Ginnell, as owner of the Heart of Ireland, received the whole brunt of the storm—there was no hearing for him when, true to himself, he tried to cast the onus of the business on Blood and Harman. He was told to get out and be thankful he was not brought back to Frisco in irons, and he obeyed instructions, rowing off to the schooner, he and Harman and Blood, a melancholy party with the exception of Blood, who was talking to Harman with extreme animation on the subject of beam engines.
On deck, it was Blood who gave orders for hauling up the anchor and setting sail. He had recaptured the revolver.
III
A CARGO OF CHAMPAGNE
I
Billy Meersam, an old sailor friend in Frisco, told me this story as I was sitting one day on Rafferty’s wharf, contemplating the green water, and smoking. Billy chewed and spat between paragraphs. We were discussing Captain Pat Ginnell and his ways; and Billy, who had served his time on hard ships, and, as a young man, on the Three Brothers, that tragedy of the sea which now lies a coal hulk in Gibraltar harbour, had quite a lot to say on hazing captains in general and Captain Pat Ginnell in particular.
“I had one trip with him,” said Billy, “shark catchin’ down the coast in that old dough dish of his, the Heart of Ireland. Treated me crool bad, he did; crool bad he treated me from first to last; his beef was as hard as his fist, and bud barley he served out for coffee. He was known all along the shore side, but he got his gruel at last, and got it good. Now, by any chance did you ever hear of a Captain Mike Blood and his mate, Billy Harman? Knew the parties, did you? Well, now, I’ll tell you. Blood it were put the hood on Ginnell. Ginnell laid out to get the better of Blood, and Blood, he got the better of Ginnell. He and Harman signed on for a cruise in the Heart of Ireland; then they rose on Ginnell, and took the ship and made him deck hand. They did that. They made a line for a wreck they knew of on a rock be name of San Juan, off the San Lucas Islands, and the three of them were peeling that wreck, and they were just gettin’ twenty thousand dollars in gold coin off her, when the party who’d bought the wreck, and his name was Gunderman, lit down on them and collared the boodle and kicked them back into their schooner, givin’ them the choice of makin’ an offing or takin’ a free voyage back to Frisco, with a front seat in the penitentiary thrown in.
“It was a crool setback for them, the dollars hot in their hands one minit and took away the next, you may say, but they didn’t quarrel over it; they set out on a new lay, and this is what happened with Cap’ Ginnell.”