nd his helplessness. He had given up the fight.

"You don't realize our situation, Mr. Trenholm, or what all this
means, or the men we are against. That forecastle bulkhead is lined with
sheet-iron on the other side to keep the crews from broaching cargo, and,
even if we should cut through it, we would come against cargo in the
hold, and would be no better off. I admire your pluck, but you don't know
the odds against us. They'll loot her and scuttle her before the sun is
well up, and we'll go down in this trap. Help me lift poor Harris into a
bunk."

We stowed the body of the mate in a lower bunk and covered it with straw
and some of the clothing of the Chinese. Riggs sat down again and stared
at the littered deck.

"But we must fight to the last minute," I said. "We can't give up like
this, even if we are trapped. You certainly do not intend to surrender
now. I know, captain, that the odds are great; but we can fight, can't
we?"

"You don't know!" he almost wailed, beating his knees with his hands.
"You don't know what it all means, of course. I tell you they'll loot her
and scuttle her when they have done their work aboard, and we're doomed
men!"

"But what is there to loot in this old tub?" I asked, preferring to have
him tell me of the mysterious cargo than to take the time of explaining
how I had followed him and Harris below.

"That's what they want," he said, talking to himself more than to me.
"Harris was right, but we found out too late. They got Mr. Trego before
he could warn us. And it's not my fault if I die for it. Me, J. Riggs,
master of sail and steam for thirty years, and never a ship lost nor a
dishonest dollar in all my life, not to know what's in my ship!

"It's not me that lost her, God knows; but that's what the owners will
say, and that's what everybody will say--if they don't say something
worse when the truth comes out. 'Riggs gone, and his ship gone,' they'll
say, and then others will wink and whisper: 'And you know the _Kut Sang_
was ballasted with gold,' and who's to know I never stole it?"

"Gold!" I said. "You say there is gold aboard?"

"Yes, gold!" he almost shouted at me. "Chests of gold coin, a dozen or
more! That's what they're after, and that's what they'll get, and that's
what it is all about--Trego and all the rest of it!"

"And you never knew?" I asked, more to take his mind off his troubles and
rouse his fighting spirit than for the information, for the details
mattered