'LL TAKE you out of here if you say the word,” said Howell, when the boy had set down our warm beer. “You're not much good, maybe, but you're a white man and you've got sense. You shouldn't be pounding the piano in this joint.”
“Thanks,” I said dryly. “How'll you take me?”
“Supercargo on that hooker of mine. I need some one I can trust.”
That struck me funny, and no wonder. I laughed at it. Trust! Trust a piano-pounder picked up in Hung Charley's place!
Port Balik was not like an American oil town, being on the Celebes coast, but there was a lot of flamdoodle to it just the same. It was a roaring place. Oil men from all over the world were there, and rigs steadily pushing up the valley and over the hills; the dredged harbor always had ships lying at anchor; Chinese and Arab traders had flocked in, and the place was wide open—clear beyond any Dutch authority—and run chiefly by the oil company, where any law and order were concerned.
How I was there, dead broke and on the beach, does not matter. I was there, pounding the old tinpan in Hung Charley's joint, for my bed and board. Oil men work hard and play hard, and there was no romantic illusion about Hung Charley's place, believe me! It was bad. Howell was bad, too. He was no angel.
His old Chinese-owned tinpot had been in harbor three days, and I had heard of him. I think he was Welsh, originally—small, dark, vibrant as a flame. A thin and bitter man with a kick in each fist and a reputation for brutality, but said to be on the square in most ways. Not where laws were concerned, but where squareness counted—man to man.
“What you thinking over, Browne?” he snapped, his cold gray eyes biting into me. “Afraid to ship with me, you big strapping piano-pounder?”
I smiled into his hard gaze and shook my head.
“Not particularly,” I said. “Why would you pick me to trust?”
“Because Hung says you're on the level.”
“Well,” I said. “Trust me, then.”
He laughed at that.
“Right!” he said briskly. “I'm one-third owner of this blasted Wung Chow of mine; the Toy Low Company in Canton, two-thirds. They've got a comprador aboard. I want one o' my own. I'm taking on some cargo before dawn tomorrow morning that will need checking. I'm not sure of my men by a long shot. My gang got about wiped out with the cholera down at Macassar and I had to ship a bad crew. We go out with the tide to-night. What say?”
“Well,” I said, “I'd say there was something queer in the wind, if you're sailing to-night and taking on cargo before morning.”
“Good for you!” he said, and chuckled. He had bright, sharp eyes, like those of a bird. “The lord hates a fool and so do I. When will you be aboard?”
“By five o'clock—in an hour,” I said.
“Good,” he nodded. “I'll have clearance by then and will meet you at the jetty.”
He drank his beer, made a face, flung down a coin and went swaggering off. Like many small men, he had a pronounced swagger, as if wearing a chip on his shoulder. It was no bluff with Howell, either.
Only after he was gone did I recall that we had not discussed wages, nor did I know whither the blessed Wung Chow was bound. Not that it mattered much to me! Any port in a storm for Jimmy Brown, strictly on his uppers and on the beach.
T FIVE that afternoon I was on the jetty with my few possessions, looking down at the four men in the waiting boat. I thought I had seen some hard specimens in Port Balik, but these four slant-eyed devils loafing in the afternoon sunlight could have given cards and spades to the whole Port Balik crowd. Not in any definite fashion either; merely in their manner, their faces, their whole bearing.
Orientals are deceptive, of course, to western eyes; the sleek, smiling, gentlemanly little Malay gives no hint that he may run wild with a knife at any moment. With these four, however, there was no mistake. They were thoroughly bad. I began to appreciate what lay behind Howell's words regarding the crew he had been forced to ship down south; I might have known there was a joker in the business somewhere. Because I was husky and Hung Charley answered for me, Howell wanted me along as company.
“All set, Browne? Good lad. Look alive, down there!”