“Yes, and I guess he told no lie. This chap Shiner is no bar bummer by a long chalk. I reckon he’s all there.”
The Captain made no reply. He was thinking. At first he had fancied this to be a simple business; some rascal person or syndicate wishing to cut a deep-sea cable and so interrupt communication between the business centres. There were only two or three Pacific cables where this piece of rascality could bring any fruitful results. That is to say, there were only two or three cables the cutting of which would not have been negatived by collateral cables or wireless, and the simple cutting of those cables could not conceivably produce a financial result worth the risk and the cost of an expedition.
But this was evidently more than a simple cutting job, since the presence of an electrician was required.
“Look here,” said he, “where is this man Shiner to be seen?”
“Why,” said Harman, “he’s to be seen easy enough in his office on Market Street.”
“Well, let’s go and have a look at him,” said the Captain, detaching himself from the mooring bitt. “He’s worth investigating. Would he be in now, think you?”
“He might,” replied Harman. “Anyhow, we can try.”
They walked away together.
Harman, unlike Blood, was a typical sailor of the tramp school, a man who knew more about steam winches and cargo handling than masts and yards. He was all right to look at, a stocky man with a not unpleasant face, a daring eye, and a fresh colour, but his certificates were not to match. Drink had been this gentleman’s ruin. Had he been a lesser man, drink would have crushed him down into the fo’c’sle. As it was, he managed to get along somehow by his wits. He had not made a voyage for two years now, but he had managed to make a living; he had been endowed by nature with a mind active as a squirrel. He was in with a number of men: ward politicians knew him as a useful man, and used him occasionally. Crimps knew him, and tavern keepers. Had he been more of a scamp and less of a dreamer, he might have risen high in life. His dream was of a big fortune to be “got sudden and easy,” and this dream, stimulated at times by alcohol, managed somehow to keep him poor.
The public life of Frisco, like a rotten cheese, supports all sorts of mites and maggots, and the wharf edge is of all cheese the most rotten part.