“You do love me, mate, and you always will?”
“Always, Moran,” said Wilbur, simply. He took her in his arms, and she laid her cheek against his for a moment, then took his head between her hands and kissed him.
Two days passed. The “Bertha Millner” held steadily to her northward course, Moran keeping her well in toward the land. Wilbur maintained a lookout from the crow's-nest in the hope of sighting some white cruiser or battleship on her way south for target-practice. In the cache of provisions he had left for the beach-combers he had inserted a message, written by Hoang, to the effect that they might expect to be taken off by a United States man-of-war within the month.
Hoang did not readily recover his “loss of face.” The “Bertha's” Chinamen would have nothing to do with this member of a hostile Tong; and the humiliated beach-comber kept almost entirely to himself, sitting on the forecastle-head all day long, smoking his sui-yen-hu and brooding silently to himself.
Moran had taken the lump of ambergris from out Kitchell's old hammock, and had slung the hammock itself in the schooner's waist, and Charlie was made as comfortable as possible therein. They could do but little for him, however; and he was taken from time to time with spells of coughing that racked him with a dreadful agony. At length one noon, just after Moran had taken the sun and had calculated that the “Bertha” was some eight miles to the southwest of San Diego, she was surprised to hear Wilbur calling her sharply. She ran to him, and found him standing in the waist by Charlie's hammock.
The Chinaman was dying, and knew it. He was talking in a faint and feeble voice to Wilbur as she came up, and was trying to explain to him that he was sorry he had deserted the schooner during the scare in the bay.
“Planty muchee solly,” he said; “China boy, him heap flaid of Feng-shui. When Feng-shui no likee, we then must go chop-chop. Plenty much solly I leave-um schooner that night; solly plenty—savvy?”
“Of course we savvy, Charlie,” said Moran. “You weren't afraid when it came to fighting.”
“I die pletty soon,” said Charlie calmly. “You say you gib me fifteen hundled dollah?”
“Yes, yes; that was our promise. What do you want done with it, Charlie?”