“Loudon, I tell you I’ve had to pay blood for that money,” cried my friend, with almost savage energy and gloom. “It’s all on ninety days, too; I couldn’t get another day—not another day. If we go ahead with this affair, Loudon, you’ll have to go yourself and make the fur fly. I’ll stay, of course—I’ve got to stay and face the trouble in this city; though, I tell you, I just long to go. I would show these fat brutes of sailors what work was; I would be all through that wreck and out at the other end, before they had boosted themselves upon the deck! But you’ll do your level best, Loudon; I depend on you for that. You must be all fire and grit and dash from the word ‘go.’ That schooner, and the boodle on board of her, are bound to be here before three months, or it’s B U S T—bust.”
“I’ll swear I’ll do my best, Jim; I’ll work double tides,” said I. “It is my fault that you are in this thing, and I’ll get you out again, or kill myself. But what is that you say? ‘If we go ahead?’ Have we any choice, then?”
“I’m coming to that,” said Jim. “It isn’t that I doubt the investment. Don’t blame yourself for that; you showed a fine sound business instinct: I always knew it was in you, but then it ripped right out. I guess that little beast of an attorney knew what he was doing; and he wanted nothing better than to go beyond. No, there’s profit in the deal; it’s not that; it’s these ninety-day bills, and the strain I’ve given the credit—for I’ve been up and down borrowing, and begging and bribing to borrow. I don’t believe there’s another man but me in ’Frisco,” he cried, with a sudden fervour of self-admiration, “who could have raised that last ten thousand! Then there’s another thing. I had hoped you might have peddled that opium through the islands, which is safer and more profitable. But with this three-month limit, you must make tracks for Honolulu straight, and communicate by steamer. I’ll try to put up something for you there; I’ll have a man spoken to who’s posted on that line of biz. Keep a bright look-out for him as soon’s you make the islands; for it’s on the cards he might pick you up at sea in a whale-boat or a steam-launch, and bring the dollars right on board.”
It shows how much I had suffered morally during my sojourn in San Francisco that even now, when our fortunes trembled in the balance, I should have consented to become a smuggler—and (of all things) a smuggler of opium. Yet I did, and that in silence; without a protest, not without a twinge.
“And suppose,” said I, “suppose the opium is so securely hidden that I can’t get hands on it?”
“Then you will stay there till that brig is kindling-wood, and stay and split that kindling-wood with your penknife,” cried Pinkerton. “The stuff is there; we know that; and it must be found. But all this is only the one string to our bow—though I tell you I’ve gone into it head-first, as if it was our bottom dollar. Why, the first thing I did before I’d raised a cent, and with this other notion in my head already—the first thing I did was to secure the schooner. The Norah Creina she is, sixty-four tons—quite big enough for our purpose since the rice is spoiled, and the fastest thing of her tonnage out of San Francisco. For a bonus of two hundred, and a monthly charter of three, I have her for my own time; wages and provisions, say four hundred more: a drop in the bucket. They began firing the cargo out of her (she was part loaded) near two hours ago; and about the same time John Smith got the order for the stores. That’s what I call business.”
“No doubt of that,” said I; “but the other notion?”
“Well, here it is,” said Jim. “You agree with me that Bellairs was ready to go higher?”
I saw where he was coming. “Yes—and why shouldn’t he?” said I. “Is that the line?”
“That’s the line, Loudon Dodd,” assented Jim. “If Bellairs and his principal have any desire to go me better, I’m their man.”