CHAPTER XIV
ST. NICOLAS
THE Kuro Shiwo current drives northward up the coast of Japan, crosses the Pacific and comes down the Pacific Coast of America, bathing the Channel Islands and giving them their equable temperature. This great current is a world of its own; it has its kelp forests, where the shark hides, like a tiger, and its own peculiar people, led by the great swordfish of Japan. Japan not only sends her swordsmen of the sea to keep this moving street-like world, she lends her colours, in blues vivid and surprising as the skies and waters of her shadowless pictures.
One morning, shortly after sunrise, George, fast asleep in his bunk, was hauled out by Hank to “see the Islands.” He tumbled out and, just as he was, in his pyjamas, followed on deck.
Between the Kuro Shiwo and the wind the Wear Jack was making a good ten knots. Pont Concepcion on the mainland lay almost astern, and the sun, with his feet still on the mountains beyond Santa Barbara, was chasing to death a fog whose last banners were fluttering amidst the foot hills.
Away ahead, like vast ships under press of sail, rode the San Lucas Islands, San Miguel, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, their fog-filled cañons white in the sunlight.
Later in the morning, with the San Lucas Islands far astern, San Nicolas showed up like a flake of spar on the horizon to the south; to the sou’-east appeared a trace of the mountains of Santa Catalina.
Candon, who was on deck talking to George, pointed towards Santa Catalina. “Looks pretty lonely, don’t it?” said he. “Well, that place is simply swarming with millionaires. Say, you’re something in that way yourself, aren’t you? So I ought to keep my head muzzled, but you’ll understand. I’m not going against you, but things in general. I reckon if you’d ever roomed in Tallis Street, ’Frisco, you’d know what I mean. I’ve seen big poverty and when I see millionaires sunning themselves, it gets my goat—now you know what I’m gettin’ at.”
“Look here, B. C.,” said George, “cut it out. Most of the millionaires I know live on pap and pills and work like gun mules—”
“Do you?” asked Candon laughing.