“Us two would be the afterguard, with five or six Kanakas for crew.
“The Greyhound was the name of the schooner, and she was lying a bit out from the wharf, and Pat has the hellnation of a fight with a waterman as to the fare for rowing us off and back, beats him down from two dollars to one dollar fifty, and asked Buck to pay as he hadn’t any change.
“I was thinking it was easy to see how Pat had become a millionaire till we stepped on the deck of the Greyhound, and then I had no time to think of anything but the dirt. It wasn’t dirt you could sweep off her, it was ground in, if you get me; all the deck-bears and holystones from here to Hoboken wouldn’t have made those decks look respectable; it was like a woman with a bad complexion, even skinning would be no use.
“‘She’s been in the oil business,’ says Pat.
“‘I can smell it,’ says I, and we goes below after prodding the sticks and taking notice of the condition of the standing rigging. Down below it was dirtier, and the smell rose up like a fist and punched us in the nose. I don’t know if you’ve ever been below decks in one of them old Island schooners fitted with Honolulu cockroaches, and the effulgences of generations of buck Kanakas and Chinks, to say nothing of mixed cargoes—sort of dark brown smell—but we weren’t out to grumble, and Pat having showed us over, we all went ashore and put back for ’Frisco, Buck paying the fare.
“We parted from Pat on the landing stage, and next morning the Greyhound was brought over to Long Wharf for her cargo. It took a fortnight getting the stuff aboard and hiring the Kanakas. Pat gave us a diving dress and pump that could be rigged in any boat; he borrowed them, or got them somewhere cheap, and then he gave us his blessing and twenty dollars for ship’s money, and we signed on, me as master, Buck as mate—seeing I was the navigator at a dollar a month, nominal pay—and six Kanakas as hands.
“Day before we started we were sitting in the cabin going over the list of stores when a long, thin chap by name of Gadgett came on board. He was a ship’s chandler and when he found no orders he opened out about Pat, not knowing he was Buck’s uncle, asking us what screws we were getting and didn’t we know the Greyhound was condemned, or ought to be, but that she was certain to be insured for twice her value, and then he lit.
“When he’d gone I said to Buck: ‘Look here,’ I said, ‘I’m not grumbling, but it seems to me your uncle doesn’t stand to lose over this game. He’s got a captain and first officer for nothing. He’s dead certain we’re on a mug’s game, and he’s used our cupidity after pearls so’s to make us work for him, and he not paying us a jitney.’
“‘How do you make that out?’ he asks.
“‘Well,’ I said, ‘look at him. I reckon, without disrespect to you, that if there was an incorporated society of mean men he’d be the President. Did he even pay you back those dollars he borrowed from you? Not he. Well, now, do you think if he had any idea we were going to pull this thing off he wouldn’t have asked for a share? Course he would. He didn’t ask, even on the off chance, for if he had we might have asked for our screws as master and mate. Another thing. It’s on the charter that we can call at Malakā on the way out or back; if he had any idea of us touching this pearl island it’s my opinion he’d have bound us to call there on the way out.’