rancisco they
could be swallowed up with her. Huh--a Chinese row, the police would
say, and not bother too much. Not like stealing an American girl. 'And
if he gives me over to the police, I am not an American citizen--out of
the country I must go,' winds up Johnnie.

"Terrible downcast is Johnnie Sing, but I stands him on his feet and
tells him to cheer up. Durks was head of the expedition, yes, and paying
the bills, yes; but me, Alec Corning, was skipper of the _Hattie_. 'Go
down and tell your little wife that everything'll be all right,' says
I--'that Alec Corning'll be on the job. Where is she?'

"'She is here,' he says, and whistles, and out from the brush steps a
cute little girl dressed like a man, and with a hard hat to make her
look all the more like a man. Johnnie lifted the little hat, and under
it she has a lot of yellow-ash hair coiled up where a reg'lar Chinaman
'd have only a black pigtail.

"'Don't let on to Durks either of you ever saw me in your life,' I
advises 'em, 'and when it's time to go aboard the vessel you go.'

"And they went aboard with what Durks says was bales of hemp; and we put
out that night in open water, and next day threading inside passages so
far as we could. Another night and another morning found us in Puget
Sound, and there on a little neck of land on the American shore we
hoisted our load of hemp onto a little, rough-made wooden pier. A
narrow-gauge track ran up from the pier, and standing on the track was a
hand flat car.

"'Now,' says Durks, 'I will pay off" these men, so they won't be hanging
around and possibly talking too much before we get clear.' And he did---
ten dollars to the hands and fifteen to the cook, and a silver dollar
all around for car-fare. And they went ashore, he telling them where
they would find a little branch station about a mile up the road to take
them to Seattle. And so we got through with them.

"He himself goes ashore after they're out the way, and stays an hour or
so, and when he's back, 'How about paying off me and my mate now?' I
asks.

"'You take the schooner to a little place west of here and then I'll pay
you both off,' he answers.

"'And how about landing those two passengers?' I asks.

"'No, no, don't land them here,' he says. 'Somebody might see them and
pounce on us for landing them. Keep them aboard for a while--to the next
anchorage.'

"And we put out late in the morning then, and, there being no wind,
'twas in the middle o