ndy "What do
those Eastern publishin' people think of Our Mug and Billy Isham and
the whiskey schooner?"

Condy had received the rejected manuscript of "In Defiance of
Authority" that morning, accompanied by a letter from the Centennial
Company.

"Well," he said in answer, "they're not, as you might say, falling over
themselves trying to see who'll be the first to print it. It's been
returned."

"The devil you say!" responded the Captain. "Well, that's kind of
disappointin' to you, ain't it?"

"But," Blix hastened to add, "we're not at all discouraged. We're
going to send it off again right away."

Then she said good-by to them.

"I dunno as you'll see me here when you come back, miss," said the
Captain, at the gate, his arm around K. D. B. "I've got to schemin'
again. Do you know," he added, in a low, confidential tone, "that all
the mines in California send their clean-ups and gold bricks down to
the Selby smeltin' works once every week? They send 'em to San
Francisco first, and they are taken up to Selby's Wednesday afternoons
on a little stern-wheel steamer called the "Monticello." All them
bricks are in a box--dumped in like so much coal--and that box sets
just under the wheel-house, for'ard. How much money do you suppose
them bricks represent? Well, I'll tell you; last week they represented
seven hundred and eighty thousand dollars. Well, now, I got a chart of
the bay near Vallejo; the channel's all right, but there are mudflats
that run out from shore three miles. Enough water for a whitehall, but
not enough for--well, for the patrol boat, for instance. Two or three
slick boys, of a foggy night--of course, I'm not in that kind of game,
but strike! it would be a deal now, wouldn't it?"

"Don't you believe him, miss," put in K. D. B. "He's just talking to
show off."

"I think your scheme of holding up a Cunard liner," said Condy, with
great earnestness, "is more feasible. You could lay across her course
and fly a distress signal. She'd have to heave to."

"Yes, I been thinkin' o' that; but look here--what's to prevent the
liner taking right after your schooner after you've got the stuff
aboard--just followin' you right around an' findin' out where you land?"

"She'd be under contract to carry Government mails," contradicted
Condy. "She couldn't do that. You'd leave her mails aboard for just
that reason. You wouldn't rob her of her mails; just so long as she
was carrying government mails s