“Captain Holstrom,” I yelled, “come here quick! Bring your hammer! Hurry! Knock that devil overboard!” I shouted when the captain tore around the corner on the gallop. His eyes were bulged out, and he had his hammer over his head, for I guess he thought from the tone of my voice that pirates had boarded us. His expression did not soften any when he laid eyes on Keedy.
The gambler put up a lean forefinger. “You’d better hark to what I say, friend Rask.” He went over the same talk he had had with me.
“Not by a continental tin damsite!” howled the captain. “And how you have got the gall even to look the way of the Zizania, much more come aboard of her, is what gives me a callous over the collar-button. Get off’m here!”
“You don’t dare to drive me, Holstrom, after I’ve come to you with a fair and open proposition—ready to take the first step and let bygones rest. You can’t afford any big talk! Why, you’re only stealing this gold, whatever of it you are getting! This is pirate business—the whole of it. Now you be careful how you try to raise me out of the game.”
That taunt about our rights there at San Apusa came from a rascal and a gambler, but the taunt made me think—and it stung, too. To tell the truth, I had done a little thinking about our rights in the matter of that treasure.
“You’re infernal thieves, and you can’t make yourselves out anything else!” Keedy insisted. “And you can’t afford to throw down another thief who is willing to come in and help.”
Captain Holstrom shot out a swift kick and missed Keedy. He made a crack at him with the hammer, and missed again.
The Keedy person had had experience with the captain, probably, in past times. He ran for the ladder and escaped into his boat.
“You are fools, besides being thieves,” he informed us, standing up when he was a safe distance away, and shaking his fists. “Don’t you understand what I can do to you?” Captain Holstrom returned the fist-shaking with too much alacrity to be misunderstood.
“All right,” bellowed Keedy; “have it your own way, you fools! I’ll do you so good that you’ll never know you were ever in the game.” He was so mad that he let out a little more than he intended to, so I reckoned. “There are men who will pay me more for what I can tell ’em than any rake-off you can give me, anyway.” He was rowed away to his schooner.