Hank was at the wheel and feeling pretty nervous of the bar, when Candon, who had just come on deck, came aft.
“I’ll take you in,” said Candon. He took the spokes, and Hank, walking to the starboard rail, stood close to George watching the land.
Then they moved a bit more forward to talk.
“What’s T. C. doing?” asked Hank.
“Down below,” said George, “getting things together. She’s not likely to come up till he’s off.”
“You’ve fixed things up with him?”
“Yep. We’ll drop anchor off Tiburon, I’ll row him ashore in the dinghy. Wouldn’t take money. Says he’s got twenty dollars and it’s all he wants. Lord, Hank! I’d give twenty hundred dollars if this hadn’t happened, twenty thousand, for I liked him. I did. What is it makes men run crooked who were built to run straight?”
“Search me,” said Hank.
The Heart began to take the tumble of the bar. They thrashed through and then came the old familiar places, Line Point, the Presidio, the Bay, breezed up and showing the same old ships and traffic, the ferry boats running like pond insects, the junks, the steamers with rust-red funnels, the pleasure yachts, the oyster boats.
As they drew on to Tiburon, a white steam yacht passing in the distance sent the music of a band along the breeze. It was playing “Suwanee.” Closer in now, Hank went below. Hank, for all his leathery old face, was far more emotional than George, and his mind, for all his will power, would keep jumping over the barrier of B. C.’s atrocious act to the old days when he had loved B. C. as a man and brother.