"I'll have you sign a paper to that effect," said Banks, "and if you don't, the whole of your crew will, including your mate."
Wilson, who was standing by Green, said that he would willingly, and when Spiller scowled, he scowled back.
"And now, Mr. Green," cried Banks cheerfully, "since we know where they are, and can find 'em any time, you may put her on her course again. And we'll have a little thanksgiving service for all this."
He did not explain whether the service was for the established character of the Simoom Rocks, or for the rescue of the shipwrecked crew, but when he got them all below he handed round hymn books.
"First of all we will sing hymn No. 184 of Hymns Ancient and Modern," he said softly, and when Spiller looked it up he was very much annoyed.
THREE IN A GAME.
Things were quiet in San Francisco—that is to say, though the usual blackguards spouted on the Sand-Lot on Sundays, there was no great political row on. The President of the United States had still three years to run before any chance of a second term, and local politics had quietened. The Governor of the State, though an angel to one side and a devil to the other, had been "let up on" at last, and the reporters for the daily papers had to invent "stories" to keep themselves going. That only kept their hand in. It was a blessing to them without any disguise when the rivalry between young Jack Hunt and Sibley Gawthrop for the hand and the money and the affections of Edith Atherton became public property. It was most of all a blessing to Gardiner, the smartest new man on the San Francisco Chronicle, who knew both of the boys well.
For how could any "story" fail to pay dividends when two of the swagger "Anglo-Franco-Californians," the most beautiful girl on the coast, and Shanghai Smith, the most scoundrelly boarding-house keeper on the Pacific, played leading parts in the drama? And when one reflects that San Francisco, the Pacific itself and the Atlantic, and the Sailors' Home in Well Street, London, came into the newspaper play quite naturally, it seems obvious there was meat for any reporter's teeth.
Gardiner, of course, was not in the high-toned gang to which Hunt and Gawthrop belonged, but he knew them both very well, although he had only been in California a short year. He knew every one in San Francisco, from the biggest toughs on Telegraph Hill, and the political bosses, to the big pots and their womankind. He knew Miss Atherton too. He wanted to know her better. Though he was on the staff of the Chronicle, it was his own fault. If he could have only got on with his father in New York, he might have been as rich as Hunt himself. But the boy who cannot differ on vital points with his father before he is sixteen is no true American, and Gardiner was U.S. to his fingertips.