THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
IF what I have just written sounds as if I wanted to pose as a hero of melodrama, I have produced a wrong impression. I was playing a big game and I was using all the hard, cold and calculating wit I possessed. As I have said, I proposed to operate on human nature. After all, I was in no position to demand anything from those men, in spite of the bluff we were making in regard to the treasure we had recovered and concealed. I had a healthy fear of what the courts might do to us in a case where stolen property had been hidden. It was up to me to cultivate a spirit of generosity in them and that was why I went down again, though every nerve and fiber in my racked body made protest. But I went down under better conditions.
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THE TERROR FROM THE NORTH
HTHE next morning Captain Holstrom ordered the checker-board crew assembled on the main deck, forward. He appeared on the bridge and leaned over the rail like a candidate ready to make a stump speech. But, unlike a candidate, he had two revolvers strapped to his waist and in plain sight.
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SUBMARINE PICKPOCKETS
ANEW arrival off San Apusa Bar had interested us for a couple of days. It was a husky sloop with a leg-of-mutton mainsail a broad-bellied craft on which a dozen men showed themselves when it sailed past us to take up a position near the ribs of the wreck. This sloop seemed to be of a build to ride the surges easily, and ven- tured much closer inshore than we had dared to anchor our lighter. The men did not visit us, and displayed no desire to meddle with the secrets of the equipment on the walled-up scow. We wondered who they were, why they were there, and left them alone.
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AMONG THIEVES
I DID not go down next day, and I watched the descent of Keedy’s divers with indifference that was pretty nigh serene. Captain Holstrom stamped around rest- lessly, for he couldn”t seem to get it into his mind that the Pacific Ocean was on guard. But he did not venture to make any suggestions to me, and I decided that I had trained him in pretty fair shape.
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THE HEART OP THE MILLIONS
T WAS about at daybreak next morning. The man who predicted the first eclipse of the sun and was waiting for it had nothing on me in the way of a case of nerves. I kept away from the captain’s state-room. I had plenty on my mind without loading up with any more trouble.
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PER MISTER MONKEY
A? she had done many times in those days of gloom and doubt, the girl came out of her state-room and walked with me. Her companionship was a consolation. She looked up at me from under her tousle of curls and swung along by my side with an easy air of comradeship.
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A TASTE OF BLOOD
THE old Pacific was in her usual welter next morning. The big seas were rolling up from the equator, and we could hear them booming in on the coast-line.
As I look back on that nightmare off the bars of San Apusa I think the day when I went down with the anchor was the calmest day of our stay. With the everlasting thrust of the trades behind them the billows rolled, rolled, rolled, rolled seethed and surged giant green soldiers with the white plumes, charging that sandy shore. I got to feel after a time that they were soldiers in real earnest, and that they were after me poor little midget, who was trying to accomplish the impossible.
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THE TELLTALE RIBS
THERE was nothing especially interesting about that prolonged grunt of the old Zizania down the Cali- fornia coast. She rolled and thrashed, and the brisk trades spattered spray over her bows, and she certainly took her own time in moving along.
We all settled down to endure the trip as best we could, but it was a rather surly party. Forward, the blacks and whites nursed their scars and their grudge; aft, Keedy and I scowled at each other so much that nobody could be happy around where we were. Miss Kama walked the deck alone, or read, or embroidered in her state-room; once in a while I got a glimpse of her through the door while she was at work. She continued to sit beside me at table, but she was very cool and distant. I don’t know as I tried to have her anything else. I would have liked to lean over the rail and talk with her, though I never presumed to speak to her on deck. Take a fellow when he is young, penned aboard a slow packet, a pretty girl near him all the time, and you bet he cannot confine all his thought to the scenery and his job.
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SORTING THE CHECKER-BOARD CREW
MR. KEEDY evidently desired to impress on me that his hankering to make sure of my company during the night was inspired by pure and sudden friendship.
When he came to awaken me his mustache was lifted so high in an amiable smile that the twin sooty wings seemed to stick out of his nostrils. He hoped I was getting to like the West and the folks there. I returned that up to date I had not been homesick a conservative statement, and true; I had had no time to be homesick.
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MR. BEASON HORNS IN
A WHITE-LIVERED, sneaky-looking chap sidled up to me and stuck out a dirty card.
“That’s my name on there,” said he; “Jake Beason, and I”m the best Chinatown guide that’s on the beat; I’ll show you everything from joss-house to hop-holes.”
“Do you know the Barbary Coast?”
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