Part 42

"'Whitely,' I says--'Bill Whitely when you say it out loud. What's your trouble, Johnnie?' And so you c'n all get it right, I ought to say first that Johnnie Sing was a sort of Americanized Chinaman, who the last time I'd seen him was inquiring if he couldn't become a real American some way. He'd been born in Lima on the West Coast, where there's a big colony o' Chinamen, and he was part Chinese, the rest of him Peruvian Indian. A Christian, too, he was; which I'm not putting up as being for or against him, except so you'll see he had as much right to be a Christian as anything else. His mother was Christian, and so it wasn't like as if he had turned against his own to get on in the world.

"Johnnie was a good sort, and he'd made a few dollars in the tea business, and so maybe ought to 'a' been happy. But he wasn't. There was an old Chinaman, and not too old either, who'd married a Finn woman came off a wrecked Norwegian bark. They ran a laundry together, and by'n'by they came on to Frisco and ran a laundry there. And Johnnie followed them. A good woman, and she died leaving a well-grown little girl, and by'n'by the old fellow he figures he's made enough and goes back to have a look at China. But no sooner there than he learns he won't live very long, and he writes Johnnie of it, or maybe it was the girl did, her and Johnnie having been always about three-quarters in love with each other. And Johnnie he cruises over to China, and the old fellow, savvying how things are, says all right, marry, and they get married, and he gives 'em his blessing and lays down and dies. A good old scout, Johnnie said, and I guess he was.

"Well, everything's fine, only Johnnie wants to come back and live in the United States, and the girl too. She was sixteen years old when she left California, and a woman's life in the United States looked a lot better to her than in this land of one-half her ancestors. So she and Johnnie takes a steamer to Vancouver, and they get there all right; but not till they got there did either of them happen to think that they were foreigners and barred as Chinese from coming into the United States. Which was a pity, they being pretty white and so strong for everything American. Anyway, Johnnie writes to Trumbull, my old boss, to see what he could do, and after ten days or so Durks happens along and bumps into Johnnie and is surprised as you please to see him, and Johnnie tells him his story, and Durks tells him not to worry about that--that he'd smuggle him and his wife across in a schooner he'd just bought. They would take a little coast steamer and meet her a few hours up the coast, and then across the sound to Seattle--'twould be the easiest thing ever you see.

"And there they were, Johnnie and his wife, and when he got that far in his story Johnnie stops and looks up at the sky most mournful-like. Springtime it was, mind you, and fine weather, with the sun shining and the waters of the inlet rolling up on the rocks gentle-like, and the first of the birds were up from the south and singing and chirping, and, I s'pose, nesting overhead--a bran'-new spring day in a piny grove on a pretty little island off the coast of British Columbia, when anybody should 'a' been happy, 'specially with a new young wife.

"'Well, what's wrong--what you so blue about?' I asks Johnnie when he'd got through squinting up the tree branches to the sky.

"And he tells me how after his wife was aboard the steamer which 'd brought 'em to this place she sees Durks and tells Johnnie how Durks came near kidnapping her one time--before she went back to China with her father. Her father and Durks had a terrible row over it. Her father near killed Durks with a hatchet. And now here was Durks turning up in this accidental way; too accidental altogether--for Durks. He would steal her or something, and once he got her into San Francisco they could be swallowed up with her. Huh--a Chinese row, the police would say, and not bother too much. Not like stealing an American girl. 'And if he gives me over to the police, I am not an American citizen--out of the country I must go,' winds up Johnnie.

"Terrible downcast is Johnnie Sing, but I stands him on his feet and tells him to cheer up. Durks was head of the expedition, yes, and paying the bills, yes; but me, Alec Corning, was skipper of the Hattie. 'Go down and tell your little wife that everything'll be all right,' says I--'that Alec Corning'll be on the job. Where is she?'

"'She is here,' he says, and whistles, and out from the brush steps a cute little girl dressed like a man, and with a hard hat to make her look all the more like a man. Johnnie lifted the little hat, and under it she has a lot of yellow-ash hair coiled up where a reg'lar Chinaman 'd have only a black pigtail.

"'Don't let on to Durks either of you ever saw me in your life,' I advises 'em, 'and when it's time to go aboard the vessel you go.'

"And they went aboard with what Durks says was bales of hemp; and we put out that night in open water, and next day threading inside passages so far as we could. Another night and another morning found us in Puget Sound, and there on a little neck of land on the American shore we hoisted our load of hemp onto a little, rough-made wooden pier. A narrow-gauge track ran up from the pier, and standing on the track was a hand flat car.

"'Now,' says Durks, 'I will pay off" these men, so they won't be hanging around and possibly talking too much before we get clear.' And he did--- ten dollars to the hands and fifteen to the cook, and a silver dollar all around for car-fare. And they went ashore, he telling them where they would find a little branch station about a mile up the road to take them to Seattle. And so we got through with them.

"He himself goes ashore after they're out the way, and stays an hour or so, and when he's back, 'How about paying off me and my mate now?' I asks.

"'You take the schooner to a little place west of here and then I'll pay you both off,' he answers.

"'And how about landing those two passengers?' I asks.

"'No, no, don't land them here,' he says. 'Somebody might see them and pounce on us for landing them. Keep them aboard for a while--to the next anchorage.'

"And we put out late in the morning then, and, there being no wind, 'twas in the middle of the afternoon before we came to anchor in a little harbor about five miles from where we landed the cargo. And we'd hardly been there when an American gunboat comes to anchor just off our hiding-place, and Archie and me we looks at each other, but don't say anything.

"And Durks? He's terribly surprised at the sight of the gunboat--terribly. By and by he stops walking the deck and says to me: 'I have a plan, captain. I will go aboard that gunboat and find out what they want here. If they think there is anything wrong about us, I will invite them to come aboard and look us over. What do you say to that?'

"I didn't say anything to it, but 'What will become of me and my wife--I paid you five hundred dollars for us?' pipes up Johnnie Sing.

"'Why'--and Durks smiles--'that is easy. You can hide--oh, where now? Why, of course, in the lazaretto. And your wife in a locker somewhere that Captain Corning will pick out for her. They will not look far, even if they shall suspect us--they will think we would have fifty or a hundred aboard or none at all. So they will not look into every corner. If you both hide away somewhere everything will be all right.'

"Johnnie is uneasy, but I nods my head to him on the sly, and he says all right and goes below with his wife. And making sure they are below, Durks turns to me and hands over five hundred to me, and to Archie two hundred dollars. And he shows us another five hundred and says: 'And this will be for you two to divide as you please when I get Johnnie Sing away from the ship and the girl is left behind. What do you say?'

"And I looks over at the five hundred and says, 'It looks pretty good'; and Archie he looks at me and at the extra money and says, 'It looks pretty good'; and Durks laughs and says, 'It will feel pretty good, too; but better put that money out of sight, hadn't you, captain--and you too, Mr. Gillis?' and goes off in the big quarter-boat--the only boat we had aboard, by the way.

"No sooner was he gone than up pops Johnnie Sing out of the cabin companionway. 'Captain,' he says, 'must I hide away?'

"Can you swim?'

"'A little bit.'

"'A little bit? Not enough. And your wife?'

"From over his shoulder she shook her head.

"'Then you can't swim ashore, can you? You got to stay aboard, that's plain. Well, you and your wife go with Mr. Gillis, who'll stow you in a place he knows under the forec's'le floor. Neither o' you bein' too tall or too fat, you c'n stow away in this place without smotherin' for an hour or two. We've used it before. Go by way of the cabin and through the hold below decks, so if anybody's got a glass on us from the gunboat they won't see you.'

"And they went, she crawling behind him like a little mouse. And Archie tucked 'em away and comes on deck, looking at his money as he comes--two one-hundred-dollar bills. 'Tuck it out o' sight!' Archie was sayin'--'tuck it out o' sight, hah?' And the more he looks the more doubtful he becomes, and I looks at mine, and I get a magnifyin' glass from my dunnage to have a closer look, and sure enough it's the phony kind of money men like Durks used sometimes to pass off on unsuspecting Chinks on that coast. 'Johnnie Sing tips me off about it just now,' explains Archie to me.