Читать книгу Sea Plunder - H. De Vere Stacpoole - Страница 5

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Captain Blood used to come down to McGinnis’ wharf every afternoon to have a look round. The Captain was an Irishman of the black-haired, grey-eyed type from the west coast—a relic of the wreck of the Spanish Armada.

The Spanish strain in the Celtic nature makes for volcanic developments; and the Captain, from what we knew of him, formed no exception to this rule. He was known as “The Captain” tout court all along the front at San Francisco, from the China docks to Meiggs’ Wharf. He was a character. Scarcely forty years of age, he had done most things that a man could possibly do in the way of sea-and-land adventure. He had run guns in the Spanish-American War, dug for gold at Klondike with the first batch of diggers, lost two fingers of his left hand in a dust-up on the Chile coast, and two ships in a manner considered dubious by the Board of Trade. But he never had lost a friend, nor an enemy. Unlike most of his class, he had nothing of the amphibian about him. Straight and well set up, he always managed to keep a clean, well-groomed appearance even in the teeth of adversity.

The Captain was seated to-day on a mooring bitt, watching the freighters loading with grain and the tugs and Italian whitehalls passing on the blue water of the bay. He was down on his luck, had been for the last month, and was in a condition of humour with the world that would have lent him to any job from piracy to the captaining of a hay barge.

Owners had fought shy of him ever since his last deep-sea adventure. Capable and sober enough, he had earned a reputation for recklessness that was a bar to employment as fatal as a reputation for drink. There were no more Klondikes to be exploited, perfect peace reigned on the west American seaboard from Vancouver to Wellington Island, piracy was out of date, and every hay barge had its captain.

There seemed no prospect before him but either to go into the fo’c’sle or go on tramp, and as he sat on the mooring bitt, kicking his heels and watching the shipping, he was trying to decide which of these two prospects was the more hateful.

He had arrived at no decision on this point when he saw a figure approaching him. It was Billy Harman.

“Why, there you are!” said Billy. “Just the man I wanted to see. I looked into Sam Brown’s, and you weren’t there, and Sam said: ‘Try down on the wharves; the Captain is sure to be down on the wharves on the lookout for his ship.’ ”

“I’ll teach him to talk about me and my affairs,” said Blood. “Well, now you’ve found me, what have you got for me?”

“A ship,” replied Harman.

“Have you got it in your pocket?” said the Captain. “If so, produce it. A ship! And since what day have you turned owner?”

Mr. Harman produced a pipe and began to load it carefully and meditatively. His manner could not have been more detached had the Captain not been present.

Then, having lit the pipe and taken a draw, he seemed to remember the presence of the other.

“Yes,” said he, “it’s a sure-enough job if you wish to take it. I’d have had it myself, only I’m no hand at the deep-sea-cable business; but when the thing was spoken of to me I said: ‘I’ve got the man you want who can do any job in that way better’n any man in Frisco.’ You see, I knew you’d served two years on the Groper.”

“The Grapnel, you mean.”

“It’s all the same; she were a cable ship, weren’t she? And I said: ‘If he’ll go, I’ll go meself as second off’cer. I can do the navigatin’.’ ”

“When the whisky bottle is out of sight,” put in Blood.

“ ‘And what’s more,’ said I, ‘I’ll get you a crew that’s up to snuff and won’t make no bother nor tell no yarns. You leave the job to me,’ said I, ‘and if I can get the Captain to come along it’s fixed,’ I says.”

“Now look here, Bill Harman,” said Blood, shifting his position on the mooring bitt so as to get his informant face to face, “what are you driving at? What do you mean, anyhow? Who’s the owner of the cable boat that’s willing to ship you as first mate and me as skipper? Is this a guy you are letting off on me, or is it delirium tremens? A cable boat! Why, what cable company is going to fish round promiscuous and pick up its officers from sweepings like you and me?”

“This is no company,” replied Harman. “It’s a private venture.”

“To lay or to mend?”

“Well, if you ask me,” said Harman, “I’d say it was more like a breaking job. If you ask me, I wouldn’t swear to it being an upside business, but it’s a hundred dollars a month for the skipper and a bonus of two thousand dollars if the job’s pulled off, and half that for the mate.”

The Captain whistled.

The darkness in this business revealed by Billy Harman jumped up at him; so did the two thousand dollars bonus and the hundred a month pay.

“Who asked you to come into this?” said he.

“A chap named Shiner,” replied Harman.

“A Jew?”

“A German. I don’t know whether he is a Jew or not, but he’s got the splosh.”

“Look here,” said the Captain, half resuming his place on the mooring bitt with one leg dangling, “let’s come to common sense. To begin with, you can’t run a cable boat with a skipper and a mate and even a couple of engineers alone. You want an electrician. Where’s your electrician to come from?”

“You don’t want no electricians to cut cables with,” said Harman.

“That’s true,” said the Captain, falling into meditation.

“Yet, all the same,” went on Harman, “this chap Shiner said we would want an electrician, and that he’d come as electrician himself. Says he has a good knowledge of the work.”

“Oh, he said that, did he?”

“Yes, and I guess he told no lie. This chap Shiner is no bar bummer by a long chalk. I reckon he’s all there.”

The Captain made no reply. He was thinking. At first he had fancied this to be a simple business; some rascal person or syndicate wishing to cut a deep-sea cable and so interrupt communication between the business centres. There were only two or three Pacific cables where this piece of rascality could bring any fruitful results. That is to say, there were only two or three cables the cutting of which would not have been negatived by collateral cables or wireless, and the simple cutting of those cables could not conceivably produce a financial result worth the risk and the cost of an expedition.

But this was evidently more than a simple cutting job, since the presence of an electrician was required.

“Look here,” said he, “where is this man Shiner to be seen?”

“Why,” said Harman, “he’s to be seen easy enough in his office on Market Street.”

“Well, let’s go and have a look at him,” said the Captain, detaching himself from the mooring bitt. “He’s worth investigating. Would he be in now, think you?”

“He might,” replied Harman. “Anyhow, we can try.”

They walked away together.

Harman, unlike Blood, was a typical sailor of the tramp school, a man who knew more about steam winches and cargo handling than masts and yards. He was all right to look at, a stocky man with a not unpleasant face, a daring eye, and a fresh colour, but his certificates were not to match. Drink had been this gentleman’s ruin. Had he been a lesser man, drink would have crushed him down into the fo’c’sle. As it was, he managed to get along somehow by his wits. He had not made a voyage for two years now, but he had managed to make a living; he had been endowed by nature with a mind active as a squirrel. He was in with a number of men: ward politicians knew him as a useful man, and used him occasionally. Crimps knew him, and tavern keepers. Had he been more of a scamp and less of a dreamer, he might have risen high in life. His dream was of a big fortune to be “got sudden and easy,” and this dream, stimulated at times by alcohol, managed somehow to keep him poor.

The public life of Frisco, like a rotten cheese, supports all sorts of mites and maggots, and the wharf edge is of all cheese the most rotten part.

Harman could put his hand on men to vote at a city election, or men to man a whaler; he was under political protection, he was in with the port officers and the customs, and he could have been a very considerable person despite his lack of education but for the drink. Drink is fatal to successful scoundrelism, and the form in which it afflicted Harman is the most fatal of all, for he was not a consistent toper. He would go sober for months on end, and then, having made some money and some success, he would “fly out.”

Having reached Market Street, Harman led his companion into a big building where an elevator whisked them up to the fifth floor.

Here, at the end of a concrete passage, Harman pushed open a door inscribed with the legend “The Wolff Syndicate,” and, entering an outer office, inquired for Mr. Shiner. They were shown into a comfortably furnished room where at a roll-top desk a young man was seated busily at work with a stenographer at his side. He asked them to be seated, finished the few words he had to dictate, and then, having dismissed the stenographer, turned to Harman.

Shiner, for it was he, was a very glossy individual, immaculately dressed in a frock coat, broad-striped trousers, spats, and patent-leather shoes.

He did not look more than thirty—if that—he was good looking, and yet a frankly ugly man would have produced a more pleasing impression on the mind than Mr. Shiner. Despite his good looks, his youth, and his manner, which was intended to please, there was something inexpressibly hard and negative about this individual.

The Captain felt it at once. “Now, there’s a chap that would do you in and sit on your corpse and eat sandwiches,” said he to himself, “and smile—wonder how Harman got a hold of a chap like that? But there’s money here; the place smells of it, and the chap, too. Well, we’ll see.”

“This is the Captain,” said Harman. “Captain Blood I spoke of to you. I happened to meet him, and he’s come in to see you.”

“Very glad to see you, Captain,” said Shiner, getting up and standing with his back to the stove. “Has our friend Harman mentioned to you anything of the business I spoke of to him?”

“He told me it was cable work,” replied Blood cautiously.

“Just so,” said Shiner. “I want a skipper for some work in connection with deep-sea cables. You have experience, I suppose?”

“Two years in the Grapnel,” replied Blood.

“You were skipper?”

“No; first officer.”

“Had you much to do with the cable work?”

“Everything, as far as handling the cable. You see, in some companies and some boats they have a regular cable engineer, a chap who doesn’t touch any work but cable work; in others, the chief officer does his work and the cable work as well.”

“I know,” replied Shiner, nodding his head as though he were well acquainted with all the ins and outs of the business. “Well, in this affair of ours the skipper would be skipper and cable engineer as well. That would not interfere with his proper business, since once the cable engineer is in charge, he is the virtual captain of the ship.”

Blood nodded, wondering how this up-to-date-looking young business man had gained so much knowledge about this special branch of seamanship.

“Of course you have certificates,” went on Shiner. “You can show a clean sheet for character and ability?”

“Curse his impudence!” thought the Captain to himself; then, aloud: “A clean sheet? No, can you?”

Shiner, 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.