In a moment, when he had finished saying what he had to say to Harman, he turned to the other.
“Of course,” said he, “I can’t stop you bringing all the supercargoes you like on board——” He stopped, told the steward to clear out of the saloon, and then, when the man had disappeared, went on: “Considering I’ve let myself in for this thing with my eyes shut, I’ve no right to complain if you brought bears on board, to say nothing of wolves; but I’d have taken it kinder if you had let me know right off at the beginning that the whole firm was going on the cruise.”
“Look here, Captain,” said Shiner, “you have spoken truth without knowing it. Wolff is the whole firm practically. He’s the boss of this business, to all intents and purposes; he’s the money behind it all, and the brain, and he did not want to advertise the fact that he was coming on board, I suppose, for he is a man pretty well known in the States. Anyhow, there are the facts. Wolff is a man that I don’t mind playing second fiddle to; and if I don’t mind, I don’t see why you should.”
“Oh, don’t you?” said the Captain. “Well, I do. I’m captain of this tub, and captain I’ll remain. I’m risking enough for a hundred dollars a month and a bonus of a thousand if this piracy, whatever it is, of yours, comes off, without losing my status quo as well.”
“What’s that?” asked the illiterate Harman, who had laid down the knife with which he had been eating so as to attend better to the dispute.
“It’s what you’ll never have—the position of a master mariner and the top seat at the table.”
“What do you mean by that word ‘piracy’?” asked Shiner, with the air of a woman whose reputation is attacked. “There is no such thing in this business, and it would be a lot better for you to be more careful with your words. Words are dangerous weapons when flung about like that.”
“Well,” said the Captain, “call it what you like. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve signed on, and I’m not the man to go back on my word; but, as I just said, I don’t know what we are after, and I don’t much care, as long as we steer clear of the gallows.”
“Don’t be talking like that,” said Harman. “Mr. Shiner, here, ain’t such a fool as to go within smellin’ distance of any hanging matter. What we are after may be a bit off colour, but it’s a business venture in the main. I’ve asked no questions, but Mr. Shiner has given me to understand that it was business he was after, not anything that would lay us by the heels, so to speak, in any killing matter.”
“What we are after is perfectly plain,” said Shiner. “Killing! Who talked of killing? This is, just as you say, a business matter, and it’s no worse than what’s being done in Frisco every day, only it’s a bit more adventurous.”
The precious trio finished their breakfast without any more words, and then went on deck. They had scarcely reached it when across the gangplank came a stout, black-bearded individual followed by a couple of wharf rats, one bearing luggage, the other two big cases.
This was Wolff.
Shiner introduced him to the Captain, and then Wolff, followed by the luggage and the cases, disappeared below.
“He’s not a good sailor,” said Shiner, “but he’ll be all right after a day or two. Ah, here come the port authorities. I’ll have a talk with them. You are all right for starting, I suppose?”
“Yes,” said the Captain. “I’m ready to cast off when you are.”
“Right!” said Shiner.
He took the port officers down to the saloon, and when they came up again they were all smoking half-dollar perfectos and the traces of conviviality and good-fellowship were evident.
“They’ve been having drinks,” said Harman to himself. “Wouldn’t wonder if there was lush in those cases Wolff brought aboard. No tellin’.”
IV
THE SAILING OF THE “PENGUIN”
It was noon when the hawsers were cast off and Captain Blood, in all the glory of command, standing on the bridge, rang up the engines and put the telegraph to half speed ahead.
It was a glorious day, not a cloud in the sky, and scarcely a ripple of breeze on the water. The breeze, just sufficient to shake the trade flags of the shipping, brought with it the whistling of ferryboats, the hammering of boiler iron from the shipyards, and a thousand voices from the multitude of ships.
They nearly scraped the stern wheel off a Stockton river boat, and then, as if sheering off from the blasphemy of the Stocktonites, nosed round and passed the buoy that marks the shoal water west of Hennessy’s Wharf. Then down the bay they went with the sunlight on Alcatraz and the Contre Costa shore, and away ahead the Golden Gate and a vision of the blue Pacific.
They passed Lime Point and took the middle channel, where the first heave of the outer sea striding over the bar met them with a keener touch of wind to back it. The Cliff House and Point Bonita fell astern, and now, right ahead, the Farallons sketched themselves away across the lonely blue of the sea.
The Penguin, bow on to the swell, was behaving admirably, so well, indeed, that Wolff, with a cigar in his mouth, had appeared on deck and climbed onto the bridge. But now, clear of the land and with a shift of helm, the beam sea produced its effect, and her rolling capacities became evident.
Wolff descended, leaving the bridge to its lawful occupants, and even Shiner, who had taken his place on the after gratings with an account book and stylograph pen, retired after a very little while.
The Penguin was built to hold a thousand miles of cable in her fore end and after tanks, and, loaded like that, the effect of her top-hamper in the way of picking-up gear, picking-up engine, derricks, and buoys would be corrected. But she had no cable in her now, only water ballast, and she rolled after her natural bent, and rolled and rolled till cries of “Steward!” came faintly through the saloon hatch, followed by other sounds and the clinking of basins.
Blood walked the bridge with Harman, casting now and then an eye at the compass card and the fellow at the wheel, and now and then an eye at the forward deck lumbered with the gear and four or five new-painted buoys, each numbered and each with a lamp socket.
“They haven’t spared expense in fitting her out,” said Harman.
“No, they haven’t,” replied the Captain. “And why? Simply because I’ve been at Shiner all the past week with a rope’s end, so to say. I’m blessed if the blighter didn’t want to economise on buoys! ‘Two will be enough,’ says he; ‘it’s only a short job we are on, and they are three hundred dollars apiece.’ He said that right to my face. ‘Well,’ said I, ‘it’s none of my business, but if you want to drop the job, whatever it is, in the middle, and run a thousand miles to the nearest port for a ten-cent buoy, you’ll find your economy has been misplaced. You will that.’ So he caved in on the buoys. Then we had an argument over the grapnel rope. He wanted to take two miles of all hemp. I wanted five miles of wire wove. I got it, but only after a mighty tough struggle. The grapnels are good, but they went with the ship, and they’d been properly laid up in paraffin; not a speck on them. Then the Kelvin sounder was out of order. Yes, they’d have sailed with it like that only for me, and it cost them something to have it put right.”
“What I’m thinking,” said Harman, “is that this expedition is costing a good deal of money.”
“It’s costing all of five hundred dollars a day.”
“What I’m thinking,” went on Harman, “is that the profits to come out of whatever they are going to do must be huge, big profits to cover the expenses, and I’ve taken notice that when chaps