Part 33

“No, I'll not forget the horses Charlie. You shall have four.”

“Want six-piecee band musicians--China music--heap plenty gong. You no flogettee? Two piecee priest, all dressum white--savvy? You mus' buyum coffin yo'self. Velly fine coffin, heap much silver, an' four-piecee horse. You catchum fireclacker--one, five, seven hundled fireclacker, makeum big noise; an' loast pig, an' plenty lice an' China blandy. Heap fine funeral, costum fifteen hundled dollah. I be bury all same Mandarin--all same Little Pete. You plomise, sure?”

“I promise you, Charlie. You shall have a funeral finer than little Pete's.”

Charlie nodded his head contentedly, drawing a breath of satisfaction.

“Bimeby Hop Sing sendum body back China.” He closed his eyes and lay for a long time, worn out with the effort of speaking, as if asleep. Suddenly he opened his eyes wide. “You no flogettee horse?”

“Four horses, Charlie. I'll remember.”

He drooped once more, only to rouse again at the end of a few minutes with:

“First-chop coffin, plenty much silver”; and again, a little later and very feebly: “Six-piecee--band music--China music--four-piecee gong--four.”

“I promise you, Charlie,” said Wilbur.

“Now,” answered Charlie--“now I die.”

And the low-caste Cantonese coolie, with all the dignity and calmness of a Cicero, composed himself for death.

An hour later Wilbur and Moran knew that he was dead. Yet, though they had never left the hammock, they could not have told at just what moment he died.

Later, on that same afternoon, Wilbur, from the crow's-nest, saw the lighthouse on Point Loma and the huge rambling bulk of the Coronado Hotel spreading out and along the beach.

It was the outpost of civilization. They were getting back to the world again. Within an hour's ride of the hotel were San Diego, railroads, newspapers, and policemen. Just off the hotel, however, Wilbur could discern the gleaming white hull of a United States man-of-war. With the glass he could make her out to be one of the monitors--the “Monterey” in all probability.

After advising with Moran, it was decided to put in to land. The report as to the castaways could be made to the “Monterey,” and Charlie's body forwarded to his Tong in San Francisco.

In two hours' time the schooner was well up, and Wilbur stood by Moran's side at the wheel, watching and studying the familiar aspect of Coronado Beach.

“It's a great winter resort,” he told her. “I was down here with a party two years ago. Nothing has changed. You see that big sort of round wing, Moran, all full of windows? That's the dining-room. And there's the bathhouse and the bowling-alley. See the people on the beach, and the girls in white duck skirts; and look up there by the veranda--let me take the glass--yes, there's a tally-ho coach. Isn't it queer to get back to this sort of thing after Magdalena Bay and the beach-combers?”

Moran spun the wheel without reply, and gave an order to Jim to ease off the foresheet.

XII. NEW CONDITIONS

The winter season at the Hotel del Coronado had been unusually gay that year, and the young lady who wrote the society news in diary form for one of the San Francisco weekly papers had held forth at much length upon the hotel's “unbroken succession of festivities.” She had also noted that “prominent among the newest arrivals” had been Mr. Nat Ridgeway, of San Francisco, who had brought down from the city, aboard his elegant and sumptuously fitted yacht “Petrel,” a jolly party, composed largely of the season's debutantes. To be mentioned in the latter category was Miss Josie Herrick, whose lavender coming-out tea at the beginning of the season was still a subject of comment among the gossips--and all the rest of it.

The “Petrel” had been in the harbor but a few days, and on this evening a dance was given at the hotel in honor of her arrival. It was to be a cotillon, and Nat Ridgeway was going to lead with Josie Herrick. There had been a coaching party to Tia Juana that day, and Miss Herrick had returned to the hotel only in time to dress. By 9:30 she emerged from the process--which had involved her mother, her younger sister, her maid, and one of the hotel chambermaids--a dainty, firm-corseted little body, all tulle, white satin, and high-piled hair. She carried Marechal Niel roses, ordered by wire from Monterey; and about an hour later, when Ridgeway gave the nod to the waiting musicians, and swung her off to the beat of a two-step, there was not a more graceful little figure upon the floor of the incomparable round ballroom of the Coronado Hotel.

The cotillon was a great success. The ensigns and younger officers of the monitor--at that time anchored off the hotel--attended in uniform; and enough of the members of what was known in San Francisco as the “dancing set” were present to give the affair the necessary entrain. Even Jerry Haight, who belonged more distinctly to the “country-club set,” and who had spent the early part of that winter shooting elk in Oregon, was among the ranks of the “rovers,” who grouped themselves about the draughty doorways, and endeavored to appear unconscious each time Ridgeway gave the signal for a “break.”

The figures had gone round the hall once. The “first set” was out again, and as Ridgeway guided Miss Herrick by the “rovers” she looked over the array of shirt-fronts, searching for Jerry Haight.

“Do you see Mr. Haight?” she asked of Ridgeway. “I wanted to favor him this break. I owe him two already, and he'll never forgive me if I overlook him now.”

Jerry Haight had gone to the hotel office for a few moments' rest and a cigarette, and was nowhere in sight. But when the set broke, and Miss Herrick, despairing of Jerry, had started out to favor one of the younger ensigns, she suddenly jostled against him, pushing his way eagerly across the floor in the direction of the musicians' platform.

“Oh!” she cried, “Mr. Haight, you've missed your chance--I've been looking for you.”

But Jerry did not hear--he seemed very excited. He crossed the floor, almost running, and went up on the platform where the musicians were meandering softly through the mazes of “La Paloma,” and brought them to an abrupt silence.

“Here, I say, Haight!” exclaimed Ridgeway, who was near by, “you can't break up my figure like that.”