“I want to get back to Frisco and scrag Rafferty,” said Blood, taking hold of the bottle. “That’s all I want.”
“You’ll have to scrag the whole of Frisco, then,” said Harman, “for the place is rockin’ with laughter now, from the China docks to Meiggs’. It’s the wheelbarrows that have done us; they’ll be had against us everywhere, and not a bar you’ll go into but you’ll be asked: Is your wheelbarrow outside? I don’t want to go back to Frisco, I tell you I don’t. I want to get to some place where I can sit down and cuss quiet. Lord, but that chap has had us lively!”
There was no doubt of that fact. Rafferty, with that fatal sense of humour for which he had a reputation of a sort, had well avenged his kinsman, Ginnell, put a hundred dollars into his own pocket, and made Blood and Harman forever ridiculous to a certain order of minds. And his whole working material had been just the recollection of this forsaken island—nothing more than that.
IV
Gadgett’s schooner, the Bertha Mason, came into the lagoon that night under a full moon lifting in the east. Blood and Harman had not gone to bed, and they were treated to a lovely sight which left them unimpressed.
Nothing could be more perfect in the way of a sea picture than the schooner fresh from the sea spilling her amber light on her water shadows to the slatting of curves and the sounds of block and cordage, moving like a vision with just way enough on her to take her to her anchorage.
Then the lagoon surface reeled to the splash of the anchor, the shore echoes answered to the rumble-tum-tum-tum of the chain, and the Bertha Mason swung to her moorings, presenting her bow to the outward-going current and her broadside to that of the Heart.
“Blast the blighters!” said Harman. Then the two went below to their bunks.
Next morning there were salutations across the water from one schooner to the other. The fellows on the Bertha Mason were at work early getting the shell on board, and the Chinese crew of the Heart were busy fishing. During the day there was little communication between the two vessels, and at night there was no offer of the Bertha Masonites to come aboard, yet it was their duty to pay first call as the Heart was a visitor.