The hatch cover off, they rigged a tackle and hauled out a case of champagne; four cases of champagne they brought on deck, and then, attacking the next layer, they brought out a case of a different description. It contained a machine gun.
Under the champagne layer, the Tamalpais was crammed right down to the garboard strakes with contraband of war in the form of arms and ammunition for the small South American republic that was just then kicking up a dust around its murdered president.
Ginnell saw his own position at a glance. The Heart of Ireland given away to Blood and Harman for the captaincy of a gun runner, and a seized gun runner at that.
He saw now why Keene and his crew had deserted in a hurry. Chased by the warship, and running into a fog, they had slipped away in the boats, making for the coast, while the pursuer had made a dead-west run of it to clear herself of the dangerous coast waters and their rocks and shoals.
That was plain enough to Ginnell, but the prospect ahead of him was not clear at all.
He could never confess the truth about the Heart of Ireland, and, when they took him back to Frisco, it would at once be discovered that he was not Keene, but Ginnell. What would happen to him?
What did happen to him? I don’t know. Billy Meersam could throw no light on the matter. He said that he believed the thing was “hushed up somehow or ’nother,” finishing with the opinion that a good many things are hushed up somehow or ’nother in Frisco.