Dan Pritchard sat down, alone in the living room, and wept. He was a bit of a sentimentalist. About one o’clock in the morning he went up to bed.
At two o’clock Sooey Wan was awakened by a rapping at his door. He crawled out of bed, opened the door an inch and found Tamea outside.
“Wha’s mallah?” he growled.
“Sooey Wan, please lend me five hundred dollars—now,” Tamea pleaded. “Dan Pritchard will pay you back.”
“Wha’ for you want money now?” Sooey Wan demanded suspiciously.
“You are a servant,” Tamea reminded him. “You should not ask questions. If you do not desire to oblige me I will make Dan Pritchard send you away from this house.”
Sooey Wan wilted, dug around in his red lacquered box and handed Tamea five hundred dollars. Then he went back to bed to think it over. As for Tamea, ten minutes later she let herself out the front door very quietly. She carried her accordion and a small suitcase which she had appropriated from Julia.
A taxicab cruised down Pacific Avenue after having deposited a bibulous gentleman in the arms of a sleepy butler. With an eye single to business the driver pulled over to the curb and hailed Tamea.
“Ride, Miss?”
“Take me to the place where the ships may be found,” she ordered and climbed in. At Clay Street wharf, just north of the ferry building, she got out and walked along the waterside, north. At that hour the Embarcadero was deserted, save for an occasional watchman at a dock head, and to their curious glances Tamea paid no heed. She stumbled blindly on, questing like a homecoming lost dog, and presently she found that which she sought. It was the unmistakable odor of copra and it brought Tamea to a little hundred and thirty foot trading schooner that lay chafing her blistered sides against the bulkhead at the foot of Pacific Street. Uninvited, Tamea stepped aboard, sat down on the hatch coaming and waited for dawn. With the dawn came a gasoline tug and bumped alongside the schooner. Then men came on deck and to them Tamea spoke in a language they could understand. The master came, stood before her and gazed upon her curiously.