Sea Plunder. H. De Vere Stacpoole
who had been standing on his toes and letting himself down on his heels, puffing out his chest, shooting his cuffs, and otherwise conducting himself like a man in power and on a pedestal, collapsed at this dig. He flung his right elbow into the palm of his left hand, pinched in his cheeks with his right thumb and forefinger, coughed, frowned, and then said:
“I can excuse a sailor for being short in his temper before a question that would seem to imply incapacity. We will say no more on that point. I take your word that you are an efficient navigator and a capable cable engineer.”
“You needn’t take anything of the sort,” said Blood. “I’m a bad navigator, and, as for cable engineering, I can find a cable if I have a chart of it and howk her out of the mud if I have a grapnel. I don’t say that doesn’t want doing; still that’s my limit as a cable man. And as to navigation, I can just carry on. I’ve lost two ships.”
“The Averna and the Trojan,” said Shiner.
“Now, how in the nation did you know that?” cried the outraged Blood.
“I know most things about most men in Frisco,” replied the subtle Shiner.
“Well, then, you’ll know my back,” replied Blood, rising from his chair, “and you may think yourself lucky if you don’t know my boot!” He turned to the door.
“Captain! Captain!” cried Harman, springing up. “Don’t take on so for nothing. The gentleman didn’t mean nothing. Don’t you, now, be a fool, for it’s me you’ll put out of a job as well as yourself.”
“What made him ask me those questions, then, and he knowing my record all the time?” cried Blood, around whose body Harman had flung an arm.
“He didn’t mean no harm; he didn’t mean no harm. Don’t you be carrying on so for nothing; the gentleman didn’t mean no harm. Here, now, sit you down; he didn’t mean no harm.”
Harman was not an orator, but his profound common sense prevented him from enlarging on the subject and trying to suggest innocent things that Shiner might have meant. Blood was in a condition of mind to snap at anything, but he sat down.
Shiner had said not one word.
“That’s right,” said Harman, in a soothing voice. “And now, Mr. Shiner, if I’m not wrong, it was a hundred dollars a month you were offering the Captain, with a bonus of a thousand when the job’s through. Maybe I’m not mistaken in what I say.”
“Not a bit,” said Shiner, speaking as calmly as though no unpleasant incident had occurred. “Those are the terms, with an advance of a hundred dollars should the Captain engage himself to us.”
“What about the victuals,” said the Captain, seeming to forget his late emotion, “and the drinks?”
“The food will be good,” replied Shiner, “and the best guarantee of that will be the fact that I go with you myself as electrician. I’m not the man to condemn myself to bad food for the sake of a few dollars. The food will be the best you have ever had on board ship, I suspect; but there will be no drinks.”
“No drinks?”
“Not till we are paid off. This business wants cool hands. Tea, coffee, mineral waters you will have as much as you want of; but not one drop of alcohol. I am condemning myself as well as you, so there is no room for grumbling.”
Harman heaved a sigh like the sigh of a porpoise. Blood was silent for a moment. Then he said: “Well, I don’t mind. I’m not set on alcohol. If it’s to be a teetotal ship, maybe it’s all the better; but I reckon you’ll pay wind money all the same.”
“What’s this they allow?” asked Shiner, as though he had forgotten this point.
“A shilling a day on the English ships,” said the Captain, “for the officers. Eighteen pence, some of the companies make it. I don’t know what the skipper gets. I reckon double. I’ll take half a dollar a day. That’s about fair.”
“Very well,” said Shiner. “I meet you. Anything more?”
“No,” said the Captain. “I guess that’s all.”
“When can you start?” asked Shiner.
“When you’re ready.”
“Well, that will be about this day week.”
“And the advance?”
“I will pay you that to-morrow, when you have seen over the ship. It’s just as well you should have a look at her first. Can you be here at ten o’clock to-morrow morning?”
“Yes, I can be here.”
“Very well, then. You had better come, too, Mr. Harman. I will expect you both at ten o’clock sharp. Good day to you.”
They went out.
Going down in the elevator, they said nothing.
It will have been noticed that not one of the three men had made any remark on the real nature of the forthcoming expedition. It was admittedly dark. The amount of pay and the bonus were quite enough to throw light on the edges of the affair. Blood did not want to explore farther. It wasn’t the first dark job he’d been on, and the less he knew the more easily could he swear to innocence in case of capture.
Harman seemed of this way of thinking also, for, when they turned into the street, all he said was:
“Well, come and have a drink.”
“I don’t mind,” said Blood. “I’m not a drinking man, as a rule; but that chap has made me feel dry somehow or another.”
He had taken a black dislike to Shiner.
II
THE “PENGUIN”
Near the docks where the China boats come in, there lies an old wharf gone pretty much to decay. Rafferty’s Wharf is the name it goes by. It bears about the same relationship to the modern sea front that Monterey bears to San Francisco, for its rotten piles, bored by sea weevils and waving their weeds languidly to the green water that washes them, were young in the days when grain went aboard ship by the sackful and the tank ships of the Standard Oil Company were floating only in the undreamed-of future.
If you hunt for it, you will find it very difficult to discover; and if you discover it, you will gain little by your discovery but melancholy.
The great grain elevators pouring their rivers of wheat into the holds of the great grain freighters overshadow it with their majesty, and go as often as you will, there is never a decent, live ship moored to its bitts.
The cripples of the sea are brought here for a rest, or for sale, before starting with a last kick of their propellers for the breaking-up yards; and here, on this bright morning, when Mr. Shiner and his two seafaring companions appeared on the scene, this veritable cripple home only showed two inmates—a brig and a grey-painted, single-funnelled steamship with rust runnings staining her paint, verdigris on her brasswork, no boats at her davits, and a general air of neglect, slovenliness, and disreputability beggaring description.
The Penguin had never been a beauty to look at, and she had always been a beast to roll; even rolling plates, though they had improved her a bit, had not cured her. She had only one good point—speed—and that was an accident; she had not been built for speed; she had been built to carry cable and to lay it and mend it; speed had come to her by that law which rules that to every ship built comes some quality or defect not reckoned for by the designer and builder.
Shiner & Co., having hailed the watchmen, crossed the gangplank to the desolate deck, the Captain with frank disapproval on his face, Harman sniffing and