“Well, if we could crawl down there—you an’ me—we’d put our claws on that twenty thousand.”
“How in the nation are you going to rig out a wrecking expedition on two cents, and suppose you could buy the wreck for two dollars—where’s your two dollars?”
“I’m not goin’ to buy no wrecks,” replied Harman, “nor fit out no wreckin’ expeditions. What I want is something small and easy handled—no steam, get her out and blow down on the northwest trades, raise San Juan and the Yan-Shan, lift the dollars, and blow off with them. Why, it’s as easy as walkin’ about in your slippers!”
The Captain sighed.
“As easy as getting into the penitentiary,” said he. “First of all, you’d have to steal a boat, and Frisco is no port to steal boats in; second, there’s such things as telegraphs and cables. You ought to know that after the Penguin job. Then if we were caught, as we would be, you’d have the old Penguin rising like a hurricane on us. She’s forgotten now, I know, but once a chap gets in trouble everything that’s forgotten wakes up and shouts.”
“Maybe,” said Harman, “and maybe I’d be such a fool as to go stealin’ boats. I’m not goin’ to steal no boats. But I’m goin’ to do this thing somehow, and once I set my mind on a job I does it. You mark me. I’m fair drove crazy to get out of here and be after somethin’ with money on the end of it, and once I’m like that and sets my think tank boilin’, there’s fish to fry. You leave it to me. I ain’t no fool to be gettin’ into penitentiaries. Well, let’s get a move on; there’s nothin’ like movin’ about to keep one’s ideas jumpin’.”
They walked along the wharf, stepping over mooring hawsers, and pausing now and then to inspect the shipping. There is no port in the world to equal San Francisco in variety and charm. Here, above all other places, the truth is borne in on one that trade, that much abused and seemingly prosaic word, is in reality another name for romance. Here at Frisco all the winds of the world blow in ships whose voyages are stories. Freighters with China mud still clinging to their anchor flukes, junks calling up the lights and gongs of the Canton River, schooners from the islands, whalers from the sulphur-bottom grounds, grain ships from half the world away, the spirit of trade hauls them all in through the Golden Gate, and, over and beyond these, the bay itself has its romance in the ships that never leave it—junks and shrimp boats, the boats of Greek fishermen, yachts, and all sorts of steam craft engaged on a hundred businesses from Suisun Bay to the Guadeloupe River.
Wandering along, Blood and his companion came to Rafferty’s Wharf. Rafferty’s Wharf is a bit of the past, a mooring place for old ships condemned and waiting the breaking yards. It has escaped harbour boards and fires and earthquakes, healthy trade never comes there, and very strange deals have been completed in its dubious precincts over ships passed as seaworthy yet held together, as Harman was explaining now to Blood, “by the pitch in their seams mostly.”
As they came along a man who was crossing the gangway from the tank saw Harman and hailed him.