“We were due out next morning at sun up, and that night, under a blazing big moon we were sitting on deck having a smoke and talking things over. Long Wharf was pretty quiet and you couldn’t more’n hear the drunks and such yelling in Third and Fourth Streets. There was a timber schooner outside of us and we could hear a fellow snoring in her cabin and a big clock somewhere striking eleven. The strokes were all equally loud, which showed there was no wind to speak of, and Buck was wondering if we’d get enough in the morning to take us out when along the wharfside comes running a chap, and, seeing us there on deck in the moonlight and the sparks of our cigars, he comes bounding down the gang plank and lands on the deck on his hands and knees without losing grip of a parcel he was carrying.
“‘Save me,’ cries the chap. ‘Get me out of ’Frisco, the police are after me.’ Then he goes limp and Buck bends down and stirs him up.
“‘Drunk,’ says Buck.
“He was, and battered at that. His coat was torn up the back, he was mud all over and his hat was gone, and yet, for all that, he looked to have been respectable. You can’t batter the respectability out of a man in five minutes, not even if you roll him in the gutter and fill him with drink, this chap’s hands were clean where they weren’t dirty, and I could see his nails had been attended to, his pants were muddy and had a tear in them, but they weren’t frayed at the heels and the cloth was good.
“‘What are we going to do with him?’ I asks.
“Buck scratches his head for a minute, then he says:
“‘Get him below.’
“I was none too anxious for extra cargo of that sort, but I knew by Buck’s voice he wasn’t in the humour for arguing, and, fearing that maybe the police might come along and find the chap and hold us up maybe next morning as witnesses of Lord knows what, I grabbed the guy by the heels whilst Buck took the head and between us we slithered him down below and shoved him in a spare bunk, putting his parcel beside him.
“We reckoned that maybe he’d have slept his liquor off before morning, and we could give him a wash up and shove him ashore.
II