“Claw on and kim up,” cried Captain Schumways to the hesitating Harman. “Cut that canoe adrift and come on deck, and don’t be wastin’ my time, or I’ll ring the injins on. What’s that you’re sayin’? Ambergris, what’s ambergris? Ain’t got no time to be muckin’ about—there, bring it if you want to.” He paused whilst Harman, having fastened a rope flung by Davis round the precious ambergris, came on deck guiding it up. Then, when they were both over the rail, Schumways, ringing the engines full speed ahead, came down from the bridge.
“Where’d you get that muck?” asked Captain Schumways, after they’d given their names and a yarn about having been drifted off an island when fishing. “Picked it up, did you? Well, you can shove it in the scupper if you’re set on keepin’ it, and now follow me down and I’ll show you your quarters. I’m sufferin’ for extra help in the engine-room and I reckon you’ve got to work your passage.”
He led the way to the saloon hatch and down to the saloon.
The Oskosh had been a Farsite Enfield boat running from ’Frisco to Seattle. Cargo, Klondyke diggers and, lastly, contraband had reduced her from respectability and cleanliness to her present state. The saloon was a wreck and ruin, the panelling split, the fittings gone, bunks filled with raffle and oddments, the table covered with old oil-cloth showing the marks of coffee cups, and over all a dank throat-catching atmosphere of decay, cockroaches and dirty bunk bedding.
Schumways inhabited the cabin aft. He pointed out two bunks to port and starboard.
“Them’s yours,” said he, “and there’s beddin’ and to spare. You’ll mess here, bein’ whites, and you’ll take your orders from me and Sellers; when you’ve cleared out them bunks and got your beddin’ in come along up and I’ll show you your job.”
He left them and went on deck, and Bud Davis sat down on the edge of a bunk.
“Say, Billy,” said Bud, “how about those passengers lining up and cheering? How about those soft drinks you were talking of?—or would you sooner have a highball?—and we’re to take our orders from him and Sellers. What I’m proposing to do is go up right now, catch him by the hoofs, and dump him over side, scrag Sellers, whoever he is, and take the ship. That’s how I’m feeling.”
“Ain’t no use,” said Harman. “Fightin’s a mug’s game. That chap’s a sure enough tough and we haven’t no guns. Lay low is the word, more especial as this packet is contraband and we’ve only to wait to get ’em by the short hairs. Contraband—look at her, guns or opium, with blackbirdin’ maybe thrown in, that’s all there is to her.”
Davis assented. These two old Pacific hands had an eye from which no ship could hide her character for sea-unworthiness or disrespectability; Schumways matched his ship, and Sellers, when he turned up, would be sure to match Schumways; the crew were Chinks, and the case was plain. Not that it bothered Bud or Billy; their one thought as they worked clearing the bunks and settling the bedding was the ambergris.