Sea Plunder

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to be exploited, perfect peace reigned on the west American seaboard from Vancouver to Wellington Island, piracy was out of date, and every hay barge had its captain.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.