Part 25

“China boy heap plenty much sick. Two boy velly sick. I tink um die pretty soon to-molla. You catch um slop-chest; you gib me five, seven liver pill. Sabe?”

“I'll tell you what you want,” cried Moran, aiming a forefinger at him, pistol fashion; “you've got a blue funk because those Kai-gingh beach-combers have come into the bay, and you're more frightened of them than you are of the schooner; and now you want us to take you home.”

“How muchee?”

“A thousand dollars.”

Wilbur looked at her in surprise. He had expected a refusal.

“You no hab got liver pill?” inquired Charlie blandly.

Moran turned her back on him. She and Wilbur conferred in a low voice.

“We'd better take them back, if we decently can,” said Moran. “The schooner is known, of course, in 'Frisco. She went out with Kitchell and a crew of coolies, and she comes back with you and I aboard, and if we tell the truth about it, it will sound like a lie, and we'll have no end of trouble. Then again, can just you and I work the 'Bertha' into port? In these kind of airs it's plain work, but suppose we have dirty weather? I'm not so sure.”

“I gib you ten dollah fo' ten liver pill,” said Charlie.

“Will you give us a thousand dollars to set you down in San Francisco?”

Charlie rose. “I go back. I tell um China boy what you say 'bout liver pill. Bime-by I come back.”

“That means he'll take our offer back to his friends,” said Wilbur, in a low voice. “You best hurry chop-chop,” he called after Charlie; “we go home pretty soon!”

“He knows very well we can't get away before high tide to-morrow,” said Moran. “He'll take his time.”

Later on in the afternoon Moran and Wilbur saw a small boat put off from the junk and make a landing by the creek. The beach-combers were taking on water. The boat made three trips before evening, but the beach-combers made no show of molesting the undefended schooner, or in any way interfering with Charlie's camp on the other side of the bay.

“No!” exclaimed Moran between her teeth, as she and Wilbur were cooking supper; “no, they don't need to; they've got about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars of loot on board--OUR loot, too! Good God! it goes against the grain!”

The moon rose considerably earlier that night, and by twelve o'clock the bay was flooded with its electrical whiteness. Wilbur and Moran could plainly make out the junk tied up to the kelp off-shore. But toward one o'clock Wilbur was awakened by Moran shaking his arm.

“There's something wrong out there,” she whispered; “something wrong with the junk. Hear 'em squealing? Look! look! look!” she cried of a sudden; “it's their turn now!”

Wilbur could see the crank junk, with its staring red eyes, high stern and prow, as distinctly as though at noonday. As he watched, it seemed as if a great wave caught her suddenly underfoot. She heaved up bodily out of the water, dropped again with a splash, rose again, and again fell back into her own ripples, that, widening from her sides, broke crisply on the sand at Wilbur's feet.

Then the commotion ceased abruptly. The bay was quiet again. An hour passed, then two. The moon began to set. Moran and Wilbur, wearied of watching, had turned in again, when they were startled to wakefulness by the creak of oarlocks and the sound of a boat grounding in the sand.

The coolies--the deserters from the “Bertha Millner”--were there. Charlie came forward.

“Ge' lup! Ge' lup!” he said. “Junk all smash! Kai-gingh come ashore. I tink him want catch um schooner.”

IX, THE CAPTURE OF HOANG

“What smashed the junk? What wrecked her?” demanded Moran.

The deserting Chinamen huddled around Charlie, drawing close, as if finding comfort in the feel of each other's elbows.

“No can tell,” answered Charlie. “Him shake, then lif' up all the same as we. Bime-by too much lif' up; him smash all to--Four-piecee Chinamen dlown.”

“Drown! Did any of them drown?” exclaimed Moran.

“Four-piecee dlown,” reiterated Charlie calmly. “One, thlee, five, nine, come asho'. Him other no come.”

“Where are the ones that came ashore?” asked Wilbur.