XXXVI—THE TERROR FROM THE NORTH
THE next morning Captain Holstrom ordered the checker-board crew assembled on the main deck, forward. He appeared on the bridge and leaned over the rail like a candidate ready to make a stump speech. But, unlike a candidate, he had two revolvers strapped to his waist and in plain sight.
“I have a few words to say to you critters down there,” he began. “I know all about what you have been planning to do. I have watched you peeking and spying around this morning for them boxes. Well, you won’t find them. Them boxes are a good way off.” He pointed a stubby finger down at the Russian Finn. “You come up here!” he commanded. The Finn turned pale and shook his head.
“You come up here and I’ll promise that you won’t be hurt. I want you to take back a report to that gang of yours. If you don’t obey a master’s orders and come up here,” continued the captain, pulling a gun, “it will be mutiny—and I know how to deal with mutiny. I’ll shoot you where you stand.”
After a little hesitation the Finn climbed the ladder. The captain led him into the wheel-house, into all the state-rooms, and took him on a genera! tour of inspection of the upper deck.
“Now you can see with your own eyes that there isn’t any gold up here to mutiny about. You go back and tell that gang what you have seen—or, rather, what you didn’t see.” He pushed the Finn to the ladder.
“I give you all liberty to hunt over the lower part of the steamer from forepeak to rudder,” declared the captain over the rail. “You can help yourselves to all the gold you find. But I can tell you that there ain’t an ounce aboard here. That gold is stored where you can’t get it.” He swept his hand in a gesture which embraced the horizon. “If you act like men from now on until this cruise is over, you’ll be paid like lords. If you hanker for mutiny, start in and mutiny. Them who live through it will never get a cent; them who are killed can’t use gold where they will fetch up; it will be too hot to handle!” The men fell to muttering among themselves, but I could see that they had been cowed. The report of the leader made them still more melancholy. They divided at last—the blacks from the whites—and went about their tasks.
“I want to say, Sidney, that you showed good judgment,” said the captain, as he went to his state-room. “But I don’t feel like giving three cheers—not while that gold is back on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.”
Well, there was gold to the value of about a million yonder on the bottom in that wreck of the Golden Gate, but I had no appetite for more gold just then. I knew that I had reached the limit of my strength and courage. I had won more than two millions from the greed of that miserly ocean, and had given it back again in order to make another fight against the greed of men.
I sat on deck and endured the pains of my tortured body, and waited for the inevitable when it should come down over the horizon from the north. Half a dozen anxious days dragged past—and then it came!
A trail of blacksmoke signaled it—they were using lots of coal and were in a hurry, as that banner of black indicated. Framed in Captain Holstrom’s long telescope, it took form as a big ocean tug. She seemed to leap angrily across the sea as the surges rolled under her, and the bows churned up white yeast.
There was no hesitation in the manner in which she came on. She bore down on us with a speed which seemed to say, “Here we come to take our own!”
We counted at least a score of men aboard, using our glass. And when the tug slowed off our quarter we saw that most of the men held rifles in the hook of their arms.
“It’s what I have been expecting,” I told the captain. “They have come down here proposing to treat us as pirates. How would you feel right now with gold aboard here?”
Captain Holstrom wagged his head mournfully, and seemed to lack words with which to express his feelings.
“We are going to make fast to you,” bawled a man, with a voice like a fog-horn. “Mind how you perform.”
That was a reckless performance even for a tug in that sea, but they rigged a row of fenders and put her alongside with much clanging of bell. A dozen men leaped on board the Zizania. Some were guards who carried rifles. There were three men who seemed of importance. I spied Marcena Keedy on the upper deck of the tug, holding to the funnel stays. He did not venture to come on board us with the others.
“Let them do the talking,” I whispered to Captain Holstrom as the three were climbing the ladder. “Just stand on your dignity as master of this steamer.” And the captain did so in a way that highly satisfied me. He chewed a toothpick and displayed much indifference.
“I bid you welcome, gents!” he informed them, stiffly. “And you can see that I ain’t looking for trouble—otherwise I might have a few words to say about your way of boarding this steamer. If it’s ignorance of rules and etiquette, I’ll overlook it.”
“It’s business, Captain Holstrom,” snapped the spokesman, a chap who wore a hard hat and looked as though he had just closed a desk in an office. “We are from San Francisco, and represent the underwriters in the matter of the Golden Gate.”
“Step into the wheel-house—it’s my office,” stated the captain. He pointed to the muzzle of the first rifle, rising over the edge of the upper deck. “If those fellows come up here I shall consider it an insult to me as a peaceful man and master of this vessel.”
The man hesitated.
“We’re no pirates,” remarked Captain Holstrom.
The man gave orders to the gunmen to remain below.
“If you are not pirates,” he said, when we were assembled in the wheel-house, “you can show it by turning over to us the gold you’ve dug out of the wreck over yonder.”
The spokesman was a rather excitable fellow. He began to tap his finger on the captain’s breast. He showed documents with seals and all the other law-shark trimmings.
“You have no right to come here and operate. Have you got attorney’s powers? Have you got anything in the way of permits? No, you haven’t. That gold belongs to other people. Give it up and save trouble.”
Captain Holstrom threw a sort of helpless look at me, stifling some emotion. I realized that he was at the end of his dignity and that in about ten seconds he would begin to use his talents in the line of profanity.
“Excuse me if I say a word here,” I broke in. “I am a partner in this enterprise.”
“You’re using a polite word for this kind of a job,” sneered the man.
“You may represent the underwriters,” I said, “but to all intents and purposes the underwriters had abandoned the treasure.”
“We shall take our gold, my friend!”
“Rights or no rights?”
“You have made it a grab game, and we’re in on the grab!” He was mighty overbearing and offensive. Law was behind him, a fortune was concerned, and he was showing the usual spirit of the greedy world.
“You have full powers in this matter so far as the underwriters are concerned, have you?” I asked.
“Absolute.” He waved his papers under my nose. “Issued due and regular by the court and the United States.”
“But don’t you realize that you are not in the United States, sir?”
“There’s got to be more or less dog eat dog in this game. We happen to have the cards. If you don’t hand over that gold, we shall put a crew on board this steamer, guard it with rifles, and set this boat into waters where we have jurisdiction. I’ll be frank to say that then we can beat you in court in the lying game, because we start with law behind us, and you’re handicapped. I say this to show you that you’d better fork over.”
I was holding my temper. For the sake of my own conscience in this affair, I wanted the other side to lay all their cards on the table; in their insolence and confidence, they seemed inclined to do so, for their plain intent was to intimidate us.
“What do we get out of it for ourselves?” I inquired, meekly.
“Remember that you came down here on the sly, thinking you were going to get away with the whole thing. It hasn’t been your fault that you haven’t. I think that we can promise to keep you out of the penitentiary if you act sensible. I’m not making any rash promises.”
There we had it! Contemptuous disregard of all our rights because they thought they had the upper hand on us!
I have hinted before this that men become monsters in the presence of much gold. From my own experience I knew the insanity which gold stirs in a man. I had foreseen some such attitude as this on the part of the men who would come to claim the treasure. A grab game, eh? And success to the best man!
I looked at that fellow—at his white hands and his flabbiness—a man who had never done an honest day’s labor with grit and muscles. He had given me his code. I told him as much.
“And I thank you for giving me that code,” I went on.
I stripped the bandages off my hands. I tore the wrappings off my feet. I showed them sights which made their faces turn white. I ripped the shirt from my back and exhibited that spectacle of ragged flesh.
“You have given me your code, I say! It’s going to be a grab game. All right! Have it your way. Go hunt this steamer from top to bottom. You’re welcome! Prove that we have any of your damned gold! Go ahead!”
I hobbled out of the wheel-house and went into my state-room, and they began to hunt the Zizania over. And I heard what Captain Holstrom said to them after they had finished.
“Now, gents, you have made sure that there’s nothing on my Zizania that belongs to you. You’re aboard here without any rights. I just want to remark that I’ll give you five minutes to get aboard your own boat and cast off, and stay cast off’m here, yourselves. I’ve got some men who can fight—and I’ve got a two-pounder in my junk-heap. I’ll put a ball through that tug that will disturb her innards seriously.”
They went silently and grudgingly—but they went. I enjoyed the expression on Marcena Keedy’s face as the tug backed off. I came out on the upper deck and gloated down on him. They anchored their craft a little distance from us, and I could readily imagine the council of war that started among them as soon as their mud-hook bit the holding-ground.
A boat put off from the tug next day, and the three important-looking men were in it. But Captain Holstrom warned them away from us. The spokesman shouted his message. He was angry, and he still dealt in threats. In order to impress upon those gentlemen that we were not at all interested in their threats, the captain and I turned our backs on them, and after a time they bawled themselves out of breath and returned to the tug.
They kept up those tactics for most of a week. They were certainly stubborn and insolent persons, and they were fighting for big money. But the more they raved and threatened, the more at peace with myself and my conscience I felt. We were fighting for our own now, and they had established the code.
Then at last the boat came with a white flag. The spokesman politely stated that they had come to talk some business in private, and begged to be allowed to come on board.
Miss Kama was with me on deck when they climbed up the ladder. She had resumed her woman’s garb, and they stared at her in frank astonishment and admiration. She did look particularly sweet, her little cap on her curls, her sweater displaying her winsome curves of beauty.
She seemed to astonish them, I say. The next moment she astonished me. She walked into the wheel-house by my side, and was the first to speak.
“Gentlemen,” she said to the three, “you have seen with your own eyes how this poor boy has suffered. You can’t see how I have suffered as I have watched him do what he has done, but the marks are on my soul, I know. There is law in the world, and all that, and men are too apt to get angry in law when there is much money concerned. Can’t you all keep from being angry to-day, and be wise, and decide on what is right?”
They looked at one another and the spokesman stammered something about being over there to have a heart-to-heart talk.
“May I not stay?” she asked, wistfully. “I won’t say a word to bother you—I won’t move unless you start to quarrel—and then I’ll only remind you that there’s a lady present.” The queer little smile she gave them started the grins on their faces. The ice was broken.
Those men were human once more. The girl had given the magic touch to the conference.
We had not been getting anywhere at all, in the past, and we woke up and realized it as we stood there with the girl’s presence toning us down. It had been man’s bluff and bluster; they had arrived ready mad and I felt that I knew what ailed them outside of the mere money part of the thing.
“Gentlemen,” I said, “if it hadn’t been for Marcena Keedy’s tongue you would have shown a better side to us when you arrived here.” Nobody seemed ready to say anything for a moment and I went on. “I reckon he told, you that he was our partner and that we have cheated him.”
“He had quite a story to tell when he reported the matter to the underwriters,” admitted the lawyer.
“After you sized him up, you naturally decided that men who could cheat Keedy must be the champion renegades of the Pacific coast! I can’t blame you much for the way you came banging up against us. I don’t know what else he has said to our prejudice, and I don’t care. Now that you are here with us, face to face, and we’re down on a real man-basis, we don’t need to paw over what a liar has said. I want you to call that man Keedy on to the Zizania, even though he poisons the air. What I have to say I’ll say in his hearing.”
I’m pretty sure that Keedy did not relish making that call, but the men who went after him brought him. He had a gambler’s face and nerve and he put on his best front; he even disregarded Miss Kama’s presence and lighted a cigar to appear more at ease, and I plucked it from between his jaws and flung it out of the window.
“I want the floor for only a few moments, gentlemen,”
I told the group. “I’m going to tell you how this expedition was organized, how this person Keedy fitted in; and what happened.” And I did tell them.
It was necessary for the lawyer to appoint Capt. Rask Holstrom as special guard to keep Keedy’s mouth shut while I talked, but the rules of a court-room prevailed after that.
“I’ll admit, gentlemen,” I said when I had finished my little story, “that we have acted like children so far as the legal side of this thing goes. But it seemed only a crazy scheme at best when we started out—I couldn’t feel that I was dealing with any reality. After we arrived here we did the best we could, and we have been too busy to study up law. But I want to say that Captain Holstrom and I are not thieves by nature. I’ll show you a thief, however. There he stands!” I pointed to Keedy. “He stole from us a box of bullion worth twenty thousand dollars. I know that he recovered two more boxes. Now that you are proposing to handle this matter man-fashion, Captain Holstrom and I stand ready to give to owners what is fairly their own. I advise you to ask Keedy what he proposes to do!” The lawyer asked him in mighty prompt fashion.
“Up to date nobody seems to be making any showdown except in talk,” said Mr. Keedy. “I’ll cash in conversation just as far as anybody.”
“But how does it happen, Keedy, that when you gave us your other information you did not say that you had any of the gold in your hands?” asked the lawyer.
He scowled and did not answer.
“If these men turn their bullion over on a square lay, are you prepared to do the same?”
“I’ll talk business after I have seen them turn it over.”
“That’s a rather queer attitude for you to take, Keedy, after your talk to the underwriters and to me.”
But the renegade did not show any inclination to come across with anything definite.
I knew well enough that he could not. His try with those divers had cost high and it was safe to presume that he had realized on every ounce of the bullion his men had recovered and had planted the money. My rancor was deep and I walked up to him and declared my belief.
“You understand, Keedy, that you must produce the bullion or its value in money or our bargain doesn’t stand,” said the lawyer.
I did not need that declaration to be assured that the villain had sold us without regard to our rights or our safety. And sudden fervor and determination thrilled through and through me. I proposed to show those men from San Francisco the difference between Marcena Keedy and the partners on whom he had pasted his dirty label. Mere talk was not as convincing proof as I desired. I had already made an investment of my best strength and all my courage and I had much to show. But I felt that if those men could see with their own eyes what that investment signified in the way of human endurance, they would meet me in more generous spirit when we came to make our bargain.
Up to then the legal papers had only been waved under my nose in threatening manner. I asked permission to examine them, and the lawyer was very obliging. They were all-embracing, even to granting powers of attorney to the underwriters’ agents to handle the matter in all its aspects.
“Gentlemen,” I said, “I’m going down after the rest of that gold, and every box will be put into your hands as it comes up.”
I got a glimpse at the girl’s face, but I did not dare to look into her eyes. Her cheeks were white, and she was gasping protests which nobody heeded, for those men were listening to something which filled their ears just then:
“And after you see how I am bucking hell for your sakes, well, then we shall see what you have to say to me—man to man!”