“That’s a point, I know,” admitted Jim. “But the rice is the sluggish article, anyway; it’s little more account than ballast; it’s the tea and silks that I look to: all we have to find is the proportion, and one look at the manifest will settle that. I’ve rung up Lloyd’s on purpose; the captain is to meet me there in an hour, and then I’ll be as posted on that brig as if I built her. Besides, you’ve no idea what pickings there are about a wreck—copper, lead, rigging, anchors, chains, even the crockery, Loudon.”
“You seem to me to forget one trifle,” said I. “Before you pick that wreck, you’ve got to buy her, and how much will she cost?”
“One hundred dollars,” replied Jim, with the promptitude of an automaton.
“How on earth do you guess that?” I cried.
“I don’t guess; I know it,” answered the Commercial Force. “My dear boy, I may be a galoot about literature, but you’ll always be an outsider in business. How do you suppose I bought the James L. Moody for two hundred and fifty, her boats alone worth four times the money? Because my name stood first in the list. Well, it stands there again; I have the naming of the figure, and I name a small one because of the distance: but it wouldn’t matter what I named; that would be the price.”
“It sounds mysterious enough,” said I. “Is this public auction conducted in a subterranean vault? Could a plain citizen—myself, for instance—come and see?”
“O, everything’s open and above-board!” he cried indignantly. “Anybody can come, only nobody bids against us; and if he did, he would get frozen out. It’s been tried before now, and once was enough. We hold the plant; we’ve got the connection; we can afford to go higher than any outsider: there’s two million dollars in the ring; and we stick at nothing. Or suppose anybody did buy over our head—I tell you, Loudon, he would think this town gone crazy; he could no more get business through on the city front than I can dance; schooners, divers, men—all he wanted—the prices would fly right up and strike him.”
“But how did you get in?” I asked. “You were once an outsider like your neighbours, I suppose?”
“I took hold of that thing, Loudon, and just studied it up,” he replied. “It took my fancy; it was so romantic, and then I saw there was boodle in the thing; and I figured on the business till no man alive could give me points. Nobody knew I had an eye on wrecks till one fine morning I dropped in upon Douglas B. Longhurst in his den, gave him all the facts and figures, and put it to him straight: ‘Do you want me in this ring? or shall I start another?’ He took half an hour, and when I came back, ‘Pink,’ says he, ‘I’ve put your name on.’ The first time I came to the top it was that Moody racket; now it’s the Flying Scud.”
Whereupon Pinkerton, looking at his watch, uttered an exclamation, made a hasty appointment with myself for the doors of the Merchants’ Exchange, and fled to examine manifests and interview the skipper. I finished my cigarette with the deliberation of a man at the end of many picnics; reflecting to myself that of all forms of the dollar-hunt, this wrecking had by far the most address to my imagination. Even as I went down town, in the brisk bustle and chill of the familiar San Francisco thoroughfares, I was haunted by a vision of the wreck, baking so far away in the strong sun, under a cloud of sea-birds; and even then, and for no better reason, my heart inclined towards the adventure. If not myself, something that was mine, some one at least in my employment, should voyage to that ocean-bounded pin-point, and descend to that deserted cabin.