“He said that was all right,” said George, “said he was acting perfectly straight and that the man was his enemy. Y’know, I believe in B. C.”
“So do I,” said Hank, “but what in the nation’s he moulting about, that’s what I want to know. I take it it’s just sensitiveness; even though the Dutchman is his enemy, he don’t like giving him away. I can understand it.”
“I can’t quite make him out,” said George, “he’s intelligent and has fine ideas about things, yet he always seems to have lived pretty rough—”
“And what’s the harm of that,” cut in Hank. “Why, it’s the guys that have lived pretty rough as you call it that are the only educated citizens as far as I can make out. They’ve had their noses rubbed into the world. Why look at me—I’m not saying I’m much, but all I’ve learned of any good to me hasn’t come out of class-rooms or colleges. Mind you, I’m not against them, I don’t say they’re no use, but I do say what makes a man is what he rubs against.”
“He seems to have been rubbing against some pretty queer characters to judge by the Heart of Ireland lot,” said George.
“That’s my point,” said Hank. “They’ve turned him respectable. There’s many a man would have gone to the bad only he’s been frightened off it by the toughs he’s met. They’re better than Sunday school books. I know, for I’ve been there.”
An hour later, San Nicolas was plain before them and an hour before sunset Beggs Rock was on the starboard bow and only a mile away. San Nicolas, itself close to them, now showed its peak, nine hundred feet high with its changeless turban of cloud, rosy gold in the evening glow. From the peak the island spilled away showing cleft and cañon and high ground treeless and devoid of life.
They cast anchor just outside the kelp ring. The sun was just leaving the sea. Nothing showed but the brown lateen sails of a Chinese junk, standing in shore about two miles away. She rounded a promontory and vanished from sight.
“That’s a Chow fishing boat,” said Hank. “They go scraping along all down this coast, hunting for abalones and turtle and whatever they can lay their hands on.”