"Oh," said Jarrow, as the patron mounted the ladder and grinned at them, hat in hand, "this boy wants his towage."
"How much?" asked Locke, taking out a large roll of yellow American bills.
"I'd give him a check," advised Jarrow, "if you've got your book."
"All right," said Locke, and he followed Jarrow into the cabin while Trask and Marjorie went to the poop-deck. The Nuestra looked clean as a pin and fresh as a maker's model. Her decks had been scrubbed until the caulking in the seams looked like lines of black paint on old ivory. Her standing rigging had been newly tarred, her bright work polished, and the water casks lashed in the waist had their hoops painted a bright yellow, not yet dry. New hemp hung in the belaying pins. The roof of the cabin, covered by a tarpaulin, gleamed with oil and yellow paint. She had been scrubbed and freshened until she had quite the aspect of a yacht.
"This beats waiting around Hong Kong," said Marjorie, as they stood looking forward. She looked quite nautical in a suit of white duck and a yachting cap pinned to her flaxen hair. Trask thought she appeared entrancingly healthy and "out of doors."
"It's going to be a jolly fine trip," said Trask. "I hope you'll enjoy it one hundredth as much as I do."
"But gold-mine hunting is no novelty to you," she said.
"It's the first time I've actually gone to sea in search of a gold mine. And there are other reasons which make this trip unique."
"You are absurdly reticent, Mr. Trask."
"Under the circumstances it would be unfair to state the facts in their blunt simplicity," he retorted, with a smile.