“That’s easy mended,” replied Ginnell. “We can get some stores from the Heart; s’pose I go off to her and fetch what’s wanted and leave you two chaps here?”
“Not on your life,” said Blood; “we all stick together, Pat Ginnell, and so there’ll be no monkey tricks played. That’s straight. Get your fellers into the boat and let’s shove off, then Harman and I can come back with the stores and the hands you can lend us to work her.”
“Faith, you’re all suspicious,” said Ginnell, with a grin. “Well, over with you, and we’ll all go back together. I’m gettin’ to feel as if I was married to you two chaps. However, there’s no use in grumblin’.”
“Not a bit,” said Blood.
He followed Ginnell into the whaleboat, and, leaving the Tamalpais to rock alone on the swell, they made back for the Heart of Ireland.
Now, Ginnell, although he had agreed to go back to Frisco, had no inclination to do so, the fact of the matter being that the place had become too hot for him.
He had played with smuggling, and had been friendly with the Greeks of the Upper Bay and the Chinese of Petaluma. He had fished with Chinese sturgeon lines, foul inventions of Satan, as all Chinese sporting, hunting, and fishing contraptions are, and had fallen foul of the patrol men; he had lit his path with blazing drunks as with bonfires, mishandled his fellow creatures, robbed them, cheated them, and lied to them. He had talked big in bars, and the wharf side of San Francisco was sick of him; so, if you understand the strength of the wharf-side stomach, you can form some estimate of the character of Captain Ginnell. He knew quite well the feeling of the harbour side against him, and he knew quite well how that feeling would be inflated at the sight of him coming back triumphant, with a salved schooner in tow. Then there was Gunderman. He feared Gunderman more than he feared the devil, and he feared the story that Gunderman would have to tell even more than he feared Gunderman.
No, he had done with Frisco; he never would go back there again; he had done with the Heart of Ireland. He would strike out again in life with a new name and a new schooner and a cargo of champagne, sell schooner and cargo, and make another start with still another name.
Revolving this decision in his mind, he winked at the backs of Blood and Harman as they went up the little companion ladder before him and gained the deck of the Heart of Ireland.