e bowsprit went,
and down! and plump! her after-part went! and flying junks of one thing
and another filled the air, and some smoke, and then in the sea around
the small parts that'd blown up began to fall. But I wasn't watching
them. I was watching the for'ard half of her as it went pitching up, the
bowsprit making a quarter circle in the air, and then plunk! down and
under. The great little _Hattie_ was gone. By that time I was in the
water reaching out for the quarter-boat.

"'Too bad,' says Archie, 'too bad!' when I was safe in her. 'Too bad!'
he says, and stops rowing. 'Pull, you sentimental loafer; pull for the
beach!' I yells at him.

"And he did, and we all did--all but Johnnie's wife--and landed, and ran
up and hid in the brush up top of the cliff, and lay on our stomachs
watching the gunboat come stealing in and put off a steam-barge and grab
our quarter-boat with all the opium in it. And we could hear Ed Gurney
whoop when he held a tin of it aloft. 'Man, tons of it, tons of it!'
Archie swore he could hear Ed yelling, and we guessed that would square
him for those few wide shots. And then they headed back and went aboard
the gunboat, and pretty soon she steamed off.

"'Vessel and opium both gone--I wonder how Durks is feeling now,' says
Archie; 'and we with his--but how much is it altogether, Alec?' And that
reminded me, and I says to Archie, 'Where'd you leave your two hundred
dollars?' and he stops and swears. He'd left it under his mattress in
the cabin of the _Hattie_. And I'd left my five hundred hanging up in my
coat in the cabin of the _Hattie_, and there she was in ten fathom of
water. I broke the news to Archie.

"Archie said he'd be damned. Then: 'How'll we get out of here? For we
gotta go east after this, Alec.'

"And Johnnie Sing, listening, takes the five hundred I'd given him and
hands it to me. I don't want to take it, and he says, 'Plenty
more--see,' and with his jackknife begins opening the wadding of his
coat, and out come bills and bills and bills. All his property,
twenty-odd thousand dollars, was sewed up there in big bills. And when
'twas all out he offers it to us, telling us to help ourselves. And
Archie and me said no, the five hundred would do us to pay our way back
to Gloucester here, and meals on the way, o' course. And Johnnie, by
our advice, he comes east, too, with his little wife, and stepped off in
New York; and that's where we left him.

"A fine little team, Johnnie and