“What a herd of wild cattle!” muttered Wilbur.
“There's something in what he says, don't you think, mate?” observed Moran, bringing a braid over each shoulder and stroking it according to her habit.
“We'll ask Jim about it,” decided Wilbur.
But Jim at once confirmed Hoang's statement. “Oh, Kai-gingh killum no-good boss, fo' sure,” he declared.
“Don't you think, mate,” said Moran, “we'd better take him up to 'Frisco with us? We've had enough fighting and killing.”
So it was arranged that the defeated beach-comber, the whipped buccaneer, who had “lost face” and no longer dared look his men in the eye, should be taken aboard.
By four o'clock next morning Wilbur had the hands at work digging the sand from around the “Bertha Millner's” bow. The line by which she was to be warped off was run out to the ledge of the rock; fresh water was taken on; provisions for the marooned beach-combers were cached upon the beach; the dory was taken aboard, gaskets were cast off, and hatches battened down.
At high tide, all hands straining upon the warp, the schooner was floated off, and under touch of the lightest airs drew almost imperceptibly away from the land. They were quite an hour crawling out to the heads of the bay. But here the breeze was freshening. Moran took the wheel; the flying-jib and staysail were set; the wake began to whiten under the schooner's stern, the forefoot sang; the Pacific opened out more and more; and by 12:30 o'clock Moran put the wheel over, and, as the schooner's bow swung to the northward, cried to Wilbur:
“Mate, look your last of Magdalena Bay!”
Standing at her side, Wilbur turned and swept the curve of the coast with a single glance. The vast, heat-scourged hoop of yellow sand, the still, smooth shield of indigo water, with its beds of kelp, had become insensibly dear to him. It was all familiar, friendly, and hospitable. Hardly an acre of that sweep of beach that did not hold the impress of his foot. There was the point near by the creek where he and Moran first landed to fill the water-casks and to gather abalones; the creek itself, where he had snared quail; the sand spit with its whitened whale's skull, where he and Moran had beached the schooner; and there, last of all, that spot of black over which still hung a haze of brown-gray smoke, the charred ruins of the old Portuguese whaling-cabin, where they had outfought the beach-combers.