“Go home!” he yelped. “Sail in past the Golden Gate with this gold? Lug it back where coyote lawyers can get their whack at it until they’ve trimmed us for every ounce? Well, I guess—not!”
I wondered if he proposed to sail around in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, cuddling those ingots for amusement, the rest of his life; but I had neither strength nor taste for any more complaint or argument at that time. It was a mighty dismal outlook, according to my way of thinking. I saw that I was tied up with a man whose sole notion was to get the gold without bothering his head about how he was going to keep it. Later, Keedy’s schooner frothed out past us, standing to sea, and headed north.
I did not go down again for almost a week. Courage is always a man’s best asset, but courage in the job I had undertaken was pretty near my whole capital. And courage had left me—I had to admit it. I had been doing honest work with all a man’s grit and strength and will. I had wrecked my body and wrenched my soul in effort. Yes, the work part of it was honest, but how about the honesty of our undertaking? I had got some plain words from Keedy—and I got no consolation from Captain Holstrom. I was daredevil enough and plenty in those days, but I was not the sort of a daredevil who would make a successful pirate.
I sat on deck day after day, and bore with my agonies of body and wrestled with my soul. An idea had come to me as I had struggled with that problem of our rights. It was a rather vague idea. Of only one point of it was I sure—its success depended on getting as much of that gold as I could tear out of the sand.
Thinking upon it, hoping that good would come from it, brought my courage back to me. I was again ready to undergo tortures and to face death.
XXXV—SUBMARINE PICKPOCKETS
A NEW arrival off San Apusa Bar had interested us for a couple of days. It was a husky sloop with a leg-of-mutton mainsail—a broad-bellied craft on which a dozen men showed themselves when it sailed past us to take up a position near the ribs of the wreck. This sloop seemed to be of a build to ride the surges easily, and ventured much closer inshore than we had dared to anchor our lighter. The men did not visit us, and displayed no desire to meddle with the secrets of the equipment on the walled-up scow. We wondered who they were, why they were there, and left them alone.
I went down and crawfished my way over the sand windrows, but I could make only slow work of it, for I was stiffened by my days of inaction. But that new idea of mine went along with me for my encouragement.