rt of
Ireland_. It's a losin' game for me, but it's better than bein' done
out entirely."

Blood looked at Harman and Harman looked at Blood. Then telling
Ginnell that they would consider the matter, they went on deck to talk
it over.

There was truth in what Ginnell said. They would want help in getting
the coin ashore in safety, and unless they marooned or murdered
Ginnell, he, if left out, would always be a witness to make trouble.
Besides, though engaged on a somewhat shady business, neither Blood nor
Harman were scoundrels. Ginnell up to this had been paid out in his
own coin, the slate was clean, and it pleased neither of them to take
profit from this blackguard beyond what they considered their due.

It was just this touch of finer feeling that excluded them from the
category of rogues and made their persons worth considering and their
doings worth recounting.

"We'll give him what he asks," said Blood, when the consultation was
over, "and mind you, I don't like giving it him one little bit, not on
account of the money but because it seems to make us partners with that
swab. I tell you this, Billy Harman, I'd give half as much again if an
honest man was dealing with us in this matter instead of Pat Ginnell."

"And what honest man would deal with us?" asked the ingenuous Harman.
"Lord! one might think the job we was on was tryin' to sell a laundry.
It's safe enough, for who can say we didn't hit the wreck cruisin'
round promiscuous, but it won't hold no frills in the way of Honesty
and such. Down with you, and close the bargain with that chap and tip
him the wink that, though we're mugs enough to give him six thousand
dollars for the loan of his old shark-boat, we're men enough to put a
pistol bullet in his gizzard if he tries any games with us. Down you
go."

Blood went.

II

Next morning, an hour after sunrise, through the blaze of light
striking the Pacific across the far-off Californlan coast, San Juan
showed like a flake of spar on the horizon to southward.

The sea all there is of an impossible blueness, the Pacific blue
deepened by the _Kuro Shiwo_ current, that mysterious river of the sea
which floods up the coast of Japan, crosses the Pacific towards Alaska,
and sweeps down the West American seaboard to fan out and lose itself
away down somewhere off Chile.

Harman judged the island to be twenty miles away, and as they were
making six and a half knots, he reckoned to hit it in three