we went on deck, where Durks told the
officer there might be a way to get hold of the contraband Chinamen yet.
And the officer eyes us both and finally says: 'You'd better both come
with me to the ship and make it clear to the captain. He is now up the
Sound, but will be aboard in the morning. And we went, leaving Archie to
look after the vessel.

"We went aboard the gunboat, not exactly under guard, but just so's to
be sure we'd be there when we were wanted. It was now getting on toward
six o'clock, and the first thing meal call blew, and up steps an old
shipmate, Ed Gurney, and invites me down to the chief petty officers'
mess for supper.

"Ed and me we'd been snapper-fishing together in the Gulf o' Mexico, on
the Campeche Bank, in one of those little short bowsprit schooners out
o' Pensacola, and now he was high-line marksman of the ship, wore extra
marks on his sleeve and got extra money, and all that kind o' stuff, for
his shooting. Well, Ed always could tell an oil-tanker from a banana
steamer as far as any man in the Gulf, and we talked of those days
during supper, and after we'd had a good smoke we walked the deck
together, talking of one thing and another, and before I got through I
told him all about the scrape I was in.

"'The grab-all snake!' says Ed. 'And what you goin' to do, Alec?'

"'My name is Bill,' I answers; 'Bill Whitely if there's anybody likely
to be in hearing. But I tell you, Ed,' I says, 'I don't like the notion
o' little Johnnie Sing and his wife getting caught--or separated.'

"We were looking over the side then, where to the boom was tied a string
of small boats, our big quarter-boat to the end.

"'What do you know about this fellow Durks, Ed?' I said, after a time.

"'Nothing,' he said, 'except that he's under suspicion of smuggling
opium for a long time. They say he's money-mad and woman-mad, and always
was.'

"'So I've heard. And what's his game here with me?'

"'It's going around the ship that you ran away with his schooner and
smuggled a Chink aboard unbeknownst, but that he's going to forgive you
if you hand over the Chinaman and so put him right with the Gover'ment.
He didn't say anything about any woman.'

"'He's one fine gentleman,' I says. And, by 'n' by: 'Suppose you saw
somebody was trying to slip the _Hattie_--the _Pioneer_--out by you in
the dark, what would happen?'

"'Happen?' says Ed. 'A lot o' things. And quick. It'd be up with a lot
of three-inch ammunition,