“Gone,” said Hank. “Drifted—sunk—but what in the nation could have sunk her? How could she have drifted? Oh, hell! It can’t be that B. C. has bolted with her—say—Bud——”
“It is,” said George, “bolted with her and the boodle. We’ve been stung—that’s all.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Tommie. Her little face looked like a piece of chalk and she was holding on to the tent flap.
“There you are,” said Hank. “Nor I. B. C. couldn’t do it, that’s all. He couldn’t do it.”
“He’s done it,” said George. “He was sore about your taking the stuff off to the ship because he intended bunking with it himself—can’t you see?”
“Maybe those Chinks have taken the ship,” said Hank.
George shook his head. “We’d have heard him shout with the wind blowing that way. Besides, they couldn’t. Not one of them has any notion of navigating her. Can’t you see? He’s got the boodle. He’s meant to do this all along when the stuff turned up and he’s done it.”
“I tell you that chap’s a white man,” began Hank, furiously.
“In spots,” said George, “or in streaks—as he said himself. He runs straight for a while, wants to run straight and then goes off the other way about. He’s a socialist, grand ideas and a slung shot in his pocket.”
“Socialist, so’m I.”