Blood was about to reply in kind, when the dispute was cut short by a loud yell from the engine-room hatch.
Harman, having satisfied himself with a glance that all was up with the junk, had gone poking about, and entered the engine-room hatchway. He now appeared, shouting like a maniac.
“The dollars!” he cried. “Two dead chinkies an’ the dollars!”
He vanished again with a shout. They rushed to the hatch, and there, on the steel grating leading to the ladder, curled together like two cats that had died in battle, lay the Chinamen. Harman, kneeling beside them, his hands at work on the neck of a tied sack that clinked as he shook it with the glorious, rich, mellow sound that gold in bulk and gold in specie alone can give.
The lanyard came away, and Harman, plunging his big hand in, produced it filled with British sovereigns.
Not one of them moved or said a word for a moment; then Ginnell suddenly squatted down on the grating beside Harman, and, taking a sovereign between finger and thumb gingerly, as though he feared it might burn him, examined it with a laugh. Then he bit it, spun it in the air, caught it in his left hand, and brought his great right palm down on it with a bang.
“Hids or tails!” cried Ginnell. “Hids I win, tails you lose!” He gave a coarse laugh as he opened his palm where the coin lay tail up.
“Hids it is,” he cried; then he tossed it back into the bag and rose to his feet.
“Come on, boys,” said he, “let’s bring the stuff down to the saloon and count it.”
“Better get it aboard,” said Blood.