Part 24

“Hello, Moran!” he said, rousing up; “how long have you been up?”

“Since before sunrise,” she said; “I've had a bath in the cove where the creek runs down. I saw a jack-rabbit.”

“Seen anything of Charlie and the others?”

“They've camped on the other side of the bay. But look yonder,” she added.

The junk had come in overnight, and was about a mile and a half from shore.

“The deuce!” exclaimed Wilbur. “What are they after?”

“Fresh water, I guess,” said Moran, knotting the end of a braid. “We'd better have breakfast in a hurry, and turn to on the 'Bertha.' The tide is going out fast.”

While they breakfasted they kept an eye on the schooner, watching her sides and flanks as the water fell slowly away.

“Don't see anything very bad yet,” said Wilbur.

“It's somewhere in her stern,” remarked Moran.

In an hour's time the “Bertha Millner” was high and dry, and they could examine her at their leisure. It was Moran who found the leak.

“Pshaw!” she exclaimed, with a half-laugh, “we can stick that up in half an hour.”

A single plank had started away from the stern-post; that was all. Otherwise the schooner was as sound as the day she left San Francisco. Moran and Wilbur had the damage repaired by noon, nailing the plank into its place and caulking the seams with lamp-wick. Nor could their most careful search discover any further injury.

“We're ready to go,” said Moran, “so soon as she'll float. We can dig away around the bows here, make fast a line to that rock out yonder, and warp her off at next high tide. Hello! who's this?”

It was Charlie. While the two had been at work, he had come around the shore unobserved, and now stood at some little distance, smiling at them calmly.

“Well, what do you want?” cried Moran angrily. “If you had your rights, my friend, you'd be keelhauled.”

“I tink um velly hot day.”

“You didn't come here to say that. What do you want?”

“I come hab talkee-talk.”

“We don't want to have any talkee-talk with such vermin as you. Get out!”

Charlie sat down on the beach and wiped his forehead.

“I come buy one-piecee bacon. China boy no hab got.”

“We aren't selling bacon to deserters,” cried Moran; “and I'll tell you this, you filthy little monkey: Mr. Wilbur and I are going home--back to 'Frisco--this afternoon; and we're going to leave you and the rest of your vipers to rot on this beach, or to be murdered by beach-combers,” and she pointed out toward the junk. Charlie did not even follow the direction of her gesture, and from this very indifference Wilbur guessed that it was precisely because of the beach-combers that the Machiavellian Chinaman had wished to treat with his old officers.

“No hab got bacon?” he queried, lifting his eyebrows in surprise.

“Plenty; but not for you.”

Charlie took a buckskin bag from his blouse and counted out a handful of silver and gold.

“I buy um nisi two-piecee tobacco.”

“Look here,” said Wilbur deliberately; “don't you try to flim-flam us, Charlie. We know you too well. You don't want bacon and you don't want tobacco.”