There we had it! Contemptuous disregard of all our rights because they thought they had the upper hand on us!
I have hinted before this that men become monsters in the presence of much gold. From my own experience I knew the insanity which gold stirs in a man. I had foreseen some such attitude as this on the part of the men who would come to claim the treasure. A grab game, eh? And success to the best man!
I looked at that fellow—at his white hands and his flabbiness—a man who had never done an honest day’s labor with grit and muscles. He had given me his code. I told him as much.
“And I thank you for giving me that code,” I went on.
I stripped the bandages off my hands. I tore the wrappings off my feet. I showed them sights which made their faces turn white. I ripped the shirt from my back and exhibited that spectacle of ragged flesh.
“You have given me your code, I say! It’s going to be a grab game. All right! Have it your way. Go hunt this steamer from top to bottom. You’re welcome! Prove that we have any of your damned gold! Go ahead!”
I hobbled out of the wheel-house and went into my state-room, and they began to hunt the Zizania over. And I heard what Captain Holstrom said to them after they had finished.
“Now, gents, you have made sure that there’s nothing on my Zizania that belongs to you. You’re aboard here without any rights. I just want to remark that I’ll give you five minutes to get aboard your own boat and cast off, and stay cast off’m here, yourselves. I’ve got some men who can fight—and I’ve got a two-pounder in my junk-heap. I’ll put a ball through that tug that will disturb her innards seriously.”
They went silently and grudgingly—but they went. I enjoyed the expression on Marcena Keedy’s face as the tug backed off. I came out on the upper deck and gloated down on him. They anchored their craft a little distance from us, and I could readily imagine the council of war that started among them as soon as their mud-hook bit the holding-ground.
A boat put off from the tug next day, and the three important-looking men were in it. But Captain Holstrom warned them away from us. The spokesman shouted his message. He was angry, and he still dealt in threats. In order to impress upon those gentlemen that we were not at all interested in their threats, the captain and I turned our backs on them, and after a time they bawled themselves out of breath and returned to the tug.