“Faith and there’s no use in kicking,” replied the owner of the _Heart of Ireland_. “I gives in.”
“Then up on your feet!” said Blood, rising and putting the revolver in his pocket. “And up on deck with you! You’re one of the hands now, and if you ever want to see Frisco again, you’ll take my orders and take them smart. You’ll berth aft with us, but your rating is cabin boy, and your pay. Up with you!”
Ginnell went up the ladder, and the others followed.
Ginnell showed to the light of day two black eyes and the marks on his chin of the frightful uppercut that had closed the fight.
He looked like a beaten dog as Blood called the crew, in order to pick watches with Harman.
“I take the chap that’s steering,” said Blood.
They finished the business, and dismissed the hands, who seemed to see nothing strange in the recent occurrence among the whites, and who were thronging now to the fo’c’s’le for their supper, their faces all wearing the same Chinese expression, the expression of men who know everything, of men who know nothing.
Then, having set a course for the San Lucas Islands, and while Ginnell was washing himself below, Blood, with his companion, leaned on the rail and looked at the far-away coast dying out in the dusk.
“Seems strange it was only this mornin’ I projected gettin’ out like this,” said Harman, “and here we are out, with twenty thousand dollars ahead of us, if the _Yan-Shan_ hasn’t broke up, which she hasn’t. ’Pears to me it was worth a dose of quinine to do the job so neat with no bones broke and no fear of the law at the end of it.”
He whistled softly to the accompaniment of the slashing of the bow wash, looking over toward the almost vanished coast, above which, in the pansy blue of the evening sky, stars were now showing like points of silver.
The _Heart of Ireland_ was spreading her wings to the northwest trades, making a good seven knots with the coast of California a vague line on the horizon to port and all the blue Pacific before her.
Captain Blood was aft with his mate, leaning on the rail and watching the foam boosting away from the stern and flowing off in Parian-Marbaline lines on the swirl of the wake. Ginnell was forward on the lookout, and one of the coolie crew was at the wheel.