Part 41

"To be asked inside. Will I call her?"

"Call her, captain--call her."

"Yes, Mrs. Lowe, but--" Leary faced the man at the table.

"Oh, well"--John Lowe sighed. "No doubt you ha' the right o' it, captain. You're one who ha' sailed many courses, an' your navigation, 'tis possible, is better than mine. Call her, captain, call her."

Next morning, for all the bay to see, the curtains in John Lowe's house were raised high.

HOW THEY GOT THE "HATTIE RENNISH"

On the word being passed that Alec Corning was back from the West Coast, a few reminiscent friends went to hunt him up, and found him in the Anchorage, in a back room overlooking Duncan's wharf; and Alec was agreeable, over a social glass and a good cigar, to explain how it came he was back in Gloucester.

"If they'd only let us alone I'd 'a' got--and Archie Gillis too--good and rich."

"Rich, Alec? You rich?"

"Well, maybe not quite rich, for that, o' course, would call for saving, but certainly I'd had a roll to spend before I was done--if only they'd let us alone. But would they? Man, the meddlers they were!--the brass-buttoned, steam-winched buttinskis!"

"But if that is their business, Alec?"

"M-m--maybe. But Russians, English, Japs--yes, an' American cutters and gunboats before they were done--you ought to seen them!"

Alec paused, but only for a quick breath. "We had the finest little scheme of sealing till they took to hunting us. Up and down the length and breadth of the sealing-grounds they'd up and chase us whenever they'd get word of us--from the Japan coast back by way of the Aleutians--clear down, one time, a pair of 'em, till we had to put in behind Vancouver Island and hide the Hattie behind a lot o' screen boughs."

Alec paused; this time for a longer, an almost reflective, breath. "That being their business, p'r'aps they were all right; but ain't it a fine thing when a gang wants to go seal-hunting that a lot o' gover'ment people must specify where they can kill 'em, and when?--and they swimmin' the wide ocean as the Lord intended! And our little vessel--the Hattie Rennish when she used to go fresh halibutin' out o' here--remember her?"

There were several who heartily remembered the fast and able Hattie.

Presently, letting the elevated front legs of his chair drop to the floor, Alec rested one forearm on the table and went on to tell of how at last they got the Hattie Rennish.

"'Twas a Californian man named Trumbull bought the Hattie when she was fresh halibutin' out o' Gloucester. A good sort of a man, and 'twas him got me, with Archie Gillis for mate, to bring her 'round to Frisco.

"But the time I'm going to speak of, the Hattie--painted green she was, and called the Pioneer--was layin' into Seattle, when a chap comes aboard with a letter from Trumbull to me explaining that certain aspects of the sealing business 'd been taking on a serious look to him lately and he'd sold the Hattie, and the party who'd bought her, letter herewith, might want to do business with me.

"The looks of the new owner didn't warm me toward him in the start-off. Looks, of course, ain't everything, but when you don't know much about a man you got to go a lot by his looks. Yes, you sure have. And I'd seen him before, joy cruisin' on the Barbary Coast one night with a lot of drunken sailors--only he wasn't drunk. And I knew what he was--some Chinese blood in him, and the name o' being a slick one. But I didn't say anything about that. Gratu'tously telling a man you don't like him don't lay you up to wind'ard any. No. And we sat down and he explains what he wanted. There was a consignment of a few bales of hemp waiting up on the British Columbia coast, and would I run the Hattie over and slip back with 'em? And we'd have to leave right away.

"Well, I would--after a talk. And with Archie Gillis and a few hoboes that called themselves sailors, which I'd picked up in Jack Downing's place in Seattle, we put out. Archie was mate and to get two hundred dollars and me five hundred.

"It was a fine night, that night, and we put out into the sound and worked our way up through the islands, and the second morning later slips into a little cove behind some high hills with trees along the banks--in Georgia Strait. Twenty-four hours we lay there, and then we hears a steamer's wheel, but we don't see her; only a couple of hours later the owner comes for me in a big ship's quarter-boat, and we work the Hattie over to a little island where we find a lot of bales wrapped in burlap and hid in a cook's shack.

"'That all?' I asks my new owner--Durks his name.

"'Oh, yes--there's a couple o' Chinamen here. But let's see--where are they?' He looks around. 'They're not here--strolling in the woods somewhere. We'll take them along, too,' he says. 'You won't mind that, will you?'

"Now there was nothing in the contract about Chinamen, and I didn't like the notion of him working 'em aboard in that way, but I said all right and soon as dark came we'd roll 'em aboard and put out.

"Well, the boss and I sits down to lunch in the cook-house, and by and by, with nothing to do but wait for dark, we stroll around the island. Now I'm no wizard in anything, but I always did have a good ear. And no harm at all, a good ear, when you got to do most of your own watching out. Before we'd gone far I knew somebody was trailing me and the new owner. I could hear steps behind us an' dead twigs snapping and somebody shoving aside branches, and once, when we stopped for a talk on the edge of a clearing, I knew I heard somebody breathing just behind the bushes which was hanging over the logs we were sitting on.

"Now I knew that this Durks wasn't very popular in the quarters where he did business, and 's I wasn't aching to have any Chinese tong man hit me over the head with any hatchet by mistake in a shaded wood, I just naturally fell out of step and lost him, and being some trailer myself, I took to trailing whoever it was 'd been trailing me and Durks, and by and by I come up behind him, and when I do I grip him where he won't make too much noise nor do me too much harm till I let him. He wasn't a very big chap, nor any too strong, and I sets him down on the nearest old tree trunk and--'What is it?' I asks.

"He looks at me and shakes his head and says, 'No sabby,' and I looks at him and I shakes my head and says: 'Oh, yes, you do, Johnnie Sing. I wasn't wearing any whiskers when I used to meet you in Wall-Eye Bunsen's place. I've cultivated them for protective purposes only, to hide my face but not my intelligence--so you just overlook them and try and recollect Alec Corning. Now what d' y' say?'

"'Halloo, Captain Corning!' he says; and, no pretending, he was glad to see me.