III
He turned with the others to examine the contents of the sacks dropped by the vanquished ones and lying among the rocks. They were old gunny bags, and they were stuffed with all sorts of rubbish and valuables—musical instruments, bits of old metal, cabin curtains, and even cans of bully beef; there was no sign of dollars.
“The fools were so busy picking up everything they could find lying about they hadn’t time to search for the real stuff,” said Blood. “Didn’t know of it.”
“Well,” said Ginnell, “stick the ould truck back in the bags with the insthruments; we’ll sort it out when we get aboard, and fling the rubbish over and keep what’s worth keepin’.”
Helped by the coolies, they refilled the bags, and left them in position for carrying off, and then, led by Ginnell, they made round the stern of the wreck to the port side.
Now on the sea side the Yan-Shan presented a bad enough picture of desolation and destruction, but here on the land side the sight was terrific.
The great yellow funnel had crashed over onto the rocks, and lay with lengths of the guys still adhering to it; a quarter boat, with bottom half out, had gone the way of the funnel; crabs were crawling over all sorts of raffle—broken spars, canvas from the bridge screen, and woodwork of the chart house, while all forward of amidships, the plates, beaten and twisted and ripped apart, showed cargo, held, or in the act of escaping. One big packing case, free of the ship, had resolved itself into staves round its once contents, a piano that appeared perfectly uninjured.
A rope ladder hung from the bulwarks amidships, and up it Ginnell went followed by the others, reaching a roofless passage that had once been the port alleyway.
Here on the slanting deck one got a full picture of the ruin that had come on the ship. The masts were gone as well as the funnel, boats, ventilators—with the exception of the twisted cowl looking seaward—bridge, chart house, all had vanished wholly or in part, a picture made more impressive by the calm blue sky overhead and the brilliancy of the sunlight.
The locking bars had been removed from the cover of the fore hatch, and the hatch opened evidently by the Chinese in search of plunder. Ginnell scarcely turned an eye on it before he made aft, followed by the others, reached the saloon companionway, and dived down it.
If the confusion on deck was bad, it was worse below. The cabin doors on either side were either open or off their hinges, bunk bedding, mattresses, an open and rifled valise, some women’s clothes, an empty cigar box, and a cage with a dead canary in it lay on the floor.
The place looked as if an army of pillagers had been at work for days, and the sight struck a chill to the hearts of the beholders.
“We’re dished,” said Ginnell. “Quick, boys, if the stuffs anywhere, it’ll be in the old man’s cabin; there’s no mail room in a packet like this. If it’s not there, we’re done.”
They found the Captain’s cabin; they found his papers tossed about, his cash box open and empty, and a strong box clamped to the deck by the bunk in the same condition. They found, to complete the business, an English sovereign on the floor in a corner.
Ginnell sat down on the edge of the bunk.
“They’ve got the dollars,” said he. “That’s why they legged it so quick, and—we let them go. Twenty thousand dollars in gold coin, and we let them go. Tear an ages! Afther them!” He sprang from the bunk, and dashed through the saloon, followed by the others. On deck, they strained their eyes seaward, toward a brown spot on the blue far, far away to the sou’west. It was the junk making a soldier’s wind of it, every inch of sail spread. Judging by the distance she had covered, she must have been making at least eight knots, and the Heart of Ireland under similar wind conditions was incapable of more than seven.
“No good chasing her,” said Blood.
“Not a happorth,” replied Ginnell. Then the quarrel began.
“If you hadn’t held us pokin’ over them old sacks on the rocks there, we’d maybe have had a chance of overhaulin’ her,” said Ginnell.
“Sacks!” cried Blood. “What are you talking about? It was you who let them go, shouting good day to them and telling them we’d got the boodle!”
“Boodle!” cried Ginnell. “You’re a nice chap to talk about boodle. You did me up an’ collared me boat, and now you’re let down proper, and serve you right.”
Blood was about to reply in kind, when the dispute was cut short by a loud yell from the engine-room hatch.
Harman, having satisfied himself with a glance that all was up with the junk, had gone poking about, and entered the engine-room hatchway. He now appeared, shouting like a maniac.
“The dollars!” he cried. “Two dead chinkies an’ the dollars!”
He vanished again with a shout. They rushed to the hatch, and there, on the steel grating leading to the ladder, curled together like two cats that had died in battle, lay the Chinamen. Harman, kneeling beside them, his hands at work on the neck of a tied sack that clinked as he shook it with the glorious, rich, mellow sound that gold in bulk and gold in specie alone can give.
The lanyard came away, and Harman, plunging his big hand in, produced it filled with British sovereigns.
Not one of them moved or said a word for a moment; then Ginnell suddenly squatted down on the grating beside Harman, and, taking a sovereign between finger and thumb gingerly, as though he feared it might burn him, examined it with a laugh. Then he bit it, spun it in the air, caught it in his left hand, and brought his great right palm down on it with a bang.
“Hids or tails!” cried Ginnell. “Hids I win, tails you lose!” He gave a coarse laugh as he opened his palm where the coin lay tail up.
“Hids it is,” he cried; then he tossed it back into the bag and rose to his feet.
“Come on, boys,” said he, “let’s bring the stuff down to the saloon and count it.”
“Better get it aboard,” said Blood.
Harman looked up. The grin on his face stamped by the finding of the gold was still there, and in the light coming through the hatch his forehead showed, beaded with sweat.
“I’m with Ginnell,” said he. “Let’s get down to the saloon for an overhaul. I can’t wait whiles we row off to the schooner. I wants to feel the stuff, and I wants to divide it right off and now. Boys, we’re rich; we sure are. It’s the stroke of my life, and I can’t wait for no rowin’ on board no schooners before we divide up.”
“Come on, then,” said Blood.
The sack was much bigger than its contents, so there was plenty of grip for him as he seized one corner. Then, Harman grasping it by the neck, they lugged it out and along the deck and down the saloon companionway, Ginnell following.
The Chinese had opened nearly all the cabin portholes for the sake of light to assist them in their plundering, and now, as Blood and Harman placed the sack on the slanting saloon table, the crying of gulls came clearly and derisively from the cliffs outside, mixed with the hush of the sea and the boost of the swell as it broke, creaming and squattering amid the rocks. The lackadaisical ventilator cowl, which took an occasional movement from stray puffs of air, added its voice now and then, whining and complaining like some lost yet inconsiderable soul.
No other sound could be heard as the three men ranged themselves, Ginnell on the starboard, and Blood and Harman on the port side of the table.
The swivel seats, though all aslant, were practicable, and Harman was in the act of taking his place in the seat he had chosen when Ginnell interposed.
“One moment, Mr. Harman,” said the owner of the Heart of Ireland, “I’ve a word to say to you and Mr. Blood—sure, I beg your pardon—I mane Capt’in Blood.”
“Well,” said Blood, grasping a chair back, “what have you to say?”
“Only this,” replied Ginnell, with a grin. “I’ve got back me revolver.”
Blood clapped his hand to his pocket. It was empty.
“I picked your pocket of it,” said Ginnell, producing the weapon, “two minits back. You fired three shots over the heads of them chows, and there’s three ca’tridges left in her. I can hit a dollar at twinty long paces. Move an inch, either the one or other of you, and I’ll lay your brains on the table forenint you.”
They did not move, for they knew that he was in earnest. They knew that if they moved he would begin to shoot, and if he began to shoot, he would finish the job, leave their corpses on the floor, and sail off with the dollars and his Chinese crew in perfect safety. There were no witnesses.
“Now,” said Ginnell, “what the pair of you has to do is this: Misther Harman, you’ll go into that cabin behind you, climb on the upper bunk, stick your head through the porthole, and shout to the coolies down below there with the boat to come up. It’ll take two men to get them dollars on deck and down to the wather side. When you’ve done that, the pair of you will walk into the ould man’s cabin an’ say your prayers, thanking the saints you’ve got off so easy, whiles I puts the bolt on you till the dollars are away. And remimber this, one word or kick from you and I shoot; the Chinamen will never tell.”
“See here!” said Harman.
“One word!” shouted Ginnell, suddenly dropping the mask of urbanity and leveling the pistol.
It was as though the tiger cat in his grimy soul had suddenly burst bonds and mastered him. His finger pressed on the trigger, and the next moment Harman’s brains, or what he had of them, might have been literally “forenint” him on the table, when suddenly, tremendous as the last trumpet, paralyzing as the inrush of a body of armed men, booing and bellowing back from the cliffs in a hundred echoes came a voice—the blast of a ship’s siren:
“Huroop! Hirrip! Hurop! Haar—haar—haar!”
Ginnell’s arm fell. Harman, forgetting everything, turned, dashed into the cabin behind him, climbed on the upper bunk, and stuck his head through the porthole.
Then he dashed back into the saloon.
“It’s the Port of Amsterdam,” cried Harman. “It’s the salvage ship; she’s there droppin’ her anchor. We’re done, we’re dished—and we foolin’ like this and they crawlin’ up on us.”
“And you said she’d only do eight knots!” cried Blood.
Ginnell flung the revolver on the floor. Every trace of the recent occurrence had vanished, and the three men thought no more of one another than a man thinks of petty matters in the face of dissolution. Gunderman was outside; that was enough for them.
“Boys,” said Ginnell, “ain’t there no way out with them dollars? S’pose we howk them ashore?”
“Cliffs two hundred foot high!” said Harman. “Not a chanst. We’re dished.”
Said Blood: “There’s only one thing left. We’ll walk the dollars down to the boat and row off with them. Of course we’ll be stopped, still there’s the chance that Gunderman may be drunk or something. It’s one chance in a hundred billion; it’s the only one.”
But Gunderman was not drunk, nor were his boat party, and the court-martial he held on the beach in broken English and with the sack of coin beside him as chief witness would form a bright page of literature had one time to record it.
Ginnell, as owner of the Heart of Ireland, received the whole brunt of the storm—there was no hearing for him when, true to himself, he tried to cast the onus of the business on Blood and Harman. He was told to get out and be thankful he was not brought back to Frisco in irons, and he obeyed instructions, rowing off to the schooner, he and Harman and Blood, a melancholy party with the exception of Blood, who was talking to Harman with extreme animation on the subject of beam engines.
On deck, it was Blood who gave orders for hauling up the anchor and setting sail. He had recaptured the revolver.