I
Captain Michael Blood and Billy Harman, having received ten thousand dollars for services rendered to Henry Clay Armbruster, and having cashed the check, held a consultation as to what they should do with it.
Harman was for filling up their schooner, the Heart of Ireland, with trade and starting off for the islands in search of copra. Blood, tired of the sea, for a while demurred. He said he wanted to enjoy life a bit.
“And who’s to stop you?” replied the open-minded Harman. “A thousand dollars is all we want for a bust, and a week to do it in. I’ve took notice that the heart is mostly out of a bust by the end of a week, after that it’s a fair wind and followin’ sea for the jimjams with an empty hold when you fetches them. Let’s lay our plans and work cautious, for, when all’s said and done, it’s no great shakes to wake jailed with empty pockets, robbed of your boots by the bar drummers you’ve been fillin’ with booze.
“Booze ain’t no use,” continued Mr. Harman, finishing his glass—they were celebrating the occasion in a bar near the China docks. “Look at the chaps that sell it, and look at the chaps that swallow it—one lot covered with di’monds and the other lot with their toes stickin’ out of their boots. We’ve got to work cautious and keep takin’ soundings all the time, for riches is rocks, as I heard a chap once sayin’ in a temp’rance meetin’ on the Sand Lot. Twenty year ago it was, but the sayin’ stuck in my head—have another?”
They failed to “work cautious” that night. Flushed with prosperity and unaccustomed drinks, they found themselves playing cards with professional gamblers, who relieved them of five thousand dollars in an hour and twenty-five minutes.
“Riches is rocks.” There was never a truer saying; and next morning, not being altogether fools, they determined to thank God the whole of their little fortune was not gone and to set to work to retrieve their losses.
Now, it had become known all about the waterside that the Heart of Ireland was back. The fate of Ginnell, her original owner, who had been jugged for gun running, was still fresh and pleasant in the mind of the public; and the authorities, who boarded the Heart on the morning after the gambling adventures of Blood and Harman, would have had a lot of things to say to those two had not Harman already made things straight with the “Clancy crowd,” that amiable political ring whose freemasonic friendship and protection was never invoked in vain by even the least of its members. So it came about that after friendly conversation and cigars the authorities rowed off, and scarcely had they gone when a boat with a big, fat man in the stern came sculling up.
“That’s Mike Rafferty,” said Harman to his companion. “He’s a cousin of Ginnell’s. Now what in the nation does he want with us?”
Rafferty hailed Harman by name and came aboard. Rafferty knew everything about them, from the fact that they were flush of coin to the fact that they were in a kind of lawful-unlawful possession of his cousin’s schooner.
He talked quite openly on these matters, but of the fate of his Cousin Ginnell he said nothing, with the exception of a dark hint that wires were being pulled in his favour.
Harman was equally explicit.
“He jugged us in the cabin of this ship,” said Harman, “and made off on the derelick we struck down the coast there; he gave us a present of her. That we stick to, and if I ever lay hands on Pat Ginnell I’ll give him a present that’ll stick to him for the rest of his nacheral.”
“Aisy, now,” said Rafferty; “don’t be losin’ your hair. I know the swab, and, though I’m workin’ in his favour, bein’ cousins, I’ve me own down on him. He sold me a pup over the last cargo of oil he brought in, and if it wasn’t for the disgrace of the family I’d l’ave him lie without raisin’ a finger to better him. What I’ve come about is bizness. I hear you’ve been talkin’ of copra.”
Harman had, in various bars, and he made no trouble about admitting the soft impeachment.
“Well,” said Rafferty, “it’s become a poor business, what with them Germans and missionaries and such. You go to any of the islands with trade, and see what you’ll get. I’ve worked the Pacific since I was a boy the height of me knee, and I know it. There’s not an island, nearly, I’m not acqueented with, not a reef, begob; you ask any one, and they’ll tell you.”
Harman knew this to be a fact. Rafferty, who was no good age, had been engaged in blackbirding, in copra, in opium smuggling, in all the in-and-out ways of life that the blue Pacific held or holds open to man.
“Heave ahead,” said he.
“Well,” said Rafferty, “this is me bizness with you. Pay me fifty dollars down and ten per cent of the takin’s, and I’ll put you on to an island where you’ll fill up with copra for a few old beads and baccy pipes. It’s a vargin island out of trade tracks; you won’t find any Dutchman there, and the Kanaka girls come dancin’ round you with nuthin’ on them but flowers. You won’t find any Bibles nor crinolines sp’ilin’ the people there. I marked it down last year when I was comin’ up from south of the line, with a never-mind cargo. But I left the sea last spring, as maybe you know, else I’d have taken a ship down there meself. Fifty dollars down and ten per cint on the takin’s, and I’ll put you on the spot.”
Harman begged time to consider the matter, and Rafferty, after drinks and conversation of a political nature, took his departure, leaving his address behind.
“Now, you see how crookedness don’t pay,” said Harman, as he watched the boat row off. “Pat Ginnell was so good at bestin’ he bested his own relations. I remember that bizness about the shark oil; Rafferty was givin’ Ginnell his name over it in every bar in Frisco, and now Rafferty’s spoilin’ to get his own back by usin’ the Heart. Funny them Irish are, for he’s tryin’ with the other hand to get him clear of jail for the sake of the family. Jail’s hell to an Irishman. I’ve always took notice of that—no offence to you.”
Blood looked away over the blue waters of the bay. “It is,” said he, “and, bad as I hate Ginnell, if I could turn the lock to let him out, I’d do it to-morrow—and scrag him the moment after. Jail’s not natural to a man. If a man’s not fit to live loose, kill him, if you want to; if you want to make him afraid of the law, cut the skin off him with a cat-o’-nine-tails, but to stick him in a cage—and what’s jail but a cage?—is to turn him into a brute beast. And it never betters him.”
Harman concurred. Sailors have a way of getting at the truth of things because they are always so close to them; and these two, discussing penal matters on the deck of the Heart of Ireland, might have been listened to with advantage by some of the law officers of the nations.
Then they had drinks, and later in the day they called on Rafferty at his office in Ginnis Street.
They had come to the decision to take his offer. A soft island was well worth paying for. Cayzer, the owner of the great Clan line of steamers, made his fortune by knowing where to send his ships for cargo, and, though Harman knew nothing of the owner of the Clan line, he was keenly alive to the truth of this matter.
“So you’ve come to agree with me,” said Rafferty. “Well, you won’t be sorry. Now, how will you take it—fifty dollars down and a ten-per-cent royalty to me on the takin’s, or would you sooner make a clean deal and pay me a hundred and fifty down and no royalties? For between you and me there’s a lot of sea chances to be taken and the old Heart is not as young as she used to be.”
Blood and Harman took a walk outside to consult, and determined to make a “clean deal.”
“I don’t want to be payin’ no royalties,” said Harman; “let’s cut clear of the chap and pay him a hundred down; he’ll take it.”
He did, after an hour’s bargaining and wrangling and calling the saints to observe how he was being cheated.
Then, the hundred dollars haring been paid, he gave them the location of the island on the chart which Harman had brought.
To be almost precise, the island was situated in the great quadrilateral of empty sea southwest of Honolulu, bounded by the International Date Line to westward, latitude 10° north to southward, longitude 165° to eastward, and the Tropic of Cancer to northward.
Having paid a hundred dollars for the information, Blood and Harman left Rafferty’s office and that very afternoon began to purchase the trade for their new venture.