isn't it?"

"Loudon, I tell you I've had to pay blood for that money," cried my
friend, with almost savage energy and gloom. "It's all on ninety days,
too; I couldn't get another day--not another day. If we go ahead with
this affair, Loudon, you'll have to go yourself and make the fur fly.
I'll stay of course--I've got to stay and face the trouble in this city;
though, I tell you, I just long to go. I would show these fat brutes of
sailors what work was; I would be all through that wreck and out at the
other end, before they had boosted themselves upon the deck! But you'll
do your level best, Loudon; I depend on you for that. You must be all
fire and grit and dash from the word 'go.' That schooner and the boodle
on board of her are bound to be here before three months, or it's B. U.
S. T.--bust."

"I'll swear I'll do my best, Jim; I'll work double tides," said I. "It
is my fault that you are in this thing, and I'll get you out again or
kill myself. But what is that you say? 'If we go ahead?' Have we any
choice, then?"

"I'm coming to that," said Jim. "It isn't that I doubt the investment.
Don't blame yourself for that; you showed a fine, sound business
instinct: I always knew it was in you, but then it ripped right out. I
guess that little beast of an attorney knew what he was doing; and he
wanted nothing better than to go beyond. No, there's profit in the deal;
it's not that; it's these ninety-day bills, and the strain I've given
the credit, for I've been up and down, borrowing, and begging and
bribing to borrow. I don't believe there's another man but me in
'Frisco," he cried, with a sudden fervor of self admiration, "who could
have raised that last ten thousand!--Then there's another thing. I had
hoped you might have peddled that opium through the islands, which is
safer and more profitable. But with this three-month limit, you must
make tracks for Honolulu straight, and communicate by steamer. I'll
try to put up something for you there; I'll have a man spoken to who's
posted on that line of biz. Keep a bright lookout for him as soon's you
make the islands; for it's on the cards he might pick you up at sea in a
whaleboat or a steam-launch, and bring the dollars right on board."

It shows how much I had suffered morally during my sojourn in San
Francisco, that even now when our fortunes trembled in the balance,
I should have consented to become a smuggler and (of all things) a
smuggler of opium. Yet I did, and tha