“There’s a tug in the pocket where the Arrow ties up. I can’t see to make her out in the dark, but we will stop and take a look. Something or other may have delayed Captain Spreckels. I hope to blazes thim seamen I sint him has not hooked it before he got ’em safe aboard the bark.”
Leaving the ’rickshaws to wait orders, they footed it down to the wharf and were convinced that they had found the Arrow even before she could be clearly made out. The darkness was shattered by the troubled accents of Captain Spreckels, who was proclaiming to the skipper of the tug:
“By Gott, I cannot wait for McDougal no longer. The tide ist turned already. My wessel must go to sea mit the morning flood. It gives me sadness to lose dot scalawag, but he has runned away mit himself.”
O’Shea climbed over the guard-rail and cried:
“How are you again, Captain Spreckels? What’s this I hear about McDougal? I am after finding him meself.”
The master of the Wilhelmina Augusta swung his arms and made answer:
“McDougal was a slippery customer, so? I haf a immense fondness for him. By the landing here he left me to go in a ’rickshaw, sehr schnell, to a room what he haf hired for to-night und fetch some little t’ings what belonged to him, mostly books und some papers mit writings on ’em. He haf come to Shanghai, he tells me, mit a small bundle which he never loses, drunk or sober. While the tug is makin’ steam und haulin’ her lines aboard he will do his errand. It vas an hour ago. I do not understand, but I must not wait.”
“Changed his mind,” suggested Paddy Blake. “Sorry ye are shy a shipmate, but the news will please me friend Captain O’Shea here. You lose. He wins.”
The hull of the Arrow was trembling to the thresh of the screw, and her skipper was bawling the order to cast off. Captain Spreckels shouted farewell as the two visitors jumped ashore, and the tug moved astern into the fair-way. As they walked toward the ’rickshaws O’Shea remarked:
“’Tis no use to go rummagin’ around to-night in search of McDougal, I suppose.”