himself into the rigging, crying out in a mincing voiceas, holding to a rope's end, he swung around to face the receding hut:"By-bye-skevitch. We've had _such_ a charming evening. _Do_ hope-skywe'll be able to come again-off." And as he spoke the lurch of the_Bertha_ twitched his grip from the rope. He fell some thirty feet tothe deck, and his head carromed against an iron cleat with a resoundingcrack.
"Here's luck," observed Hardenberg, twelve hours later, when Slick Dick,sitting on the edge of his bunk, looked stolidly and with fishy eyesfrom face to face. "We wa'n't quite short-handed enough, it seems."
"Dotty for fair. Dotty for fair," exclaimed Ally Bazan; "clean off 'isnut. I s'y, Dick-ol'-chap, wyke-up, naow. Buck up. Buck up. _'Ave_ adrink."
But Nickerson could only nod his head and murmur: "A fewmore--consequently--and a good light----" Then his voice died down tounintelligible murmurs.
"We'll have to call at Juneau," decided Hardenberg two days later. "Idon't figure on navigating this 'ere bath-tub to no Hongkong whatsoever,with three hands. We gotta pick up a couple o' A.B.'s in Juneau, if sobe we can."
"How about the loot?" objected Strokher. "If one of those hands getsbetween decks he might smell--a sea-otter, now. I put it to you hemight."
"My son," said Hardenberg, "I've handled A.B.'s before;" and thatsettled the question.
During the first part of the run down, Nickerson gloomed silently overthe schooner, looking curiously about him, now at his comrades' faces,now at the tumbling gray-green seas, now--and this by the hour--at hisown hands. He seemed perplexed, dazed, trying very hard to get hisbearings. But by and by he appeared, little by little, to come tohimself. One day he pointed to the rigging with an unsteady forefinger,then, laying the same finger doubtfully upon his lips, said to Strokher:"A ship?"
"Quite so, quite so, me boy."
"Yes," muttered Nickerson absently, "a ship--of course."
Hardenberg expected to make Juneau on a Thursday. Wednesday afternoonSlick Dick came to him. He seemed never more master of himself. "How didI come aboard?" he asked.
Hardenberg explained.
"What have we been doing?"
"Why, don't you remember?" continued Hardenberg. He outlined the voyagein detail. "Then you remember," he went on, "we got up there to PointBarrow and found where the Russian fellows had their post, where theycaught sea-otters, and we went ashore and got 'em all full and liftedall the skins they had----"
"'Lifted'? You mean _stole_ them."
"Come here," said the other. Encouraged by Nickerson's apparentconvalescence, Hardenberg decided that the concrete evidence of thingsdone would prove effective. He led him down into the 'tween-decks. "Seenow," he said. "See this packing-case"--he pried up a board--"see these'ere skins. Take one in y'r hand. Remember how we found 'em all in thecellar and hyked 'em out while the beggars slept?"
"_Stole_ them? You say we got--that is _you_ did--got somebodyintoxicated and stole their property, and now you are on your way todispose of it."
"Oh, well, if you want to put it thataway. Sure we did."
"I understand----Well----Let's go back on deck. I want to think thisout."
The _Bertha Millner_ crept into the harbour of Juneau in a fog, withships' bells tolling on every side, let go her anchor at last indesperation and lay up to wait for the lifting. When this came the ThreeCrows looked at one another wide-eyed. They made out the drenched townand the dripping hills behind it. The quays, the custom house, the onehotel, and the few ships in the harbour. There were a couple of whalersfrom 'Frisco, a white, showily painted passenger boat from the sameport, a Norwegian bark, and a freighter from Seattle grimy withcoal-dust. These, however, the _Bertha's_ company ignored. Another boatclaimed all their attention. In the fog they had let go not apistol-shot from her anchorage. She lay practically beside them. She wasthe United States revenue cutter _Bear._
"But so long as they can't _smell_ sea-otter skin," remarked Hardenberg,"I don't know that we're any the worse."
"All the syme," observed Ally Bazan, "I don't want to lose no bloomin'tyme a-pecking up aour bloomin' A.B.'s."
"I'll stay aboard and tend the baby," said Hardenberg with a wink. "Youtwo move along ashore and get what you can--Scoovies for choice. TakeSlick Dick with you. I reckon a change o' air might buck him up."
When the three had gone, Hardenberg, after writing up the painfullydoctored log, set to work to finish a task on which the adventurers hadbeen engaged in their leisure moments since leaving Point Barrow. Thiswas the counting and sorting of the skins. The packing-case had beenbroken open, and the scanty but precious contents littered an improvisedtable in the hold. Pen in hand, Hardenberg counted and ciphered andcounted again. He could not forbear a chuckle when the net result wasreached. The lot of the skins--the pelt of the sea-otter is ridiculouslysmall in proportion to its value--was no heavy load for the average man.But Hardenberg knew that once the "loot" was safely landed at theHongkong pierhead the Three Crows would share between them close uponten thousand dollars. Even--if they had luck, and could dispose of theskins singly or in small lots--that figure might be doubled.
"And I call it a neat turn," observed Hardenberg. He was aroused by thenoise of hurried feet upon the deck, and there was that in their soundthat brought him upright in a second, hand on hip. Then, after a second,he jumped out on deck to meet Ally Bazan and Strokher, who had justscrambled over the rail.
"Bust. B-u-s-t!" remarked the Englishman.
"'Ere's 'ell to pay," cried Ally Bazan in a hoarse whisper, glancingover at the revenue cutter.
"Where's Nickerson?" demanded Hardenberg.
"That's it," answered the colonial. "That's where it's 'ell. Listennaow. He goes ashore along o' us, quiet and peaceable like, neverbattin' a eye, we givin' him a bit o' jolly, y' know, to keep himchirked up as ye might s'y. But so soon as ever he sets foot on shore,abaout faice he gaoes, plumb into the Custom's orfice. I s'ys, 'Wot allnaow, messmite? Come along aout o' that.' But he turns on
me like abloomin' babby an s'ys he: 'Hands orf, wretch!' Ay, them's just hiswords. Just like that, 'Hands orf, wretch!' And then he nips into theorfice an' marches fair up to the desk an' sy's like this--we heerd him,havin' followed on to the door--he s'ys, just like this:
"'Orfficer, I am a min'ster o' the gospel, o' the Methodis'denomineye-tion, an' I'm deteyined agin my will along o' a pirate shipwhich has robbed certain parties o' val-able goods. Which syme I'mpre-pared to attest afore a no'try publick, an' lodge informeye-tion o'crime. An',' s'ys he, 'I demand the protection o' the authorities an'arsk to be directed to the American consul.'
"S'y, we never wyted to hear no more, but hyked awye hot foot. S'y, wotall now. Oh, mee Gord! eyen't it a rum gao for fair? S'y, let's getaout o' here, Hardy, dear."
"Look there," said Hardenberg, jerking his head toward the cutter, "howfar'd we get before the customs would 'a' passed the tip to _her_ andshe'd started to overhaul us? That's what they feed her for--to round upthe likes o' us."
"We got to do something rather soon," put in Strokher. "Here comes thecustom house dinghy now."
As a matter of fact, a boat was putting off from the dock. At her sternfluttered the custom house flag.
"Bitched--bitched for fair!" cried Ally Bazan.
"'ERE'S 'ELL TO PAY!"
From a drawing by Lucius Hitchcock _Courtesy of Collier's Weekly_.]
"Quick, now!" exclaimed Hardenberg. "On the jump! Overboard with thatloot!--or no. Steady! That won't do. There's that dam' cutter. They'dsee it go. Here!--into the galley. There's a fire in the stove. Get amove on!"
"Wot!" wailed Ally Bazan. "Burn the little joker. Gord, I _can't,_Hardy, I _can't._ It's agin human nature."
"You can do time in San Quentin, then, for felony," retorted Strokher ashe and Hardenberg dashed by him, their arms full of the skins. "You cando time in San Quentin else. Make your choice. I put it to you asbetween man and man."
With set teeth, and ever and again glancing over the rail at theoncoming boat, the two fed their fortune to the fire. The pelts,partially cured and still fatty, blazed like crude oil, the haircrisping, the hides melting into rivulets of grease. For a minute theschooner reeked of the smell and a stifling smoke poured from the galleystack. Then the embers of the fire guttered and a long whiff of sea windblew away the reek. A single skin, fallen in the scramble, stillremained on the floor of the galley. Hardenberg snatched it up, tossedit into the flames and clapped the door to. "Now, let him squeal," hedeclared. "You fellows, when that boat gets here, let _me_ talk; keepyour mouths shut or, by God, we'll all wear stripes."
The Three Crows watched the boat's approach in a silence broken onlyonce by a long whimper from Ally Bazan. "An' it was a-workin' out aslovely as Billy-oh," he said, "till that syme underbred costermonger'sswipe remembered he was Methody--an' him who, only a few d'ys back, wentraound s'yin' 'scrag the "Boomskys"!' A couple o' thousand pounds goneas quick as look at it. Oh, I eyn't never goin' to git over this."
The boat came up and the Three Crows were puzzled to note that nobrass-buttoned personage sat in the stern-sheets, no harbour policeglowered at them from the bow, no officer of the law fixed them with theeye of suspicion. The boat was manned only by a couple offreight-handlers in woolen Jerseys, upon the breasts of which wereaffixed the two letters "C.H."
"Say," called one of the freight-handlers, "is this the _BerthaMillner?"_
"Yes," answered Hardenberg, his voice at a growl. "An' what might youwant with her, my friend?"
"Well, look here," said the other, "one of your hands came ashore mad asa coot and broke into the house of the American Consul, and resistedarrest and raised hell generally. The inspector says you got to send aprovost guard or something ashore to take him off. There's been severalmix-ups among ships' crews lately and the town----"
The tide drifted the boat out of hearing, and Hardenberg sat down on thecapstan head, turning his back to his comrades. There was a longsilence. Then he said:
"Boys, let's go home. I--I want to have a talk with President Ryder."