I 
 
 
The Lure <f Gold 
 
JOHN* MORNING 
 
LURE O GOLD 
 
 fEMLEY M1LAM) 
 
 ^Drawings&Decoraliom 
 
 EDWARD J. CLODE 
 
 156 Fifth Ave., New York 
 Mdcccciiii 
 
Copyright 1904, by EDWARD J. CLODE 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 June, 1904 
 
 Plimpton Press Norwood Mass. 
 
Co 
 WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST 
 
Contents 
 
 I My Burden of Treasure . . . 1 
 
 II Advice from Doctor Quaritch . . 17 
 
 III On the Lighter my Burden grows Heavier 24 
 
 IV In which I am Relieved of my Burden 39 
 
 V Back to the Golden North . .. ; 51 
 
 VI Guarding the Beach . . ., .62 
 
 VII The White Buoy Bobs Up . . . 70 
 
 VIII A Glimpse of the Poetical Pirate . . 79 
 
 IX In the Steerage . . . . .91 
 
 X A Heavy Trunk . . .101 
 
 XI The Bulkhead Door . . . .110 
 
 XII The " Tai-Fung" . . . . 128 
 
 XIII Wreck of the Flying Mist . . . 138 
 
 XIV Searching for the Treasure . . 152 
 
 XV The Last Pound of Coal . . .166 
 
 XVI "Finding is Keeping" . . .179 
 
 XVII In the Lower Hold . . . .194 
 
 XVIII The Heat of the Gold-Hunt . . 202 
 
 XIX The Steam Collier . . . .210 
 
 XX In the Shaft Alley . . . .224 
 
 XXI In which my Burden is Resumed. . 234 
 
 vii 
 
Illustrations 
 
 John Morning .... Frontispiece 
 
 Dr. Quaritch 53 
 
 Bill 97 
 
 Pete Slattery 145 
 
 George Somers ..... 191 
 
 Max Fishley 237 
 
The Lure o* Gold 
 
 MY BURDEN OF TREASURE 
 
 AINGULAR wakefulness possessed me. I was 
 thinking and thinking of the treasure and 
 of how I was to convey it safely home. The 
 treasure was at that moment in the care of the trusty 
 landlord of the Golden North Hotel he of the honest 
 brown eye, the round frame, the heavy red beard and 
 bald crown. I had selected him as the temporary 
 guardian of my gold because he was the only responsible 
 person in the whole mining camp of Nome that I knew 
 intimately at the time. 
 
 Not that he was a model man, by any means. He was 
 rather uncouth, in fact. His red beard had a rat s- 
 nesty look and at times his language was as hard as 
 his beds. As to the solidity of the beds I could freely 
 have testified at that moment, if the one I was trying to 
 sleep in was a fair example. The frame of it was made 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 of rough pine scantlings which supported a lumpy mat- 
 tre&s; two pairs of shoddy blankets and no sheet or pil 
 low. Still the blankets were clean and the box of a 
 room was neat enough, though the red-and-green wall 
 paper was saggy and wrinkly in places. 
 
 But it was not the hardness of my bed which kept me 
 awake, for I had camped on frozen tundra and sandy 
 beach, and minded rough beds not at all. Nor did I 
 miss the absent pillow, for my rigidly ruling father had 
 taught me when I was but a little tad that a pillow was a 
 dangerous luxury and that if I wished to be " straight 
 as an Indian " I might better dispense with soft " head 
 pads," as he called them; and, in this instance, at least, 
 I had been obedient to his teaching. 
 
 No, it was not my bed that was cheating me of my 
 much-needed sleep; but another bed in the opposite 
 side of the sleeping-box, not more than three feet from 
 mine, contributed not a little to my wakefulness. Mind 
 you, there was nobody in the other bed. I had seen by 
 the light of the candle, which I had extinguished some 
 hours before, that it was empty and that there was no 
 sign of any other person s occupancy of the room except 
 a small black leather bag, with the initials "R. N." 
 marked upon it. When the landlord of the Golden 
 
 [2] 
 
My Burden of Treasure 
 
 North had conducted me to the room he had said that a 
 light-haired, oldish man with a short, sandy beard had 
 paid for the other bed for the night and had left his bag 
 there. The landlord could tell no more about the light- 
 haired man; nor did I, at the time, care to know, for I 
 had seemed to be uncommonly tired and sleepy after 
 my long tramp up the beach into camp; but soon after 
 blowing out the candle and getting under the shoddy 
 blankets I began to wish that I had had a little acquain 
 tance with "R. N.," my unknown roommate. Had I 
 locked the door before retiring I might have been able 
 to sleep until he knocked and then to get up and let him 
 in. But I had not locked the door, for the simple rea 
 son that it had no lock, nor even a bolt or " catch." 
 
 In the darkness of a strange bedroom one s fancies 
 are often weird to the point of absurdity, and when one 
 is only a lad of eighteen and has forty thousand dollars 
 worth of gold dust on one s mind one is likely to become 
 rather morbid in one s meditations. To be sure, the 
 treasure was not in the room. It was in a stout box 
 which was in the landlord s securely locked private 
 closet, which was just behind the hotel counter. The 
 box had a big brass padlock on it and I had the key of 
 that padlock, together with five hundred dollars worth 
 
 [3] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 of dust in my little "poke," or chamois bag, which was 
 at that moment reposing under the mattress within 
 easy reach of my hand. 
 
 At the head of my bed stood a rifle which I had car 
 ried all through my Alaskan travels for the purpose of 
 providing game for the camp table, which had oftener 
 been a rock in the open than anything more serviceable, 
 and once or twice had been merely a smooth block of 
 ice. 
 
 One comfort which I, in my fanciful condition of 
 mind, extracted from the situation was that " R. N.," 
 whoever he might be, was a light-haired man. For of 
 course he had a light face; and there is something less 
 of mystery and more of everyday plainness and open 
 ness about a light face than there is about a dark one. 
 My overwrought brain what might it not have con 
 jured up had the landlord told me that my unknown 
 roommate was a dark man ? 
 
 I tried to reason with myself. What could "R. N." 
 have to do with me or with my treasure ? Supposing 
 that, at the worst, while I was asleep he should rob me 
 of the " poke " and take away the key of my strong box, 
 I still had gold enough. And the key he could do 
 nothing with that. 
 
 [4] 
 
My Burden of Treasure 
 
 And yet my eyes would pop open and my ears would 
 be alert, for every time my weary lids closed I had a 
 vision of a blond ruffian putting the key in the padlock 
 and taking out of the box those eight buckskin sacks, 
 each branded with the plain " J. M." lettering and each 
 containing 287 ounces of the beautiful "ruby sand" 
 gold dust. But it was very heavy that treasure 
 it weighed about 190 pounds. How would he make 
 away with it ? I heard the rattle of a whiffletree out 
 side in the street and the crunching of heavy wheels in 
 the soft tundra, the angry call of a driver and the crack 
 of a whip. Why, my infamous roommate might easily 
 take the gold away in that wagon ! 
 
 Then I heard other calls, the barkings of dogs and the 
 laugh of a woman. The whole sleepless, busy, tent- 
 and-shanty city was still awake and astir, and it must 
 have been after eleven o clock. In the Arctic in June 
 eleven at night is not late, and at Nome you really 
 have no night in the summer; but in September, when 
 there is more than a hint of the near approach of the 
 long winter, it is dark enough at eight. Yet there was 
 so much feverish activity among the gold-seekers and 
 those who followed them to leech away their gold, that 
 the foolish system of staying up all night, so prevalent 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 in other Arctic mining camps, was adhered to in this 
 oddest of all gold-diggings in the world. And how 
 could anybody, like myself, who really wanted and 
 needed sleep, find it in such a wild, noisy, bustling 
 place as this Nome ? 
 
 Nome! What a leaping inspiration the name had 
 been to me ! What a loadstone it had been to the thou 
 sands who were now crowding its crooked streets ! What 
 a golden hope! What a lure! My thoughts ran far 
 over the tundra and up the yellow Yukon to the Klon 
 dike from which my father and I had come in the early 
 summer. In the Klondike we had felt the frustration, 
 the depression and the bitterness of the late comers 
 the men who were in at the tail of the stampede. Not 
 but that my father was seasoned to defeat, though he 
 had never been soured by it. He was an old Califor- 
 nian miner and had seen many a fair prospect melt away. 
 Of late years he had been making a modest living as a 
 mining secretary in the office of a San Francisco com 
 pany. When the Klondike rush set in he had felt the 
 old gold fever stirring in his blood, but he hesitated for 
 months about going. Finally the impulse became too 
 strong for him to resist any longer, and he declared that 
 he would go to the gold fields and take me with him. 
 
My Burden of Treasure 
 
 We sailed from our home city up through the wonder 
 ful Inland Passage, threading among fairy summer 
 islands up toward what seemed to me the golden 
 top of the world up past shores on which in those 
 June days it seemed always afternoon up past the 
 mysterious Taku Inlet, to Dyea and thence by the trail 
 over the rough Chilkoot and down by Lake Linder- 
 mann, Lake Bennett and the swift-flowing upper 
 reaches of the Yukon, over the tragic White Horse 
 Rapids and down to Dawson. 
 
 But we were too late. There is no gold at the tail 
 of the stampede no gold, only the galling regret, 
 " Had we but been among the first ! " Our means were 
 running low and we could make but a short stay in 
 Dawson. After the weary pilgrimages in which we 
 sweated under the hot, searching, ever-shining sun and 
 fought the mosquitoes up and down the creeks after 
 vanishing golden Meccas, my father was offered a posi 
 tion as bookkeeper at St. Michael s, a small trading 
 post near the lower end of the Yukon, a thousand miles 
 away, and he hastened there before his last dollar 
 should be gone, that he might earn passage money for 
 the two of us in some homebound vessel. 
 
 I now thought of that wonderful river journey, the 
 [7] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 grandest I had ever made, down that broad and beauti 
 ful Yukon, steaming by banks lined mile on mile with 
 silent armies of spruces, or by inspiring cliffs, splashed 
 with red and yellow, or along great sweeps of tundra 
 over which I saw the weirdest cloud piles, electric 
 storms and majestic plays of sunlight; on down by the 
 villages of the wild Esquimaux, from which strange 
 women would run out to secure the boats that would 
 have been sent adrift by the great wave from our paddle- 
 wheel; and so on through the broad mouth of the river, 
 into the great Norton Sound and on to the low-lying 
 island where the roofs of St. Michael s greeted my eyes. 
 There my father found that the position he had come 
 so far to take had been given to another man. But he 
 was not downcast. He was a plucky man, that strict- 
 living, abstemious almost Puritanical father of mine, 
 and he walked the streets of the little town day after day, 
 looking for any sort of work with which to earn the 
 coveted passage money. At last we secured positions 
 as carpenters helpers, for which service we were so 
 well paid that in a short time we had enough money to 
 buy second-class passage to San Francisco. 
 
 But just as we were about to purchase our tickets and 
 go aboard the steamer the news came flying down the 
 
 [8] 
 
My Burden of Treasure 
 
 coast that up on the Cape Nome beach, a hundred 
 miles north, gold had been discovered in the sands and 
 that three men had washed out a thousand dollars in a 
 single day. 
 
 At first my father shook his head, but when a man 
 in whom he had unlimited confidence assured him that 
 the story was true and that by hurrying to the beach 
 and getting in at the head of the new stampede he could 
 make an easy fortune, he hesitated no longer, and we 
 set sail in a small steam schooner for the new Eldorado. 
 There were not many miners on the beach when we ar 
 rived, but though we were almost in the vanguard of 
 the great army that was to follow, the hope of securing 
 even a "grub stake" seemed at the first sight a des 
 perate one. 
 
 Looking back as I lay there that night in the Golden 
 North Hotel I could see the whole picture: Before us, 
 just at the eastern rim of the broad Bering, stretched 
 a gray, desolate, forbidding shore, wind-swept, bare, 
 low-lying, mist-haunted, with here and there a dreary 
 heap of drift over which mournful-voiced sea-fowl 
 wheeled and cried. 
 
 When my father saw the gray picture, I knew at once 
 by the sad look in his brown eyes that he was bitterly 
 
 [9] 
 
The Lure o y Gold 
 
 disappointed. Being an old miner, he knew the " lay " 
 of gold fields as well as any one I had ever seen. 
 
 "Of all the unlikely places to find gold," he said, 
 "this is the most unlikely. Those low-lying hills," he 
 went on, pointing to the east, "this long, wide strip of 
 tundra, and then the beach why, it s absurd ! There 
 is no place for the gold to wash down from. There are 
 such things as beach diggings, of course, but gold is 
 secured there only in limited quantities. Still, they 
 say gold is where you find it, and there may be more 
 than a little thin pay-streak here, but I doubt it. Let s 
 get ashore, my boy, and find out the worst. We ll not 
 waste much time here." 
 
 I remember how I shivered when I splashed through 
 the low waves beyond the surf when our boat was 
 beached and we carried our packs ashore. How cold 
 the water was! Within an hour after our arrival we 
 had staked our claim and had prospected it. 
 
 " Six dollars in the very first pan," said my father to me 
 in a low, hoarse tone. I had never seen him so excited. 
 
 He worked like a slave all that first day and night, 
 digging and washing the gold, and I worked with him, 
 cold and stiff and only half-fed, for we hardly took time 
 to prepare and eat our meals. 
 
 [10] 
 
My Burden of Treasure 
 
 And then followed the weeks of hard labor, shoveling 
 the sand and carrying water from the sea and washing 
 the " dirt " rock, rock, rocking our little machine and 
 cleaning up every night many ounces of the shining dust. 
 The new, clean-looking buckskin sacks we had brought 
 from San Francisco and had given up all hope of ever 
 filling were soon bulging and heavy with gold. We had 
 not washed out one-half of our little strip of beach be 
 fore it became apparent that we should soon have a 
 fortune. 
 
 But in the midst of our exultation over our splendid 
 prospects my father was laid low with fever. He had 
 drank the evil tundra water, and in his overworked and 
 weak state it had poisoned his system. I cared for him 
 in our little tent on the sand, and procured medical ser 
 vice for him from among the many hundreds that came 
 thronging to the golden beach. But at the end of a 
 month he was still barely able to lift his head. The 
 doctor told him that his only chance of recovery was to 
 leave the place, and he offered to see him safely aboard 
 ship and take him down to San Francisco with him, as 
 he was sailing back to that port. The sick man was 
 extremely loath to go, and for a time insisted on remain 
 ing, that he might help to clean up the fortune that 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 awaited us on the beach. But the doctor finally per 
 suaded him that to go back home was the only wise 
 course left for him. I saw the force of this reasoning 
 and, much against his will, my poor, weak father was 
 made to see it, too, though he groaned when he thought 
 of leaving the fortune that seemed within his grasp. 
 
 " You can t stay here, Mr. Morning, and drink that 
 water and live on pork and peans and canned stuff, * 
 said the doctor with a tone of authority. "They re 
 almost enough to kill a well man." 
 
 " But the mine we must wash out that sand." 
 
 " Oh, leave the mine in charge of this young man," 
 said the doctor. "He s tough. He ll see it through 
 and bring the gold home safely." 
 
 "Do you think you could do it, John?" asked my 
 father, with just a little apprehension in his tone, which 
 was natural, as it probably seemed to him that it was 
 only the other day when he had whaled me for some 
 childish folly. Still he must have seen what bulging 
 muscles I was bringing to bear, shoveling on the pay- 
 streak, and he must have seen that by this time I had 
 learned never to fill the rocker too full nor to let the 
 water splash out of it while it was in operation. 
 
 So it was decided that he should go back home and 
 [12] 
 
My Burden of Treasure 
 
 be nursed by my mother and be given proper diet and 
 attention. As soon as he sailed it was the most de 
 pressing morning of my existence I hired men and 
 set to work constructing sluice-boxes, as I wanted to 
 hasten the washing. I bought sea-water from a pump 
 ing outfit, and soon was cleaning up every night from 
 my riffle-box four times the amount of gold that it would 
 have been possible to wash in the rocker in a single day. 
 In six weeks I had washed out the last shovelful of the 
 pay-streak, and after settling accounts with my men 
 and paying my water bill and other expenses I had 
 left, as nearly as I could compute it on my gold scales, 
 a little over $41,000 worth of dust. 
 
 And now on the morrow I would be aboard ship 
 bright and early and off for dear old San Francisco, to 
 surprise my good people with the wonderful tale of 
 what our little strip of beach sand had washed out. 
 There it was in that box in the landlord s closet a 
 fortune. Not a large fortune, but enough for me and 
 mine for the rest of our days. And it represented to 
 me more than the mere dust in the box. It represented 
 four years at Stanford, a trip to Europe, a home-com 
 ing, a settling down to " the one honest business in the 
 world," as my father had called that of mining, in which, 
 
 [13] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 to still further quote my philosophic parent, "you 
 robbed no man and profited by no man s needs, nor 
 his ills, nor his contentions." 
 
 But the treasure was not yet safe in the San Fran 
 cisco Mint at the time I lay there in my hard bed in the 
 Golden North Hotel, and awaited the coming of the 
 mysterious light-haired man who should occupy that 
 other pillowless bed three feet from mine. When 
 would he ever come ? Perhaps he was an all-night 
 prowler and was off after other people s gold, not know 
 ing how near to his bed lay another and perhaps 
 easier victim. With my hand on that particular 
 and most comforting lump of the mattress which 
 represented the five hundred dollars worth of gold 
 dust, I somehow grew a little easier of mind and at last 
 dozed off. 
 
 It did not seem that I had more than dropped into 
 slumber before I leaped up in bed, startled into sudden 
 consciousness by the creaking of the crazy door. I 
 did not say a word, but my hand involuntarily sought 
 the cold barrel of my rifle, and my fingers remained 
 rigidly fixed upon it while I heard the shuffling of a pair 
 of feet on the bare floor, the closing of the door and a 
 rustling of clothing. I hardly believe that I breathed 
 
 [14] 
 
My Burden of Treasure 
 
 more than once during all this, but sat still as a post, 
 staring out through the darkness. 
 
 My roommate for I judged that it was he 
 struck his foot against the corner of my bed, and then I 
 could feel his leg press the edge of the cover. Was he 
 going to try to choke me to death, or stab me in my 
 sleep, and then take the gold and the key of the box ? 
 Well, he should not have them without a struggle. 
 He was so near to me now that I could hear him breathe. 
 Suddenly my alert ears caught the sound of a sharp 
 click. I did not fancy that sound in the least, it 
 could be nothing less than the cocking of a revolver. 
 So instead of being choked or stabbed, I was to be shot 
 or threatened with a pistol. I pulled the rifle toward 
 me. If it was to be too close range for firing my weapon, 
 I could at least give my man the butt. 
 
 I heard a scratch and a match burst into a bright 
 flame before my astonished eyes. Then it was the 
 clicking of a metal matchbox that I had heard and not 
 that of a revolver! My man saw the candle I had left 
 on the small dry-goods box which served for a table. 
 He applied the match to the wick, which soon flamed 
 up, revealing the round and familiar face of Doctor 
 Philip Quaritch, of Doctor Quaritch, jolly, good- 
 
 [15] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 natured Doctor Quaritch, who had been the friend 
 of our family ever since I wore kilts ! 
 
 He was a ship s doctor, this old friend of ours, and 
 nearly every time his steamer came into port which 
 was generally a matter of two or three months he 
 would come to our house and partake of the best cheer 
 it afforded. Doctor Quaritch had known my father 
 when he mined in Calaveras County in the early days. 
 They had come out from the East as boys, and had 
 shared a lot of hard luck together on the plains and in 
 the mountains. At that moment of my mental dis 
 composure I could not have named anybody that I 
 should have been happier to meet than dear old Doc 
 tor Quaritch. 
 
 [16] 
 
II 
 
 ADVICE FROM DOCTOR QUARITCH 
 
 r 
 
 " WELL, well," said the Doctor, his round, blue eyes 
 opening wide as he stared at me, sitting stock-still 
 there, holding my rifle in my hands. "You wouldn t 
 shoot me, would you, young man? Put your gun 
 away." 
 
 There was no look of recognition in the startled 
 eyes. The Doctor was gazing at me as upon a stranger. 
 I thought, as I quietly slipped the rifle into its place at 
 the head of the bed, that my face must have changed a 
 great deal in the past year, and it occurred to me that 
 a growing line of dark color on my upper lip to which 
 line I had given much careful attention must ap 
 preciably have altered my appearance. I felt the blue 
 eyes studying me curiously, while my blood was chang 
 ing from the chill of alarm to the warmth of assurance. 
 Suddenly the eyes blazed forth in full recognition. 
 
 " Why, John Morning ! " cried the Doctor, in his 
 great booming voice, grasping my hand and giving it a 
 
 [17] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 regular milkman s grip. " Is it really you ? Why, of 
 course it is! I d know the son of William Morning 
 anywhere, by his father s big brown eyes and square 
 lower jaw, to say nothing of that nose. How are you, 
 John, my lad, and how did you get away up here ? " 
 
 "I m pretty well, thank you, Doctor Quaritch," 
 said I, "and I m awfully glad it s you. I thought it 
 might be well, I didn t know who it might be." 
 
 " So you were prepared, eh ? " he laughed, glancing 
 at the rifle. " But what are you doing here ? I 
 thought you and your father were in the Klondike." 
 
 "So we were; but we couldn t strike pay there, and 
 so we came over this way." 
 
 While he sat on the edge of his bed, with his short 
 legs hanging over, his face alight with friendship and 
 his merry blue eyes agleam, I told him of our adven 
 tures and of the fortune we had made. 
 
 "It s too bad he took that fever," he said, referring 
 to my father, his eyes full of kindly sympathy, "but it 
 couldn t have been typhoid; probably only a malarial 
 disorder what our distinguished medical friend 
 Shakespeare would call a distemper of the blood. 
 Wish I had been here. I might have seen what a ship s 
 doctor could have done for him. But your good luck 
 
 [18] 
 
Advice from Doctor Quaritch 
 
 in the diggings that was fine. Let me congratulate 
 you, John." 
 
 " Thank you," said I. We talked about the treasure 
 for a while. " Are you still with the Modesto ? " I asked, 
 remembering the times I had accompanied him aboard 
 that old steamer, as she lay along the musty docks. 
 And at the mention of the name I could almost sniff 
 the pungent odor of the drugs in the stuffy little state 
 room, and see the rolls of bandages and the mysterious 
 and evil-looking instruments in the little sea-chest. 
 
 "Yes, yes; still aboard the old Modesto," he said, 
 picking up the black bag with the " R. N." marked 
 upon it, and opening it meditatively, and, as I thought, 
 a little awkwardly, which was explained by his saying: 
 "This isn t my valise. It s one I borrowed from Mr. 
 Nason, our first officer. These are his initials here. 
 Nason is a mighty good fellow, and he sails in a mighty 
 good ship. Yes, the Modesto s all right. Not much 
 for speed alongside some of those new steel greyhounds, 
 but she s staunch and steady, my son, and I like the 
 feel of her deck under my feet better than that of any 
 craft I was ever aboard of. Her machinery doesn t 
 shake you all to pieces. Why, some of those boats 
 make you feel as if you were riding on a camel that had 
 
 [19] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 palpitation of the heart; but the Modesto is steady as a 
 church. * 
 
 " No doubt of it, sir," said I, with a slight feeling of 
 duplicity, for I was mentally making allowances for 
 the Doctor s strong attachment to his steamer, which I 
 had heard at least one marine man along the San Fran 
 cisco water front refer to as " the crankiest old tub on 
 the Pacific." But men who sail often in a vessel are 
 likely to come to have a strong affection for her, and 
 the Doctor s remarks about his ship seemed quite 
 natural to me, and full of a laudable loyalty. 
 
 The Doctor took his pipe from his bag and, lighting 
 it, proceeded nearly to stifle me with prodigious clouds 
 of tobacco smoke, which soon filled that close little 
 room. When, at last, after much polite repression, I 
 choked and coughed, he laid aside his pipe, ceased his 
 yarning about his ship and raised the window sash about 
 two inches from the bottom. 
 
 "A sanitary measure," he remarked, but I doubt if 
 he would have admitted even that small allowance of 
 oxygen (such is the contradictory nature of some of the 
 wise gentlemen who have the world s health in charge) 
 had I not shown signs of approaching asphyxiation. 
 "Very sorry you re sailing to-morrow, John. What 
 [20] 
 
Advice from Doctor Quaritch 
 
 vessel you say the Flying Mist ? Don t know 
 her." 
 
 "She s a steam schooner of a peculiar rig," said I. 
 " She has a very tall, slim funnel, almost as high as an 
 ordinary mast, and it is used as a mast for the main 
 sail." 
 
 The Doctor looked at me with frank incredulity. 
 
 " Oh, no, " said he, decisively. " Nothing of the sort. 
 I have sailed about a good bit. There isn t any such 
 craft as that afloat, my boy." 
 
 " All right, Doctor," said I, smiling and fanning the 
 latest besetting and most obnoxious cloud of smoke 
 away from me with my hand. " Just wait and see." 
 
 " Where does your Flying Mist sail for ? " 
 
 " For Seattle. From there I go down by the railroad. 
 It will be quicker that way, won t it ? " 
 
 "Well, perhaps; but if you waited four days and 
 went down by the Modesto, you wouldn t be much later. 
 She ll take about twelve days to San Francisco, if there s 
 the right kind of weather; and then you could go down 
 along with me." 
 
 "I should enjoy that very much," said I, "but it 
 would mean getting home in sixteen days. By sailing 
 on the Flying Mist to-morrow I shall arrive in ten days." 
 
 [21] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 " Well, only six days difference. What s the rush ? " 
 
 It is hard for a man who is never in a hurry to appre 
 ciate the burning haste of a youth anxious to get home 
 with a box of treasure. But some of the things he said 
 at that time were well remembered by me afterward. 
 
 The Flying Mist was evidently a strange, irregular 
 sort of craft, so the Doctor thought, if she really did 
 blow smoke through her mast. Men who would sail 
 such a vessel ought to be treated with suspicion. And 
 even if a safe landing of the gold were effected at Seattle, 
 the extra transfer of it to the railroad involved an extra 
 risk. If it were to go aboard the Modesto, where he 
 knew the purser as well as he knew his own name, there 
 would be no extra handling save from the dock to the 
 Mint, which transfer, in civilized San Francisco, was 
 safe enough. To wait and sail with him would be the 
 better way. 
 
 " But my passage is paid," said I, with a strong note 
 of finality; for I did not wish to wait for the sailing of 
 the Modesto, although I should have been glad of the 
 Doctor s company. "I paid it yesterday to Captain 
 Transome, and I m afraid I ll have to go in his vessel." 
 
 "Very well," said the Doctor, in the same tone he 
 would probably have used in giving up a patient with a 
 
 [22] 
 
Advice from Doctor Quaritcfi 
 
 fatal illness. " But remember, I don t like your Flying 
 Mist. There s something devilish about this blowing 
 smoke through a mainmast. Makes me think of 
 Mephisto s doings in Faust/ I m not as suspicious as 
 many men who sail the seas, but you wouldn t catch me 
 aboard of such an outlandish craft. I wonder they are 
 ever able to ship a crew." 
 
 He picked up his pipe, as if he would like to exorcise 
 some unseen imp by its smoke, but noticing that I was 
 holding my head as near to the window vent as possible 
 he laid it down with a sigh, said "Good-night," and 
 was soon abed, and, though perhaps I should not re 
 cord it of so worthy a man, snoring lustily. 
 
 [23] 
 
Ill 
 
 ON THE LIGHTER MY BURDEN GROWS 
 HEAVIER 
 
 DOCTOR QUARITCH was still asleep the next morning 
 when I arose early, dressed and went down to eat my 
 hurried breakfast. I thought it best not to disturb my 
 friend with my adieus, so I left a note with the landlord, 
 saying "good-bye," and telling the Doctor that I hoped 
 to see him soon in San Francisco. 
 
 With my rifle over my shoulder, I followed the wheel 
 barrow in which my treasure-box was being trans 
 ported to the beach. Everyone in the crowd along the 
 street recognized the nature of the freight in the barrow, 
 and once I overheard the remark among the miners: 
 
 " He s rather a young chap to have charge of all that 
 dust." 
 
 " Looks like he knew how to take care of it, though," 
 was the reply. 
 
 I suppose I did look rather grim and formidable, 
 with my set face and my hard grip upon the barrel of 
 
 [24] 
 
My Burden Grows Heavier 
 
 the rifle. I confess, however, that while I should not 
 have been loath to level my weapon at anyone who 
 might seek to rob me of that precious box, pressing the 
 trigger would have been a matter very little to my taste. 
 But as everybody I met was civil enough and respect 
 fully turned aside for my wheelbarrow load of gold, 
 there seemed to be no need of any really hostile demon 
 stration on my part. 
 
 Soon we reached the beach where the lighter lay. 
 Beyond the flat, dark, little craft, which was bobbing 
 on the low waves just out of reach of the white surf, 
 was a world of unquiet, chilly water on which the sun 
 hanging rather low over the blue Bering in these 
 early autumn months glinted as upon a surface of 
 steel. There was a harsh, cutting breeze astir and the 
 air was wonderfully clear, bringing the little bristle of 
 masts and funnels in the offing within ready reach of 
 the eye. I could easily make out the tall, lean stack 
 of the Flying Mist, and wished that Doctor Quaritch 
 might have been there that I might convince him of the 
 fact that she blew smoke through her mainmast. 
 
 It was rather heavy wheeling in the sand, and my 
 man breathed hard as he pushed upon the handles of 
 the barrow. I had thought to have him wheel the 
 
 [25] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 treasure-box up the long gang-plank and to have it 
 deposited on the deck of the lighter at once; but the 
 lighterman a rough-looking chap in blue overalls 
 and blanket coat, and with a grayish, stubbly face 
 shook his head. 
 
 " For the Flying Mist ? " he asked. " You ll have to 
 wait till the Captain comes." 
 
 " She s to sail at ten, isn t she ? " I asked, " and it s 
 nine now. Can t I come aboard with my box and see 
 that it is safeguarded ? " 
 
 "Your treasure?" he sniffed, insolently. "How 
 much d yeh s pose yeh got in that there box ? Nough 
 to buy a farm ? Jest because yeh got a little dust an a 
 gun yeh needn t think to hurry or bully me." 
 
 "I don t wish to hurry or bully anybody," I said 
 with rising heat; for the fellow s bad temper provoked 
 a quick resentment in me, " but I want to see this gold 
 safely aboard the schooner and into the purser s hands." 
 
 "Guess the Captain s the only purser aboard the 
 schooner," he said, grinning and biting off a chunk of 
 tobacco from a huge plug he held in his hand, " an yer 
 gold will be jest as safe on the beach till he comes as if 
 it was on the lighter. I ve got my orders an yeh can t 
 come aboard now. Dump yer box on the beach and 
 
 [26] 
 
My Burden Grows Heavier 
 
 stan over it with yer gun, if yeh wanter; but," he added, 
 with a bantering tone not at all appreciated by me, " I 
 don t know whether yeh can handle a gun might 
 shoot some innercent passenger by mistake." 
 
 A few of the passengers who had collected near the 
 plank and were enjoying the colloquy laughed loudly 
 at this. They took a large interest in the dumping of 
 the treasure-box into the sand, where it lay solidly 
 enough, just beyond the reach of the last ripple of white 
 water that ran up from the low waves. I paid my man 
 his dollar and felt singularly lonely and moody when I 
 saw him trundle his wheelbarrow off up the beach. I 
 sat down on my box, my rifle across my lap, and my 
 feet working nervously in the sand. Some of the Fly 
 ing Mist s passengers there were not above a dozen 
 in all strolled near me, one or two at a time, and 
 asked me what I considered impertinent questions about 
 my gold whether it belonged to me or whether I was 
 guarding it for another person; whether I didn t think 
 I was too young to be taking care of so much dust, and 
 whether I shouldn t have help to see it safely aboard. 
 
 "It s too bad they haven t got a regular shipping 
 company to handle such freight," remarked that one of 
 my inquisitors for whom I felt the least repulsion. " I 
 
 [27] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 hear the A. C. Company will open an office here next 
 week. If you had waited you might have shipped 
 with them." 
 
 " Oh, the gold s all right," said another man who had 
 just come up. " Nobody ll bother it. This is an honest 
 camp." 
 
 These latter words were spoken in a soft, smooth 
 voice, quite gentlemanly in tone and very acceptable 
 to my ears in contrast with the harsh accents of the 
 other men. But as I looked up at the speaker I cannot 
 say that I was drawn to him. He was neatly dressed 
 in a quiet tweed suit and wore one of those soft, wide- 
 brimmed hats so much affected by Alaskan miners in 
 the summer time, only that this hat, instead of being 
 soiled and battered like most of them, was clean and 
 neatly dented in its four sides. Yet the smoothly 
 shaven face was not one to inspire confidence. The 
 mouth and nose were regular enough, but in the matter 
 of vision there was a pronounced and what seemed to 
 me sinister irregularity. In short, the man lacked an 
 eye, his right peephole being entirely closed . Now 
 there is no doubt many a highly respectable and good- 
 natured gentleman going about with but a single eye; 
 but, perhaps through some defect of my nature, such a 
 
 [28] 
 
My Burden Grows Heavier 
 
 person is always repellent to me unless he is able suc 
 cessfully to conceal the loss by wearing a glass sub 
 stitute for the missing orb of vision. The man who 
 stood before me boasted no such substitute, and, in 
 spite of his steady smile, there was something so abhor 
 rent to me in the sight of that drawn blind in the window 
 of his soul that I could hardly look at him without a 
 shudder. 
 
 " Ah, my lad, " he said to me very pleasantly, " you ve 
 got quite a burden there. Do you think you can get it 
 safely aboard ship ? I m sailing down the coast my 
 self, and so is this gentleman here with me; and if we 
 can be of any service to you, just let us know." 
 
 He pushed forward through the crowd a small but 
 very straight man, with a round head on which was a 
 blue golf cap. This man had a pink face and a very 
 red nose. He wore a dark-brown sweater and loose 
 trousers which accentuated the shortness of his legs. 
 
 " Yes," said the pink-faced man, " I ll be glad to help 
 you. I ve had the care of gold dust myself, and know 
 what a nuisance it is." 
 
 "Thank you," said I, shifting my rifle so that the 
 butt of it rested in the sand between my feet, " but I m 
 getting along all right. As soon as the Captain comes 
 
 [29] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 I can go aboard the lighter. Then if you want to lend 
 me a hand with my box I shall be glad of your assist 
 ance." 
 
 "Nome is a great place," ventured the pink-faced 
 man, nodding toward the town. "Strangest mining 
 camp I was ever in, and I ve been pretty much all over 
 the coast. Everybody is jumping everybody s claim 
 now. My friend here has written some verses on the 
 claim-jumpers. Maybe you d like to hear them." 
 
 I was not in the mood to have poetry read to me, and 
 particularly by a one-eyed man, but the poet produced 
 his little manuscript from his inside coat pocket and 
 read his verse with great gusto and an indescribable 
 sing-song, while the other passengers gathered about. 
 At the close of the reading of the jingle for it was 
 hardly more there were some strong notes of assent 
 from the crowd. 
 
 " Pretty good that sizes em up great," said one 
 miner. " They run me out all right they were too 
 many for me." 
 
 "The poetry is all right," said another. 
 
 " Ain t it good ? " asked the pink-faced man, address 
 ing me. "And it s dead easy for him to write such 
 things. He just dashes em off like it was no trouble 
 
 [30] 
 
My Burden Grows Heavier 
 
 at all. He s got lots of other pieces that he wrote, and 
 he knows all the poets by heart Shakespeare and 
 Tennyson and Bryant. It s a great thing to be a poet, 
 I think." 
 
 "Yes," mused the one-eyed man, folding his manu 
 script, 
 
 
 " * The poet in a golden clime was born, 
 
 With golden stars above. 
 
 I wrote quite a number of war poems when I was with 
 Roosevelt in Cuba. There s where I lost my eye," he 
 said, turning to me. "It was a splinter from a shell 
 thrown while we were storming up San Juan Hill. 
 The opening stanza of one of them was pretty keen, 
 I m telling you. It began: 
 
 * When the sickening soul of silence swoons in sobbing 
 
 seas of sound, 
 And the greedy guns are grumbling, throwing grapnel 
 
 o er the ground. 
 
 " Isn t that word shrapnel ? " I suggested. 
 
 "Well, * shrapnel or grapnel it s all the same," 
 said the poet. " Grapnel, though, is more alliterative. 
 I m great on alliteration." 
 
 [31] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 " Yes, I see you are," said I, smiling, and just a little 
 weary of the one-eyed man and his poetry. 
 
 The pink-faced man was quite sociable. He did not 
 tell me his name, but he told me quite a bit of his his 
 tory, and particularly that which related to his adven 
 tures in the mines. While he was talking the one-eyed 
 man stood by, adding a word now and again. When 
 ever I chanced to look up at him, which was not often, 
 as the creep which the sight of his closely lidded eye 
 hole gave me was a most disagreeable sensation, I saw 
 that he was gazing intently at my box. That glittering, 
 penetrating eye of his seemed sharp enough, in its 
 black keenness, to bore through the fir wood and through 
 the tough leather, right into the midst of the dust. I 
 wondered, as I glanced at him, if he were sifting out 
 and assorting in his mind those bright little pinhead 
 grains and bullet-sized nuggets which had been my 
 particular delight as they lay in the gold-pan at clean- 
 ing-up time. I remember that once I looked up sharply 
 and questioningly at him, full in that evil eye of his, 
 and he no doubt saw irritation and suspicion glancing 
 from my own eyes, for he turned suddenly to his " part 
 ner," as he had called him, and spoke hurriedly of a 
 matter quite foreign to the subject of treasure. 
 
 [32] 
 
My Burden Grows Heavier 
 
 I pulled out my watch for the fiftieth time, and my 
 impatience was vast and all afire when I saw that it 
 was eleven o clock and the Captain had not yet hove in 
 sight. The passengers rearranged their baggage, 
 tightening the straps and cords, and walked up and 
 down the sand, and the crowd of beach idlers came 
 and went. While my one-eyed inquisitor and his 
 friend were talking together and still standing near me, 
 the master of the lighter broke through the crowd and 
 appeared with a long, stout hempen line to one end of 
 which was attached a white buoy about as large as my 
 head. 
 
 "Hitch this to yer box, son," he said, in a milder 
 tone than I had yet heard him use, and with a friendly 
 gleam in his eye which showed that he was not a bad 
 fellow after all. 
 
 "That s a good idea," remarked the poet, before I 
 had time to say a word. 
 
 "Nobody spoke to you," gruffed the lighterman. 
 
 " What s it for ? " I asked, referring to the buoy. 
 
 "To mark where yer box falls overboard." 
 
 "Overboard?" 
 
 "Yes, I mean if she should happen to go splash off 
 the boat," the lighterman explained. "Better let me 
 
 [33] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 hitch her up. I know how better n you. We don t 
 generally tie em on till the stuff s aboard; but the 
 Capt n s late and when he comes there ll be lots o* 
 lively jumpin round, an I might fergit or somethin . 
 You throw a hitch like that see an then over 
 this way twicet aroun to make sure." 
 
 He hitched and wound the rope about the box, one 
 end of which he lifted with a grunt, for the compact 
 little mass hugged the sand as if it were the top of a 
 sunken post. 
 
 "She is heavy, isn t she?" said the lighterman, as 
 he tugged and tilted, with what seemed to me a growing 
 respect for the treasure he had before referred to so 
 disparagingly. After tying the last of a complex and 
 seaman-like system of knots, he said : " Guess we bet 
 ter git her aboard, after all. It s ag in orders, but I ll 
 stand fer it. Yeh ve paid yer passage, ain t yeh? 
 Well, then, I guess it will be all right. Bill ! " he called, 
 "Bill!" 
 
 A great, rough, sailor-looking fellow, whose hands 
 were freely tattooed in blue and red and whose eyes 
 wore a sleepy look, came from the lighter, and the two 
 of them lifted the box and carried it aboard. I fol 
 lowed, nodding to the one-eyed poet and his friend in 
 
 [34] 
 
My Burden Grows Heavier 
 
 exchange for over-polite bows and smiles from them, 
 and walked up the plank to the deck of the lighter with 
 a feeling of relief that was quite restful after the strain 
 of waiting ashore. 
 
 " Look here, young feller," said the lighterman in a 
 deep-breathed, throaty undertone as I dropped my 
 rifle butt on the box where it lay amidships of the flat- 
 boat and stretched one arm comfortably. "Do you 
 know why I went out with that there line, an why I 
 brought yer box aboard? It s on account o them 
 chaps you was talking with. They ain t no good. That 
 one-eyed feller is Pete Slattery, that used to deal faro 
 at the Monte Cristo saloon till they run him out fer 
 false play; an his side partner is a crook, I know, 
 though I ain t seen much o him. They ain t no good. 
 I saw they was a-takin too much interest in yer box, 
 so I fetched it aboard here, out o their way. Don t 
 have no truck with ary one o em. They ain t no 
 good." 
 
 " But he was in the Cuban War," said I, " and lost 
 his eye there, so he says." 
 
 "That there eye was lost in a gamblin row over in 
 Juneau that s where it was lost," said the lighterman. 
 "Don t have no truck with such trash, my boy." 
 
 [35] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 I thanked my new friend heartily and forgot all his 
 former insolence, which I now set down to his natur 
 ally uncouth ways. He evidently had no real intention 
 of injuring anyone. 
 
 Looking out over the blue waves to the Flying Mist, 
 which lay a mile to seaward, and noting how the masses 
 of water rose and tumbled, I could appreciate the ad 
 vantage of the line-and-buoy device. The deck of the 
 lighter being perfectly flat and smooth, it would be a 
 simple matter for Neptune to rock the craft heavily 
 and get my gold. 
 
 "Once," said the lighterman, "we lost a box that 
 had sixty thousand in it, going off to the Caroline 
 Stevens. She just slid right off the boat and down to 
 the bottom an nobody never seen her ag in. Ever 
 since then we ve hitched buoys to em. It s a good 
 plan if yeh don t want the sharks to be a-buyin fancy 
 store clo es with yer gold." 
 
 " But the owners of the lost dust," I asked, " didn t 
 they recover anything from you ? " 
 
 " Recover ? I guess you don t think we take any 
 thing like that, here in this wild place, except at owner s 
 risk. That s understood. When a reg lar shippin 
 company gits in here it will be different, but I d like to 
 
 [36] 
 
My Burden Grows Heavier 
 
 know who s a-goin to hold us responsible, as things 
 stand, an what court they re a-goin to git jedgment 
 in ? It ud be like tryin to collect back dues from them 
 gulls a-flyin over there. Of course, you could put in 
 yer claim," he said, grinning, "jest as them fellers did; 
 but it s owner s risk here, every time, an you d have to 
 take it out in claimin , I guess eh, Bill ? " 
 
 Bill nodded sleepily and grinned prodigiously. 
 
 "I guess that s what," said he, with as much con 
 viction as he seemed capable of expressing. 
 
 I lapsed into a thoughtful mood. The risks attend 
 ing the transfer of gold to vessels in the stream seemed 
 out of all proportion to the toil and trouble involved in 
 the process of taking it out of the mine. I had heard 
 it said that the gold dust in the beach sand had all been 
 given up by the sea, and now that the sea seemed so 
 eager to get back its treasure, a miner was lucky if he 
 landed any of it safely in his home port. 
 
 " The Captain," I asked, " is he ever going to come ? " 
 For I was now more impatient than before I had heard 
 the story of the loss of the gold. I wanted to see my 
 box safe aboard the Flying Mist and out of the reach 
 of the covetous landsmen, on the one hand, and the 
 shoalwater sharks on the other. 
 
 [37] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 "Oh, he ll be along," said the lighterman, rescuing 
 his tobacco plug from the hands of Bill after that indi 
 vidual had made a desperate attack upon it with his 
 teeth. " It s any time to-day, you know, and the tug 
 boat won t come along until I set the signal." 
 
 "Any time to-day!" I exclaimed in dismay, "and 
 we were to start at ten." 
 
 "Don t fret, sonny. He ll be here before dark. 
 He ll want the tide, yeh know." 
 
 "That s right," said Bill. 
 
 "There s big attractions up town," said the lighter 
 man. 
 
 "That s right," said Bill. 
 
 "Monte, roulette, wheel-of -fortune, and plenty of 
 gin." 
 
 "That s right," said Bill. "That s right." 
 
 I groaned and looked about with large unrest and 
 irritation. 
 
 [38] 
 
IV 
 
 IN WHICH I AM RELIEVED OF MY BURDEN 
 
 r 
 
 I TURNED toward the beach. The crowd there had 
 thinned perceptibly and had lost the one-eyed man and 
 the man in the dark-brown sweater. Some of the pas 
 sengers had wrapped themselves in great-coats or blan 
 kets and were lying in the sand, fast asleep. Others 
 sprawled or sat about, talking and reading, and a few 
 were strolling up and down the shingle, idly, and, as I 
 regarded it, all too good-naturedly, seeing they were 
 so belated by the stupid master mariner, who, I began 
 to suspect, cared little for his craft or the fate of the 
 people who were to risk their lives and treasure in her. 
 I heard a cheery voice among the crowd Doctor 
 Quaritch s beyond question. He came down to the 
 edge of the wet sand, while I walked to the after end 
 of the lighter. By his side was a grinning little Japan 
 ese, who was carrying the black bag. 
 
 "Hullo, John!" called out the Doctor. "I heard 
 your Flying Mist hadn t sailed yet, so I dropped down 
 
 [39] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 on my way to the Sand Spit, where some friends of 
 mine are camping. Guess you struck a pretty slow 
 boat." 
 
 " She s slow at starting, anyway," I confessed. " But 
 you can see her funnel now, Doctor," I added, smiling, 
 " and you can make out for yourself what it s like." 
 
 The Doctor took a pair of pince nez glasses from his 
 waistcoat pocket, and, adjusting them, stared hard 
 across the water. 
 
 "Nothing of the sort," said he, slowly. "There 
 ins t any such rig as that afloat. Nothing of the 
 well, bless my soul ! " 
 
 A little curl of dark smoke had lifted from the top of 
 the mainmast, which now showed plainly in the clear 
 afternoon sunlight as both mainmast and funnel. 
 
 " Dashed if that doesn t beat me ! " And he gave a 
 roaring laugh, his round stomach shaking. He stood 
 for a few minutes staring at the vessel, and then, saying 
 good-bye to me and wishing me a lucky voyage, he 
 moved on up the sands, the Jap following him, and both 
 of them pausing now and again while the Doctor 
 turned his eyes upon the Flying Mist as upon the rarest 
 sight he had ever witnessed. 
 
 I went back and sat down upon my box, glad of the 
 [40] 
 
/ am Relieved of my Burden 
 
 break which Doctor Quaritch s coming had made in the 
 monotony of waiting. 
 
 The breeze over the blue Bering cut in harder than 
 ever. I had been wearing mukluks, but had exchanged 
 that warm foot-covering for a pair of new calfskin 
 shoes, so that, to add to my other discomforts, my feet 
 were cold. From time to time I had to rise and stamp 
 about the little deck. I had kept a sharp eye open for 
 the coming of the Captain, looking across the beach to 
 where the white tent-cloths filled and fluttered in the 
 stout sea breeze. I was weary of the sight of those 
 dirty-white tents and of the flimsy shanties of the miners 
 and of the litter and filth all about them. I yearned to 
 be off for home. If I could safely have been set down 
 among the tall, smoke-browned brick buildings of 
 Market street at that moment I should willingly have 
 given one of those eight buckskin bags of gold dust. 
 But there I was, still waiting. The low, dull Arctic 
 sun sank into the icy Bering, and the sharper chill of 
 night came to further beset my powers of endurance. 
 At last I heard one of the passengers shout derisively : 
 
 " Here comes Captain Bright-and-Early, and what a 
 load he s got aboard ! " 
 
 A tall hulking figure, moving slowly and uncertainly 
 [41] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 along the sands, had appeared around the corner of the 
 nearest shanty, accompanied by four or five others, and 
 as they drew near I recognized my one-eyed friend, 
 whom the lighterman had told me was Pete Slattery, 
 and the little pink-faced man who wore the dark-brown 
 sweater. Both of these worthy gentlemen were very 
 loose-motioned and were muttering brokenly. 
 
 I glared at the late-coming skipper sullenly, my pa 
 tience worn to the thinnest possible edge. It seemed 
 to me particularly odious and insolent of him that after 
 all our waiting he should appear in such an offensive 
 state. 
 
 " Get aboard everybody ! " he shouted, as he reeled 
 up the plank, assisted by Bill and the lighterman. 
 " Signal for your tug, Sandy," he commanded. " What s 
 that you say ? Tide turning ? Of course it is. What s 
 the odds ? We can steam out all right all right ! " 
 
 I had observed that Slattery and his friend had been 
 keeping close to the Captain and that they seemed to 
 be on excellent terms with him. I wondered if they 
 were not partly responsible for his condition. During 
 the embarkation of the passengers and their effects the 
 two partners were laughing and joking loosely with the 
 Captain, and their mirth was all the more hateful to 
 
 [42] 
 
I am Relieved of my Burden 
 
 me when they pressed upon him a long, black bottle 
 which, I was glad to see, he persistently refused, though 
 with the utmost good nature. 
 
 "Sorry, gents," I heard him say, "but I know when 
 I m down to my Plimsoll line. It s good stuff, I know, 
 but I ve got to get a steamer out of this crazy port, 
 which is no port at all, and bucking a turning tide at 
 that. So I ll have to beg off, though I m glad to have 
 had your jolly company, which I ll always remember 
 always remember." 
 
 When the man Slattery came aboard the lighter the 
 sleepy Bill seemed to be more wakeful. I saw Bill 
 having a few words with the poet behind the tall pile of 
 baggage. To this interview I paid but little attention 
 at the time, and it could have lasted but a few min 
 utes, for the master of the flatboat, who had vainly been 
 signaling for his tow, suddenly came around the bag 
 gage pile and told his mate to run up the beach and see 
 if he couldn t raise her. Bill went away and soon came 
 back, and I saw the lights of the tug gleam over the 
 water, through the gathering murk. At last I was to 
 be relieved of the long ordeal of waiting. 
 
 The tug s line was made fast, and I heard her wheeze 
 violently. Glancing about among the passengers, I 
 
 T431 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 did not see the one-eyed poet or his companion. It 
 could not be, I thought, that they had of a sudden given 
 up the idea of becoming passengers on the Flying Mist. 
 As my eye ranged about in search of them, Bill inter 
 posed his burly form between me and the baggage pile. 
 
 " I ll have to move you and your box a little further 
 over," he said, with more politeness than I had deemed 
 him capable of exhibiting. "You re in the runway 
 here." 
 
 I made no protest, but I observed that in shoving my 
 box a " little further over " he placed it in a position 
 which I deemed dangerously near the edge of the lighter. 
 
 "Oh, you needn t worry about that," said he, in 
 tones meant to be reassuring, for I had grasped the box 
 to prevent his moving it any farther. "It can t go 
 overboard. It sticks to the deck too close for that." 
 
 "But there s no railing," I insisted, "and it might 
 slide off. The sixty thousand dollars went over the 
 side, and 
 
 " Oh, that s a fairy tale," sneered Bill. " He tried 
 to scare yeh. Didn t yeh see him tip me the wink ? " 
 
 Seeing that I could make no headway with the ob 
 durate Bill, I looked about for his master, to whom I 
 thought to appeal; but the lighterman was away for- 
 
 [44] 
 
I am Relieved of my Burden 
 
 ward, while I was well aft, and I did not dare to leave 
 my gold to go and speak to him. The sea was not rough, 
 there being only a light wind now and a few surges. 
 There was really not much cause for apprehension re 
 garding the safety of the treasure. So I stood leaning 
 against the baggage , feeling the grateful motion of the 
 slow-going craft as she was towed nearer and nearer 
 the Flying Mist. 
 
 Looking back at the lights of Nome, as they twinkled 
 along the beach, it did not seem such a desolate place 
 as it had during those waiting hours. After all, the 
 camp had treated me well and had given me a fortune. 
 I could not help having a little friendly feeling for it. 
 
 Not far astern I could hear the " put-put " of a gaso 
 line launch, which seemed to be following us. I won 
 dered for a moment if it could contain belated passen 
 gers for the Flying Mist; but this, I thought, could 
 hardly be the case, considering the tardy start which we 
 were making. What seemed rather strange to me was 
 the fact that the launch showed no lights. Still, as we 
 were in waters where port regulations were vague and 
 loosely applied, it did not matter much. 
 
 As we were towed a little farther out we were swept 
 by a sudden blast of wind. The lighter careened 
 
 [45] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 quickly, my side of the craft rising high. At the same 
 time there was a shock as of the striking of a wave. 
 
 " That was a hard one ! " I heard a passenger call out. 
 " How I love one of these crazy flatboats ! " 
 
 "Likely to turn turtle any minute," said another pas 
 senger, with a gasp. 
 
 As the little craft heeled over on my side, I heard a 
 commotion forward, where some of the topmost bag 
 gage of the hastily thrown together pile had fallen on 
 the deck. I turned to look ahead in the darkness, and 
 heard the lighterman swearing and the Captain bawling 
 out orders. At that moment I heard a " chug " in the 
 water, and, turning quickly, my eye did not catch the 
 precious square object it had held in view all day long. 
 The legs of the cumbersome Bill were, I thought, ob 
 scuring my sight of it; but as they were quickly with 
 drawn, the man starting forward with a "What s the 
 matter, there ? " I saw at a glance that my treasure was 
 gone. The " chug " I had heard was made by the fall 
 ing of the heavy box into the water. 
 
 "My gold is overboard!" I shouted to Captain 
 Transome. " Stop her please stop her ! " 
 
 The Captain stood within ten feet of me and his face 
 was in the light of a lantern that was sitting on the bag- 
 
 [46] 
 
/ am Relieved of my Burden 
 
 gage pile. I saw him blink unconcernedly and then 
 stare stupidly as I called out again: 
 
 " Captain, Captain, my gold is overboard ! " 
 
 He swore a blood-curdling oath and called the lighter 
 man. 
 
 "What about this?" he asked. "Man says he has 
 lost his gold overboard." His speech was thick and 
 almost incoherent, while his tone was full of indifference. 
 But the lighterman was all sympathy in an instant. 
 
 "Bill," he shouted, "signal for a stop!" 
 
 In those first breath-breaking moments of my ter 
 rible loss it seemed to me that it took the villainous 
 Bill half an hour to get his lantern and make the signal ; 
 and when he did so there was no response from the tug. 
 
 I heard the quick "put-put!" of the launch and 
 instinctively I felt that the presence of that night- 
 cruising craft was in some way connected with the loss 
 of my treasure. I turned quickly to the lighterman. 
 
 "Your man Bill," I cried, "pushed my box over 
 board, and those fellows who are following us in the 
 launch will try to get it. I m going to take the small 
 boat towing behind there and see that they don t rob 
 me. Will you come and help me ? " 
 
 "I can t," he said. "I can t leave till she stops. 
 [47] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 And don t you take that boat. The lighter will stop 
 in a minute, as soon as they git our signal." 
 
 "Yes, and by that time my gold will be stolen. 
 They ll see the buoy, pull up the line and make away 
 with the box." 
 
 I ran aft, in a fever of excitement, my rifle in my 
 hand, and hauled in the rope of the small boat hurriedly. 
 
 "Leave that" boat alone!" yelled the lighterman, 
 running after me. But I sprang in over the bow, un 
 tied the line and fell astern rapidly. 
 
 The lighterman yowled after me in the darkness, 
 but I paid no heed to his calls. Seizing the oars, I 
 rowed like mad toward the spot where I could hear 
 the gasoline engine " putting " and purring. I rightly 
 divined that this would be the place where the watchful 
 eyes of the scoundrels who had been following us would 
 have spied the white buoy floating on the surface of the 
 dark water. My little boat was tossed about upon the 
 waves, but I pulled steadily. I had been nursing my 
 muscles with the mining shovel and they were hard as 
 wood ; and, being handy with the oars, I made the little 
 craft fly toward the launch. As she rose on one of the 
 waves, I saw a light flash out within two hundred feet 
 of me. There was the launch and in her were two men 
 
 [48] 
 
/ am Relieved of my Burden 
 
 hauling on a line over the side. I yelled at them lustily, 
 but they paid no heed. Now they pulled at something 
 heavy my box of a certainty and lifted it into their 
 boat. 
 
 Immediately I heard the sound of the engine "put 
 ting " and whirring, and as my boat fell into the scoop 
 of the dark sea, I could do nothing but pull at the oars 
 and shout. 
 
 When my craft lifted again and I could see the light 
 of the launch, I raised my rifle and sent a shot singing 
 over it, and then another and another. 
 
 "Bang! bang! bang!" The sounds, in that great 
 expanse of sea, seemed but toyish and trivial in their 
 volume, and as for the effect upon the men in the launch 
 the firing counted for naught. 
 
 The light went out suddenly, and as I could see 
 nothing of the men in the boat nor even the outline 
 of the craft, there was little use of further shooting. 
 Indeed, I was sorry I had shot or shouted, for I might 
 have pulled in nearer before the light was extinguished, 
 when, at closer range and being so well armed, I might 
 have commanded the situation. Now there was noth 
 ing left but aimless and futile rowing in the direction 
 which I blindly judged the launch had taken. As for 
 [49] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 the lighter, she seemed to have left me to my fate. Far 
 over the water I could see her lights and those of the 
 tug proceeding out to sea; but my interest was no longer 
 in any way connected with her or with her men, though 
 I own I should have liked to see the ruffianly Bill for a 
 brief moment and square accounts with him in some 
 way. All that I strained forward to now was to detect 
 and confront the poetical Pete Slattery and his pink- 
 faced friend. 
 
 [50] 
 
V 
 
 BACK TO THE GOLDEN NORTH 
 
 I PULLED ashore alongside a big lumber lighter 
 which made a breakwater for me, else I might have had 
 great difficulty in landing. As it was, I had to wade in 
 ice-cold water over my knees. So, in drenched disgust 
 and with my thoughts melting dizzily into each other, 
 I hastened to the board shanty in which dwelt Gus 
 Clarke, the chairman of the Committee of Safety, 
 which was at that time all the rough camp afforded in 
 the way of public officers for the detection and punish 
 ment of crime, unless one counted the detachment of 
 soldiers who idled about the place. 
 
 Gus Clarke s cabin was dark and he was sound 
 asleep when I knocked harshly and with intense anxi 
 ety, arousing him and all his dogs, which made a tre 
 mendous fuss just inside the door. Soon I saw a light 
 through the little window and heard the voice of Clarke, 
 whom I knew very well, cursing and quieting the dogs. 
 But the brutes set up such another hubbub when the 
 
 [51] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 door was opened that he could not make out what I 
 had come to tell him. At last, after kicking the noisy 
 animals all out of doors, he heard my story, told with a 
 quivering excitement akin to despair, and was instantly 
 sympathetic, though not so resourceful as I had 
 hoped. 
 
 " It s too bad too bad, John," said he, stroking his 
 shaggy beard. "Forty thousand dollars in dust! 
 That s a big loss. They worked it slick, didn t they ? 
 Let s see. What can be done ? You say you think it 
 was Pete Slattery, but you don t know. Pete s a neat 
 hand, and not above such a game as that. He has the 
 mug for it, and was crooked at cards, they say, though 
 I ain t heard of his liftin any dust before." 
 
 "The little, round man with the pink face and the 
 red nose the man who wore the dark-brown sweater," 
 I suggested, my words running together in my anxious 
 haste to offer something on which instant action might 
 be taken. " Do you know who he is ? " 
 
 Gus Clarke, assuming an official air, pulled his beard 
 and thought, while my wet feet nervously tapped the 
 floor. 
 
 "No," he said, after a few minutes, "I don t know 
 as I ever seen him. Must be a chechako." 
 
 [52] 
 
DR. QUARITCH 
 
Back to the Golden North 
 
 By "chechako," he meant new-comer. But this 
 speculation, as well as those which he further offered, 
 was of little assistance to me in my burning impatience 
 to get something done toward detecting the robbers and 
 regaining my lost treasure. 
 
 "I think you d better report all this to Captain 
 Walker in the morning," said Gus Clarke, "though it 
 ain t likely the soldiers can do much for you. You 
 see, we are working this Safety Committee on the q. t. 
 for the present and not many people know about it. 
 We ve got some pretty sharp men in it, and they know a 
 thing or two. My opinion of the soldiers guarding this 
 here camp is that they re a lot of doughheads. Still, 
 they might help you some. But you can t do nothing 
 to-night, John not a thing. Better get back to the 
 Golden North and get your feet dried out and go to bed. 
 In the morning I ll call a meeting of the Committee 
 and see what can be done." 
 
 " But by morning they ll have my gold packed clear 
 over to Topkok, and I ll never see it again," said I, 
 bitterly, fearing in my drooping heart that I had seen 
 the last of the eight buckskin sacks with the " J. M." 
 stamped upon them. Perhaps by this time the gold 
 was being transferred to other receptacles, all marks of 
 
 [53] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 its identity destroyed, and it was being "packed" on 
 dog-back to some far-away place. 
 
 "Oh, no," said the chairman of the Committee of 
 Safety very sagely, "the only way they can get out of 
 Nome City with that gold is to take it aboard some ves 
 sel, and they won t try to do that to-night." 
 
 " Why, they might have gone out to the Flying Mist. 
 They were friendly with the Captain. They may have 
 been in league with him." 
 
 " Onlikely, my boy, very onlikely," said the judicial 
 Gus Clarke. " I know Captain Transome and he s 
 square as that table, though he does gin up a little too 
 heavy once in a while. It was them and their liquor 
 that kept him back until after dark, so they could have 
 the box throwed overboard; but they wouldn t try any 
 game of runnin off with it on his schooner. He 
 wouldn t stand for it and they know it. Your gold is 
 here in the camp somewhere, and I ll hunt it up for 
 you to-morrow if it s to be found, and land that chap 
 Slattery and his pal in the calaboose that is, if it s 
 them that done it, and you seem pretty positive it was." 
 
 " And you ll get started bright and early ? " I insisted, 
 loath to give up all opportunity of a night search for 
 the gold, and yet convinced after a fashion that Gus 
 
 [54] 
 
Back to the Golden North 
 
 Clarke would do his best to aid me as soon as I should 
 come around in the morning. 
 
 "Sure," promised he. 
 
 "And set the other members of the Committee at 
 work hunting it up ? " 
 
 "Sure." 
 
 I bade him " good-night " very kindly and went away. 
 It was late, but I could not yet go back to the hotel. I 
 was too full of the dreadful sense of my loss. I was 
 hoping, also, that a lucky chance might aid me to 
 stumble upon the robbers that very night. As I strode 
 feverishly along the crazy, creaking sidewalks of the 
 stinking streets of the town, past open gambling dens, 
 aflame with lights, past dance-halls where gaily dressed 
 girls smiled and beckoned at me, I peered into this and 
 that place of sin, in the vague hope of catching sight of 
 Slattery or his companion, and at each failure in the 
 search my depression of spirits was something ex 
 tremely difficult for a young and generally buoyant 
 nature like mine to bear. 
 
 How could I go home empty-handed and tell my 
 father that I had lost the gold ? How could I own to 
 him that the fortune for which he had risked so much 
 and had come so near to his death to lay hold upon, 
 
 [55] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 had utterly vanished almost before my sight, while I 
 was powerless to prevent its loss ? Blind, unreasoning 
 self-accusation held me to the rack in that first hour of 
 wandering. Had I been a little more vigilant, the fel 
 low Bill might not have had his opportunity to push 
 the box overboard. Why had I let him shove it so near 
 to the edge of the lighter in the first place ? It was true, 
 as Gus Clarke had seen from my recital, that the man 
 Slattery and his companion had kept the Captain 
 ashore in some drinking resort that they might delay 
 him and thus take advantage of the darkness. Why 
 had I not suspected something ? Why had I not been 
 more alive to the situation and the peril ? When I had 
 noted that they did not stay aboard the lighter it had 
 been childish of me not to have suspected the very plot 
 that had been carried out. How easily, and neatly, 
 and completely they had victimized me ! 
 
 And then a wave of self-pity swept over me. How 
 much more wisely would any man have acted under 
 the circumstances ? Was not the whole affair most 
 unusual ? Who had ever heard of such a robbery 
 of gold being thrown deliberately into the sea to be 
 fished up again by the thieves ? And the man Bill who 
 could reasonably have suspected him in the part he was 
 
 [56] 
 
Back to the Golden North 
 
 playing ? He was one of the crew of the lighter the whole 
 crew, so far as I could see and the trusted servant and 
 agent of the public. Who could have suspected him ? 
 
 But of what avail would be all the explanations I 
 might make to my father as to the loss of the gold? 
 He was, as I have said before, exceedingly strict in his 
 dealings with others. I would rather have been re 
 sponsible to any other man alive. Explanations! 
 Why, I had often heard him say that he never dealt in 
 explanations himself, and wanted no man to explain 
 or apologize to him. 
 
 And to such a man, looking at him for a moment 
 wholly aside from the natural compassion and affection 
 that I must feel for a father who loved me in spite of 
 all my faults to such a man I must go home and say, 
 "The gold that you worked for, starved for, sickened 
 and almost died for, is lost ! " 
 
 In those first dazed hours I did not think of my own 
 share of the stolen gold, nor of my wasted labor. I 
 could afford to lose time and treasure. I was young 
 and the world lay all before me; and though I had 
 built mightily upon the fortune that had come so quickly 
 I could work and regain it. But to the good folk at 
 home the blow would be terrible 
 
 [57] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 Again I thought of the infamous Bill, and as I did so 
 it seemed to me that by going down to the lighter, 
 which, no doubt, had returned from the Flying Mist, I 
 might get some sight of the rascal and possibly capture 
 him. All this time I had been carrying my rifle, though 
 I had not often been reminded of it, as it was a light 
 weapon. Its presence on my shoulder was quite com 
 forting, however, as I strode down the beach to the 
 place where the lighter had been stranded with the 
 other shore-lying craft. But when I found the flatboat 
 in the darkness there was no sign of life on or about the 
 square little hulk. So I walked back toward the Gol 
 den North, away from the sound of the melancholy 
 surf, the voice of which seemed doubly sad to me, stag 
 gering as I was under this heavy stroke of misfortune. 
 
 The warmth of the big stove in the tavern and the 
 lingering food smells that haunted the little dining- 
 room, which was also sitting-room, public room and 
 office all in one, reminded me of how miserably cold 
 and hungry I was, for I had eaten nothing since morn 
 ing and my feet were still wet and cold from wading in 
 the surf. 
 
 The landlord, who was still out of bed, although it 
 was nearly midnight, was greatly surprised when he 
 
 [58] 
 
Back to the Golden North 
 
 saw me. I refrained from telling him of my loss. He 
 would hear of it soon enough. I merely told him that 
 I had not taken passage in the Flying Mist after all. 
 The good man fetched me some cold boiled beef, a 
 loaf of bread and a cup of hot coffee, which I attacked 
 ravenously. 
 
 "You can have the same bed you had last night, 
 John," said he, turning to attend to some other late 
 comers. "You know the way up. Turn in whenever 
 it suits you." 
 
 I was now dried, warmed and well fed, and, although 
 not a bit sleepy, I thought it best to retire and get as 
 much rest as possible for the day of hard detective work 
 that lay before me in the morning. So up the rickety 
 stairs I mounted and walked to the door of the little 
 box of a room which I had thought never to see again. 
 My turning of the handle brought forth a lusty " Who s 
 there?" And in an instant I knew by that booming 
 voice that Doctor Quaritch still kept the incommo 
 dious lodging we had shared together on the previous 
 night. I stuck my head inside the door and announced 
 myself. 
 
 " Goodness me ! " was the Doctor s greeting. " It s 
 you again, is it, John Morning? Light the candle. 
 
 [59] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 Then you didn t get away after all ? I m mighty glad 
 of it. Hated to see you set sail in that funnel-masted 
 thing. Now you can go down to San Francisco with 
 me." 
 
 I struck a match and looked about for the candle, 
 finding it on a chair near the head of his bed. 
 
 " But, Doctor," said I, as the candle-wick blazed up 
 and I took the hand he extended to me from under the 
 shoddy blanket, "I ve met with a terrible loss. My 
 gold is gone stolen ! " 
 
 "No! How in tunket did it happen?" 
 
 "They threw it overboard and then fished it up be 
 fore I could reach them." 
 
 I sat down on the edge of my bed and told the sorry 
 tale of the robbery. 
 
 "Well, well," said the Doctor, at the close of my 
 narration. "That beats all. That s the worst I ever 
 heard. But there s a chance yet you may get it, 
 though it s doubtful mighty doubtful. The soldiers 
 here are not likely to be first-class detectives, and your 
 Safety Committee can hardly hope to cope with such 
 shrewd criminals." 
 
 "I m afraid they re not much good," I owned. 
 
 "You d know that one-eyed chap again, of course, 
 [60] 
 
Back to the Golden North 
 
 if you saw him, which you may never have the chance 
 to do, and the other rascal." 
 
 "Oh, I d know him, too, and Bill, though Bill was 
 only a tool." 
 
 "Yes; they must have hired him to push the box 
 overboard. Well, now, my boy, go to bed and get to 
 sleep. You ll want to be pretty active to-morrow. 
 It ll be a busy day. I ll help you all I can, and the 
 Jap, too, though he doesn t count for much." 
 
 I went to bed and lay very still, so as not to disturb 
 the repose of the good Doctor Quaritch. But I doubt 
 if either of us slept above an hour or two. When I did 
 drop off I was wrestling with Pete Slattery, whose one 
 eye became a gigantic searchlight and dazzled me so 
 that I was blinded and dazed and had to let him go. 
 
 [61] 
 
VI 
 
 GUARDING THE BEACH 
 
 WE were both early astir in the brisk, biting air of 
 the Arctic morning, going down to the lighter to see if 
 aught might be learned of the iniquitous Bill. I never 
 knew the surf to sound so dismal or the briny breath 
 of the ocean to be so chill and discomforting as when 
 we reached the lone lighter, lying black and wet there 
 in the wave-washed sands. In places the foam was 
 crisply set in icy bubbbles that crackled under our feet. 
 
 There were few people on the beach and no one about 
 the ugly flatboat. We waited there a little while in the 
 cold, stamping our feet to keep them warm. Just as 
 we were about to give up the watch for the time the 
 lighterman walked briskly down the sands, all bundled 
 up in his blanket coat and his white breath hanging 
 about him like a wraith. 
 
 When I ran up to him eagerly and inquired as to the 
 whereabouts of Bill, the lighterman shook his head. 
 
 " Bill s quit the country lit out last night and left 
 [62] 
 
Guarding the Beach 
 
 me in the lurch to git this blamed boat back here all 
 alone. I m awfully sorry you lost your gold, my boy, 
 but you shouldn t a took that boat." 
 
 "I ll see that you get it again," I promised. "But 
 where s Bill gone ? " 
 
 " South," was the short reply. 
 
 "South?" 
 
 "Yes; sailed on the Flyin Mist. She didn t git 
 away till two or three o clock this morning, I guess. 
 Somethin wrong with her machinery, or else the Cap 
 tain didn t want to buck the tide after all." 
 
 " Do you know if any other boats went out to her ? " 
 
 "No; we was the last one." 
 
 " Are you sure ? " 
 
 " Well, of course I didn t keep a lookout all night, but 
 I m pretty sure, just the same." 
 
 " How do you think Bill got away ? They must have 
 wanted to leave him ashore, after what I reported about 
 his helping to steal the gold. 
 
 "Oh, the Captain didn t take him knowingly." 
 
 " How then ? Did he stow himself away ? " 
 
 " That s what I think. He didn t want to make him 
 self too numerous on deck, you can bet on that. But 
 he was waitin all the while for that one-eyed feller to 
 
 [63] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 come aboard. And they just sailed away with him. 
 He must feel rotten cheap by this time." 
 
 When we passed down to where the Doctor stood on 
 the sands he made sharper queries, based on his nautical 
 knowledge, but nothing shaking the ugly fact that Bill 
 had wholly escaped us and had gotten away on the 
 Flying Mist could be learned. 
 
 "They fooled him good," said the lighterman when 
 we had fully discussed the robbery and Bill s connec 
 tion with it, " an it serves the cuss jolly well right. He 
 allus was a-shirkin , no-account chap, but I didn t 
 think he d jine a gang o dust-lifters like them." 
 
 " So you think he was really in with the other fellows ? " 
 remarked the Doctor. 
 
 "Why, it s only what I sispicion, yeh know, but it 
 stands to reason, don t it ? The critters that pulled up 
 the dust told him they d jine him in the Fly in Mist an 
 sheer the gold with him. So as soon as the baggage 
 is off he goes an hides away on the schooner until the 
 lighter goes ashore, expectin all the time them fellers 
 would come out in their launch an bring the gold an 
 sail away with him. But the lunkhead got left. He 
 might a knowed they wasn t goin to go an divvy up 
 with him, an if he d had a grain o sense which he 
 [64] 
 
Guarding the Beach 
 
 never did have, as far as I seen he might a knowed 
 Capt n Transome wouldn t stan fer that kind of a deal, 
 even drunk as he was. The other fellers was sharp. 
 They re hid aroun the camp somewhereswaitin achanst 
 to git the gold aboard o some vessel ; but they can t git 
 it off on my lighter you kin bank on that, gentlemen." 
 
 On inquiry from the honest lighterman, we found 
 that two vessels would be sailing in the afternoon, and 
 I determined to hang about the beach with as many 
 soldiers and as many officers of the Committee of Safety 
 as I could get to help me in the search for my stolen 
 treasure. 
 
 I went to the army barracks and found Captain 
 Walker, who had charge of the detachment stationed 
 near the camp. 
 
 "I ll help you all I can," said the Captain, when I 
 told him of my loss, "but I doubt if anything can be 
 done." He detailed three of his men to make a search 
 for the robbers, and the word was passed among all the 
 soldiers of his company to keep a sharp lookout for the 
 rascals. 
 
 I rejoined the Doctor at the Golden North, and he 
 and I went to Gus Clarke s cabin. Clarke was there 
 with two other members of the Committee, discussing 
 
 [65] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 the robbery. These two were directed by him to in 
 form the others and be on the lookout for Pete Slattery 
 and the pink-faced man. It was not long before the 
 whole camp knew of my loss, and I was stopped many 
 times in the street by sympathetic acquaintances, who 
 wished to condole with me and to suggest the possible 
 hiding-place of the robbers. Many of the miners 
 scouted the idea that the gold was still in the camp. 
 Some wise oracle among them had insisted that the 
 treasure and the robbers must all have gone in the Fly 
 ing Mist, and the majority adhered to this theory. 
 But Gus Clarke and his men made a faithful search 
 about the camp while the Doctor and I, together with 
 Yohara, the Jap, lay about the lighters. 
 
 In the afternoon, two hours before the sailing of the 
 Robert Dollar for San Francisco, four men of the Com 
 mittee of Safety were on hand at the lighter and closely 
 scrutinized each passenger that went aboard, as well as 
 his baggage. My heart leaped when I saw a treasure- 
 box of about the same size and shape as my own taken 
 aboard and tied with a long line and buoy. The gold 
 was in the charge of a big, burly Swede, who protested 
 violently when a close inspection was made of it by the 
 Committeemen. 
 
 [66] 
 
Guarding the Beach 
 
 "Ay tank you don t got any rights to coom a-mud- 
 dlin mit deesen bokes," he said, angrily, shaking his 
 white hair. "You don t got any rights. I vait two 
 hours to get me dis bokes on deesen boats, and I don t 
 vant no mans muddlin mit it." 
 
 When the inspectors saw the markings, one of them 
 said: 
 
 "It s Lindbloom s. He s one of the biggest miners 
 up on Anvil Creek. It s all right, my friend," he added, 
 in pacific tones to the Swede. " We re only doing our 
 duty." 
 
 And the vigilant officers certainly did all that might 
 reasonably be expected of them. But I was not satis 
 fied. I could have wished that every trunk and package 
 brought aboard might be opened and its contents ex 
 plored, that my gold might be found and restored to me. 
 
 Little Yohara, who was keeping close watch, aston 
 ished us all by madly springing upon a tall passenger 
 as he stepped upon the lighter s plank to go aboard. 
 The Jap grasped the man by the tail of his long, loosely 
 hanging parka. The passenger protested, and used 
 violent language while he tried to shake off the closely 
 clinging Jap; but the little fellow had a grip like a bull 
 terrier, and would not let go. 
 
 [67] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 " What s the matter, Yo ? " asked the Doctor. " Whom 
 do you think you have got ? " 
 
 "Gol Jobber, gol Jobber see!" he blew out be 
 tween his short breaths. "See, he have disappeared 
 his bad eye behind that-a thing." 
 
 We looked and saw that the captured passenger wore 
 a black blinder over one of his eyes; but the man was 
 not Slattery. 
 
 "Let go of me, you little heathen!" shouted the in 
 nocent stranger, not relishing the attack nor the laugh 
 ter of the crowd. 
 
 "Yes ; let him go !" I commanded. "He isn t the man." 
 
 But Yohara looked inquiringly at the Doctor, and 
 would not relax his tenacious grip upon the long-tailed 
 parka until his master had recovered from the attack 
 of laughter in which his red face grew redder than 
 ever and shouted at him to desist from his over- 
 zealous efforts to detain the man, who was writhing and 
 shaking himself and calling out : " I ll disappear your eye, 
 you little rascal ! And you ll never see out of it again ! " 
 
 "Gangway! gangway!" shouted a man carrying a 
 big trunk; and Yohara, covered with confusion, slunk 
 back to the Doctor s side. 
 
 Soon all the passengers and their luggage were aboard, 
 [68] 
 
Guarding the Beach 
 
 the tug s whistle blew and the lighter was towed out 
 through the surf, the angry man in the long parka 
 shaking his fist at the Jap by way of adieu and the 
 Swede giving vent to uncouth and obscure mutterings. 
 
 We had no better luck with the Emily H olden. Her 
 passengers sailed after as close an inspection as we had 
 given those of the Dollar. 
 
 "I guess they ain t a-goin out to-day," said Gus 
 Clarke, who took an active part in the second watch. 
 " They ll be laying low anyway. I didn t think it would 
 be any good spying about here, but of course it was 
 a part of our game. Hank James has arrested a feller 
 on suspicion. He s in the lockup. You might go and 
 have a look at him John." 
 
 I fairly ran to the calaboose, but when I saw the 
 prisoner I was again disappointed. He was not one of 
 the men whom I suspected of the robbery. He was re 
 leased, and after making loud and intemperate threats 
 of prosecution for false imprisonment, he went his way. 
 He was such a surly fellow, and cursed me so roundly 
 for being the cause of his arrest, that, as I looked after 
 him while he vanished down the road, I was sorry that we 
 were not able to keep him over night in the calaboose 
 as a sort of reminder to him to sweeten his language. 
 
 [69] 
 
VII 
 THE WHITE BUOY BOBS UP 
 
 r 
 
 "PENETRATION! penetration!" repeated the Doctor 
 after we had done another hard day s work of unsuc 
 cessful thief -hunting. "That is what you and I lack, 
 John, in this detective business. If we were only as 
 shrewd as some of Wilkie Collins s heroes. But I own 
 I never was much of a sleuth, and I m afraid our friends 
 of the Committee are only good-natured amateurs. 
 One first-class Pinkerton man now would land those 
 fellows in jail, for I think they re right here in this camp, 
 hiding away somewhere, waiting for a chance to levant." 
 
 We were standing on the little porch of the Golden 
 North, looking out over the sea, along which a cold 
 moon-path ran gleaming to the south. 
 
 I said nothing, for I had been working early and late 
 in this depressing business, and could feel the subtle 
 poison of fatigue creeping through my chilly frame. 
 
 " I m afraid it s no use, my boy no use. They re 
 too sly for us. But there s no good wailing over it. 
 
 [70] 
 
The White Buoy Bobs Up 
 
 Let s go in and have as good a supper as this elegant 
 caravansary can afford, and then go to bed." 
 
 We went to supper, where the Doctor ate slowly and 
 with considerable gusto. For there were roasted ptar- 
 magin and what he called "rare old stout," though I 
 had to take his word for that, as I did not know the 
 taste of liquor. I nibbled nervously and was glad when 
 the meal was over. The sense of my loss grew upon 
 me as the prospect of recovering the gold dwindled from 
 hour to hour. It was a relief to see the Doctor arise 
 from the table and go to sit before the fire in the empty 
 office. He viewed my sour face from the standpoint 
 of a man who had just drank a bottle of stout and is 
 preparing to enjoy a well-stuffed pipe. 
 
 "As I say, my boy," he said, scratching a match on 
 the stove, "you musn t look at this business so sadly. 
 You know (puff) we re all likely to loss (puff), that is, 
 (puff) those of us who have anything to lose. Now, I 
 never in all my life had half as much money at one time 
 as you had in that box, and I think I m just as well off. 
 Rich men don t sleep well. They have bad livers, too, 
 or have to be operated on for appendicitis or something. 
 Of course, a little money s all right; but just think 
 you might have speculated with that gold of yours and 
 
 [71] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 got to be a millionaire. Then where would you be ? 
 Right in the insomnia class, with all manner of high- 
 priced complaints, and with a lot of land-shark doctors 
 trying to get your money away from you." 
 
 "I don t sleep as it is, Doctor," said I, " so I couldn t 
 be any worse off in that way than I am now." 
 
 He looked at my jaded eyes, but instead of sympa 
 thizing with me, he said bluffly: 
 
 "Well, young fellows like you don t need a lot of 
 money, anyway. They re better off without it. Why 
 don t you take to the sea ? That s the life. You could 
 be a quartermaster or a purser or something on some 
 good ship like the Modesto. I tell you, you sleep on 
 the sea rocked in the cradle of the deep, you know. 
 There s nothing like it, my boy, nothing like it." 
 
 As we went to our room I moved my head sadly from 
 side to side and dreaded the getting into bed, where I 
 knew I should toss about and think and think of the 
 lost gold, and plan and plan for its recover} 7 . 
 
 "Would you be kind enough to give me a dose of 
 something to make me sleep, Doctor ? " I asked. 
 
 "An opiate? Nonsense!" he grunted. "What 
 does a healthy, well-nerved boy want of anything of 
 that sort ? Do you take me for one of those doping 
 
 [72] 
 
The White Buoy Bobs Up 
 
 doctors ? I don t give medicine except in cases where 
 I really have to. I know what s better for you than 
 medicine. I ve got a cheap copy of Boswell here, and 
 you just read away at that, while the candle burns, and 
 I guess it will send you off to sleep in an hour or so, at 
 the most. If it doesn t, just blow out the light and lie 
 there in the dark and imagine you re out in an open 
 boat, drifting. Don t let your eyes close as long 
 as you can keep em open. Nature is sometimes a 
 little perverse, you know, and if you try hard to keep 
 your eyes open in bed she will shut them for you very 
 soon." 
 
 The Boswell took me far away from the scene of my 
 anxieties, and I followed where it led along the dingy 
 streets of old London jntil I was lost in their mazes 
 and did not hear the Doctor blow out the light. Nor 
 was I alive to any of the external sounds. In the morn 
 ing I awoke refreshed and with renewed hope. 
 
 "Now, if you had taken an opiate," said the Doctor 
 at breakfast, "you might have been as heavy as lead 
 this morning and you wouldn t have felt like eating. 
 All you needed was to cut the cable from the wharf 
 you d been moored to so fast, and that was what tire 
 some old Boswell did for you. Heigho! I ve been 
 
 [73] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 through all that. There was a time I couldn t sleep. 
 That was when I was working in a big hospital, years 
 ago, and had case after case to operate upon. There 
 is nothing a man can do that uses up his nerve force so 
 fast as operating. A good many say they are schooled 
 to it, and all that, but I notice that the butchers, as we 
 call the hardiest of the surgeons, are very often men 
 who take a great deal of stimulant to keep em going. 
 Of course, that s a false backing, and they don t last 
 long they soon cave in. Sleep ? Why, I ve seen 
 the time after a hard day in the operating-room when I 
 could no more sleep than I could fly. I ve sat up all 
 night and read or walked the floor. But I didn t take 
 any opiates. No, sir! They re the last resort. I got so 
 bad, though, that I had to give it all up and go away to 
 sea. It did me a world of good that first voyage of 
 mine. I had often advised patients to go to sea, but 
 had never been there myself. I got to like it so well 
 that I stuck to it like an old salt. I got a ship s doc 
 tor s berth on the old Ocean Queen, and was in her 
 when she was wrecked down near Melbourne in 67. 
 Then I got several places on other vessels, and finally 
 on the Modesto. I ve stayed with her now so long that 
 I don t know what it would seem like on any other boat. 
 
 [74] 
 
The White Buoy Bobs Up 
 
 We ve got a fine man for a Captain as good as gold. 
 You ought to know Captain Head." 
 
 "I think I met him once," said I. 
 
 " Did you ? Then you met as good a sailing-master 
 as you ll find aboard of any steamer that ever left San 
 Francisco," said the Doctor, warmly. And he went 
 on to tell me some of the exploits of Captain Head in 
 storms and tight places, which narration showed me 
 that the Modesto s master was certainly a man of re 
 sources. 
 
 "I m awfully sorry, John," said the Doctor at last, 
 " but I m afraid I can t be with you for the next couple 
 of days. You see, we sail Saturday night, and I ve 
 got some shore business to attend to. A friend of mine 
 down in California wants me to look at a claim of his 
 up on Reindeer Creek. I ll see you Saturday. Hope 
 you will have found your gold by that time and will be 
 ready to sail with me." 
 
 "Maybe I shall," said I, "and I ll be very glad to 
 sail with you if I do." 
 
 I went over to Gus Clarke s cabin after breakfast. 
 Mr. Clarke gave me a mysterious look and dived under 
 his bunk after a tangle of tackle, which he drew out and 
 held up before my eyes as he said: 
 
 [75] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 " Did you ever see that before ? " 
 
 It was a white buoy with a long line tied to it. I 
 looked at it with a thrill of expectancy, as if my box 
 might be attached to the part that still dragged under 
 the bunk. I was disappointed when a movement of 
 Gus Clarke s arm twitched into view the cut and frayed 
 end of the bare line. 
 
 " It looks like the very buoy that was attached to my 
 box," said I, thoughtfully. 
 
 "The lighterman says it s the same one. He has 
 only three or four, and they are all numbered. See 
 this is number two." He pointed to a small black 
 figure on the side of the buoy. 
 
 "Hi Means found this," said he, "in a deserted 
 shanty down on the Spit, third house beyond the ferry. 
 Now I think this shows sure enough that that there gold 
 was brought ashore and not taken in the Flyin Mist. 
 If they had a shipped it out to the schooner they would 
 have had no further use for this here thing and would 
 a chucked it overboard. But, you see, they wanted to 
 keep it tied on, for fear of some accident that would 
 send it into the water again. So they jest brought the 
 whole business ashore with them. Don t that sound 
 reasonable ? " 
 
 [76] 
 
The White Buoy Bobs Up 
 
 I nodded assent, though I was not much impressed 
 by the argument, as it seemed productive of nothing 
 that would bring my lost gold nearer to me. 
 
 Gus Clarke went on to say that the cabin where the 
 buoy was found had been occupied by an old man who 
 owned one of the little ferry-boats that plied across the 
 narrow Snake river. But the man had disappeared, 
 leaving nothing in the cabin but an old rusty camp 
 stove and a pair of worn-out overalls. The buoy, with 
 the rope wound carelessly around it, had been found 
 in a corner. Whether the ancient ferryman had any 
 thing to do with its presence there was not apparent. 
 I went with Gus Clarke to the ferryman s cabin, and we 
 poked about under the loose flooring and tore out some 
 of the lining in the effort to find something that might 
 give us a better clew. Our patient search was not re 
 warded. Inquiry among the miners of the Spit as to 
 the occupant of the cabin gave us nothing further to 
 work upon. At the ferry they told us that the old man 
 had been gone a week and that nobody had been living 
 in the cabin in the meantime. They had not seen any 
 one enter the place, though it would have been an easy 
 matter for a person to come and go in the night without 
 observation. 
 
 [77] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 It would have made an old detective smile to see 
 how I clung to that buoy, the one remaining object that 
 related to my lost treasure. During the whole of my 
 careful inquiry I came and went along the beach with 
 that white object closely hugged under my arm. To 
 ward evening, however, when I saw that no good could 
 come of carrying it about, I took it down to the lighter 
 man s station and handed it over to him. It was his 
 property, and I had sadly concluded that it would be of 
 more service to him than it could ever be to me. In 
 fact, in my hopeless state, I began to wish that it never 
 had marked the place where the treasure fell overboard. 
 For then the villains could not now be enjoying the 
 fortune with which I had counted upon doing; so much. 
 
 [78] 
 
VIII 
 
 A GLIMPSE OF THE POETICAL PIRATE 
 
 NOTHING came of my inquiries of the next day. I 
 walked over the tundra hummocks to Anvil Creek on a 
 wild-goose chase after a one-eyed man who had been 
 reported to be up that way. Tundra walking about 
 Nome is hard work. You step from one of the " nig 
 ger-heads," as the grass clumps are called, to another, 
 sometimes springing over awkward spaces of water 
 and mud, and on occasion losing the shaky and treach 
 erous foothold and being bogged down over your knees. 
 
 After making one of these slips I felt a prickly sensa 
 tion in one of my heels and soon found myself favoring 
 the left foot, though I had but a vague sense of lame 
 ness. I limped into camp at Anvil and found my one- 
 eyed man to be an innocent German who was shoveling 
 gravel into a sluice-box, unconscious of having been the 
 cause of the hard tramp of an amateur sleuth over the 
 boggy tundra. 
 
 I ate dinner there, telling no one of the reason of my 
 [79] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 visit to the camp, and limped back to Nome, a distance 
 of over ten miles. My heel and the back of my ankle 
 gave me such pain by the time I reached the Golden 
 North that I was glad to see the round, smiling face of 
 Doctor Quaritch above the supper-board. 
 
 " Lame ? " he asked, as I limped upstairs with him 
 after supper. "Let s see." 
 
 I took off my boot and stocking when we reached 
 our room, and he felt of the heel and ankle with gentle 
 fingers. 
 
 "Tendon Achilles strained, my boy. No wonder 
 you limped. You come aboard ship with me and I ll 
 fix you up. We sail to-night, you know. Wish you 
 were going with us." 
 
 We went off to the Modesto in the moonlight in the 
 steamer s boat, Doctor Quaritch, Yohara and I. I 
 was glad of an excuse to be with the Doctor as long as I 
 could, and to say " good-bye " to him at the last possible 
 moment, for I knew I should be very lonely when he 
 should be gone. Soon the hull of the big vessel lay 
 before us. 
 
 " She s pretty high out of water, isn t she ? " remarked 
 the Doctor. " We brought up a big cargo of machinery 
 and supplies for the miners, but there isn t anything 
 
 [80] 
 
A Glimpse of the Poetical Pirate 
 
 in the way of freight to go back, and I guess we won t 
 take on ballast until we get to Dutch Harbor. That s 
 on Unalaska, in the Aleutian Islands, where we get our 
 coal." 
 
 We went aboard the Modesto, and in his little state 
 room amidships the Doctor bathed my foot and wound 
 a long piece of sticky plaster band around the ankle 
 and under the heel, crossing it over the instep like one of 
 the sandal latches you see in pictures of ancient footgear. 
 
 "Be careful of that foot for a few days, John," he 
 cautioned, "and it will be all right. What s that? 
 Eight bells ? Well, we ll be pulling out of here in a 
 little while." 
 
 "Then I must get ashore," said I. We walked to 
 the ship s ladder and stood for a few moments looking 
 down on the dark little lighter as it rose and fell along 
 side. I was grieved to lose the Doctor, and as I looked 
 ashore to where the camp lay in the solemn moonlight, 
 it seemed more dismal to me than ever. 
 
 "Awfully sorry you can t come," said the Doctor, 
 taking my hand. " I don t see why you can t do it. I 
 don t think there s much chance of your ever getting 
 sight of those pirates again. They know what they re 
 up to. No doubt they ve made away safely by this 
 
 [81] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 time. Besides, you re lame. It won t do that foot any 
 good to be tramping about on it. If I were you " 
 
 "No," I interrupted, shortly and rudely, with strong 
 determination not to be tempted home until I had done 
 all I could do to find the lost treasure. "No, Doctor; 
 please don t ask me. I ve got to catch those thieves 
 I ve got to get that gold. I couldn t go home until I 
 had exhausted every chance there might be of success. 
 Not but that I should enjoy sailing home with you. 
 Nothing would suit me better. But under the circum 
 stances " 
 
 " All ashore ! " rang a vibrant voice. 
 
 I said " Good-bye," and turned to step down the lad 
 der, when the Doctor called out: 
 
 " Hold on a minute, John ! I m going to run down 
 and get another strip of that plaster for you, so you ll 
 have a fresh one to put on when this gets old." He 
 trotted away, and I stood leaning against the rail, look 
 ing incuriously at the passengers as they moved about 
 in the chill night air, some of them stamping their feet 
 and beating their arms against their sides to keep them 
 warm, for it had come on quite cold. Three or four 
 men went down the ladder at the ship s side and got 
 aboard the lighter. 
 
 [82] 
 
A Glimpse of the Poetical Pirate 
 
 Of a sudden a figure stole past me in the dim light 
 that of a man in a dark parka, the collar of which, being 
 turned high, muffled his face, while a bandage about 
 his forehead concealed his brow and shaded one eye. 
 The other eye, however, was clearly visible and flashed 
 brightly before me. 
 
 " Who is that man ? " I demanded of the nearest pas 
 senger, as the figure dodged back quickly and, as I 
 thought, furtively, into the crowd along the rail. 
 
 " What man ? " was the reply. 
 
 "The one with the bandage around his head." 
 
 " I don t know his name. I heard it was a feller at 
 got hurt in a blast over at Rock Creek. Miners takes 
 lots o chances, don t they?" 
 
 But I made no response. I was dazedly thinking of 
 that one bright eye. 
 
 " Is it he ? Is it he ? " I was asking myself over 
 and over, trying to help a vague impression to deepen 
 from doubt into certainty. " Is it Pete Slattery ? But 
 it can t be. He wouldn t venture aboard here where he 
 would be likely to be recognized unless he felt sure of 
 his disguise. But is it the man ? " 
 
 I was all in a whirl when the Doctor came running 
 back, breathing hard. 
 
 [83] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 (< All ashore ! " yelled the vibrant voice a second time. 
 
 " Well, good-bye ! " said the Doctor, seizing my hand 
 again. 
 
 What external intelligence I possessed was merged 
 into a mute hand-grip. But all my real consciousness 
 was concentrated upon the fleeting and baffling vision 
 of that burning eye. 
 
 " Good-bye," I said, with intense preoccupation, and 
 stood stock-still. 
 
 "There s nothing the matter with you, is there, 
 John ? " asked the Doctor. " You aren t ill, are you ? " 
 
 "No," said I; "I m all right. Good-bye!" I 
 seized his hand again in my confused abstraction. 
 " Good-bye ! " I repeated, and yet I did not move. 
 
 "All ashore!" 
 
 " Can it be can it be the man ? " I was struggling 
 with the uncertainty of the impression, commanding it 
 and yielding to it by turns. 
 
 "Ain t yeh comin ashore, young feller?" called out 
 the lighterman from below. "If yeh be, yeh d better 
 git a move on." 
 
 I limped down the steps to the lighter s deck, and 
 stood near the bottom stair when one of the lines was 
 cast off. The tugboat whistled shrilly. A man ran to 
 
 [84] 
 
A Glimpse of the Poetical Pirate 
 
 loosen the last line, and while he was doing so and the 
 space between the flatboat and the steamer had grown 
 a few inches, my vague, harassing doubt flashed into 
 sudden conviction, and, giving myself up to a wild im 
 pulse, I sprang at the steps, grasped the side rails and 
 drew myself up over the hazardous, widening water- 
 space. 
 
 " What s the matter ? " called an angry voice from 
 the lighter. " Don t yeh know which way ye re goin ? " 
 
 " What s the matter ? " echoed the Doctor, as I sprang 
 upon the steamer s deck. 
 
 " Matter ? " I repeated, not caring to confide my secret 
 to any who might be within earshot. "Matter? 
 Nothing s the matter, only I take back all those good 
 byes. I m going to sail with you." 
 
 " Good ! " cried the Doctor, almost embracing me. 
 " Mighty glad to hear it." 
 
 "Up with the ladder!" commanded the first officer. 
 
 I looked down at the lighter as she drifted away, her 
 tug chugging harshly in the quiet night air and her men 
 calling out rude farewells to their friends aboard. 
 
 A hoarse, deep-toned whistle boomed out over the 
 steamer s deck. There was a gathering groan of 
 machinery and a throb throb throbbing down 
 
 [85] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 below. By a strange and sudden turn of fortune there 
 I was on my way to San Francisco, in the same craft 
 with the man or, at least, one of the men by whose 
 agency such harsh vicissitudes had been visited upon 
 me. Off for San Francisco, as I had set forth before, 
 and now under what different and bewildering circum 
 stances ! But here at last was hope. One of the pirates 
 and, perhaps, another was within reach. Well, 
 they should not escape me. And the gold ? My spirits 
 rose, my senses were all subtly alert. If they had 
 brought it aboard it should not long remain in their 
 thievish hands. I should have it again and sail back 
 with it to my anxious father sail back in that very 
 ship every throb of whose giant heart was saying, 
 " Home home home ! " 
 
 I took Doctor Quaritch aside and told him the true 
 reason why I had so suddenly decided to stay aboard 
 the Modesto. 
 
 " Great Scott ! " he exclaimed, lifting his eybrows in 
 astonishment. Then he whistled low. "But you 
 must be dreaming," he added. "The man wouldn t 
 have dared. Well, yes; he might have disguised him 
 self and come aboard in a small boat, but not on the 
 lighter, for it was well watched. We must look into 
 
 [86] 
 
A Glimpse of the Poetical Pirate 
 
 this at once. I ll tell Captain Head." He started up. 
 Then he sat down again. " We musn t be in too great 
 a hurry," he said. "Let s think. Suppose we begin 
 a little investigation on our own account. I ll go and 
 see the purser. You d better come, too. You ll want 
 to arrange for your passage. I have an extra berth in 
 my stateroom. Better come in with me. You might 
 fall into bad company," he said, his blue eyes twinkling. 
 "And, seriously speaking, you can t tell what trouble 
 you may have if your piratical Pete Slattery is really 
 on board." 
 
 "Thank you, Doctor; I ll be glad to accept your 
 offer," said I, "and my baggage won t clutter up your 
 room, for I haven t any." 
 
 We went to the purser s cabin, and as that functionary 
 and the Doctor were on the best of terms, there was no 
 trouble in finding out all that was to be ascertained re 
 garding Pete Slattery in that quarter. Of course the 
 name was not on the passenger list, and, so far as the 
 purser knew, there was no one-eyed man on board. 
 
 "To be sure I haven t had time to make any close 
 observation as yet," said the purser, smiling, "but I 
 can go around with you in the morning on pretense of 
 examining berth-checks, or something, and look over 
 
 [87] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 the first-class passengers. There aren t more than a 
 couple of dozen. Your man will probably keep close 
 to his room and pretend seasickness, so as not to show 
 himself any more than is necessary." 
 
 "But he s disguised," said I. 
 
 " That may be," said the purser, " but if he s aboard, 
 you can find him out somewhere." 
 
 "He probably doesn t know you re on the ship," 
 said the Doctor to me. "The cold air out on deck 
 drove nearly all of em in before the lighter got away, 
 and, besides, your man was doubtless anxious to get out 
 of sight. He will not be expecting to see you aboard, 
 and in a day or two will be less anxious about conceal 
 ing himself." 
 
 That night, as I lay in my narrow berth in the Doc 
 tor s stateroom, I thought of Gus Clarke and the Com 
 mittee of Safety and also of Captain Walker. I won 
 dered what they would think of my disappearance. I 
 determined to write to them as soon as I reached San 
 Francisco and let them know I was still alive. 
 
 I was up and out early in the morning, looking for 
 Pete Slattery and his companion. I lingered in the 
 saloon and in the smoking-room, and out on deck, peer 
 ing about eagerly. Before nine o clock I had seen all 
 
 [88] 
 
A Glimpse of the Poetical Pirate 
 
 but four of the cabin passengers, and there was no one- 
 eyed man among them. 
 
 At ten o clock the purser went with me into some of 
 the staterooms, and I had an opportunity of seeing sea 
 sickness in various stages, but caught no glimpse of the 
 man for whom I was so eagerly searching. 
 
 "They couldn t have taken first-class passage," said 
 the purser, as we sat in the Doctor s stuffy stateroom. 
 
 " Well, it s not likely they d travel in the steerage," 
 surmised the Doctor, "with all that gold in their pos 
 session." 
 
 "No, it isn t," said the purser, "but you can t tell. 
 Maybe they thought they could put up with the steer 
 age a couple of weeks for the sake of keeping out of 
 sight as much as possible." 
 
 "Their names wouldn t appear on the steerage list," 
 remarked the Doctor. " For of course they have taken 
 false ones if they re on board at all, which I m not 
 so sure of; for this young gentleman caught only a 
 glimpse of his man, and might easily have been mis 
 taken." 
 
 "No," I insisted stoutly. "I am sure it was he. I 
 have fixed his eye in my mind. There can t be any mis 
 take. He s the man, and I m going to find him before 
 
 [89] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 we get to San Francisco, if I have to search this ship 
 all over." 
 
 "That s the way to talk," said the Doctor, smiling. 
 But I could see that he was only half convinced after all. 
 
 [90] 
 
IX 
 
 IN THE STEERAGE 
 
 r 
 
 PROFESSIONAL duty called the Doctor to the steerage 
 during the afternoon, and I went down with him to 
 look about for the gold-thieves. I had already seen 
 most of the steerage passengers. There were about 
 fifty of them, chiefly men who were going home 
 " strapped " and dejected after their profitless journey 
 to the Arctic. They had used up the last of their 
 " grub-stakes " and were barely able to secure the poor 
 est return passage. 
 
 I had seen those men on the forward deck, where 
 they huddled together, with their hands in their pockets, 
 looking over the flashing brine with spiritless gaze 
 the most depressed set of men I had ever looked upon. 
 But Slattery had not shown himself on deck. He was 
 probably lurking somewhere below. I had thought 
 that the finding of him and his pink-faced companion 
 might prove a difficult task, as they could have stowed 
 themselves away so securely somewhere in the vessel s 
 
 [91] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 hold as to escape all the prying eyes that might be 
 searching for them. 
 
 But when Doctor Quaritch and I went down into 
 the steerage, and I sat aft near the starboard corner, 
 while the Doctor made an examination of his patient, I 
 looked into the dimly lighted angle, and there, at a 
 table, playing at cribbage and smoking their pipes, 
 sat Pete Slattery and the little pink-faced man, as cool 
 as you please. 
 
 The poet still had his head bandaged in a way to 
 conceal his blind eye, but the pink-faced man had made 
 no attempt to disguise himself, probably relying upon 
 the fact that he was unknown to the miners aboard the 
 vessel. 
 
 Without the long parka and its high collar, which he 
 had worn the previous night, it was easy for me to 
 recognize the form and the face of Slattery, and I won 
 dered if he really had thought of deceiving people by 
 his attempt to conceal the loss of his eye. It might 
 have been the bandage was merely intended to aid the 
 poet in getting aboard in the night, when he had thought 
 that any sort of disguise, however slight, might safely 
 be relied upon. Once aboard and settled down in the 
 steerage it may have been that he was a little more care- 
 
 [92] 
 
In the Steerage 
 
 less as to his identity being discovered. He must have 
 deemed it reasonably certain that no one aboard the 
 Modesto would take as much interest in him as the sol 
 diers and the Committee of Safety who were on the 
 lookout for him ashore. But to find me aboard must 
 have been something of a surprise. It occurred to me, 
 as I stole cautious glances at him, that he could not 
 fear me so much in the ship as in the mining camp, 
 where the crime of dust-robbing was one of the most 
 heinous a man might commit, and was often punished 
 most severely, even on the slightest evidence against 
 the supposed offender. 
 
 As soon as the Doctor was done with his patient, I 
 hastened to apprise him of my discovery. He 
 glanced at the men and then looked away. 
 
 " Don t let them see you paying so much attention to 
 them," said he, "or they will take alarm. They may 
 not know that you really suspect them. If you can 
 throw them off their guard it will be better. And re 
 member you have no proof that they stole your 
 gold." 
 
 I saw the force of this counsel, although my fingers 
 were tingling to seize upon the slim neck of Pete Slat- 
 tery and choke out of him a confession of the robbery 
 
 [93] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 and the whereabouts of the stolen treasure. It now 
 seemed to me doubtful that the rascals could have 
 brought the gold aboard. They might have exchanged 
 it for paper money, in which case I should have little 
 chance of recognizing it, after all. 
 
 The Doctor and I sauntered along the steerage deck, 
 and on nearing the corner where the card-players sat I 
 stepped casually up to them and gave what I intended 
 for an incurious glance at the one-eyed man. He did 
 not see me for a moment, for his good eye was on the 
 further side. His partner, however, was quicker to 
 note my presence. He started and dropped some of 
 his cards on the floor. He gave a slight cough, and 
 Pete Slattery s one eye looked straight at me and with 
 as little trepidation as you could imagine. He must 
 have seen at a glance my look of full recognition. Yes, 
 he certainly was a cool customer the coolest I ever 
 have seen in all my journeyings. 
 
 "So you changed your mind," he remarked, with a 
 smile and an offhand tone that I thought would have 
 been the despair of a professional detective, though I 
 must admit that a smile that lacks an eye is a poor 
 affair and not in the least assuring. "You didn t sail 
 in the Flying Mist., after all. You changed your mind/* 
 
 [94] 
 
In the Steerage 
 
 "Yes," I replied, finding it extremely difficult to be 
 civil to the villain, though it were the better policy for 
 the time ; " and you changed yours, too, didn t you 
 you and your friend ? " 
 
 "Oh, did you think we were going to sail in that 
 crazy little craft? No, sir-ee; we hadn t the slightest 
 notion of it. We waited ashore until the Modesto was 
 ready to sail. I wrote three poems while I was waiting. 
 Want to hear them? One is entitled The Alaskan 
 Moon. It is the best." 
 
 " Why are you wearing that bandage ? " I asked. 
 
 "Oh, I caught cold, and it settled here," he replied, 
 tapping the cloth over the place where his lost eye had 
 been. 
 
 He fumbled in the inside pocket of his coat and pro 
 duced some little dirty-white pieces of paper, covered 
 with pencil scrawls. 
 
 Meanwhile, the pink-faced man regained his com 
 posure enough to say, by way of explanation : 
 
 " Why, even if we had intended to do it, we couldn t 
 have gone in the Flying Mist anyway." 
 
 " Why not ? " I asked, all on the alert. " She wasn t 
 crowded." 
 
 " I know that, but you see people has to have money 
 [95] 
 
The Lure o> Gold 
 
 to sail in her all first-class passengers. Here we git 
 steerage." 
 
 "Which is cheaper," put in the poet, "and more 
 suitable to the circumstances of poor, stranded 
 miners." 
 
 " So you were stranded ? " I asked. 
 
 " Yes. I had to apply to a friend of mine to buy our 
 passage tickets for the Modesto." 
 
 "But your friend Bill," I could not help throwing 
 out. " He sailed in the Flying Mist, didn t he ? " 
 
 " Bill ? " The single eye burned keenly, as if it 
 could look me through. "What bill hotel bill?" 
 he added, trying by this cheap pleasantry to overcome 
 the effect which he must have felt his stabbing eye made 
 upon me. "I do not know what or who you have 
 reference to, my friend. But here s my poem, The 
 Alaskan Moon. May be you and your partner would 
 like to hear it." 
 
 I hesitated. I was burning with impatience to do 
 something that should force these pirates to the point 
 which I wished to have settled as soon as possible, and 
 was in no mood to hear his cheap doggerel. 
 
 "Yes, read it," said the Doctor, who, as I after 
 ward understood, seized this opportunity to gain time 
 
 [*] 
 
BILL 
 
In the Steerage 
 
 to study the rogues. " The Alaskan Moon. That 
 ought to be a bright subject for a poem." 
 
 " Well, sir," said the poet, addressing the Doctor in 
 very humble tones. "If you will excuse the faulty 
 rhymes. You know I just dashed off this little piece 
 and haven t taken time to fix it up as it should be." 
 
 He read the verses. There was a long string of 
 them, and to me they were very tiresome; but the Doc 
 tor did not seem to be bored. In fact, he commented 
 on the sentiment quite pleasantly. 
 
 " Ain t that all right ?" asked the pink-faced man, 
 addressing the Doctor, whose smile of encouragement 
 seemed to reassure him. 
 
 " Why, the idea is good," replied the Doctor, good- 
 naturedly. " I m not saying anything about the poetry, 
 mind you, for I m no judge of that. But the idea of 
 the moon getting its cold glitter from the northern ice 
 fields is all right." 
 
 " I thought it was pretty fair," said the poet, proudly, 
 "though not as good as some I ve written. I m glad 
 you like it. Appreciation is what a poet needs, you 
 know. Many a poet has suffered for the want of it." 
 
 " That s so," said the Doctor, with a side glance at me. 
 " That s so. And it s true of a good many other things 
 
 [97] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 besides poetry. How did you come to be stranded at 
 Nome?" 
 
 "Oh, the beach claims was all taken up," said the 
 pink-faced man, replying for his partner, " and we 
 didn t have no money to buy anybody out." 
 
 "Well, there were the tundra and the creeks," sug 
 gested the Doctor. 
 
 " Yes," said the poet, " but it takes capital to work on 
 the creeks, and the tundra is very uncertain. We 
 could not afford to buy the costly machinery to thaw 
 out the ice, and all that. But we may return. We re 
 going below to try to raise money, you know." 
 
 " And, meantime, all you can do is to play cards and 
 write poetry," remarked the Doctor, with a smile of 
 good-fellowship that incensed me, so ill applied did it 
 seem in this place. 
 
 " Yes, I ve got two or three pieces started. May be 
 I can sell em when I get below, and raise a little money 
 that way. Don t you think The Alaskan Moon 
 would go well, set to music ? " He reproduced the dirty- 
 white sheets and seemed anxious to read the jingle again. 
 
 "It might," said the Doctor, moving off. "Good- 
 day, gentlemen. I must go and see a patient on the 
 upper deck." 
 
 [98] 
 
In the Steerage 
 
 We passed along out of the steerage, the Doctor 
 quietly alluding to the poem in a way that would have 
 been very amusing to me at another time. As to the 
 meter, he remarked, when we were out of hearing of 
 the poet, "I m afraid some of the feet need plaster 
 bands on them, like the one you are wearing. How is 
 your foot to-day, John ? " 
 
 I could hardly reply decently. I was out of patience 
 with my friend that he should have been able so calmly 
 to placate the rascals and then walk away discussing 
 matters other than the one that touched me so closely. 
 
 "Well," he replied at last, when on reaching his 
 stateroom I asked what he thought of the situation. 
 "It looks involved, my boy. Your poetical pirate is 
 either very deep or very harmless, I can t tell which. 
 On a superficial examination, I should diagnose his 
 case as that of a worthless bummer, a cheap wit and a 
 very bad verse-maker. I suspect that there is a twist 
 somewhere in his mental processes. Whether he is 
 really a thief or not, and the thief that helped to make 
 away with your gold that s another matter." 
 
 "But, Doctor," I began, much annoyed by his cool 
 ness, " I m sure " 
 
 "You are no more sure that those men stole your 
 [99] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 dust than you are of the depth of the water immediately 
 under you, or of your precise latitude and longitude. 
 But we may be able to get some sort of assurance of 
 their connection with the robbery, though you must 
 admit it barely stands to reason that men of that ilk 
 would be in the steerage, smoking cheap tobacco, when 
 they could be in the best stateroom, smoking two-bit 
 cigars. You ll have to hold yourself in, my boy 
 hold yourself in, and lie low and watch very cautiously. 
 Something may turn up before we reach the Golden 
 Gate." 
 
 I ascertained from the purser that the poet and his 
 partner had taken passage under the names of J. R. 
 Trust and George Somers. It seemed to me that the 
 name of Trust had been chosen by Pete Slattery to 
 inspire confidence in the minds of those whom he might 
 meet aboard and to offset the sinister appearance of 
 his evil eye. 
 
 [100] 
 
X 
 
 A HEAVY TRUNK 
 
 HAVING the run of the ship, because of my intimate 
 friendship with the Doctor, there was hardly any ac 
 cessible place aboard that I did not venture into or 
 upon. I liked well to stand upon the bridge in the 
 clear, white sunlight, and look across the waste of 
 white, tumbling waters, and smell the good, clean salt 
 smell of the sea. 
 
 No water is so blue as that of the Bering. It is of 
 that intense azure that makes the wave-tips seem whiter 
 than on other seas, and it lends to the sky an extra tint 
 of its own color. 
 
 And I loved the dark waters of the night, when the 
 phosphorescent gleams against the steamer s side 
 shone out against the white foam, and the moon-path 
 lay along the sea. It was then that Yohara, who served 
 as a pantry-boy aboard ship, would come on deck by 
 invitation of the Doctor, to whom he owed his position, 
 and for whom he served as porter ashore. The little 
 [101] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 Jap would sing the weirdest songs "night poems," 
 he called them greatl} .to the entertainment of the 
 passengers. Dressed in his native garb, he would do a 
 sort of grand opera performance in Japanese all by him 
 self, flourishing a wooden sword which he would pull 
 out and thrust into his belt, clasping the handle while 
 he recited poems which he afterward interpreted in his 
 queer English. 
 
 Those first days of the voyage were calm enough, 
 and I should greatly have enjoyed the being abroad 
 on the early autumn seas, where the air was brisk and 
 not cold, and where no hint of the fogs and mists that 
 often prevail in those latitudes obscured the vision 
 which could reach afar. But the thoughts of my lost 
 treasure and of how to recover it were almost constantly 
 in my mind. It harried me sadly to think that nothing 
 was being done toward the positive detection of the 
 guilt of the men who called themselves Somers and 
 Trust. I felt like going to Trust, telling him that I 
 knew his real name, charging him with having stolen 
 my gold, and demanding the restoration of it. But 
 whenever I hinted at any action of this sort to the Doc 
 tor he was ready with his cool caution of awaiting the 
 turn of events. 
 
 [102] 
 
A Heavy Trunk 
 
 I paid several visits to the steerage, and once, when I 
 was in the corner by the bunk of Somers and Trust, I 
 observed nobody about. The two worthies had doubt 
 less gone on deck, and the coast was clear for an in 
 spection of their luggage. This consisted of four 
 pieces three satchels, a telescope basket and a small, 
 trunk. I lifted each of the satchels and the basket to 
 test its weight. None of them was very heavy. Then 
 I looked closely at the trunk in the dim light. It was 
 of leather, but not covered with canvas as such trunks 
 are usually encased. Besides the ordinary straps it 
 had running about it, crosswise and endwise, a small, 
 strong chain, secured by a heavy brass padlock. This 
 lock was in addition to the regular trunk lock, which 
 seemed strong enough for common purposes. On one 
 end of the trunk was painted in black, " J. R. Trust, 
 San Francisco." I looked at the lettering carefully. 
 Though the trunk was rather an old one, the lettering 
 seemed strangely new. 
 
 If this strongly fastened and evidently precious piece 
 of luggage belonged to Pete Slattery, alias "J. R. 
 Trust," it certainly had not been long in his possession. 
 He had probably purchased it just before leaving Nome. 
 One question burned strongly within me: Did it con- 
 [103] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 tain my gold ? I bent over the trunk, seized it by the 
 handle nearest me and was about to test its weight 
 in fact, I did give a stout tug, which, however, did not 
 raise it from the steerage floor when I heard footsteps 
 approaching me, and, straightening up immediately, 
 I stared into the faces of Messrs. Trust and Somers. 
 
 Always the more nervous of the two, Somers seemed 
 harshly to resent my intrusion, and I thought that 
 Trust s one eye gleamed with momentary malevolence, 
 but he became at once friendly enough. 
 
 "Oh, it s you, Mr. Morning!" he remarked very 
 blandly. "Did you come down to hear that poem of 
 mine on the Humpbacked Whale ? I ve got the last 
 verse done, you know. It ain t quite so comic as I 
 thought I d make it. In fact, it s a little sad towards 
 the end, where the whale loses his lady-love." 
 
 "Read it," said I, remembering the Doctor s for 
 bearance under a similar infliction, and calming my 
 self as best I could in my flustered state. 
 
 He read the miserable doggerel, at the end of which, 
 seeing that something was expected of me by way of 
 appreciation of the rhymes which he had ventured to 
 call comic, I laughed, though I could not have told 
 whether the thing was amusing or otherwise. 
 [104] 
 
A Heavy Trunk 
 
 "You find it funny, after all," remarked Trust. 
 "Well, perhaps it is. Ah, here s Fishley." 
 
 A stubby, sailor-looking fellow, with a singularly 
 sour face and greenish eyes, whom I had had pointed 
 out to me as the third officer, came forward. 
 
 "Mr. Morning," said Trust, "let me introduce my 
 friend, Mr. Max Fishley." 
 
 The third mate held out a stumpy paw, on the wrist 
 of which was a blue-and-red lady, with long hair, prob 
 ably intended for a mermaid. 
 
 "Glad to know you, Mr. Morning," he said, in a 
 voice that seemed not at all pleased. 
 
 I had seen Fishley with Trust and Somers two or 
 three times before on the forward deck. It had seemed 
 to me that they had become very friendly on short ac 
 quaintance, though that is nothing remarkable aboard 
 a steamer, and particularly one like the Modesto, where 
 there appeared to be a certain laxity of discipline, which 
 even my unaccustomed eye did not fail to detect. 
 
 " Want to hear the Humpbacked Whale ? " asked 
 the poet of the third officer. 
 
 "Yeh-ah," was the reply. "It s a new one, ain t 
 it?" 
 
 " Composed last night," said the poet, musingly, 
 [105] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 "while I was tossing on the bosom of the deep and 
 wholly unable to sleep." 
 
 " He rhymes nat ral, don t he ? " said Somers, with 
 evident pride in his friend s poesy. "Jest as nat ral." 
 
 Trust read the verses again. At the conclusion of 
 the reading Max Fishley shook his head. 
 
 "I don t like them sad pieces," he said. "You 
 oughter make it end different." 
 
 " There you are," said the poet. " One laughs and 
 the other weeps. That s the way of it. You never 
 can tell how poetry will affect people." 
 
 I did not stay long in the steerage, but bustled away 
 to tell the Doctor what I had learned. I was disap 
 pointed when I heard him say: 
 
 "Oh, you can t tell anything about that. They rig 
 up their baggage all kinds of ways. Trust may have 
 bought the trunk with the chain on it from some poor, 
 stranded gold-seeker who had taken it up with that 
 rig, thinking to bring it home full of dust." 
 
 "That may be," said I, "but the trunk is only a 
 small one, about so high, and it s heavy as lead. I gave 
 one end of it a jerk just as those chaps returned. It s 
 awfully heavy." 
 
 " Is that so ? " said the Doctor, changing his tune a 
 [106] 
 
A Heavy Trunk 
 
 little. " Well, of course there might be gold in it ; but 
 you only lifted one end, and not fairly even then. So 
 you don t know as to the weight of it. A well-packed 
 trunk is a deceitful thing when it comes to guessing at 
 its weight. This one may be filled with some gaming 
 machines belonging to your poet. He s a gambler, 
 you know. Or may be some of the other man s mining 
 apparatus is in it. You take a gold retort, and scales 
 and pans and things like that, and they weigh, you 
 know." 
 
 " But couldn t we have the trunk searched ? The 
 Captain could order it done, couldn t he ? " 
 
 "Yes, if there was any charge against the men, I 
 think he might, though I m not certain. We ought to 
 be a little surer of what we are doing. I m afraid you re 
 letting your suspicions run away with you." 
 
 " But if we search the trunk we might get the proof," 
 I insisted. " Nothing could be better proof than find 
 ing the gold there." 
 
 The Doctor smiled. 
 
 "Of course, said he. "Nothing could be better 
 
 proof. But I m sure the Captain would rather wait 
 
 until we get to San Francisco. Then the search could 
 
 be made officially and by the proper authorities. Still, 
 
 [107] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 if you insist, we ll search it. I know a way that it could 
 be done without our being much committed." 
 
 " Shall we do it right away ? " I asked. " Don t you 
 think it would be better to search it right away ? " 
 
 " Not while they re down there watching it, for sup 
 pose we don t find any gold in it. That would be a 
 little awkward. Better wait our chance. You hang 
 around in the steerage as much as you can and watch 
 them and the trunk. On the first opportunity, when 
 they re on deck and out of the way, we ll go down there 
 with Mr. Nason, the first officer, and I guess a good 
 big bunch of keys will settle the question of what s in 
 that trunk in short order, unless the lock is a peculiar 
 one. But I shouldn t like to break it open, until we 
 know a little more. I have seen the folly of hasty 
 actions of that sort. We might get into some scrape. 
 You see, when it comes to ransacking other people s 
 property the same rule holds good on the sea as on the 
 land. Better be a little cautious, my boy, and go 
 slow." 
 
 I did not fancy the delay. I was all for going down 
 and seizing upon the trunk then and there, but I con 
 sented to the Doctor s plan, and watched and waited 
 about. But Somers and Trust did not seem much in- 
 
 [108] 
 
A Heavy Trunk 
 
 clined to take the air together. If Trust went up on 
 deck, Somers stayed below, and when Somers wanted 
 to relieve his nose of the steerage stinks, Trust would 
 remain, as I fancied, on watch. 
 
 My silent comings and goings in the poorly lighted 
 steerage seemed barely to be observed by the two men. 
 Sometimes Somers, when he caught sight of me, ap 
 peared a bit suspicious, but Trust was always bland 
 and affable, greeting me cordially. Being the deeper 
 rogue of the two, he was, as I saw him, better capable 
 of dissembling any anxiety he might have felt because 
 of my visits. I came to understand that, if I were to 
 gain anything by my vigilance, I must be more alert 
 and less conspicuous. 
 
 [109] 
 
XI 
 
 THE BULKHEAD DOOR 
 
 r 
 
 So one evening, after I had paid the suspected men a 
 visit, I bade them an impressive good-night and made 
 rather a noisy exit from the corner where their bunks 
 were situated. Having reached the middle of the steer 
 age, I took off my shoes and slipped quietly back to a 
 place near the pirates corner where I had seen an empty 
 berth. Into this I dropped, pulling the bed-clothing 
 closely up about me, not without some natural repug 
 nance, to be sure, although the sheets were evidently 
 clean enough. With the end of the upper sheet pulled 
 well over my head, I could lie and peep out toward the 
 place where Trust and Somers were quartered. I 
 could hear their voices droning over their interminable 
 cribbage, and could smell the tobacco smoke as it was 
 wafted down the steerage. 
 
 The rolling motion of the old Modesto had been in 
 creasing for some hours, and I could hear the waves 
 thumping hard along her bows. Occasionally there 
 
 [110] 
 
The Bulkhead Door 
 
 would be a hard swash, and in the intervals the wind 
 piped shrilly up above. The warm air down below, 
 with the buzzing of the voices and the heavy roll of the 
 vessel, in what seemed to my vague and lassid sense to 
 be a gathering storm, must have had a drowsy effect 
 upon me, for I found myself fighting sleep as I had 
 never fought it before. Remember, I had had many 
 wakeful nights up to the time of coming aboard, and 
 even yet I had not been getting more than half of my 
 share of sleep. 
 
 I dozed, and awoke to the sound of a hearty laugh 
 from somewhere forward. Then there came the wheezy 
 notes of an accordion. Two or three times a great 
 swash, harder than the others, would break through 
 my dozing state, and I would start up and look back at 
 the pirates corner and listen. But I did not hear any 
 thing but the whistling of the rising gale, which, strange 
 to say, helped me back to slumber, although my will 
 was all against it. 
 
 I must have slept a couple of hours when I felt a 
 cold draught of air floating over my bed. Some one 
 down the aisle of bunks sneezed, and there came a 
 cough or two. And then there was the banging of a 
 door aft and the draught was suddenly shut off. 
 
 [in] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 I got out of my berth and stole back to the corner of 
 Somers and Trust, and peered about in the half dark 
 ness, but could not see or hear anything of them. They 
 were not there. Again I heard the banging of the door. 
 This was an unusual sound, and could come from but 
 one of two quarters in the after part of the steerage. 
 The banging must have been caused by the port or 
 starboard bulkhead door, which was no doubt open. 
 I had taken careful note of the internal arrangements 
 of the steerage, and I was sure my conclusion was cor 
 rect. I passed to the nearer of the two doors, the one 
 on the starboard side, which, as the Doctor had told me, 
 led into one of the steerage wings. As I neared the 
 door I could hear a curious hollow sound, which I had 
 not heard before, and it seemed that I could more dis 
 tinctly note the effect of the heavy sea upon the steamer. 
 
 For a time I stood and listened to these and to certain 
 strange sounds coming from the after part of the vessel. 
 It was evident to me that some one had opened the 
 door to the steerage wing and had left it open, and that 
 the motion of the ship was swinging it back and forth. 
 
 I struck a match, and saw that this was really the 
 case. The heavy iron door of the bulkhead at the end 
 of the steerage way was ajar, the dogs and bolts having 
 [112] 
 
The Bulkhead Door 
 
 been drawn, and the big padlocked bar that I had often 
 noticed there was slipped aside. 
 
 I had been curious about the construction of the 
 steamer, and the Doctor, who was quite familiar with 
 such matters, had told me much about her, so that I 
 knew that behind that bulkhead door was the wing in 
 which were the coal bunkers, and that after this was 
 the main freight-hold between decks. 
 
 I struck another match and glanced about at the 
 empty berths of Somers and Trust. I looked at the 
 trunk, which stood near by, and, as it no doubt still 
 remained locked, I peered about for something with 
 which I might smash in its top and get my gold. Luckily 
 for me, as it chanced, I could find nothing to serve as a 
 tool for that purpose. I struck match after match, and 
 looked carefully at the trunk. One detail I noticed 
 the brass chain had been slipped off the cover and was 
 lying to one side, the hasp of the padlock being opened 
 and the key being in the lock. But when I tried to 
 open the trunk I found it securely fastened. It oc 
 curred to me to lift it again, and, taking hold of a side 
 handle, I raised one end quite easily. Whatever the 
 weight was that had made the trunk so heavy before, 
 it was not there now. 
 
 [113] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 In that moment I made sure in my own mind that my 
 gold had been in the trunk and that it had just been re 
 moved. If not, then why the loosely lying chain with 
 its open padlock? Why the midnight movements of 
 the men from the deserted berths ? Why the open door 
 of the steerage wing ? 
 
 I was full of the sensations of the discovery and madly 
 eager to ascertain more to find out where my gold 
 had been taken. The pirates, I was satisfied, had re 
 moved the gold from the trunk and were hiding it some 
 where aft, either in the steerage wing or in the freight- 
 hold beyond. 
 
 Not recking what I did or for a moment fully sensing 
 the fact that I was alone and unarmed, I tiptoed quietly 
 through the bulkhead doorway, and along the dark, 
 narrow wing, by the great coal bunkers, pausing from 
 time to time and listening. As I passed aft I could 
 hear more plainly the curious noises which I have 
 spoken of before. They came more harshly to my 
 ears, but were as mysterious as ever. 
 
 I found that the door at the after end of the long 
 
 wing was closed, but soon perceived that it was merely 
 
 held in place by a block of wood on the other side, for 
 
 the bolts and dogs were all drawn. When I pushed 
 
 [114] 
 
The Bulkhead Door 
 
 upon the door it yielded gently, and I passed into the 
 dark and chilly air of the great empty space between 
 decks, blank darkness all about me. It seemed to me 
 that I was now nearer the sea, or at least could more 
 distinctly note its effect upon the vessel. As the ship 
 rolled violently to one side, I heard strange swishing, 
 crackling and crashing sounds proceeding from the 
 after part of the vessel, down below somewhere. These 
 sounds were so loud, so strange and so startling as to 
 make me leap in fright the first time I heard them. 
 When the ship heaved over on the other side there was 
 a repetition of the racket swis-s-s-s-h ! rus-s-s-sh ! 
 crash-s-h ! mingled with a low roll and hubbub that 
 frightened me more than ever. In the lulls between 
 these uproarious and half-deafening noises I heard 
 certain grating sounds coming from the after part of 
 the vessel down below. These gratings were scarcely 
 audible above the fierce swishes and crashes, but they 
 finally came to me as the sound of a saw. The order 
 of these noises came at last to be almost regular in suc 
 cession: First, there would be the long-drawn swish 
 and rush, followed by the violent crash, then the thin 
 grating of the saw, which would be drowned by the 
 thudding hubbub. 
 
 [115] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 When I had, to a certain degree, overcome my awe 
 of these mysterious sounds, I proceeded very cautiously, 
 feeling uncertain of my ground. Of a sudden I stood 
 before a great, softly lighted square that lay along the 
 freight-deck. I crept to the edge of the square, which 
 I knew must be the open hatchway running down to the 
 lower hold. I got down on my hands and knees, and 
 looked into the hold. Away aft I caught the flare of a 
 candle-light, but when I gazed strainedly down I could 
 see nothing that might have immediate reference to 
 human life, save some black shadows. These I watched 
 until I saw they were moving along toward me, with the 
 light. I rose and stood shivering in the damp, cold 
 place, uncertain what to do. Then, during a lull in the 
 other sounds, I heard a foot strike the lower round of 
 the hatchway ladder and a deep voice, which I recog 
 nized as that of Max Fishley, said : 
 
 "Well, it s safe enough now. Nobody would ever 
 think of looking for it there." 
 
 "That s right," I heard Trust say, "but how will we 
 take it ashore when we get into port ? " 
 
 "Oh, leave that to me," said the third mate. "I 
 know how to do that business up in shape. I ve smug 
 gled too much loot ashore to be bothered with a job 
 [116] 
 
The Bulkhead Door 
 
 like this. It s dead easy. Only you musn t be in too 
 big a hurry, and if we have to go into quarantine, 
 why - 
 
 " Quarantine ? " 
 
 "Well, you never can tell." 
 
 " But I m afraid you ll " began Somers, and the 
 rest I did not hear, for a terrible grinding noise came 
 from the after part of the steamer, mingled with a rip 
 ping whir. This ceased suddenly. 
 
 "Lord, how her screw is racin I" said the third 
 officer. "It s a nasty night. There s a high sea run- 
 nin an I guess Cap n will want me on deck. The 
 louty old porpoise is pilin on the watches pretty thick." 
 
 I heard the feet on the ladder rounds again, and 
 dodged back through the bulkhead door. With chat 
 tering teeth I ran along the wing, through the forward 
 doorway and out through the steerage upon deck. I 
 had to battle with a stiff wind, which nearly knocked 
 me off my feet, and I thanked my stars that my ankle 
 was strong enough to walk upon, though it was still 
 lame and a bit uncertain. 
 
 When I reached the Doctor s stateroom, my friend 
 was not in. I looked about for him and found him 
 with the Captain, on the forward deck by the quarter- 
 [117] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 master s house. My impulse was to run up to them 
 and tell them both of my discoveries then and there 
 to say that I suspected that my gold had been taken 
 from the steerage and hidden away somewhere in the 
 lower hold, and to charge the third officer with com 
 plicity in the matter. Of course, I did not know that 
 these were the facts, but I could not rest until some 
 thing should be done. I wanted the trunk broken open 
 at once, and if the gold were not in it of which I 
 now felt positive I wanted a search made of the 
 lower hold, where the treasure had probably been 
 secreted. 
 
 But as I reached the spot where the two officers 
 stood, my awe of the Captain, who represented to me 
 the monarch of our little world afloat, reasserted itself. 
 I probably should not have hesitated, however, had it 
 not been for the fact that he seemed in deep concern. 
 He would put up his night glass and peer anxiously 
 forward into the dun masses of clouds that were racing 
 down toward us, and then look at an instrument be 
 fore him and shake his head. 
 
 "Is it going to be much of a storm?" I heard the 
 Doctor ask as I stood near at hand, but as wholly unob 
 served as if I did not exist for them. 
 
 [118] 
 
The Bulkhead Door 
 
 There was no answer for a while, but alternate con 
 templation of the sky and of the instrument. 
 
 "The glass is falling pretty fast," the Captain said 
 at last, as if speaking to himself, " and I don t like the 
 looks of those clouds. There s dirt in em or I m a 
 Dutchman. I wouldn t care so much, only we stand 
 so high, without any freight or ballast, and we re being 
 driven away to the south of the Aleutian Islands." 
 
 "Is that so?" asked the Doctor, anxiously. "Then 
 we shan t make Dutch Harbor for several days." 
 
 " Not for a week, if this thing keeps up. I tell you, 
 Doc, I don t like it. There s dirt in that black mess 
 out there the rankest kind of dirt. You know, we re 
 pretty well north and it isn t exactly the right season 
 for it, either, but we ll be in the biggest kind of luck if 
 before to-morrow morning we ain t bucking a typhoon." 
 
 " But I thought " began the Doctor. 
 
 " I know what you thought that typhoons only 
 blow along the Chinese coast. That s right. But 
 storms get misplaced sometimes, just like other things; 
 and you know that where we are sailing now, away south 
 of the Aleutians, and driven over here by those east 
 winds, we re not so far from Chinese waters as you 
 think. Of course, it may not be a regular typhoon, 
 [119] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 and I wouldn t report it that way, because those smart 
 Alecks of the hydrographic office would have the laugh 
 on me. But if that black mess out there ain t a typhoon 
 it s the best imitation of one I ever saw. Hold on! 
 I m going to get Sing up here, and ask him what he 
 thinks of it." 
 
 He stepped aside and called down a pipe, coming 
 back after a minute to say to the Doctor: 
 
 "The trouble about these storms is they last so in 
 fernally long." 
 
 "And they re hot stuff, too," said the Doctor. "I d 
 hate to be out in a sailing vessel where you couldn t do a 
 thing but lay to and let it drive at you. Do you remem 
 ber the Albert Dcane? That was a terror, wasn t it? 
 She lay on her beam ends all one night and lost half her 
 crew. But of course nothing like that could happen to 
 the Modesto" 
 
 Sing, the Chinese cook, came on deck, his loose 
 white blouse and trousers ballooning in the wind. The 
 Oriental looked the picture of humility in the presence 
 of the master of the Modesto. 
 
 "Sing," said Captain Head, pointing to the dark 
 moving mass, " what you think of him ? You sawe 
 him?" 
 
 [120] 
 
The Bulkhead Door 
 
 "Oh, him tai-fung," said the Chinaman, quickly, 
 and with nervous awe. " Him no good makee ship 
 go chop-chop. Him makee tlee-piecee stick up thaia," 
 he said, pointing to the foremast. " Habee too muchee 
 plenty watah all ova deckee. Velly bad, velly bad ! " 
 
 "All right, Sing; you can go down. Now, what did 
 I tell you ? " said the Captain to the Doctor. " But of 
 course you can t report it that way. All you ve got to 
 do is to buck through it and get out alive, if you can." 
 
 " But the old Modesto " 
 
 " Oh, she s stanch enough I ain t afraid of that. 
 That isn t what I m worrying about, though she would 
 be better off if she sat snugger into the water. It s the 
 coal." 
 
 " What about the coal ? " 
 
 "Jim tells me there ain t enough, even of screenings 
 and scrapings, in his bunkers to run her four days 
 more." 
 
 "Whew!" whistled the Doctor. "How did that 
 happen ? " 
 
 " Well, you know them plaguey old owners what 
 
 drivers they are they thought it was better to fill her 
 
 up with high-priced freight for Nome, and take chances, 
 
 than it was to give us a show for our lives with a few 
 
 [121] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 more tons of coal. Thought I was a barnacled old 
 fool because I suggested that we leave out a little freight 
 and bring up something to run her with. That s the 
 way they are. They think that it s all like San Fran 
 cisco Bay up here, and that you can dodge in anywhere 
 and coal up. Wish I had Densmore and a couple 
 more of em up here, facing that ! " He pointed toward 
 the "black mess," as he called it, and gave a curious 
 laugh, in which there was not a spark of mirth. 
 
 The Captain aired his views on the subject of owners 
 while the wind scudded over the forward house and 
 buzzed in the stays, making noises that reminded me 
 of the sounds proceeding from paper-covered combs 
 at the lips of stout-breathed schoolboys. 
 
 Glancing about of a sudden, the Doctor spied me, 
 where I stood to the leeward of a big, staring ventilator, 
 uncertain of my right to break into this serious talk. 
 Although what I had heard about the storm was un 
 pleasant news, it did not destroy the scent of the ama 
 teur sleuth, and I was all for speedy action, whether 
 we floated or sank. 
 
 "Hullo, John!" said the Doctor, "shouldn t you be 
 in your berth ? " 
 
 " Yes," I replied. " I know it s late, but I want to 
 
The Bulkhead Door 
 
 tell you something, and the Captain may as well hear 
 it, too, for it concerns one of his officers." 
 
 I told them what I had seen and heard between- 
 decks. 
 
 The Captain was furious, but his fury had no refer 
 ence to my stolen treasure. 
 
 " Bulkhead doors open ! " he raged, " and in this gale ! 
 By the great horn spoon, I d like to know who did that 
 and what for! As if there wasn t enough to think of, 
 with a big storm thickening forward." He leaned over 
 and touched a bell. "I ll see what Mr. Fishley s got 
 to say about this. It s enough to make a preacher 
 curse. Bulkhead doors open at all hours of the night 
 and in a sea like this! " 
 
 The Doctor called me away. We went aft to the 
 stateroom, and there I rehearsed what I had learned. 
 He was deeply interested, though I could see he was 
 nervous about the storm and the other troubles aboard 
 ship. 
 
 "We ll go down in the morning and have a look at 
 that trunk," he said. " Mr. Nason will go with us and 
 we ll have his authority for opening it. I m sorry now 
 that we didn t search it before and all the rest of their 
 baggage; but to tell you the plain truth, my boy, I 
 [123] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 thought your suspicions about these two men were al 
 together too strong, considering what you had to go 
 upon. And nobody ever heard of such a thing as gold- 
 robbers in a steerage anyway. They were pretty slick 
 to play poverty, and cover up their robbery in that way." 
 
 I remarked, with some satisfaction, that the Captain 
 seemed to be rather angry about what his third officer 
 had done. 
 
 "Yes," said the Doctor, "but I m afraid that that 
 part of your story isn t going to stick. Fishley will 
 square himself with the Captain. He s a pretty smooth 
 article, is Fishley. Then, too, there is a chance of your 
 having been mistaken." 
 
 "Oh, yes," said I, "though I am about as sure of 
 what I have told you as I am of being aboard this 
 ship." 
 
 " Aural idiosyncrasies are something that have to be 
 allowed for, you know," was the reply. " There were 
 all kinds of noises down in that hold, according to your 
 report." 
 
 "Yes. What do you think those terrible crashing 
 and smashing sounds were down there ? " I asked. 
 
 "Let s see," meditated the Doctor. "What could 
 it have been ? " He thought for a moment. Then his 
 [124] 
 
The Bulkhead Door 
 
 face brightened into a smile. "Why, I ll bet a dollar 
 it s Stetson s bottles." 
 
 Stetson was the purser, but I had not heard of his 
 bottles before, so I looked inquiringly at the Doctor. 
 
 " You see, Mr. Stetson thought to make a little * spec 
 up at Nome. Everything is high there except empty 
 glass. He had a chance to get four thousand beer 
 bottles for half what they re worth in San Francisco, so 
 he bought the lot. They cost him about eighty dollars. 
 It wouldn t pay him to crate them at the prices they 
 were charging for such work, so he just had them laid 
 down in the lower hold, loose, not figuring on how we d 
 roll if a storm came up." 
 
 "That was it," said I. "Breaking beer bottles, 
 rolling about in a place like that, would have made pre 
 cisely the sounds I heard." 
 
 "I guess they ve all gone to smash," laughed the 
 Doctor. " You see, my boy, the folly of wild specula 
 tion. The purser has lost his eighty dollars, for there 
 won t be a whole bottle left when we get through this 
 storm, and he will have to pay extra to have the splin 
 tered glass swept and taken out of the hold. I hope 
 he began, and then broke off. " But of course it s all 
 right." 
 
 [125] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 " What s all right?" I asked. 
 
 " Well, you see, my boy, we ve got a dead man down 
 below in that same hold, and I don t think he s stowed 
 away very tight." 
 
 " A dead man ? " said I, raising my eyebrows. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I didn t know about that." 
 
 " Few people aboard do know about it. He and the 
 beer bottles are every ounce of freight we ve got aboard. 
 I hope his box won t get broken while we are pitching 
 about so. The men aboard this ship I mean the 
 crew are regular cranks for superstition, so the Cap 
 tain had to have that dead box made big and square 
 instead of long and narrow, to fool em. He smuggled 
 it aboard as reindeer skins; otherwise those foolish 
 galoots might have left the ship at Nome every 
 mother s son of em. They were bitten by the gold 
 fever, as it was, and some of em got away, but we made 
 up the number by stranded chaps picked up on the 
 beach." 
 
 "But Nome isn t exporting any reindeer skins," I 
 said, laughing. "Wouldn t the crew have suspected 
 the deception ? " 
 
 " Not they. They re a little dull about some things, 
 [126] 
 
The Bulkhead Door 
 
 though they re bright enough when it comes to handling 
 the steamer. But if that box should break open, you 
 couldn t get one of em to touch it for love or money." 
 
 Under ordinary circumstances I should have dreamt 
 of the dead man that night, and should have shivered 
 at the thought of him tossing about in the empty hold, 
 with the beer bottles smashing and crashing all about 
 him. But my thoughts were all of the gold, and of the 
 fact for it seemed to me assuredly a fact, after what 
 I had seen and heard that my precious dust was hid 
 den away down in the depths of the ship. All that need 
 be done now, so I fancied, was to make a careful 
 search for it, when it doubtless would be unearthed 
 and brought safely upon deck. 
 
 I planned that I should take the most scrupulously 
 watchful care of it this time, until it should be safely 
 deposited in the purser s hands. 
 
 [127] 
 
XII 
 
 THE "TAI-FUNG" 
 
 THE next morning we were in the teeth of the " tai- 
 fung." The poor Modesto, with so much of her great 
 hulk exposed to the storm, staggered along over the 
 seas like a drunken man. She heeled over from side 
 to side, drove her nose into the watery hills that piled 
 up before her, and, with her stern well out of the sea, 
 she strained heavily, while her screw raced like a wind 
 mill until she settled down again. 
 
 The racing and grinding of the propeller made the 
 Doctor very nervous at breakfast. Each time he heard 
 the sound his eyebrows would knit darkly. 
 
 " I don t like this at all," he said once, when the shaft 
 ground so harshly that the Modesto shivered all over 
 like a wet dog. " I was in the old Rio when she bucked 
 a typhoon for six days off the coast of China, and was 
 blown seven hundred miles out of her course. Some 
 times I thought she would rack her engines all to pieces. 
 But the Modesto is a clever ship. She ll get through 
 [128] 
 
The " Tai-Fung " 
 
 where any of em will you can rest assured of that." 
 
 " But is this a typhoon ? " I asked. 
 
 "Of course not," said the Doctor. "But, as the 
 Captain says, it s the best imitation you could possibly 
 find, and Sing insists that it is a tai-fung, which is the 
 same thing. I hope the business end of it doesn t strike 
 us. If it does you can t tell what will happen. But 
 the Modesto will go through all right. You needn t 
 fear for her, my boy." 
 
 Nevertheless, I knew that he was worried. I hated 
 to broach the question of searching for the gold just 
 then, but he thought of it himself. 
 
 " Guess we d better get Mr. Nason and see what we 
 can do about finding that dust of yours," he said, 
 "though it isn t the best time in the world to go ran 
 sacking a ship." 
 
 " I know," said I, " that the officers will all be needed 
 for duty now, for the storm is on pretty heavy; but if 
 one of them could possibly spare the time 
 
 "We ll see, we ll see," promised the Doctor, shortly. 
 " Great Scott ! I wish that old propeller wouldn t grind 
 so. Come along, my lad," he said, more cheerfully, 
 "and we ll see where that gold is. It s too bad we 
 didn t search the trunk before they got the stuff out 
 [129] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 and hid it. Perhaps I was a little over-cautious. You 
 get that way as you grow older, you know. I took 
 risks enough at your age." 
 
 As the " business end " of the storm seemed to hold 
 off and there was a little season of lull in the lashing 
 wind, I felt less backward about pressing the matter of 
 the search, and so we finally started forth. Mr. Nason, 
 the first officer, could spare but a few minutes, he said, 
 to go with us, but he was very obliging. We passed 
 forward and down into the steerage, where the frowzy 
 passengers were being racked in the agonies of seasick 
 ness and storm-panic, and passed through to the place 
 I have alluded to as the pirates corner. 
 
 The effect of the storm was visible in Somers face; 
 the pink of his cheek had turned to an ashy grayness. 
 Nor was the cool Mr. Trust any too full of assurance 
 at that moment. Both men evidently shared the fright 
 of the other steerage people. 
 
 "Gentlemen," said Mr. Nason, "I ll trouble you to 
 open this trunk." 
 
 "Sir," said Trust, forgetting his fright in the new 
 excitement of this pointed demand upon him and his 
 thievish partner, and his one eye giving forth a malig 
 nant fire, "sir, you have no right. I will not submit 
 [130] 
 
The " Tai-Fung " 
 
 to the indignity, for that s what it is, and you know it," 
 
 We ll see about that," said Mr. Nason. 
 
 "But you musn t touch it." 
 
 " Mustn t I ? " repeated the first officer in a tone of 
 contempt. 
 
 " No. What do you want to get into it for, anyway ? " 
 
 "That s my business," said the officer, curtly. 
 
 " But you have no right," insisted Trust, in a tone 
 which I recognized as that of the bluffer. Looking at 
 him closely, I could hardly believe that he really cared 
 whether his trunk was opened or not. But he must 
 needs make this righteous fuss about it for reasons of 
 his own. "The trunk is my private property." 
 
 "What of that?" said the officer. "I see you ve 
 got it pretty well locked up with all this chain and 
 things. Hand me the keys, please." 
 
 I had been watching Trust s face, but now I looked 
 at the trunk and saw that the chain, which had been 
 taken off the night before, was securely fastened about 
 the trunk again. 
 
 "The keys, sir," demanded Mr. Nason, stretching 
 out his hand to Trust. 
 
 " I don t see why - " began Trust. 
 
 " Well, then, I ll tell you why," blurted out the officer, 
 [131] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 angrily. "You are suspected of robbing this young 
 man of his gold, you and your partner, and I want to 
 see if you haven t it in your baggage. If you don t 
 open it up at once I ll open it for you." He held up a 
 small, keen-edged hatchet. "Come, quick, now! I 
 have but a moment to spare. Hand em out ! " 
 
 Trust produced a bunch of keys, and fidgeted with 
 them for a moment. Finally he stooped down, un 
 locked the trunk and opened it wide. 
 
 "Look, Mr. Inspector," he said. "Search all 
 through. You ll find no gold there." 
 
 Mr. Nason threw some clothing and other things out 
 of the trunk, and ransacked it thoroughly, top and 
 bottom. 
 
 " No gold here, gentlemen," he said, turning to the 
 Doctor and me. Then he commanded, " Let the rest 
 of the baggage be opened." Which was done, without 
 revealing an ounce of the stolen treasure. 
 
 " Now," said I, looking straight at the defiant Trust, 
 " we have determined that the gold is not in their bag 
 gage. I hardly expected to find any of it here. Sup 
 pose we search the lower hold, where I am confident 
 they have hidden it." 
 
 Trust s eye fell before my gaze, and the poor creature, 
 [132] 
 
The " Tai-Fung " 
 
 already unnerved by the storm, cowered before me; 
 but he rallied and managed to bluff out : 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 "I mean," said I, "that you and your friend there 
 and Mr. Fishley took my gold from the trunk last night 
 and hid it away in the lower hold." 
 
 " Oh, come, Morning," said Mr. Nason, with fretful 
 impatience, "Fishley s denied that he ever touched 
 the bulkhead doors, as you reported. Besides, he was 
 on watch and couldn t have got down here, even for five 
 minutes. You are mistaken, really mistaken." 
 
 " Then he deserted his watch," said I, emphatically, 
 not heeding the Doctor s warning glance, "for he was 
 here and the bulkhead door was open. I saw it and 
 heard him and these men in the lower hold." 
 
 "What a smart youth!" said Trust, regaining con 
 fidence because of the first officer s attitude in the mat 
 ter. "What have you been eating to make you so 
 bright ? Why, Somers and I turned in at nine o clock 
 last night and weren t out of our bunks until this 
 morning." 
 
 "It doesn t sound reasonable," said Mr. Nason, 
 hastily, "and I haven t time to search any further 
 for your gold, anyway. Besides, I wouldn t open 
 [133] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 those bulkhead doors now if you d give me all your 
 treasure." 
 
 A terrible blast struck the Modesto, and there was a 
 crashing noise up on deck that must have been from a 
 great wave washing over her. 
 
 " Do you hear that ? " said Mr. Nason. " You can t 
 expect me to be opening up bulkheads while that s 
 going on." 
 
 He turned quickly and walked out of the steerage, 
 the Doctor and I following him. 
 
 "It s no use thinking about the treasure now," ad 
 vised the Doctor. " They can t do anything with it 
 to hide it in another part of the ship, I mean until 
 after we re out of this storm." 
 
 "When do you think that will be, Doctor?" I asked. 
 
 " There s no telling. If we get sucked into the storm 
 center we may be carried along with it for a week. But 
 she ll ride it all right, my boy, never fear. Only I wish 
 we had some cargo aboard, or ballast, or something. 
 Your gold down in the hold there is pretty heavy, but 
 it doesn t seem to keep us steady; and the broken bot 
 tles and the dead man are not settling us very deep in 
 the water either." He said this in a half -quizzical way, 
 and I wondered if he really accepted and believed what 
 [134] 
 
The " Tai-Fung " 
 
 I had said about Fishley and the two other gold-thieves, 
 or was only humoring me as he would any poor creature 
 whose mind was affected by the loss of his fortune. I 
 had counted all along upon the Doctor s friendship and 
 good-will. Was I about to lose them when it came to 
 the pinch? Just at that moment there seemed to be 
 nobody in the ship who really sympathized with me, 
 after all. In a gloomy, depressed mood I walked away 
 to the steward s room, where I sat for an hour or two, 
 trying to fix my mind upon a story in a magazine, but 
 tormented out of all appreciation for the tale because 
 of the blasts and swashes with which the storm was 
 punishing the old Modesto for her temerity in venturing 
 out upon the open sea so poorly equipped for buffeting 
 wind and wave. 
 
 As the gale cut in over the white wave-tips and the 
 ship heeled over under the tremendous pressure, a 
 sound would go up as of a wail amid all the roaring and 
 humming. Then there would be a great shock, as a wall 
 of water would heave itself against the side, together 
 with a tremendous shiver and a sound of rattling stays. 
 In the intervals between blasts, the rain fell in great 
 pelting swirls. 
 
 So far as any independent motion was concerned 
 [135] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 the steamer seemed to have none whatever, being tossed 
 about by the will of the storm and sent scudding here 
 and there. It seemed to me that in the course of an 
 hour we would change our direction half a dozen times. 
 When I spoke of this to the Doctor, while we braved 
 the storm on the deck for a little while, he smiled and 
 said: 
 
 " It seems that way, doesn t it ? But we re driving 
 southwest as fast as the gale can carry us. We can t 
 steam worth a cent in all this weather. The changing 
 directions, as they seem to you, are due merely to our 
 heading up against the wind now and again when it 
 blows a bit too stiff. We shouldn t have to do that if 
 we sat down farther in the water, but as it is " 
 
 The wind blew the rest of his words away, and we 
 scurried back to our stateroom. 
 
 For three days the " tai-fung " toyed with the Modesto. 
 Once or twice she seemed ready to give up the struggle 
 and sink to the more peaceful lower waters. But she 
 rode out the storm on the fourth day and the wind 
 quieted down. The sea was still running high, but it 
 was now flecked by patches of bright sunshine. The 
 air was warm and had a soft feel in it. We had been 
 blown away down the North Pacific and hundreds of 
 [136] 
 
The " Tai-Fung " 
 
 miles out of our course, but the passengers who came 
 smiling up on deck seemed happy in the consciousness 
 of having outlived the storm. 
 
 The Doctor and I were standing on the forward deck, 
 and I was urging upon him that we should go below 
 and search the hold for the treasure, when of a sudden 
 Mr. Nason, who was standing by with his glass to his 
 eyes, said quietly to the Doctor: 
 
 " Have you seen that craft out yonder yet ? I picked 
 her up right after luncheon, and the Captain and I have 
 been watching her for an hour. Seems like some der 
 elict. I don t exactly understand her." 
 
 [137] 
 
XIII 
 WRECK OF THE "FLYING MIST" 
 
 r 
 
 I LOOKED to the westward, where Mr. Nason pointed, 
 and saw a small black craft about half a mile away. 
 Her decks were all raked clean save for a tall, bare stick 
 of a mast. 
 
 "When I first picked her up," said the officer, "I 
 thought I saw a puff of smoke above the top of that 
 mast, but I haven t made out anything of the sort since. 
 I could hardly believe my eyes at the first, and the Cap 
 tain scoffed at the idea, but when he looked sharply 
 he saw it, too." 
 
 " Why," said I, " she must be the Flying Mist. " 
 
 " That s what she is," affirmed the Doctor, speaking 
 to Mr. Nason. " Didn t you see a strange craft with a 
 funnel mast a steam schooner or something of that 
 sort lying up there off the Nome coast ? " 
 
 "I didn t notice her," said the first officer, "or, at 
 least if I did, I didn t see that she had a funnel for a 
 mast. So that s the Flying Mist ? I ve heard of her 
 [138] 
 
Wreck of the Flying Mist 
 
 the Flying Mist. Well, she doesn t look as though 
 she d fly much farther. She s all logged down, and I 
 suppose the fires are out of her furnaces by this time." 
 
 " You don t mean that she s sinking ? " I cried. 
 
 " But she is, though, and her crew must have deserted 
 her early this morning after the wind went down. I 
 guess their chances were about as good aboard her as 
 they were in the boats. Hold on ! I think I see signs 
 of life on board. Yes, there s a couple of chaps there 
 forward of the house, and they re hailing us!" 
 
 By shading my eyes with my hands, I could make out 
 two dark figures that seemed to have just come upon 
 deck. One of them was waving something white. 
 
 " That big fellow looks as though he could take care 
 of himself," said Mr. Nason, screwing down his glass. 
 "But the other I don t make much of. Seems weak 
 and limp. Mr. Fishley, get a boat ready there." 
 
 A boat was swung from the davits. 
 
 "I think," said the Captain, coming up, "that we ll 
 steam down a little nearer. We can keep to the lee 
 ward of her and take em off easier. It isn t quite the 
 kind of sea I like to send out small boats in." 
 
 We headed down to leeward of the Flying Mist, 
 where she lay with the waves washing her decks, but 
 [139] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 before we got near enough to take the men off we saw 
 the little craft s bow rise in the water, her stern settling 
 rapidly, and down she went, her bowsprit showing for a 
 moment above the waves and then disappearing from 
 sight, leaving nothing but the blank, open sea where the 
 little schooner had been so gallantly fighting for her life. 
 
 I shuddered, and I saw the Doctor shudder, too, as 
 he gasped: 
 
 "My God! She s gone!" 
 
 A few pieces of wreckage now appeared on the sur 
 face, and clinging to one of these I saw a man. I 
 clutched the first officer s arm and called out excitedly: 
 
 " See him see him ! Can t we save him ? " 
 
 "We ll try, my lad," said he, coolly, to my mind not 
 nearly so much affected by the sight of the struggling 
 man as he should have been. "Lower that boat, 
 Max." 
 
 " Lower away ! " I heard Fishley call to his men. He 
 was sitting in the stern of the little craft himself and had 
 four brawny fellows to man the oars. Little as I had 
 reason to like the third officer, I could not, in spite of 
 myself, help admiring him as he sat there, swinging 
 down to the surging waves which would have daunted 
 the heart of many a hardy seaman. Soon the boat was 
 [140] 
 
Wreck of the Flying Mist 
 
 tossing upon the rough sea, so that more than once the 
 oarsmen fanned the air with their blades, while the 
 spray dashed over them. But in a few minutes they 
 had rowed to the side of the man, who clung to the 
 wreckage, and had made fast. After repeated 
 pullings and haulings, they managed to get him into 
 the boat, where he lay flat after his struggle with the 
 waves. 
 
 When the boat was pulled up and the rescued man 
 was taken in over the side, I stood near at hand, and it 
 so chanced that Somers and Trust, who were also near, 
 were, with me, among the first to see the rescued man s 
 face. All three of us stared very hard, and I heard 
 Somers smother a groan while he said under his breath : 
 " Gee, Pete ! What d ye think o that ? " 
 "Oh, it can t be!" said Trust. "Yes, it is, too!" 
 " Yes," I repeated, " and you thought you were well 
 rid of him, didn t you, after you fooled him by sending 
 him to wait for you and the gold aboard the Flying 
 Mist?" 
 
 For the rescued man, who, so far as we knew, was 
 the only survivor of the wreck, was none other than 
 Bill of the lighter the rascal who had pushed my 
 gold overboard. 
 
 [141] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 " What are you fellows doing here abaft the steerage 
 sign ? " gruff ed the Captain to Somers and Trust. " Get 
 back where you belong. We want room here. Doc 
 tor, will you tend to this man ? Fix him up if there s 
 anything the matter with him." 
 
 The Doctor had Bill taken into an empty stateroom, 
 where he cared for him. Bill soon revived, and told 
 the story of the wreck. He said that when the great 
 gale struck the Flying Mist she strained badly, and, the 
 caulking being old, some of the seams near her stern 
 opened, making a nasty leak. The pumps were kept 
 going, but the schooner made water from hour to hour, 
 and all through the terrible storm, while masts were 
 falling and rigging was littering the deck, the vessel 
 kept settling, little by little. After the storm had abated 
 the men aboard feared the danger of the ship going 
 under at any moment. Some of the passengers were 
 wild with panic. To make matters worse, Captain 
 Transome took to his liquor so heavily that he seemed 
 hardly to know whether he was afloat or ashore. The 
 first mate was very nervous, and kept constantly urging 
 that every one should take to the boats. Bill, being an 
 old sailor, did not like the prospect of such a course, 
 and tried to dissuade the mate from his evident inten- 
 [142] 
 
Wreck of the Flying Mist 
 
 tion, which was to lower the boats at once and not wait 
 for the storm to further abate. 
 
 "It was the worst kind of craziness," said Bill, re 
 flectively, as if he still saw the tragic situation. "The 
 first boat they lowered was swamped, and the dozen o* 
 men in her was soon a-throwin up their hands an a- 
 grabbin at things that wasn t there to grab at. Every 
 man of em was lost. But that fool mate got the 
 drunken Captain an the rest o the passengers into the 
 next boat that is, all except me an a sick feller that 
 got overlooked somehow down below. I wouldn t go 
 in her, an told em they was idiots for tryin it ; but they 
 pulled away, an I bet a dollar they re safe at the bottom 
 now. 
 
 " It was three hours before the Modesto hove in sight. 
 I thought the schooner would stay afloat a couple o 
 hours longer, an I was at work makin a raft when the 
 steamer came along. But gee ! the old thing went down 
 all of a sudden. Never see anything to beat the way 
 she dove under. I was sucked down with her, an I 
 jest give myself up for a goner when I begun to rise. 
 As soon as I got my snoot above water I grabbed a 
 stick of something I don t know what it was and 
 then the boat came out and picked me up. But you ll 
 [143] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 never see that drunk Captain an the other fellers in 
 that boat they re gone, as sure as guns." 
 
 "No doubt of it," said the Doctor. "How do you 
 feel now ? " 
 
 "A little better, but not much good yet," sighed Bill, 
 wearily. "I got knocked in the head somehow when 
 we went down right there." 
 
 The Doctor examined a great purple bump behind 
 Bill s ear. 
 
 " Oh, that ll be all right in a few days," he said, re 
 assuringly. "I ll bandage it." 
 
 He bound up the man s head, the patient inconsid 
 erately trying for a moment to fight him off. Then the 
 Doctor said: 
 
 "Keep quiet here now, and I ll send you in some 
 broth in about half an hour." 
 
 During the entire recital of Bill s tragic story I had 
 kept in the background, and he had not observed me. 
 He seemed to be suffering much pain, and kept his eyes 
 closed most of the time. I was glad that he had not 
 seen me, for I might the better plan what should be 
 done regarding him. I was determined he should not 
 escape punishment for his crime in despoiling me of 
 my gold. 
 
 [144] 
 
Wreck of the Flying Mist 
 
 I went about that day feeling rather light and glad 
 some. For whatever other misfortunes had befallen 
 me, I was in a position to rejoice that I had not taken 
 passage in the Flying Mist. 
 
 When I told the Doctor who the rescued man was, 
 and how much concerned Trust and Somers were when 
 they saw him hauled aboard, he was greatly interested. 
 
 "This means trouble," said he "trouble for those 
 steerage pirates, and possibly trouble for us. It s a 
 mighty curious thing that they should all get together 
 here on the Modesto all the men that were in the con 
 spiracy against you." 
 
 "This man Bill," said I, "can t he be arrested as 
 soon as his head is well again ? " 
 
 " Certainly. I ll see that he doesn t escape when we 
 reach port." 
 
 " Don t you think, Doctor, that we should be search 
 ing the lower hold ? We ought to be able to find the 
 gold down there somewhere. I am confident that it 
 was hidden there by those robbers, working in collusion 
 with Max Fishley." 
 
 " You may be right about Max being in with them," 
 said the Doctor. " I never had much use for him and 
 his green eyes. But it does seem almost past belief 
 [145] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 that a trusted officer of a ship like the Modesto should 
 be up to such infernal doings. I suppose these things 
 begin with smuggling and gradually lead up to robbery." 
 
 " Can t we get started on our search in the hold ? " 
 I asked, impatiently. 
 
 "Now the way to do that," planned the Doctor, "is 
 to go to the Captain, lay the whole matter before him, 
 and get him to detail three or four men under Mr. 
 Nason. Then we can go down with some chance. 
 Otherwise, if the gold is hidden in the hold, as you 
 think, those fellows and Fishley if he is really in 
 with them will not hesitate to give us a side dig with 
 a knife, if they are lurking about. Down in a dark 
 hold with a cutthroat like that one-eyed rascal is not 
 the kind of place I am seeking, unless I m well rein 
 forced." 
 
 " Of course, you know best," said I. " But can t we 
 get started ? " 
 
 " And I have feared for you and kept something of a 
 watch on their actions," he went on. "You ought to 
 be very careful about being in any place alone with 
 them. They might easily tumble you overboard some 
 dark night." 
 
 The last words came from the Doctor without any 
 [146] 
 
Wreck of the Flying Mist 
 
 reference to what I had just said. They were not re 
 assuring words, but I thanked him for the warning, and 
 told him that it should not be thrown away upon me. 
 Then I asked him if we could not go to the Captain at 
 once. 
 
 " No," was the reply. " He s asleep just now so 
 Nason just told me trying to make up a little of what 
 he lost these past few nights, I guess. It was a terror, 
 that storm. I was never in one that knocked a ship 
 about so. Let him sleep. He deserves it." 
 
 I made several suggestions that might aid in a solu 
 tion of the matter without the help of the Captain, as I 
 did not wish to wait until he should waken. I fretted 
 under the loss of time, and even went so far as to risk 
 the Doctor s displeasure by going to Mr. Nason and 
 asking him if he would not let us have the men to go 
 along and make the search of the hold. 
 
 "No," said he, very shortly. "I can t do it. The 
 Captain wouldn t like it without being consulted; and, 
 my boy, if you want to know my opinion of this affair 
 of your little bag of dust, I must say that it has caused 
 me trouble enough already. Mr. Fishley has but 
 you don t have to know everything that passes between 
 officers. If the Captain says that such a search must 
 [147] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 be made, why of course it s all right; but I hope you 
 understand now how I feel about it." 
 
 " Well," said I, very respectfully, though I was not a 
 little wroth because of what he had seen fit to say, 
 "you know your duty of course, sir; but about the gold: 
 It isn t a little sack it s eight sacks, and they contain 
 over forty thousand dollars." 
 
 " That may be or may not be," said the ruffled officer. 
 "It seems likely, doesn t it, that a mere boy like you 
 should have all that gold in his care ? I know Doctor 
 Quaritch says it s all right; but he s a good-natured, 
 easy-going man, who s not hard to take in." 
 
 I walked away with rising heat. It was an hour 
 before I was cool enough to contemplate the situation 
 calmly. I thought vaguely of going to the second 
 officer, Mr. Lovell, and enlisting his aid. But it oc 
 curred to me that I should be getting things mixed up 
 worse than they were. It was plain that Mr. Nason 
 had been listening to Max Fishley, and that officer had 
 convinced him that my pretensions concerning the gold 
 were all false. It was evident that, while matters were 
 run rather loosely aboard the Modesto,, there was suffi 
 cient harmony among the officers not to make them 
 very suspicious of one another s actions. I could do 
 [148] 
 
Wreck of the Flying Mist 
 
 nothing about the gold just then; so I went down into 
 the saloon and talked with Yohara. He was full of 
 the unhappy incident of the wreck, and asked ques 
 tion after question, some of which were difficult to 
 answer. 
 
 The Captain woke about noon and ate his breakfast, 
 after which the Doctor and I went to his cabin. The 
 Doctor did not immediately begin upon the subject of 
 the search for the treasure, preferring to lead up to it 
 in a quiet, politic manner. He spoke of the weather, 
 and remarked upon the smoothness of the sea, which 
 had calmed wonderfully in the past few hours. 
 
 " Oh, the sea s all right," said the Captain, with fur 
 rowed forehead, " and the wind s all right, but I ll be 
 jinged if I know how we re going to make San Fran 
 cisco with only one day s coal. You re pretty wise, 
 Doctor," he went on, with a little satire in his tone, 
 "and may be you can solve that problem." 
 
 "I confess it beats me," owned the Doctor, "but let 
 us hope we shall have the good luck to fall in with some 
 steamer." 
 
 " Yes, and be towed in for salvage, and have to pay 
 all she s worth to some pirate with a strict eye to busi 
 ness. What would the owners say to that ? No, siree- 
 [149] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 bob ! She s got to work in some way. If we had coal, 
 we could make port in five days easy enough. We are 
 only about seventeen hundred miles out." 
 
 "Wouldn t Seattle be quicker to make than San 
 Francisco ? " 
 
 "Oh, we could get coal at Victoria before Seattle; 
 but do you know where we are? That infernal tai- 
 fung, as Sing calls it, has blown us away down the 
 Pacific. Honolulu or San Francisco is about a stand 
 off just now; and I prefer San Francisco. You know 
 we re chartered for that Philippine trip and must be in 
 port by the first of the month. This is the 22d. Eight 
 days are all the time we ve got." 
 
 " Well, Captain, I m awfully sorry, and I know you 
 don t like to be bothered about such matters just now, 
 but I wish you would let three men go down in the 
 hold with us and Mr. Nason, and find this young man s 
 gold." 
 
 " Oh, wait till you get to port, whenever that ll be," 
 said the Captain, in the worst humor I had ever seen 
 him display. "If the gold s down there, it ll keep. 
 There s no use bothering about it. There s nothing 
 in the hold but a lot of busted beer bottles, a dead man, 
 and maybe a little dunnage. And that yarn about 
 [150] 
 
Wreck of the Flying Mist 
 
 Fishley. Say, young man, did you see him down 
 there?" 
 
 He turned upon me suddenly and crossly, and my 
 eyes fell before his angry gaze. 
 
 "No," I began, "but " 
 
 " Of course you didn t I knew you didn t." 
 
 " Captain," interposed the Doctor, "this boy s father 
 is a friend of mine, and he has lost his gold. It has 
 been stolen from him and secreted aboard your vessel. 
 It seems to me 
 
 "Oh, Doctor!" groaned the Captain, "haven t I got 
 enough troubles of my own without all this? Wait 
 until we get to port." 
 
 " But I feel responsible to this young man s father." 
 
 " Can t help that. Go way and let me alone!" 
 
 The Doctor s face fell as this rude speech was uttered. 
 
 "I m sorry I bothered you," he said. 
 
 "So am I," was the short rejoinder. 
 
 We turned and slowly left the cabin. When we were 
 just abaft of the mainmast we heard a gruff call : 
 
 " All right, Doctor ! Tell Nason I say it s all right " 
 
 [151] 
 
XIV 
 
 SEARCHING FOR THE TREASURE 
 
 r 
 
 FROM despondency I was quickly uplifted to joy. 
 It was clear that Captain Head was not such a dis 
 obliging commander after all. 
 
 " Oh, he s all right," said the Doctor. " He means 
 to be agreeable, but he s terribly worried just now about 
 the fix he s in over the coal. I don t see how he s going 
 to get out of it, myself; but he s an awfully lucky mar 
 iner, and something will no doubt happen to straighten 
 things out for him." 
 
 Mr. Nason was not pleased at the idea of the search, 
 but he went along readily enough. It came to me that 
 what had ailed him before was a part of the Captain s 
 complaint the anxiety over the shortage of coal and 
 the uncertainty about reaching port. In fact, the situa 
 tion was made quite plain to me by what the first officer 
 said in reply to a question from Doctor Quaritch about 
 the matter of the charter. 
 
 " You see, the owners have contracted this ship for a 
 [152] 
 
Searching for the Treasure 
 
 voyage to Manila, and we have to be in San Francisco 
 by the first or they ll lose big money. Forfeiting a 
 charter amounts to something in these days when 
 American steamers are in such great demand for the 
 island trade." 
 
 " That s so," said the Doctor, " and I hope for the 
 sake of everybody concerned that we may be able to pull 
 in on time." 
 
 " But I don t see how it s going to be done," said Mr. 
 Nason, shaking his head. 
 
 We went down into the steerage, which was nearly 
 deserted, as most of the passengers were sunning them 
 selves in the balmy air on deck. Somers and Trust 
 were among those who remained below. They were 
 down in their corner playing their cribbage and smok 
 ing. You may be sure they took very little interest in 
 their game when the six of us the Doctor, Mr. 
 Nason, three stalwart deckhands and myself ap 
 peared before the bulkhead door, and, without in the 
 least regarding them or the anxious looks they gave, 
 began to slip the bolts and bars. 
 
 "That s strange," said the officer, when the great 
 iron door swung open and the dank breath from down 
 below came up to us where we stood in the steerage 
 [153] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 wing. " I never opened one of these doors after it was 
 closed for several days that it didn t stick to the rubber 
 gasket in the jamb." 
 
 The Doctor looked at me with large significance, 
 but said nothing. I knew he was being convinced of 
 the truth of my statement that the bulkhead had been 
 opened but a few days before. Mr. Nason led the 
 way through the long wing. 
 
 "That looks pretty tough," said he, glancing at the 
 coal bunkers. " Every blamed one of em on this side 
 is empty as an old oyster-can." 
 
 " It s a sorry state of affairs," said the Doctor. " Too 
 bad there isn t a coaling station somewhere near at 
 hand." 
 
 "It s about the worst place in the whole Pacific to 
 look for a chance to coal up," said the officer. "I 
 don t know what we re going to do." 
 
 He lighted his lantern and proceeded down the wing 
 to the door which led out upon the freight-deck. As 
 the other men all carried lanterns, that the search might 
 be a thorough one, there was plenty of light inside. 
 Save for a little heap of dunnage, there was nothing to 
 be seen in the great cavernous hold between-decks. 
 This dunnage, as I may remark to landsmen readers, 
 [154] 
 
Searching for the Treasure 
 
 is only a miscellaneous lot of old pieces of lumber, long 
 and short, thick and thin, which is used to wedge be 
 tween the boxes, barrels and crates containing the cargo, 
 that it may not shift while the ship is in motion. 
 
 We reached the hatchway in a few steps, and de 
 scended, one after another, down the narrow slender 
 iron ladder into the lower hold. I was the last one 
 down, and, being in the shadow for a moment, I stum 
 bled into a litter of refuse lumber. 
 
 " There s quite a lot of dunnage aboard," observed 
 the first officer. "But I guess it will be pretty well 
 cleaned out in the next few days." 
 
 " Why ? " asked the Doctor. 
 
 "We ve got very little coal, and we ve got to burn 
 something, haven t we? There s only three or four 
 thousand feet of the stuff, and it s nothing but Oregon 
 pine and California redwood, but it ought to keep up 
 steam for a day or two. What s this ?" 
 
 His feet had crunched upon a crumply mass of 
 broken glass. " Oh, Stetson s beer bottles ! " he 
 laughed. " Great snakes ! How they went to pieces in 
 that gale!" 
 
 All over the after part of the lower hold bright crumbs 
 of shivered glass gleamed in the light of the lanterns. 
 [155] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 The sparkling bits were strewn thickly in some places, 
 but in others there was but a thin sprinkling of them. 
 Our boots ground upon them as we moved along. 
 
 "Not the best place in the world for a bare-footed 
 nigger," remarked Mr. Nason. " Wouldn t it be a joke 
 if we left this stuff for the Filipino freight-handlers to 
 walk on ? What have we here ? " 
 
 He bent over and picked from the floor an old ban 
 dana handkerchief, looked at it and cast it aside. I 
 gathered it up again, hoping that in some way it might 
 afford a clew. We all searched about the dirty, glass- 
 bestrewn floor of the hold, and the lanterns were held 
 high to see if the gold might not be secreted behind 
 some of the angle-bars, a complex system of which 
 served as braces to the inner side of the ship. One of 
 the men found a loose plank in the floor of the forward 
 part of the hold, and this was lifted in the hope that the 
 treasure might be hidden below it. But there was 
 nothing there except a little reeking bilge. One of 
 the crew who was farther aft than the rest of us gave 
 a startled cry and ran back over the glass flakes, drop 
 ping his lantern on the way. 
 
 " What s struck you, Tom ? " asked Mr. Nason, 
 sharply. " Have you seen a ghost ? " 
 [156] 
 
Searching for the Treasure 
 
 Tom breathed hard several times and gulped a little 
 before he could say a word. 
 
 "No; tain t no ghost," gasped he at last, "it s a real 
 live dead man, sticking his head through a box and 
 asking what s the time o day." 
 
 "Sho!" said Mr. Nason, "you re off, Tom. You 
 and Pete and George pile up that dunnage back there 
 while the Doctor and I look at your dead man." 
 
 The three seamen went forward, while the Doctor 
 and Mr. Nason crunched over the glass. I followed 
 my friends and heard the first officer say quietly to the 
 Doctor : 
 
 " I m sorry that man found the box, which must have 
 broke open in some way while being tossed around in 
 this empty hole. I m sorry he found it, for you know 
 what a lot of fuss these chaps make over such things at 
 sea. That dead man was one of the richest miners in 
 Nome. Too much whiskey and tundra water took 
 him off, and we ve got to take his body home to his 
 widow or there ll be no end of trouble. But these chaps 
 may chuck him overboard now on the sly, so that we 
 can get safely into port." 
 
 "Yes," remarked the Doctor, "they ll be laying all 
 our bad luck to him." 
 
 [157] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 " Don t you know," said the first officer, reflectively, 
 " there may be something in that old superstition after all. 
 Now, take our case : We ve had the worst kind of a storm, 
 and are blown away off from our coal station, and 
 Good Lord ! That was enough to scare a man, wasn t it ? 
 His head is sticking out. That s true enough." 
 
 I fell back, and looked the other way. I had a ter 
 ror of dead bodies and would never willingly look at 
 one. Not that I was in the least alarmed, for I was 
 not. I did not share the superstition of the members 
 of the crew as to having dead men aboard ship. But 
 my repugnance for any such gruesome sights and 
 particularly that of a body in a battered box was 
 unreasonably strong. So I kept back, with my face 
 turned away; but I could not help hearing what the 
 first officer said: 
 
 "Doctor, this looks like an ugly job, but I guess 
 we ve got to stand it. This man s got to be put back 
 into his box, and I suppose we ve got to do it. You 
 don t mind such things though, do you ? " 
 
 "Well," said the Doctor, "I can t say I relish them 
 very much, but I ll help. Better send for a hammer 
 and some nails. It s just the end of this thing that s 
 come loose." 
 
 [158] 
 
Searching for the Treasure 
 
 Tom was sent into the engine-room and returned 
 with the hammer and nails, which Mr. Nason was 
 obliged to take from him at a respectful distance from 
 the box. While the Doctor and the first officer worked 
 away at their gruesome task, and the men piled up the 
 dunnage, I searched about the hold for the hiding-place 
 of the treasure. Soon we were all occupied in the hunt 
 again, and in the course of an hour it seemed that every 
 square foot of the flooring of the lower hold had been 
 carefully looked over two or three times before Mr. Nason, 
 who stood away aft in the run of the ship, called out : 
 
 "Come here, Doctor! This may be the place." 
 
 Doctor Quaritch went aft and I followed closely at 
 his heels. Mr. Nason had set his lantern on the floor 
 and was looking intently down at a rough little panel 
 in the planking about a foot square. The panel was 
 made by two indistinct saw cuts. There was none of 
 the broken glass in the run of the ship, so that the saw 
 cuts were not covered by dangerous fragments. 
 
 " I can t tell whether it s old or new," said Mr. Nason, 
 closely scrutinizing one of the cuts. " If it s new they ve 
 rubbed dirt and tar over it to cover it up. It s a neat 
 job anyway. Looks as if the plank was cut through 
 on a level with a very fine saw." 
 [159] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 I was trembling with excitement, and, producing my 
 pocket knife, I scratched at the dirt in the cracks. 
 
 " Looks as if it had been cut lately," said the first 
 officer, when I had scraped some of the tarry filth away 
 from the joint. "Bring the ripper, Tom." 
 
 The long, slim ripping iron, which looked like an 
 attenuated, flattened cold chisel, was brought and in 
 serted into one of the cracks. 
 
 Just then I heard a succession of quick, nervous 
 gasps behind me, and, looking back, I saw the anxious 
 face of Somers dodging out of the circle of light. There 
 was another figure beside him, sneaking behind the 
 deckhands, and this figure I took to be that of Trust. 
 My first impulse was to resent their unauthorized pres 
 ence there, but after all that I had suffered at their 
 hands I was a little revengeful, and it came to me in a 
 flash that here was the best kind of revenge : If the gold 
 were now to be uncovered before their eyes and they 
 should see me and my friends take possession of it, I 
 should enjoy the spectacle of their defeat and chagrin 
 as much as I should to see them clapped into irons, 
 which act of justice would no doubt immediately follow 
 the recovery of the stolen treasure. 
 
 " They have hidden the gold between this plank and 
 [160] 
 
Searching for the Treasure 
 
 the skin of the ship," said the officer. "There is no 
 bilge under this part of the flooring." 
 
 It was several minutes after the insertion of the rip 
 ping iron, which was used as a lever to pry up the plank 
 panel, before the stubborn, well-nailed wood gave way 
 and was lifted from its place by one of the men. But 
 there was no gold in the hole. There was nothing but 
 an empty space below where the plank had been, and 
 extending down almost a foot to the skin of the ship, 
 as the first officer had called it. 
 
 I was dumbfounded. I had made sure in my own 
 mind that the treasure was there. The sawing I had 
 heard in the hold, and the words I had overheard from 
 the three men who had gone below on the night of the 
 beginning of the storm, had made me confident that 
 the rough panel had concealed the hiding-place of the 
 stolen treasure. Not to find it there after all that 
 search was a bitter disappointment to me. I got down 
 on my knees and thrust my hand all about under the 
 floor as far as I could reach, but the hand touched 
 nothing but the cold, damp bottom of the vessel. 
 
 I was about to give up the search in despair when 
 my eye caught the gleam of some bright specks at the 
 bottom of the hold where the lantern light fell upon 
 [161] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 them. I brushed these specks together. There was 
 about a teaspoonful of them altogether. I held them 
 close to the nearest light. 
 
 " The gold has been here ! " I cried, " for here is some 
 of it!" 
 
 All the heads of the searchers crowded closely about 
 me, and among them the sinister one of the rascally 
 Trust, to whom, however, I paid no attention, in the 
 excitement of the moment, except to remark that he 
 seemed to be very much disappointed about something. 
 
 "Yes," said Mr. Nason, examining the moist grains 
 in my hand. "That s gold dust, all right. They 
 must have spilled a little in taking it out. See that 
 small nail there. Maybe it punched a hole in one of 
 the sacks." 
 
 "So you think the gold was really hidden there?" 
 asked the Doctor. 
 
 "It certainly looks like it," said Mr. Nason. "You 
 take the shape of this piece of plank, and the careful 
 way it was cut out, together with these grains of gold, 
 and I think you ve got to admit that gold was stowed 
 away here, and within a few days, too, for those rubber 
 gaskets worked altogether too easy to have been long 
 sticking to that bulkhead door. That gold is hidden 
 [162] 
 
Searching for the Treasure 
 
 somewhere aboard this ship, and I want you men," he 
 said, addressing the hands who had been helping, "to 
 keep a sharp lookout for it." Then he turned to me. 
 " My boy," he said, " I was rather hasty in what I said 
 to you this morning. I think now that you have told 
 the truth in all except what concerns Mr. Fishley. 
 You were mistaken there. It would be a good plan, I 
 think, to arrest those steerage fellows whom you sus 
 pected." 
 
 There was a soft scuttering away down the deck, 
 and I cried out to the first officer: 
 
 "There they go now! They have been lurking 
 about here in the dark and have just run away." 
 
 "Well, they can t get off the ship very well," said 
 Mr. Nason, "unless they jump overboard. We can 
 secure them any time we want them, and I think that 
 will be soon." 
 
 He picked up his lantern and passed forward to the 
 dunnage pile, which he looked at for a moment thought 
 fully. Then he turned to the hands. 
 
 "I think while you re down here, boys, you may as 
 
 well carry some of this dunnage into the fire-room. 
 
 They may need it before morning. They re scraping 
 
 the bottoms of the coal bunkers, so Mr. Derrick says. 
 
 [163] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 Take all you can carry. I guess by to-morrow the 
 Captain will order the lot of it piled into the furnaces." 
 
 It was a strange sight, and one I had never thought 
 to see aboard ship, this gathering up of loose lumber 
 to make steam. But each man took his load and car 
 ried it forward into the fire-room. In the light of the 
 engine-room door I saw in the arms of one of the men 
 a lot of short blocks, and among them an object that 
 struck me as oddly familiar. 
 
 " Excuse me," I said, going up to the man, " may I 
 look at that thing you have there ? " 
 
 "You mean this box?" said the man. He handed 
 it to me, and I looked at it carefully. 
 
 The box was a small one, and the top was splintered 
 a little, but on looking at the flat cover I saw painted 
 upon it in black lettering, "John Morning, San Fran 
 cisco." 
 
 "That s my box," said I. "Will you let me have 
 it?" 
 
 " Your box ? " said Mr. Nason, who had overheard 
 me. 
 
 "Yes; the box that held the gold." 
 
 "Where did you pick it up?" asked the officer of 
 the deckhand. 
 
 [164] 
 
Searching for the Treasure 
 
 " It was a-layin among the dunnage," said the man. 
 "The other fellows picked up the top stuff and then I 
 gathered this in. Is it the young gentleman s gold- 
 box? Well, well!" 
 
 The other men laid down their burdens and gathered 
 about to look at the box that had held the treasure. 
 
 "Never mind, boys," commanded the first officer. 
 "Take your wood to the bunkers. Keep the box if 
 you want it, Mr. Morning. I guess we d better go up 
 and look after those robbers in the steerage." 
 
 When we reached their corner, Somers and Trust 
 were deep in their cribbage game. 
 
 [165] 
 
XV 
 
 THE LAST POUND OF COAL 
 
 TRUST growled furious imprecations when he, with 
 his companion, was seized and brought on deck to 
 be taken before the Captain. He declared that he 
 knew nothing of the missing gold, and he glared at me 
 with that one burning eye in a way that I shall never 
 forget. Somers, who was thoroughly frightened, had 
 nothing to say, but kept glancing about nervously as 
 if looking for somebody. When he saw Max Fishley 
 come along the deck he beckoned to him two or three 
 times, but the third officer pretended not to see him. 
 
 All the passengers took a curious interest in the arrest 
 of the two men, and they and the crew, among whom 
 the robbery and the search had been freely gossiped, 
 were full of kindly sympathy for me and execrations 
 of the men charged with the crime. 
 
 Little Yohara s eyes were gleaming with interest. 
 When he saw the arrested men marched forward along 
 the deck, he came around in front of Trust and stared 
 [166] 
 
The Last Pound of Coal 
 
 up into his face in an odd and altogether Oriental way, 
 as if taking note of every feature. 
 
 "I sink I have knowledge of the gentleman nex 
 times," said Yohara to me, " if he shall escape away 
 again. I shall know his eye better, too." 
 
 "The lad thinks he s a born detective," explained 
 the Doctor, smiling. " He s been reading a lot of those 
 nickel detective stories." 
 
 Captain Head ordered Somers and Trust put in irons, 
 as I had hoped. The Captain dispatched the matter 
 in a jiffy, and then entered into a consultation with his 
 first officer, at which Doctor Quaritch was present. 
 Their talk, as I heard from the Doctor, had nothing 
 to do with the arrest or the missing gold, which to them 
 were matters of minor importance compared with the 
 problem of getting the vessel into port without coal. 
 
 "You see," said the Doctor, when speaking of the 
 matter, "we can t make any headway with our sails. 
 They are small affairs, and are just about able to steady 
 the steamer and that s all. Of course, if there were a 
 gale dead aft of us we might be helped along consider 
 ably, but the wind is light and what little we have is 
 not from the right quarter. The first officer recom 
 mends burning all the dunnage, those empty horse- 
 [167] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 stalls on the forward deck and whatever else there is 
 of unnecessary lumber aboard ship. I shouldn t won 
 der," added he, slowly and impressively, "but that 
 before long we should be burning a lot of wood that is 
 pretty solidly spiked down. I ve heard of such a thing 
 as gutting a vessel in order to get her into port." 
 
 "But perhaps we ll fall in with some other steamer 
 before we have to do that," said I, hopefully. 
 
 "I don t know. You might sail all the way from 
 the North Pacific down to San Francisco and not sight 
 a single steamer. I ve done that two or three times. 
 It s an unfrequented part of the world s waters. There s 
 nothing to bring a steam vessel up here at this time of 
 the year." 
 
 "I was looking at the chart," said I, " and I don t see 
 an island anywhere within two thousand miles of us." 
 
 "No. There s a great basin under us here, over a 
 thousand miles wide and about as long. I m told it s 
 the deepest part of the whole sea. That may account 
 for the intense blueness of the water." 
 
 We looked abroad upon the great expanse of deep 
 
 color, for the beauty of which I should have had a better 
 
 eye had not the thought of Max Fishley entered my 
 
 head at that moment. I had felt aggrieved because 
 
 [168] 
 
The Last Pound of Coal 
 
 the officers would pay no heed to my charges as to his 
 complicity in the robbery. But now it occurred to me 
 that it was better he should be free from suspicion on 
 their part for the present. He doubtless knew where 
 the gold was hidden, and by closely watching him I 
 might be able to discover its hiding-place. I said 
 nothing of the matter to the Doctor, but walked away, 
 and for the rest of that day and during the day follow 
 ing Mr. Fishley made few movements of which I was 
 not apprised. To give the man full credit, however, 
 I must say that I noted absolutely nothing suspicious 
 in his actions. He had charge of the coal-passers and 
 deckhands who were carrying the dunnage and the 
 stall lumber to the fire-room. 
 
 The last pound of coal was consumed, and the 
 Modesto was now being propelled through the water 
 by means of steam generated by pine boards and pieces 
 of scantling. This fuel lasted but a short time and 
 drove us but three hundred miles nearer port. There 
 were still over fourteen hundred miles of water to 
 traverse, which, in a moderate going craft like the 
 Modesto, meant nearly five days sailing under the most 
 favorable conditions. 
 
 The Captain complained of the slow movements of 
 [169] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 t . 
 
 the men, who were now ripping the cargo battens from 
 the inside of the hold. He stormed about and ordered 
 all hands down there steward s men, pantrymen, 
 freight-handlers, coal-passers, oilers and all the lesser 
 officers everybody save the firemen. 
 
 " Lively there lively ! " he kept calling. " We ve 
 got to keep those boilers hot or we ll run down to half- 
 speed. Mr. Nason, keep em at the battens good and 
 hard. We can t let up a minute. We ve simply got 
 to make port by the first." 
 
 The men flung at their work, ripping off the long 
 battens with axes, adzes and other tools, and filing with 
 their burdens into the hot fire-room, where the furnace 
 doors were hardly closed for a moment at a time. 
 
 " More steam ! Can t you get up more steam ? " I 
 heard the Captain calling down the pipe, and was near 
 enough to catch the chief engineer s reply: 
 
 "The dashed stuff is too light, sir. The draught 
 throws it out of the stack before it s half-burned. I ve 
 tried wetting it, but it s no good no good at all. I 
 can t get up any kind of pressure." 
 
 "Send Nason up here," bawled the Captain. "I ll 
 do better than eight knots if I have to burn up the whole 
 insides of her." 
 
 [170] 
 
The Last Pound of Coal 
 
 Mr. Nason came on deck. 
 
 "We ve got to get up some steam somehow," said 
 the Captain, calling across to the first officer before he 
 was within thirty feet of him. "There s good wood 
 in those masts and spars. Have em cut down, will 
 you ? " 
 
 "All right, sir!" was the reply, in as even tones as if 
 the order were given every day of the year. And soon 
 the axes rang on deck and down came the mizzenmast. 
 
 I happened to pass the cabin where lay the offensive 
 Bill, with his wounded head. He was sitting up in 
 his berth, looking about with grave interest. 
 
 " What s all this row about ? " he asked, staring out 
 at me through the open door. " What are they cuttin 
 away the masts fer ? " 
 
 I did not deign to give a reply, and was just turning 
 away when he recognized me. 
 
 "Hullo!" he cried, in his great gruff voice. "It s 
 you, is it ? What are you a-doin aboard ? " 
 
 "Attending strictly to my own affairs," said I, rather 
 curtly. 
 
 "Oh, of course! But can t yeh tell a man what s 
 up?" 
 
 "I might tell a man who was of a different stripe 
 [171] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 from you," said I, "but I decline to give information 
 to anybody who plays the despicable part of a thief." 
 
 " What d yeh mean ? " he snarled, reddening and 
 looking particularly ugly with his head bandaged up 
 and his eyes full of malignant fire. 
 
 " I mean that you pushed my gold overboard off the 
 lighter for those rascally robbers to pick up in their 
 launch." 
 
 " Why, my dear young feller, you re mistook 
 you re altogether mistook. I ain t shoved no gold 
 off n no lighter. I don t know nothin about it." 
 
 "Your double negatives make the best possible 
 affirmatives," I replied. But knowing that he did not 
 understand that remark, I added: "I do not believe 
 you. I am positive that you did it." 
 
 " Well, I s pose yeh got a right to think anything yeh 
 want, but I tell yeh, ye re a way off. If the gold went 
 overboard it was on account o the way the lighter 
 swung." 
 
 "It was because of the way you swung the box," I 
 insisted, "that sent it into the sea, and nothing else. 
 But perhaps you ll be glad to learn that the men who 
 made you go aboard the Flying Mist on a fool s errand 
 are now under arrest. I mean Pete Slattery and his 
 [172] 
 
The Last Pound of Coal 
 
 pink-faced friend, who give their names as Trust and 
 Somers on board this ship." 
 
 "Where?" asked Bill, unguardedly. "Not on 
 board?" 
 
 "Yes; on this boat. They re in irons." 
 
 " Oh," he chuckled. " Good enough fer em ! But," 
 he added quickly, catching the idea that he was in 
 criminating himself, "I don t know anything about 
 em not a word. I never had no truck with em." 
 
 I turned away of a sudden as I saw the coal- 
 passers going by with pieces of the mast to be lowered 
 into the fire-room. I went up to the Captain s 
 cabin. He was sitting at his big table, a chart spread 
 before him. 
 
 " Well, young man, what is it ? " he asked gruffly. 
 
 "That fellow Bill, sir, that we rescued when the 
 Flying Mist went down." 
 
 "What about him?" 
 
 " Well, he s the man that pushed my gold overboard 
 from the lighter." 
 
 "Yes, I know. Doctor Quaritch has told me that 
 already," he said querulously. 
 
 " But he s getting well." 
 
 "Glad to hear it." 
 
 [173] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 "Yes, sir; he s getting well, and don t you think it 
 would be a good idea to put him in irons, as you have 
 done with Trust and Somers ? " 
 
 "No; I don t," was the curt reply. 
 
 " But he s guilty he s a criminal and he stole 
 
 "I don t doubt it," said the Captain, petulantly. 
 "But by to-morrow morning I m going to set every 
 mother s son aboard this ship, criminals and everybody 
 I don t care who getting out stuff to feed the fur 
 naces." 
 
 " The passengers ? " I asked in wonder. 
 
 " That s what I mean and I ve got authority to 
 do it. If any of em don t take to the work they ll be 
 punched up until they do. I ll line em up on deck 
 and turn the big hose on em that s what I ll do." 
 
 " Oh," I hastened to say, " I don t doubt they ll all 
 go to work very cheerfully. I know I shall." 
 
 "All right, my boy, and when we get to port your 
 gold-stealers will be ready to be handed over to the 
 police." 
 
 Next morning, much to the surprise of the passen 
 gers, they were all summoned on deck by the Captain 
 and quietly told that the steamer had burned all her 
 coal. They were asked to take off their coats and help 
 [174] 
 
The Last Pound of Coal 
 
 the crew tear out the superficial woodwork and cut it 
 up for fuel. 
 
 There were some mutterings among the first-cabin 
 men, who said they didn t want to work their passage 
 when it was paid for already; but they took the tools 
 that were handed out to them and proceeded to the 
 task of demolition. Most of the passengers were will 
 ing and anxious to help. There were only three women 
 aboard, and one of these a buxom girl from Sacra 
 mento insisted upon doing what she called her share 
 of the work, but Captain Head would not permit her 
 to help. 
 
 " Get at those after deckhouses the first thing, Mr. 
 Nason," he ordered. 
 
 "All right, sir." 
 
 The first officer led the way aft and directed the at 
 tack upon the neat, white-painted woodwork. First, 
 the doors were removed and slid down into the fire-room 
 through a hastily constructed chute. Then followed 
 the berth frames and the moldings. This was light 
 work. But when the axes and ripping irons were 
 cleaving and tearing the walls of the houses and the 
 partitions, those of the passengers not used to manual 
 labor perspired prodigiously. 
 [175] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 "This is a sight I never expected to see aboard this 
 ship," said the Doctor, burying the blade of a sharp 
 axe into the outside wall of one of the staterooms, " and 
 it s a sad sight, too. The poor old Modesto! I hate 
 like everything to see them chopping her up." 
 
 "Yes," said I, prying off a piece of "tongue-and- 
 groove," "but I suppose it s the only thing left to be 
 done." 
 
 "They must burn up and destroy the ship," said 
 Yohara, thoughtfully, bending over to pick up some 
 of the splintered pieces of old lumber which lay on deck, 
 " to voyage it into San Francisco. Yes, I am so very 
 sorry, so very sorry this beautiful ship ! She must 
 be all burn all burn ! " 
 
 " Oh, not so bad as that, Yohara," said the Doctor, 
 reassuringly. " You see," he said, turning to me, " she s 
 a composite steamer they don t build em any more 
 and she s got lots of wood in her." 
 
 " Composite ? " I asked, prying away at another 
 board. 
 
 "Yes; iron frame and wooden hull. There s a lot 
 
 of metal in her, but all her decks and sides are wood. 
 
 There s a good deal to burn if they conclude to take up 
 
 the planking and all, though that would take a great 
 
 [176] 
 
The Last Pound of Coal 
 
 lot of the stiffening out of her. But I m awfully sorry 
 to see this done awfully sorry." 
 
 "Don t you think, Doctor," said I, "there will be 
 a pretty good chance now of finding that hidden gold ? " 
 
 "Yes," said he, reflectively, "and we ought to be 
 working where we would be likely to run across it. It 
 never would be hidden anywhere around on the hurri 
 cane deck, where all the passengers are. If it s found 
 at all, it will be down below somewhere." 
 
 "I m going to ask Mr. Nason if there s any ripping 
 out going on down there," said I, "and if there is, I 
 shall request him to assign me to that part of the job." 
 
 " Now if it was opium," said the Doctor, running on 
 as if I had not spoken a habit of his which never 
 seemed impolite to those who knew him very well 
 " if it was opium, I d know what to say about directing 
 a search, for I ve run on the China route, and I ve seen 
 it taken out from all sorts of places. The coal bunkers 
 they re likely places to find smuggled stuff in. But 
 ours being empty to the last walnut of a piece, there 
 wouldn t be any good looking there. I saw five hun 
 dred taels of opium taken out of one bunker by cus 
 toms men one trip. And then there are the waste bins 
 they hide stuff in there; and just before getting into 
 [177] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 port they ll put it in the ashes, and chuck it out of the 
 ash chute into a small boat alongside. Oh, there s 
 hundreds of places, when you think em all over, but 
 the most likely place of all, to my notion, is down in 
 the lower hold under that planking. I know we ve 
 looked about quite a bit down there already, but we 
 haven t taken up any planks, except a piece or two. 
 When those planks come up, if they ever do though 
 it s unsafe, to my notion, taking the stiffening out of 
 the bottom in that way you want to be on hand, my 
 boy, with your eyes peeled. I ll be there, too. What 
 you want to look out for is these dead-broke miners, 
 coming home from Nome. They re just as likely to 
 sneak your dust as anybody, and a little more so. When 
 you think how disappointed they are, with nothing to 
 show for all their season s work but an empty poke and 
 a few frost-bites, you may understand how readily 
 some of them would take the chance of getting hold of 
 that dust and having something real big and substan 
 tial to take home." 
 
 [178] 
 
XVI 
 
 FINDING IS KEEPING 
 
 I WENT over and asked the first officer about the 
 work of " fuel-grubbing " in the lower hold. 
 
 "That will begin to-morrow," said he. "We are 
 giving the crew half a day s rest while the pas 
 sengers are at work up here. This is a light job 
 and that s the reason the passengers were set to work 
 upon it. Ripping up those heavy planks down there 
 will be a tough job to tackle, and it will be a slow one, 
 too." 
 
 "That s right" said Mr. Lovell, the second officer. 
 
 "We ll begin to work on it early in the morning," 
 said Mr. Nason. 
 
 " What time ? " asked the Doctor. 
 
 "Seven o clock. If you and the lad want to work 
 down there, as you seem anxious to do, I ve no objec 
 tion. But I should think that instead of a damp, dark 
 place you d prefer it up here in the sunlight and fresh 
 air. Oh, yes; I know what you re after you want 
 [179] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 to find that dust. Well, I hope you may be successful, 
 but " and he shook his head. 
 
 "What are you going to do with your dead man, 
 Mr. Nason ? " asked the Doctor. " He s down there, 
 you know." 
 
 "I guess I ll have to remove him temporarily from 
 the lower hold before we begin work," said the first 
 officer. "It would be paying him very small respect 
 to have all that clatter going on so near him." 
 
 "That s true," affirmed Doctor Quaritch, "and 
 then there are the men to consider, I suppose." 
 
 They talked awhile on this subject, which had so 
 little attraction for me that I strolled away. 
 
 While amidships, I became much interested in the 
 operations of some pantrymen who were trying to split 
 an enormous butcher s block so that it could go into 
 one of the furnaces. The block was of eucalyptus, or 
 Australian gumwood. This wood is very fibrous, and 
 when dried a long time it is excessively hard to split, 
 being almost as tough as iron. The axe-blades that 
 fell upon the smooth, hard top of the block rebounded 
 without making the slightest impression. The men 
 worked hard and perspired profusely, but could not 
 detach a piece of the wood as large as a man s arm 
 [180] 
 
" Finding is Keeping 9 
 
 "You greenhorns don t know how to do nothin ," 
 growled Max Fishley, as he came along the deck where 
 the block stood, it having been wheeled away from the 
 cook s domain on a freight-truck. " Let me show yeh. 
 Git a wedge, Jack, an a big one." 
 
 A large steel wedge was brought from the ship- 
 carpenter s shop, and Fishley quite ceremoniously 
 stuck its point upon the middle of the block. After 
 pounding the steel head for five or ten minutes with the 
 back of the axe he managed to make it stand upright 
 in the wood. Then he swung the axe hard, striking 
 the back of it upon the wedge, which slowly entered 
 the little crack he had made. But at the last blow, 
 after he had puffed and grunted for half an hour and 
 the steel had sunk almost out of sight in the wood, the 
 crack had not been enlarged perceptibly. 
 
 " Go way ! " he bawled to the men, on whose faces 
 broad grins were now visible. " Go way ! " he puffed, 
 his face as red as a piece of flannel. " You re wastin yer 
 time here. This blasted thing wouldn t burn any way. 
 It s like an old anvil. That s what it is an old anvil." 
 
 He wiped his wet face, gave the block a kick, threw 
 down the axe and hurried along over the deck, swear 
 ing uproariously, while all hands laughed. 
 [181] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 "It s a little tough, even for such a smart man as 
 Mr. Fishley," said one pantryman, chuckling. 
 
 " Oh, he knew how to do it," said another. 
 
 "Yes, he was wise." 
 
 "It s a wonder his cuss words didn t split it." 
 
 "Yes, he s a corker on the swear," was the remark 
 made by a burly miner, " but that block ll never see the 
 furnace unless they use a little powder in an auger- 
 hole; an I don t s pose they d do that aboard ship." 
 
 In the morning I was down in the lower hold with 
 the other passengers and some of the crew under Mr. 
 Lovell, the second officer. I was helping to rip up the 
 planks. This was tedious work, as the first officer had 
 predicted. In order to loosen and take up one of the 
 soggy planks it was necessary to cut off with cold chisels 
 the heads of the rivets or bolts that held them to the 
 angle-iron. Where it was possible to do so, we would 
 split the plank at the point where the rivet entered the 
 wood and thus loosen it ; but this was not done as a rule, 
 for the blade of the axe would strike the rivet or the 
 edge of the angle-iron below the plank and would dull 
 the tool badly. As we had no time to sharpen axes, it 
 was deemed advisable to keep their edges in good con 
 dition. The cold chisels and ripping irons were best 
 [182] 
 
"Finding is Keeping" 
 
 for the purpose of loosening the wood and were the 
 oftenest used. The work was so difficult that it took 
 an hour to remove the first three planks. 
 
 When the planks were lifted we saw that under them 
 and on top of the concrete in the bottom of the ship 
 was a mass of coal screenings, wheat and rotten wood 
 bits, while scattered among this refuse were old Brazil 
 nuts, pecans, and almonds. This ancient and musty 
 litter was the sif tings from former cargoes of the old 
 steamer. The stuff had fallen through the cracks in 
 the upper planking. I poked through the debris with 
 a stick, hoping that the treasure might be hidden some 
 where beneath the strange mixture. 
 
 I noticed that other passengers were poking, too, 
 and scattering wheat and coal screenings all over the 
 floor. But none of the searchers seemed to find that 
 for which they sought. The broken glass cut the 
 hands of the workers, and there was a good deal of 
 swearing because of it. 
 
 When the anxious master of the Modesto found out 
 what slow progress we were making he ordered more 
 men to help us. I was surprised to see among the new 
 comers Trust and Somers. 
 
 " Captain sent us down here to join Mr. LovelPs 
 [183] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 gang," said Somers to me, "but if I had anything to 
 say about it, I d be back where I was." 
 
 " You d rather remain in irons than go to work ? " I 
 exclaimed in disgust. "And work such as this, too, 
 so necessary to the interest of the ship and our 
 selves?" 
 
 " I don t see how it s goin to benefit anybody to tear 
 a steamer to pieces just for the sake of getting into port 
 a few days sooner," said Somers, who was evidently 
 not in a hurry to reach San Francisco now that he was 
 under arrest. " And Mr. Trust here thinks jest like I 
 do, don t you, Trust ? " 
 
 His partner smiled an evil smile. Then his one 
 eye regarded his mattock contemptuously. "They ve 
 given me the heaviest tool they could find," said he, 
 snarlingly. " This mattock feels like it weighed a ton." 
 
 "I ll trade you my crowbar for it," proposed Somers. 
 
 "No, you won t," was the quick reply. 
 
 " Get to work there ! " bawled the second officer, 
 hastily giving each of the complaining men a harsh 
 shove with his big hands. "This job is a good deal 
 pleasanter than breaking rock in a San Quentin chain 
 gang, where you ll be before long." 
 
 I saw Somers wince and grind his teeth as he grasped 
 [184] 
 
" Finding is Keeping" 
 
 his crowbar tightly and inserted it under the edge of a 
 plank. 
 
 While the two pirates worked together, they had 
 much to say in quiet undertones. When Max Fishley 
 came down into the hold they regarded him with mani 
 fest displeasure and suspicion. They had nothing to 
 say to him, and he kept aloof from them, though I 
 saw him look at them very closely several times. Fish- 
 ley went away after half an hour, and soon a curious 
 change came over the two men whom I had believed 
 to be in complicity with him. This was after they had 
 had a further consultation in a corner of the hold when 
 the second officer s back was turned. They seemed 
 wholly to have changed their attitude toward the work 
 in hand, for they now attacked it with surprising vigor. 
 Whenever they were raising a plank or saw one lifted 
 near them they would dart anxious glances beneath it, 
 sometimes getting down and poking under it, just as I 
 was doing at my end of the job. I puzzled over the 
 change that had so suddenly been wrought in them, 
 and spoke quietly to the Doctor about it. But it was 
 as much a mystery to him at the first as it was to me. 
 He could make nothing of it. Just before the dinner 
 hour, however, he came over and said to me : 
 [185] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 "I think I have it; and what happens in the next 
 few days will prove I m right. These fellows, Somers 
 and Trust, have been fooled by Max Fishley that 
 is, assuming that he was in with them, which you in 
 sisted upon so stoutly and if that is so, they don t 
 know where that gold is any more than you or I." 
 
 "Well," said I, "how does that account for their not 
 caring to go to work at the first when they might stand 
 as good a chance as any of us to find the treasure and 
 put it aside here somewhere in a dark corner ? " 
 
 "I thought of that too," said Doctor Quaritch. "I 
 thought that after Fishley had secretly removed the 
 gold from the place where the three of them had hidden 
 it, and they had discovered his duplicity while lurking 
 about when we removed that floor panel, they had 
 nearly despaired of ever seeing the gold again. After 
 their arrest no doubt they gave up the game entirely, 
 and may have planned to turn State s evidence against 
 Fishley a little later. In the first hours of their release 
 from the irons they could see nothing in this business 
 down here but hard work, and that they did not relish 
 in the least, as such fellows never do. But when they 
 saw Fishley come prying about, it occurred to them 
 that the gold might be secreted somewhere down here, 
 [186] 
 
" Finding is Keeping" 
 
 and that there was a chance of getting it yet and of 
 making away with it. So they have gone to work, 
 hammer and tongs, to discover the stuff." 
 
 "But in case they find it," said I, "what can they 
 do with it ? They can t take it off the steamer." 
 
 "I don t know what they may have schemed as to 
 that; but they re very crafty and full of rascally re 
 sources." 
 
 I was much impressed by the Doctor s conjectures, 
 and it pleased me to observe that his process of reason 
 ing had almost, if not quite, convinced him of Max 
 Fishley s complicity in the crime. 
 
 I thought that if these theories of the Doctor should 
 prove to be correct, it was evident that Somers and 
 Trust were altogether in the dark respecting the where 
 abouts of the treasure. As to this I was ready to re 
 joice. It seemed to me eminently just that the two 
 villains should lose their loot. And as far as I could 
 see I had as good a chance of getting it now as before. 
 I thought that Fishley s visit to the hold must have been 
 due to his anxiety over the treasure. He was, no 
 doubt, so fearful that some one should find it that he 
 could not keep at his post, which for the time was on 
 deck, but had to be running down below to see what 
 [187] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 was being done. In support of this idea of the third 
 officer being worried about the work of demolition that 
 might at any moment unearth the treasure, we had to 
 observe that he came down again just before dinner, 
 looked about carefully, and returned quickly to the 
 upper deck. The Doctor looked at me significantly. 
 
 "If things weren t in the shape they are now on 
 board this ship," he undertoned to me, " I d have that 
 man tied up and have the hose turned on him until he 
 told where the gold was. But the Captain would think 
 I was daft to propose anything of the sort, with all this 
 rumpus going on." 
 
 And truly it was a chaotic condition of affairs that 
 now obtained aboard the Modesto. I observed this 
 more particularly as the Doctor and I were told off on 
 a little dinner watch of half an hour when we grabbed 
 and bolted a cold snack and walked about a bit on deck. 
 Wherever we went, below or above decks, men with 
 their arms full of splintered lumber were constantly 
 running into us, as they swarmed toward the open 
 space above the fire-room, where their burdens were 
 slid down the chute to the hungry furnaces, which ate 
 the dry stuff as though it were so much matchwood. 
 
 Chopping, ripping, tearing, rending and creaking 
 [188] 
 
ftp 
 
 "Finding is Keeping" 
 
 noises came from everywhere, as boards and planks 
 were cut or pried off, and nails and bolts and rivets gave 
 way unwillingly before the quick, insistent work of the 
 destroyers, who ran about covered with sweat and dirt, 
 bent upon their strange and unremitting toil. 
 
 Clouds of dust puffed out over the decks or lay in 
 little wind-piled heaps abaft the ventilators and sky 
 lights. Strings of torn canvas, cordage, bits of splin 
 tered stanchions, boards and moldings were strewn 
 about, and all over the hurricane deck lay gleaming 
 crumbs of broken glass from panes that had been 
 knocked from the stateroom windows and had been 
 ground under the heels of the workers. Nearly every 
 man aboard had been turned into a wood-grubber or 
 wood-passer, and once I saw the Captain himself with 
 a big painted board in his arms, walking toward the 
 chute. But for the most part he seemed to be stamp 
 ing the deck and roaring down through the pipe, " More 
 steam! More steam! Can t you crowd on a little 
 more steam ? " 
 
 I grieve to say that his commands were interspersed 
 with a great many imprecations that I am loath to re 
 cord. But in trying times aboard ship little attention 
 is paid to the language used by its master. It is to the 
 [189] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 order itself, and not to the trimmings, profane or other 
 wise, that the men pay heed. 
 
 They told me that the fiercest swearing done by the 
 good Captain was when he went down into the lower 
 hold and saw the musty litter that still lay between the 
 angle-irons. 
 
 "Why didn t somebody tell me about this?" he 
 bawled to Fishley, while he pointed to the coal siftings 
 and old wheat. " There ain t any brains on board this 
 ship, I guess. Why, that stuff would burn like a house 
 afire, and make some steam, too. Tell em to get boxes 
 and freight-trucks and wheel it out, raise it to the upper 
 deck and dump it down the chute ! " 
 
 His orders were obeyed, and soon the dust flew up 
 out of the chute in great clouds all over the deck, nearly 
 choking the men, while from the fire-room came howls 
 of protest. 
 
 "They re sendin down glass an gravel for us to 
 burn!" was the loud complaint, for some of the frag 
 ments of the broken bottles were among the coal screen 
 ings and the wheat. 
 
 "Never you mind!" roared the Captain, when he 
 heard the angry voices. "I m running this ship, and 
 I m going to burn anything I like. Wet it down and 
 [190] 
 
2f 
 
 GEORGE SOMERS 
 
"Finding is Keeping" 
 
 dump it in; and if the dust chokes you, put wet gunny- 
 sacks over your heads. It won t hurt you. I only 
 wish there was more of the same stuff to burn." 
 
 "This is the saddest day of my life," said Doctor 
 Quaritch, as he walked along the deck. "I never 
 thought to see the dear old Modesto so dismantled. 
 Why, she couldn t look much worse if she was one of 
 those old hulks lying in the Oakland Creek. It s too 
 bad too bad. " 
 
 He must have been deeply moved, for he let his pipe 
 go out three or four times, and once he blew his nose 
 very loudly. 
 
 Just before going below I chanced to be near some 
 of the crew who did not observe me, and I overheard a 
 few remarks that set my thoughts flying in another 
 direction. 
 
 " There ll be a big bonus for the man that finds it," 
 said a pantryman, prying away at a door- jamb. 
 
 " Of course the will/ 3 said his mate. 
 
 " The young feller s easy. Whoever finds it will git 
 one o them eight sacks." 
 
 " I d make sure of a couple of em," said another man. 
 
 " How d ye do that ? " 
 
 "Why, I guess I d hold out two, or mebbe three. 
 [191] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 He d never know the difference. He d think the other 
 feller stole em." 
 
 " Are all the passengers on ? " 
 
 "Yes, every one of em, an they re all a-lookin for 
 it. Wouldn t it be great if you an me should find it, 
 partner ? " 
 
 "That s right; and findin is keepin , says I." 
 
 I passed along, my senses all alert and my hands 
 clenched in impatience in which righteous anger played 
 no small part. Here was a fine state of affairs. Every 
 man aboard that ship and not a few of them doubtless 
 as unscrupulous as Somers and Trust was eagerly 
 seeking for my gold. Might not that explain some of 
 the zeal that had everywhere been manifest among the 
 busy workers who were prying off boards and planking ? 
 I could see them all peering under each piece of wood 
 they detached searching, searching for those eight 
 bags of gold dust, and eagerly rushing to the next piece 
 and quickly uplifting it. How they must begrudge 
 the loss of time occasioned by carrying the torn-off 
 lumber to the chute. What if the treasure should be 
 pounced upon by one of those many disappointed 
 miners, would it not prove too great a temptation for 
 him ? It made me shudder to think of the many ad- 
 [192] 
 
"Finding is Keeping" 
 
 venturers men who had been mere camp-followers, 
 leeches upon the lucky and the industrious the 
 gamblers, the monte-players, the sharpers, who were 
 returning to a warmer climate for the winter season. 
 These men would not hesitate to put into force the rule 
 of "finding is keeping." Yes, the riff-raff, the rag 
 tag and the bobtail who had been mere idlers on the 
 golden beach, and whom we had on board in plenty 
 "finding is keeping" would be a rule easy of applica 
 tion with them in a place where they had had to work 
 so hard with axe and saw and cold chisel. 
 
 [193] 
 
XVII 
 
 IN THE LOWER HOLD 
 
 r 
 
 I HURRIED down into the lower hold after the Doc 
 tor, cheered somewhat by my remembrance of what 
 had been said about the unlikelihood of the missing 
 treasure being secreted anywhere above deck. This 
 seemed to me a logical idea, and as there were but two 
 places where the work of demolition was going on at 
 present in the after deck-house and in the lower hold 
 I had for the time to concern myself about the lower 
 hold only. On my way down I passed Max Fishley. 
 He was waiting his turn to climb up the hatchway 
 ladder as I was passing down. When I made out his 
 ugly head below me I could not help thinking that it 
 would be no great sin if I should let go my hold upon 
 the ladder and plump down upon him with my heels. 
 But such an act would serve no purpose other than 
 the possible extinction of a rogue before his time. So 
 I passed down and by him coolly enough, and was soon 
 at work with Doctor Quaritch, cutting off rivet heads 
 with my hammer and cold chisel. 
 [194] 
 
In the Lower Hold 
 
 But the new phase of the affair kept haunting me, 
 and as I glanced about where the lanterns twinkled in 
 the great musty hold, and many feet crunched the glass 
 of the broken bottles, I could not help thinking that 
 while all these men were intent upon the work of tear 
 ing out the planks and stanchions to supply the steamer 
 with fuel, they were far more eagerly interested in the 
 keen search for my eight bags of gold dust. 
 
 "That s no doubt exactly the way things stand," 
 said Doctor Quaritch, when I told him what I had over 
 heard and of my fears. " They re all on the lookout. 
 It must have come from letting those deckhands help 
 us in our first search down there. That was gossiped 
 all about, of course. News like that travels fast on 
 shipboard. We should have been more careful. I ll 
 tell Nason." 
 
 He went over and whispered to the first officer. 
 They held quite a conference, and when the Doctor 
 came back he took the first occasion to tell me quietly 
 that Mr. Nason had promised to keep a sharp eye on 
 the workers, and that if any of the officers saw any one 
 trying to carry out anything that looked like the treas 
 ure, he would pounce down upon him like a hawk. 
 
 "Speaking of the other officers," said I, "does he 
 [195] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 still think that Max Fishley has nothing to do with the 
 hiding of the gold ? " 
 
 " I discussed that matter with him," replied the Doc 
 tor, " but he waved me off, saying that if we wanted to 
 bring any such absurd charges against Fishley, we d 
 have to wait until we reached port." 
 
 "When," said I, bitterly, " he ll no doubt escape scot 
 free, gold dust and all." 
 
 " Oh, don t worry about that, John," was the suave 
 reply. " I guess Captain Head will do the square thing, 
 as he sees it." 
 
 "I hope so," said I, "but there s so much going on 
 aboard this ship beside the workings of justice, that 
 I" 
 
 " What have they got over there ? " broke in the Doc 
 tor, stepping forward to where two of the passengers 
 were examining some object they had taken from a 
 newly made hole in the low casing that ran all about 
 the hold for two or three feet above the floor. 
 
 "What is it?" I cried, rushing forward. A dozen 
 others of the party of workers, among them Trust and 
 Somers, were already about the passengers who had 
 made the discovery. 
 
 "They ve found the dust!" piped a shrill treble. 
 [196] 
 
In the Lower Hold 
 
 "They ve found the dust!" repeated a deep-toned 
 bass, and all hands sprang toward the place of the dis 
 covery. 
 
 The finders of the supposed treasure had undone a 
 tightly tied package and were unrolling it at the com 
 mand of Mr. Nason, who had immediately taken a 
 lively interest in the discovery and had tried his best 
 to keep back the curious crowd. 
 
 " Wai, all that there gold ain t in that little bundle," 
 remarked one miner to another. 
 
 "No, unless that s all the is left of it after goin 
 through the mill," said another. 
 
 There were a few minutes of suspense during which 
 I worked my way to the side of the first officer and 
 looked down at the object on which all eyes were bent. 
 As it was unrolled it seemed to be a seaman s old blouse, 
 and in its innermost fold the eager searchers were re 
 warded by the sight of something that gleamed in the 
 lantern light. This something was held up to view. 
 
 "Nothin but an old whisky bottle!" groaned one 
 of the expectant crowd. "Jest an old dead soldier." 
 
 "Fall back there, men!" commanded Mr. Nason, 
 " and get to work." 
 
 The men resumed their places. 
 [197] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 "Mighty glad that blear-eyed Arizonian didn t find 
 the stuff that time," I heard one of the passengers re 
 mark to a man at his side. 
 
 " So m I. But if it had been it, he wasn t very smart. 
 He could a let it lay there a while and took it out when 
 nobody was a-lookin . He wasn t very smart." 
 
 This remark was very disconcerting to me. It 
 showed that the doctrine of "finding is keeping" was 
 too freely and fully held aboard the Modesto to assure 
 the owner of lost treasure of any interest he might have 
 in it unless he was capable of exerting an unremitting 
 vigilance. 
 
 I felt sick and disgusted when I thought of how 
 lightly my fellow-passengers treated my ownership of 
 the missing gold. It seemed to me that between some 
 of them and the pirates I had so strongly execrated 
 there was but little choice. 
 
 By noon of the next day the lower hold had been en 
 tirely stripped of whatever it could afford in the way 
 of fuel, and every shovelful of coal screenings and wheat 
 sif tings had been scraped from the concrete bottom. 
 
 I watched the men taking up the last plank, and 
 heaved a deep sigh as I saw that on its removal I was 
 no nearer than before to the recovery of my lost gold. 
 [198] 
 
In the Lower Hold 
 
 It might, I thought, have been taken out by thievish 
 passengers or ship s men when no one was looking. I 
 had worked and watched all night long, and had seen 
 nothing to arouse my suspicions as to any one finding 
 and making away with it. But the workers had come 
 and gone, toiling in short shifts, and I could not see 
 all that was going forward. When I communicated 
 my fears to Mr. Nason, he laughed. 
 
 " Oh, they couldn t have taken out any of your 
 treasure, John. It would be heavy and unmanageable 
 stuff for them to handle without being noticed; and 
 somebody would have reported them." 
 
 I was cheered in a measure by what he said. I 
 asked him where the work would be carried on next. 
 
 "In the main freight-hold, between-decks," he re 
 plied, pointing his finger upward. "We ll hoist the 
 wood up on deck and send it down the chute." 
 
 I was feeling weak and miserable because of lack of 
 sleep. My hands, which had been cut in many places 
 by the broken glass, were moist with nervous sweat, 
 and my throat was sore from the effect of damps and 
 draughts. 
 
 When the Doctor came down to work beside me 
 between-decks, where the ring of hammers upon rivet 
 [199] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 heads was already heard and planks were being pried 
 up, I insisted upon his going back into the sunshine. 
 He looked jaded and listless, and I felt guilty to think 
 that his friendship for me had kept him down in the 
 dreary lower hold so long,, 
 
 " Well, I do feel a bit knocked about," said the Doc 
 tor, " and seeing that you insist, I ll go up for a while. 
 I can swing an axe at that deck-house; and it might be," 
 he added, "seeing that the gold wasn t found in the 
 lower hold and may not be in this one, that it will be 
 just as well to keep a lookout up there after all." 
 
 " You re right," said I, glad to think that his kindly 
 interest in my affairs should find practical expression 
 without discommoding him. 
 
 I do not know whether it was that the passengers 
 and crew had learned the trick of it and could work 
 with better expedition, or whether their lust for the gold 
 had grown stronger, but the planks of the freight -deck 
 on which they were now laboring were torn up much 
 more rapidly than were the others. I am inclined to 
 think it was as much due to one of these causes as to 
 the other. I could see the eagerly peering eyes of some 
 of the nearer workers as they held their lanterns under 
 each plank that was being uplifted, and I knew what 
 [200] 
 
In the Lower Hold 
 
 they were seeking for there. I was kept under a severe 
 nervous tension hour by hour as the work progressed. 
 My eyes ached from the strain that was put upon them. 
 My head was dizzy at times. Just how much of this 
 sort of thing I could stand I did not know, but as I 
 look back upon those harassing experiences now, I 
 do not think that I stopped for one moment to consider 
 what effect the loss of sleep and the never-ending men 
 tal perturbation might have upon me. 
 
 [201] 
 
XVIII 
 
 THE HEAT OF THE GOLD-HUNT 
 
 r 
 
 IT was rip and tear, clink and clank. Where the 
 planks were short, as they were in some sections of the 
 floor, there was a scramble of the workers to see who 
 could raise the most of them. I saw one man lie flat 
 upon the deck and run his long arm back under the 
 flooring and move it all about, and I heard some of the 
 passengers expostulating : 
 
 " That ain t fair!" 
 
 " Aw ! He wants to hog it all ! " 
 
 " Let up on fudgin there, you ! " 
 
 The man against whom all this was aimed rolled 
 over and arose, and in the light of a lantern I saw his 
 face. It was that of my worthy friend Bill of the 
 lighter. During all the progress of the search, which, 
 from the remarks I had heard, seemed to constitute 
 one prolonged indignity to me, my blood had not boiled 
 quite so fiercely as it did when I saw that fellow Bill 
 there between-decks, and knew that he was so bent 
 
The Heat of the Gold-Hunt 
 
 upon finding my treasure. There were others, no 
 doubt, just as anxious to find it as Bill, but not even 
 the rascally Trust was as odious to me as the man who 
 had so coolly and deliberately pushed my treasure-box 
 off the lighter and sunk it in the Bering sea. It was, 
 to my way of reasoning, the worst of all the offenses in 
 connection with the robbery. I was on the point of 
 speaking to Mr. Nason and asking him to transfer Bill 
 to the work on the deckhouse, when Max Fishley came 
 down and relieved the first officer, who immediately 
 left the hold. 
 
 Mr. Nason had been very gentlemanly in his treat 
 ment of the passengers, but Max Fishley began ordering 
 them about as though they were so many coolies. This 
 they very plainly resented, but the green-eyed third 
 mate had not discernment enough to note the effect of 
 his bearishness upon the passengers. I felt that on the 
 first occasion that might arise they would make matters 
 interesting for Mr. Fishley. 
 
 Remarkable as it may seem, in view of the slow 
 progress made in the lower hold, all the planking 
 and lining between decks was removed in a day. 
 This, I thought, was not in any way due to the 
 officious supervision of Mr. Fishley, but to the in- 
 [203] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 creased interest the passengers took in the search for 
 the treasure. 
 
 As soon as it was apparent to me that the gold was 
 not to be found between-decks the tension relaxed for a 
 time, and when the passengers went on deck for a few 
 hours rest I lay on a heap of tattered canvas in a corner 
 and slept soundly until I heard a call : 
 
 "All first watch to the forehold!" 
 
 Now I was in the first watch and it behooved me to 
 be stirring, but I did so slowly enough. When I sat 
 up and looked about me a scene of sad desolation met 
 my eye. Over the bestrewn and littered deck I could 
 see what remained of the ruined and despoiled after- 
 house, and heard the crash of the axes, the grating of 
 the saws and the clink of the hammers on the heads of 
 the nail-cutters. My heart was heavy as I saw Doctor 
 Quaritch walk wearily forward to where I lay, shaking 
 his head and muttering mournfully. 
 
 "Well, John," he said, with a thin smile, when he 
 saw me, "we re still over a thousand miles from port. 
 At this rate it will take nearly all the woodwork on 
 board to run her in. Isn t it a pity ? Of course they 
 can put a hundred ship-carpenters to work and repair 
 the damage in a week, but still she ll never be the same 
 [204] 
 
The Heat of the Gold-Hunt 
 
 never the same old Modesto. And have you noticed 
 how she has come up out of the water ? Why, a good 
 lively gale now would lay her on her beam-ends like a 
 log. How are you feeling ? " 
 
 I told him about my sore throat, and he led me back 
 to his stateroom and prepared a gargle for me. 
 
 " I suppose," he said, " they ll be tearing up this room 
 before long. They re working on 31 now and this is 
 22. But perhaps something may happen before then 
 
 something may happen." 
 
 Through the open doorway I heard the call repeated : 
 
 "All first watch to the forehold!" 
 
 "Well, Doctor," I said, "I must get to work again. 
 Somebody will be getting that gold dust and keeping 
 it." 
 
 " You re right," he said. " We mustn t let up, I sup 
 pose. But there must be at least four days more of 
 this four days more, unless something turns up." 
 
 As I passed along the line of doomed staterooms, 
 and came to the end, where the work of demolition was 
 in progress, I noted that the next room marked for 
 destruction, because of its being nearest the one most 
 lately destroyed, was the cabin of the second and third 
 officers. As I paused near this cabin I saw a passenger 
 [205] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 wrench the outside door from its hinges and start away 
 with it toward the chute. 
 
 " Here ! " yelled Max Fishley. " What are yeh doin ? 
 Put that there door back." 
 
 "Why, I thought that everything went," said the 
 passenger, returning with the door, "and this is next 
 in line." 
 
 " I don t care what you thought," growled the third 
 officer, with an oath. " You leave my cabin alone ! " 
 
 "But Mr. Lovellsaid " 
 
 "I don t care a little green apple what Mr. Lovell 
 said. He s got no business to have my cabin tore 
 down. Don t you see, I had that partition sawed off 
 and left there? I want the other side sawed off, too. 
 I want my room left jest as it is now." 
 
 There was a ripple of dissent among the passengers. 
 
 "We ve given up our rooms," said one, "and are 
 sleeping on deck in all that mess. And I should think 
 
 " I say I don t care what you think. Your thinkin 
 don t count for nothin here," said the mate, contemp 
 tuously. 
 
 "Captain s orders," said Mr. Lovell, coming up. 
 " Our room s got to be cut down with the rest of the 
 house. I m just as sorry to see it go as you are, Max, 
 [206] 
 
The Heat of the Gold-Hunt 
 
 but it wouldn t be fair to the rest to let it stand and cut 
 down the others." 
 
 " Well, if it s got to go I want my own men to do it. 
 I want ship s hands and not these haymakers. I got 
 things in there I want taken out before the work is 
 begun." 
 
 " All right," said Mr. Lovell, good-naturedly. " Only 
 I advise you to be more respectful to these passengers. 
 They re doing this to be obliging, and they re working 
 very hard." 
 
 " Oh, I know and you know what they re workin* 
 so hard fer. It ain t to keep the fires a-goin . It s 
 
 "Oh, stow your jaw, old man!" called the second 
 officer in his great, good-humored voice. " Begin on 
 this next cabin, gentlemen," he said to the passengers. 
 
 Although I knew that Mr. Nason wanted all his 
 hands down below, I was lax enough in my duty to slip 
 back to the Doctor and ask him if he would carefully 
 note everything that was taken out of the second and 
 third officers cabin. I told him I suspected from Max 
 Fishley s actions that the gold might have been stowed 
 away in there. 
 
 "It s unlikely," said Doctor Quaritch, "very un 
 likely, for Fishley must have taken fright after what 
 [207] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 we reported of him to the Captain. He wouldn t keep 
 the gold where it could be so easily found, in case he 
 was actually charged with having it in his possession. 
 But I ll keep a sharp lookout just the same. I think 
 it s only the natural selfishness of the beast that makes 
 him want to keep his cabin from destruction. He s 
 that kind, you know." 
 
 As I went below, I brooded over the plain significance 
 of the ironic remark let fall by Max Fishley as to why 
 the passengers were working so hard. It emphasized 
 the strong feeling of distrust I had already entertained. 
 While there might be an honest man here and there 
 among these disappointed miners and among the crew, 
 I had reason to believe that the rule of the rogue that 
 "finding is keeping" had been gaining steadily, until 
 at the present time my chances for the recovery of the 
 treasure were slimmer than ever. 
 
 The gold-hunt for it was plainly little else had 
 been led on by all sorts of rumors and reports, among 
 them one that made it clear that I had never had any 
 just claim to the treasure; and it was argued that as it 
 had passed out of my hands it was clearly the property 
 of whosoever should discover it. I heard one report 
 to the effect that the Captain had said the gold should 
 [208] 
 
The Heat of the Gold-Hunt 
 
 belong to the man who found it; and though this was 
 at variance with the attitude of the other officers, it was 
 accepted by nearly all on board, in their blind, unrea 
 soning lust for the treasure. 
 
 It was clear that if the search went on long enough 
 some one would lay his hands upon those eight bags 
 of dust; and that these would be covetous, unyielding 
 hands I made not the slightest doubt. 
 
 [209] 
 
XIX 
 
 THE STEAM COLLIER 
 
 r 
 
 THE forehold of the Modesto was not large, as she 
 was built at the time when it was considered best to 
 stow aft as much of a steamer s cargo as possible, that 
 the propeller might be left deep under water. The 
 passengers and crew attacked the work with surprising 
 vigor, considering their worn condition. Here, as in 
 the after hold, I kept vigilant watch of the movement 
 of the passengers while doing as much work as I could 
 in providing fuel. 
 
 The eagerness of the searchers for the gold, built 
 upon an ever-increasing cupidity, had become some 
 thing feverish. The side of the forehold had been 
 cased to protect some special freight that had been 
 taken up to Nome in that part of the ship. This casing 
 was composed of surfaced pine boards, six inches wide 
 and one inch thick. The boards were simply nailed 
 to a temporary wooden framework, and this lining 
 structure afforded but slight resistance to the attacks 
 
The Steam Collier 
 
 with the axes and other tools wielded by the busy 
 workers. 
 
 I saw Trust, who had managed to exchange his 
 heavy mattock for a light axe, ripping off the casing 
 boards in a way that would have astonished some of 
 his old idling, gaming friends; but Somers was not in 
 the hold, and I wondered if he were bent on individual 
 search in some other part of the vessel. 
 
 "There s no gold in here," I heard a man call out, 
 as the last piece of casing was torn off with a loud creak. 
 " If it s in the hold at all, it s under what planks there 
 is left in the flooring." 
 
 But when, after another half hour, the floor planks 
 were all torn up, the whole crew concentrating their 
 energies on the last one and darting quick, anxious 
 glances under it, there was a call of "What s the next 
 place, Mr. Nason ? " 
 
 "The steerage," replied the mate, shortly. And 
 there was a rush to that part of the vessel, which was 
 near at hand. 
 
 My throat was now aching again, and I started for 
 the stateroom to make a new application of the Doc 
 tor s gargle. Beside a piece of torn canvas that had 
 been stuck up by some of the passengers for a night 
 [211] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 shelter I saw Trust and Bill. I crept up behind the 
 canvas and lay there listening, in the hope of hearing 
 something to my advantage. 
 
 "And the next time yeh git anybody to go in with 
 yeh on a lay like that there," came in angry tones from 
 Bill, " lookout yeh don t git somebody like me that can 
 put yeh out o business, if he wants to, in three shakes. 
 Some men will stand a lot o foolin , but nobody ever 
 fooled me more n oncet, an* they allus was sorry they 
 tried it even then. Sendin a man off on a schooner 
 to wait for you to bring aboard 
 
 " Sh ! " cautioned Trust. " You musn t talk so loud. 
 We re in deep enough already." 
 
 " Yes, you an Joe is, an I m derned glad of it." 
 " Well, you re no better off. You ll be landed along 
 with us if we ever get to San Francisco. The boy has 
 told the Captain who you are." 
 
 " The devil he has ! How d yeh know ? " 
 " Oh, I ve got ways of getting inside information." 
 " Yes, but that third mate he s fooled you good 
 that s what he has," chuckled Bill. " He s too many 
 for you, ain t he now ? He s got the stuff hid away from 
 yeh. You ll never see it, nor red-faced Joe neither. 
 Your game is played, an yeh got what was a-comin , 
 [212] 
 
The Steam Collier 
 
 didn t yeh?" he went on tauntingly. "But if that 
 there kid blabbed about me I ll chuck him over the 
 side, jest as I did his box. Say, look here, Pete, on the 
 square now, did you put up that there job on me ? Yeh 
 might as well own up ye re done for anyway. Did 
 yeh put up the job ? " 
 
 "No, I didn t honest Indian," said Trust, delib 
 erately, with falsehood sounding in every note. "Joe 
 lost his nerve at the last moment. He wouldn t run 
 the launch out, and I didn t know anything about 
 handling her. So I couldn t get aboard with the stuff." 
 
 " I wish I could believe half you say," said Bill, " but 
 I don t. You never ring true. But your game is up 
 now. You ll never git them hooks o yourn into that 
 there gold agin. Fishley s got it stored away where 
 nobody will find it that feller used to be the best 
 opium smuggler on the City o Peking, an you can bet 
 he knows how to stow things away safe out o sight an 
 git em ashore on dark nights. You might as well give 
 up you ll only blister them neat, ladylike, gambler 
 hands o yourn for nawthin ." 
 
 " But what are you searching so hard for yourself ? " 
 asked Trust. "You re right in the general hunt with 
 the rest. They re all looking for the gold." 
 [213] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 " I know that, but it s jest a kind o pastime with me. 
 I ain t got no notion o findin nawthin . But I can t 
 hardly help lookin when everybody is so anxious-like 
 an up an at it all the time. But I m glad Fishley s fooled 
 yeh. It serves yeh right. Yeh ll git about fifteen 
 years for this, that s what yeh ll git; an I m glad of it." 
 
 Bill turned and went away to join the fuel-grubbers 
 in the steerage, and as Trust followed him, with a slow 
 and thoughtful step, I dodged out of my hiding-place 
 and got my gargle. Soon I was on my way to the 
 steerage. Now all along I had had hopes of the steer 
 age. It was true that most of the berth-frames and 
 odd stanchions had been removed already, but there 
 still remained the flooring and some casing in a super 
 ficial after-partition that was independent of the bulk 
 head. 
 
 I ran to the corner that had been occupied by Somers 
 and Trust, and chopped away at the floor there, look 
 ing about closely for any sign of a panel such as had 
 been discovered in the lower hold. Trust, together 
 with his mate, who had rejoined him, devoted his ener 
 gies to a corner farthest away from the one they had 
 slept in, and paid no attention to the work begun in 
 their old corner. 
 
 [214] 
 
The Steam Collier 
 
 This was rather a disheartening circumstance, for 
 had the gold been hidden near the place where their 
 berths had been, they would surely have burrowed 
 about that quarter. I had toiled hard, despite the 
 fact that my axe-handle had become splintered a little 
 and was hurting my hand at every stroke. I paid closer 
 attention to the two pirates and became at last thor 
 oughly convinced, by the way they worked and by the 
 looks in their faces, that they had not the slightest no 
 tion of the actual whereabouts of the treasure. Like 
 myself and the others aboard, they knew that the gold 
 was in the ship, but where to find it was another matter. 
 
 Relaxing my vigilance for a while from sheer weari 
 ness, I asked Mr. Nason to excuse me, and went up on 
 the hurricane deck, where I lay for a moment near the 
 great naked square in the painted canvas, where the 
 after staterooms, the smoking-room and rear house 
 had stood. The debris that littered the deck had be 
 come a general mass that lay helter-skelter, its fag-ends 
 of canvas and cordage whipped by the winds and twisted 
 fantastically. I stretched out for a quiet hour of rest 
 near a little knot of passengers, and was lying flat on 
 my back looking up into the blue tenuity of the sky, 
 when the breeze shifted a bit, bringing down some of 
 [215] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 the smoke from the funnels, and instantly an intolerable 
 stench greeted my nostrils. I sprang up and cried, 
 " What s that ? " to the man nearest me. 
 
 " I don t know," said he. " Ain t it awful ? Smells 
 like burning grease." 
 
 "They re throwin a lot of oleo into the furnace," 
 explained another passenger. 
 "What s oleo?" I asked. 
 " Oleomargarine." 
 
 "Then we must be somewhere near port," said the 
 man I had first addressed, closing his nose with his 
 fingers. "They wouldn t burn up provisions if they 
 wasn t near port." 
 
 " Oh, no ; we re six hundred miles out yet, so the 
 Captain says; but he swears he s goin to run her in in 
 the next two days, if it takes all the burnable stuff there 
 is aboard. He s got to do it. They ve piled in all the 
 lubricating oil they dared to use. Now they re burnin 
 that stinkin oleo." 
 
 "Well, bull butter ought to make steam all right." 
 "You bet it will." 
 
 But going forward I learned from the second officer 
 that there had been only a few hundred pounds of oleo 
 margarine burned all that could be spared and 
 [216] 
 
The Steam Collier 
 
 that the last of this fuel had just been thrown into the 
 furnaces. 
 
 " We re chucking in a lot of hams and sides of bacon 
 next," said he. "Chow will be short on our last day 
 out. But bacon-burning don t bother me, for I never 
 touch pig in any shape." 
 
 "No," observed the Doctor, coming along, "it isn t 
 the best kind of food, but men working as hard as these 
 are on this ship ought to have something in the way of 
 meat. Speaking of eating, I d like to have my legs 
 under the table at the Palace Grill just about now." 
 
 "Wouldn t I though!" exclaimed the second officer. 
 " If we have good luck we ll be in by to-morrow night." 
 
 I saw the squat little figure of the Jap coming along 
 the deck with an instrument in his hand. It looked 
 something like a zither. 
 
 "That s his yo-kin, as he calls it," remarked Doctor 
 Quaritch. " It took him nearly a month to make it." 
 He took the instrument from the boy s hands as he 
 came up. " See how ingeniously it s constructed." 
 
 Mr. Lovell and I admired the neat workmanship of 
 the yo-kin, which was flat and made of wood, prettily 
 painted over with a brave show of decoration. In 
 stead of strings the yo-kin had wires of various lengths, 
 [217] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 which the cunning Jap had taken from broom-handles, 
 and twisted around neat hardwood thumb-screws. 
 
 "What are you going to do with this?" asked the 
 Doctor of Yohara. "It s no time to be playing it on 
 deck. If the Captain saw you with it he d make music 
 for you." 
 
 " Oh, I no going play now," said the Jap, sadly, shak 
 ing his head. 
 
 "What then?" 
 
 "I putting it into chute." 
 
 " The dickens you are," exclaimed the Doctor. 
 
 " Yes, I sinking it burn very well make good fire 
 for the ship for one minute." 
 
 " How many miles do you think we d run on it, Yo 
 hara ? " snickered the second officer. 
 
 "Don t laugh at him," said the Doctor, seriously. 
 "Don t you see what a sacrifice he s making? This 
 yo-kin is the apple of his eye. It took him weeks and 
 weeks to make it. It s the only treasure he s got, and 
 he s willing to part with it for the good of the ship. 
 Now I call that a genuine sacrifice a piece of down 
 right good-heartedness . 
 
 "So it is," said Mr. Lovell, "and I shouldn t have 
 laughed, only it s so perfectly " 
 [218] 
 
The Steam Collier 
 
 "Yohara!" called the Doctor to the Jap, who had 
 walked solemnly away during the last words. " Come 
 back. You don t have to burn your yo-kin. You re a 
 good boy, and here s half a dollar for you. Take the 
 yo-kin back and hang it up, and if anybody attempts to 
 burn it I ll jump on him stiff-legged." 
 
 "I must not burn?" asked Yohara, pocketing the 
 coin and patting his instrument affectionately. "Oh, 
 I do not want to burn ! I love yo-kin to my heart ; but 
 I sinking I must burn." 
 
 " No no nothing of the sort," the Doctor in 
 sisted stoutly. "I ll burn my instrument case first. 
 Take it back and hang it up." 
 
 " Sank you, sir sank you," said Yohara, in his 
 soft little speech, and starting back to his coop near 
 the scullery. "I very glad I must not burn. But if 
 ship cannot go to San Fran-cis-co, I will burn I will 
 burn." He hugged the yo-kin close to his breast and 
 went away. 
 
 "Talk about your self-denial," said my medical 
 friend, " doesn t that beat all ? " 
 
 " You re right," said Mr. Lovell, " and I m ashamed 
 to think I laughed. Hope he didn t notice it. They re 
 mighty sensitive little fellows, those Japs." 
 [219] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 "They are that. Why, even the grown men and 
 women are just like children. And they re affectionate. 
 No matter how much I scold that chap when we re 
 ashore for he s kind of careless sometimes kind 
 of careless, you know he just bows his head and 
 takes it all like a lamb. Never says a word back." 
 
 "Yes," said the second officer, "I ve seen enough 
 of em to notice how soft-hearted they are. Three 
 years ago in Yokohama I Hullo ! What ship s 
 that?" 
 
 He pointed to the northeast. 
 
 Down on the horizon we saw a black smoke-drift 
 and low-standing topmasts. 
 
 "It s a big steamer," said Doctor Quaritch. "I 
 wonder if we can t get some coal now." 
 
 " Maybe a little if he would spare it. But he might 
 n t be obliging," said Mr. Lovell. 
 
 We all went forward to where Captain Head was 
 closely scanning the steamer. 
 
 "It s the San Bernardino coming down from Na- 
 naimo, or I miss my guess," said he, screwing down 
 his glass. 
 
 "Why, she s a big collier," said the Doctor. 
 
 "Yes," said the Captain, sententiously, but with a 
 [ 220] 
 
The Steam Collier 
 
 world of meaning. " Carries about three thousand 
 tons." 
 
 " Three thousand tons of coal within sight of us," 
 exclaimed the Doctor, " and we re burning up our 
 houses and hams! That s the fortune of the sea." 
 
 Within an hour the San Bernardino was within easy 
 hailing distance. We could see her Captain on the 
 bridge, raking us fore and aft with his glass. There 
 was an exchange of signals and the two steamers slowed 
 down. 
 
 " Want a tow, Captain ? " came the voice of the San 
 Bernardino s master. 
 
 "No," called back Captain Head, "but I d like to 
 buy a little coal." 
 
 "Sorry, but can t sell a pound." 
 
 " Not at sea-prices ? You can sell at sea-prices, 
 can t you?" 
 
 " The owners don t allow it. Let me tow you in." 
 
 " He s after salvage," muttered Captain Head. " The 
 highbinder! That would mean forty per cent of the 
 ship at the least figure. I ll see him hanged first." 
 Then he raised his voice : " I ll give you forty dollars a 
 ton!" he shouted. "That s eight times shore prices." 
 
 " Very sorry, but we re a day overdue now, and can t 
 [221] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 wait. I ll tow you in for twenty thousand dollars, and 
 say nothing about salvage." 
 
 " Oh, yes, you will," undertoned the Captain. Then 
 he called out: " I ll give you forty dollars a ton." 
 
 " You re riding a little high, ain t you ?" asked the 
 unobliging master, satirically. "Did you burn your 
 ballast ? Where s your masts and after deckhouse ? " 
 
 " Fifty dollars a ton ! " called Captain Head. " That s 
 as high as I ll go." 
 
 "Say twenty thousand, and I ll pass you the line. 
 That s reasonable." 
 
 "Reasonable? you pirate!" yelled our Captain, 
 stamping the deck and cursing loudly. " You needn t 
 take this ship for any old derelict. Her engines are in 
 good working order, and we re not out of fuel. We ll 
 get into port as soon as you do." 
 
 " Yes, if you put your whole ship into your furnaces," 
 laughed the Captain of the San Bernardino; and there 
 were echoing "haw-haws" from his officers. "What 
 are you burning now that stinks so ? It ain t Welling 
 ton coal, by a long chalk. Say the word and I ll tie 
 you up at the dock by Thursday night." 
 
 " No, sir ! I ll have no dealings with a pirate of the 
 high seas. You ve struck the wrong man this voyage. 
 [222] 
 
The Steam Collier 
 
 I ll not be held up and robbed in cold blood by the likes 
 of you you infernal skinflint ! I d rather burn my 
 ship than hand her over to you." 
 
 And the Captain ran into his cabin and banged the 
 door very loudly. 
 
 [223 
 
XX 
 
 IN THE SHAFT ALLEY 
 
 THE great collier headed away from us and increased 
 her speed so rapidly that the poor, dismantled old 
 Modesto soon fell behind and lost sight of her. 
 
 After an hour or two in his cabin the Captain came 
 on deck again and did not deign to look forward at the 
 dwindling drift of the San Bernardino, but walked up 
 and down, calling out orders and making the lives of 
 his officers and crew very miserable for a while. 
 
 "You are the slowest lot," I heard him complain. 
 " Here, with all these passengers helping you, you can t 
 give us steam enough for more than half speed. The 
 light stuff s no good. What we want is more of those 
 planks. I wish you d stop chasing around in a circle 
 and do something. Get up more planks." 
 
 " The planks are all gone, Captain," said Mr. Nason. 
 
 "All gone?" 
 
 " All except what s in the shaft alley, and I thought " 
 
 " Rip em out rip em out ! Don t be standing 
 [224] 
 
In ike Shaft Alley 
 
 around with the indicator running down and the log 
 showing only seven knots. Rip em out!" 
 
 A lot of us, with Mr. Nason, rushed down into the 
 fire-room on our way to the shaft alley. On the floor 
 of the fire-room was a pile of the house partitions, doors, 
 window-sashes and shutters. These were being flung 
 into the open furnace-doors by stokers naked to the 
 waist, and covered with sweat and dust. The head 
 fireman was bawling his orders. There was a crashing 
 of axes among the larger pieces and a clanging of fur 
 nace-doors. The fire-room had always been a forbid 
 ding nether world to me, but never had it seemed such 
 a reeking, steaming, seething, hot and noisy inferno 
 as now. 
 
 The firemen welcomed the crowd of newcomers, be 
 lieving that they had come down to relieve them from 
 their long and arduous labor of feeding the insatiable 
 furnaces. When the pale and weary toilers learned 
 the object of our coming, they were loud in their lam 
 entations. 
 
 " Oh, we get a lot of help from up above, don t we ? " 
 growled one man, with his arms full of splintered boards. 
 
 "Expect us to make sixteen knots on cigar-boxes 
 and kindling-wood." 
 
 [225] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 " Stand up to one of these open hell-holes all day and 
 see how you like it." 
 
 "They d think it was a picnic." 
 
 " S pose you could run a month with empty bunkers." 
 
 "Worth ten dollars an hour." 
 
 " We ll fire again on this ship oh, yes ! " 
 
 "Why don t you send down some more glass to 
 burn?" 
 
 And all this accompanied by the hardest swearing 
 I ever heard. 
 
 Mr. Nason, who was anxious to get out of range of 
 this snarling pack, dodged quickly out of the fire-room 
 and into the engine-room, passing to the shaft-alley 
 door. I followed him closely, being uncomfortably 
 joggled by the odious Fishley, who, closely pressed by 
 Somers and Trust, seemed feverish in his haste to get 
 into the tunnel. We entered the long, low, narrow 
 alley, hurrying by a couple of oilers who were growling 
 like the firemen, and at once proceeded to take up the 
 first of the planks, to the right of the long, swiftly re 
 volving shaft of steel that ran back to the stern of the 
 ship. It was a tight place for a gang of thirty men to 
 work in. Many of them removed their waistcoats, 
 and some took off their shirts. We were down in the 
 [226] 
 
In the Shaft Alley 
 
 very bottom of the steamer. If there were any ventila 
 tors and if they were doing any service at all it was not 
 perceptible. The hot air in the tunnel reeked with 
 machine-oil, and, with all those breaths in there, it 
 soon became wretchedly foul. A man near me, who 
 was prying up a plank with a heavy crowbar, suddenly 
 gave a little gasp, reeled and fell quietly into my out 
 stretched arms. Two of his friends carried him out, 
 but they quickly returned and went eagerly to work. 
 In fact, in spite of the bad air, the heat and the oily 
 smells, all the men seemed remarkably keen for the 
 work. I noticed that Max Fishley was officiously di 
 recting operations, and wondered how he came to be 
 down there while Mr. Nason was in command. My 
 mental comment on this was, strangely enough, fol 
 lowed on the instant by a remark by the first officer, 
 who drew near to Fishley and asked, " What are you 
 doing down here, Max ? " 
 
 " Oh, I thought I could be of some help. Don t you 
 want to go on deck ? I ll take charge here. You must 
 be nearly worn out." 
 
 He said this with a gentleness of tone of which I had 
 deemed him incapable. It occurred to me that he was 
 not such a bad fellow after all. 
 [227] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 "Thank you, Max," replied Mr. Nason. "The 
 Captain asked me to come down here, but as you re so 
 good, I will go up on deck a little while. The air here 
 makes my head spin like a top." 
 
 "Sorry you don t feel good," said Fishley, sympa 
 thetically. " Stay up as long as you like. You needn t 
 come back to the tunnel at all. We can skin this stuff 
 out in a few hours." 
 
 As soon as Mr. Nason had gone it occurred to me 
 that Max Fishley had simply been trying to get rid of 
 him. 
 
 The third officer appeared to be much relieved and 
 not a little elated by having been left in charge of the 
 work. As I looked at his face in the light of the flicker 
 ing lanterns, hanging from the low, grimy ceiling, it 
 flashed upon me that the hidden gold must be in that 
 shaft alley, and that Fishley knew where it was. I 
 walked up and down the narrow lane in which the long 
 shaft was steadily turning, and peered carefully all 
 about. In this occupation I was interrupted of a sud 
 den by the third officer, who snarled forth: 
 
 " Git to work, or git out o this here tunnel. If you 
 ain t able to do anything but walk around, I ain t got 
 no use for yeh. And anybody here," he went on, ad- 
 
In the Shaft Alley 
 
 dressing the men, " who wants fresh air, better go up on 
 deck. There s too many in here for comfort anyway. 
 Ye re all tumblin over each other an standin on each 
 other s feet." 
 
 At this I saw Trust and Somers exchange glances. 
 It had no doubt occurred to them, as it had instantly 
 occurred to me, that Fishley would send the whole 
 gang away if he could, but that in any event he would 
 thin them out as much as possible. 
 
 "I ll bet a dollar he fixed them ventilators," said 
 Somers to Trust, quietly. "He wants to choke us all 
 out." 
 
 "Well, I can stand it as long as he can," was the 
 reply. 
 
 Two men passed forward, panting, and left the alley. 
 
 " Leave that door open !" bawled a man with an adze. 
 
 "Don t you dare!" shouted Fishley. "Captain s, 
 orders very strict wants it kept closed." 
 
 "You re a liar," breathed Trust, though not loud 
 enough for the third officer to hear. 
 
 The door was closed, and I felt as though we were 
 all sealed up in a great tin can. Most of the men had 
 stripped themselves down to the waist, and yet the 
 sweat rolled from their bodies. 
 [229] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 Half a dozen planks had been removed, but no sight 
 of the treasure rewarded the eyes of the weary workers. 
 Still they kept at it diligently, and, as it seemed to me, 
 with a sort of desperate zeal, although half fainting 
 for want of air and some of them reeling blindly. I 
 had kept up my close search of the planks peering, 
 peering for any trace of a hiding-place which might be 
 disclosed. 
 
 Fishley had been careful to keep the men forward, 
 and had so directed their work that none of them had 
 any chance to examine the after part of the alley floor. 
 When he was not observing me, I stooped low, 
 dodged along behind the shaft and stood away in the 
 stern, where I could hear the propeller pounding the 
 water. There was a little heap of refuse there, a few 
 old scraps of junk and some bolts and pins. I thrust 
 these aside with my foot and pried about in the cracks 
 of the planks with a long cold chisel. Of a sudden I 
 drew a quick breath; for a piece of one of the planks 
 yielded gently. I raised it and saw below a dirty piece 
 of canvas, which I lifted and there lay my eight 
 buckskin sacks, nested between two angle-irons, and 
 smiling up at me like old friends ! 
 
 "Where s that boy?" I heard Fishley bellow from 
 [230] 
 
In the Shaft Alley 
 
 his station forward. "Where s Morning? Anybody 
 seen him ? " 
 
 " He didn t go out ! " sang a voice from near the door. 
 
 I heard a quick beating of heavy soles along the 
 planking, and the third officer pounced down upon me 
 like a pelican after a fish, just as I had slipped the can 
 vas over the treasure. 
 
 "Out o that out o that!" he roared. "Git 
 for ard there, you young rascal ! " 
 
 A stinging blow from the stick he carried fell upon 
 my back. 
 
 " Not till I have got my gold ! " I yelled at him angrily, 
 though he was within two feet of me " the gold you 
 stole and hid away under this plank." 
 
 The men heard me, and they all rushed aft, in a 
 whooping, compact mass that bore down upon us both 
 so heavily that had I not ducked under the shaft they 
 would have trampled me under their feet. It was 
 evident that their curiosity to see and handle the gold, 
 if not actually to make away with it, had much to do 
 with this rash action. But many of them must have 
 been moved by a natural desire to make Fishley desist 
 from his evident intention of securing the treasure 
 which they had all worked so hard to find, and which 
 [231] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 was about to be taken away from before their very eyes. 
 
 In their wild, distorted view of the matter, half 
 choked with the bad air, and with their brains a-buz- 
 zing, it must have seemed to them that they were about 
 to be robbed; and so they pressed aft down the alley, a 
 fierce, hot mass of half-naked, maniacal men, fired to 
 the last drop of their blood with the relentless lust of 
 gold. 
 
 "Keep him off keep him off! Don t let him get 
 it ! " cried several of the mob. 
 
 "Where is the gold? Let s see it let s see it! 
 shouted hysterical voices. 
 
 " Stand back ! " yelled Fishley. " The ain t no gold 
 here. He s fakin . Th ain t no gold ! " 
 
 I saw Trust s evil face near mine. He was pawing 
 at the canvas which I had replaced upon the buckskin 
 bags. I kicked his arm away, clapped the piece of 
 planking back in its place and lay heavily upon it. 
 Two men of the swaying, struggling mass fell near me, 
 suffocated by the foul air and the steam of the hot, 
 reeking bodies that were fighting their way aft. I saw 
 Fishley on his knees near me, and in his hand was a 
 shining something that must have been a knife. He 
 bent over me with uplifted hand. I struck at his face 
 [232] 
 
In the Shaft Alley 
 
 with my bare fist, and tried to pick up the cold chisel 
 to strike him with it. He came at me again with the 
 knife uplifted, but he was pulled back by the others. 
 He floundered violently and lost the knife. Then he 
 rose, leaning against the side of the alley, and kicked 
 his way back a few feet. At last he and Trust sprang 
 upon me simultaneously at either side, each man trying 
 to roll me over in a different way and get at the gold. 
 
 " Don t let em git it ! " I heard a ringing nasal voice 
 cry out. " Don t let em git it ! " 
 
 The mob sprang at us again, and pushed and hud 
 dled itself into a mass that could hardly lift hand or 
 foot. I felt a terrible weight upon my breast. My 
 face was buried in the greasy, sweltering, naked back 
 of a prostrate man. The contact was insufferably 
 loathsome to me, but I could not escape it. My legs 
 were pinned down and something was grinding on my 
 head. Then a dense blackness stole quietly over me, 
 great wheels hummed in my head, and of what went 
 forward during the next half -hour I was utterly ob 
 livious. 
 
 [233] 
 
XXI 
 
 IN WHICH MY BURDEN IS RESUMED 
 
 I AWOKE on deck, where I found myself lying on a 
 cot, with the friendly face of Doctor Quaritch bending 
 over me, and I could hear Yohara chattering near by. 
 After the vile closeness of the shaft alley, the fresh, 
 sharp afternoon breeze was a delight to my thick 
 senses. But it was five minutes after I had opened my 
 eyes and filled my lungs with the life-giving air before 
 I could gasp out: 
 
 " The gold did they get the gold ? " 
 
 "The gold is safe, John. It s all in my black bag, 
 right under your cot." 
 
 I breathed a deep, delicious breath and lay back 
 exultant. 
 
 " Feels good, doesn t it that air," remarked the 
 Doctor. "We found you all lying in a pretty heap, 
 Nason and I, when we got down there. Ten of you 
 under chaps had fainted dead away and the rest hadn t 
 strength enough to walk out of the tunnel by them- 
 [234] 
 
My Burden is Resumed 
 
 selves. Fishley and Trust weren t very pretty to look 
 at when we pulled em out. I never saw such a purple 
 face as Fishley s, but he came to when we brought him 
 out and soaked his head ; and we ve got him and Trust 
 and Somers, all in irons." 
 
 " So you convinced the Captain that Fishley was one 
 of the conspirators ?" 
 
 "Yes; and it was easy, for there was the testimony 
 of a lot of the passengers that they saw him trying to 
 stab you." 
 
 " Do you think Fishley closed the ventilators ? " I 
 asked, remembering what Trust had said to Somers. 
 
 "What ventilators?" 
 
 "Those running into the shaft tunnel." 
 
 The Doctor smiled. 
 
 " There are no ventilators to the tunnel. All the air 
 you got was from the engine-room, through the door." 
 
 " Which Fishley kept closed," I added. 
 
 "Did he? The scoundrel! Well, it turned out as 
 badly for him as for the rest. He didn t count on that 
 jamming up toward the stern-post. That was what 
 made the trouble for him." 
 
 "But how about Bill?" 
 
 "Bill hasn t been seen. He probably heard about 
 [235] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 the arrest of his pals and Fishley. But they ll get him, 
 if he hasn t jumped overboard, which I very much 
 doubt. For men just out of wrecks don t often do 
 that." 
 
 I gave the Doctor s hand a grateful squeeze, and 
 asked : 
 
 "How did you manage to keep the mob out of the 
 gold ? They were all after it, so it seemed to me." 
 
 "Why, John, there was no more resistance to them 
 than in so many dead men. They were just lying 
 there like flies in a corked bottle. They were stifled. 
 It was the worst conglomerate case of mal-aria you 
 ever saw. But they will all come around again the 
 rascals." 
 
 "Well, I don t know," said I, "that they were all 
 rascals. A few of them seemed to be trying to help 
 me." 
 
 " By piling on top of you and smothering you, eh ? 
 How do you feel, John ? " 
 
 "All right," said I, sitting up; "and I m going to get 
 my old box it s in our cabin and put the gold in it." 
 
 " Our cabin s gone torn down," said the Doctor, 
 sadly; "but our things are all in with Mr. Nason s. 
 Run and get that box, Yohara." 
 [236] 
 
My Burden is Resumed 
 
 I rose rather stiffly when Yohara came with the box. 
 I opened the Doctor s black bag and took out the gold, 
 counting the buckskin sacks as I laid them affection 
 ately in the box. The treasure seemed to have in 
 creased tenfold in value, although one of the sacks, from 
 which a few hundred dollars worth of the dust had 
 been extracted, was a trifle light. There was still 
 over forty thousand dollars worth of gold left, so that 
 what was missing seemed trivial to me. 
 
 Now I was a made man again. Now I could face 
 my father. I breathed deeply two or three times and 
 the Doctor smiled down at me. 
 
 " I think," said I, looking up at him, one of the heavy 
 sacks in my hand, "that this belongs to you." 
 
 " To me ? What are you thinking of ? " he grufFed 
 forth. " Do you suppose that I helped you as I did for 
 the sake of your gold ? No, sir not for a moment ! 
 It was because you were the son of William Morning, 
 and because you were my friend." 
 
 I saw that he was offended by my offer of the gift, 
 and so I did not press it upon him, but made a quiet 
 resolve that when we got ashore there should be some 
 sort of substantial recognition of his services to me. 
 
 Bill was found toward evening in one of the empty 
 [237] 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 coal bunkers, and was hauled out and set to work in 
 the fire-room. The Captain promised that all four of 
 the men under guard should be turned over to the 
 authorities as soon as we should reach port. 
 
 My gold was now safe in the purser s hands, and 
 there was nothing more to fear from anybody s evil 
 designs upon it. 
 
 The next morning we were all hard at work, tearing 
 out what remained of the woodwork. We even chopped 
 up the fore-hatch and shot it down the chute. The 
 hatch was replaced by a piece of sail-cloth. We did 
 not strike an axe in the large passenger saloon or the 
 dining-room below, as they were built of costly wood; 
 but when one of the young women aboard insisted upon 
 drumming upon the piano, much to the Doctor s annoy 
 ance, he went in and gravely requested her to leave the 
 instrument, as it was about to be broken up for fuel. 
 
 " Going to burn the piano ? " she exclaimed. " Well, 
 I s pose they are pretty short of wood by this time." 
 And she returned to her cabin, much to the relief of 
 the Doctor. 
 
 "Well," he said to me as I cut away at an unwieldly 
 piece of studding, "this should be our last day. We 
 are only two hundred and fifty miles out, and ought 
 [238] 
 
My Burden is Resumed 
 
 to reach port sometime to-night. The passengers are 
 talking about a steamer to the eastward, but I haven t 
 picked her up yet." 
 
 I looked sharply about the eastern horizon. 
 
 "There she is!" I cried. "Maybe this one will be 
 more obliging than the other was." 
 
 "Oh, yes; I see her. Well, she isn t throwing out 
 much smoke." 
 
 We went up to where Captain Head stood with his 
 glass pointed toward the steamer. 
 
 "She s a little queer," said the Captain. "I can t 
 make her out just yet. I don t believe she s making 
 much way. She can t be the San Bernardino. She 
 would be blowing out smoke for further orders. But 
 by thunder, that s what she is ! " 
 
 " The San Bernardino ? Why, she ought to be dump 
 ing her coal over at the S. P. wharf by this time," was 
 the Doctor s oracular remark. 
 
 " It s the San Bernardino all right," said the Captain. 
 " I wonder why he s running her so slow. Well, we ll 
 know pretty soon." 
 
 In less than an hour we were near enough for close 
 observation. The steamer was drifting about idly, every 
 stitch of her smoke-begrimed canvas to the breeze. 
 
The Lure o Gold 
 
 " Oh, she s making no way at all ! " said the Captain, 
 and his voice had an exultant note in it. "I ll tell 
 you what, Doctor, she s stalled broke her crank 
 shaft, I ll bet my buttons." 
 
 He called up the chief engineer, and I heard him 
 say to that officer: 
 
 " Jim, we ve simply got to make better speed. To 
 morrow will be the first, and we must be in by noon. 
 Besides, I d like to come a-flyin up by the bows of that 
 chap over there. Can t we do a little better ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir; I ve got a few knots up my sleeve yet." 
 
 " How can you make it ? There s nothing but this 
 light stuff out of the house." 
 
 " You won t mind, will you, how I do it ? " 
 
 " No; not unless it s dangerous." 
 
 " Well, it is a little dangerous. You see, we ve got four 
 hundred gallons of coal oil on board in those tanks." 
 
 " Oh, you can t feed that illuminating stuff. It will 
 go pop if you throw it in." 
 
 " I couldn t feed it in solid, I know. But I ll tell you 
 what I can do : I can soak a lot of mattresses in it 
 roll em up and poke em in. That would work all 
 right. Dangerous, of course; but we don t want to be 
 out here all winter, do we ? " 
 
 [240] 
 
My Burden is Resumed 
 
 " Well, try it," said the Captain, with a smile. " Any 
 thing to get around that fellow." 
 
 "All right. In go the mattresses." 
 
 Within ten minutes we could smell the petroleum 
 smoke from the stack, and in half an hour we were 
 flying toward the San Bernardino at a good fifteen 
 knots. 
 
 " Good morning, Captain ! " said the M odesto s mas 
 ter, with cool politeness, when we had neared the San 
 Bernardino, and slowed down on her starboard side. 
 "I see you are in no hurry about making port." 
 
 " Yes, I am ; but my propeller s hung up for the pres 
 ent." 
 
 "I don t suppose you want a tow!" called Captain 
 Head, in cutting tones. 
 
 " Well, yes; I m in a hurry to get in. But you haven t 
 any fuel." 
 
 " Oh, yes enough to run in with." 
 
 " What are you asking ? " 
 
 " Well, you are low in the water, and are a pretty 
 soggy craft to handle, but I can tow you in all right." 
 
 " At what figure five thousand ? " 
 
 "Oh, no! Salvage!" 
 
 The Captain of the San Bernardino whistled. 
 [241] 
 
The Lure o* Gold 
 
 "Huh, but you re burning your insides out!" he 
 yelled. " You re showing half your bottom." 
 
 " What of it ? My engines and machinery are in 
 good order. I ve got something to turn a screw with. 
 But yours are useless. You re adrift, and may be car 
 ried anywhere by the current and the tides perhaps 
 on to the coast." 
 
 "Well," said the dejected Captain, still trying to 
 make the best of the situation, "it would be only a 
 matter of a few days with me, for I ve got four good 
 machinists at work fixing up the shaft. But time is 
 valuable. If you ll tow me in, I ll give you all the coal 
 you want and eight thousand dollars to make repairs 
 with." 
 
 " Nothing but salvage, and I won t do it for that un 
 less you let me have the coal and lend me your firemen. 
 You wanted to take advantage of me, and now perhaps 
 you ll learn something." 
 
 "All right," said the crestfallen Captain of the San 
 Bernardino. " Pass us your line." 
 
 The sea was smooth, and, as the crew worked rapidly, 
 
 in a short time we had plenty of coal aboard and the 
 
 aspect of affairs was wholly changed. All the firemen 
 
 were soon cooling off on deck. Half of the crew had 
 
 [242] 
 
My Burden is Resumed 
 
 quit work, and the passengers were singing and smok 
 ing and making merry all save Trust and Somers, 
 who, with Fishley and Bill, were in irons down in the 
 steerage. 
 
 " This isn t so bad for the ship after all," was Doctor 
 Quaritch s remark to me, as he glanced at the low- 
 lying San Bernardino, trailing along astern. "We 
 didn t burn a third of our deckhouse woodwork, and 
 those planks from the holds weren t worth much. 
 Twenty thousand dollars will pay for the repairs, so 
 the Captain says, and the salvage will be twice that 
 amount. We have really made money by gutting the 
 ship." 
 
 We steamed along, the San Bernardino in tow, picked 
 up Point Lobos light by midnight, and next morning, 
 after some little delay, because of a rigid quarantine 
 inspection, lay alongside the Howard-street wharf* 
 where I could hear the old familiar hum of the trolley- 
 cars, the sound of which made my heart leap with joy. 
 Never did the grimy streets of the water-front wear 
 such a friendly look as in the hazy sunlight of that brisk 
 October morning. 
 
 I had come back to the city of my birth, after my 
 long Arctic pilgrimage, and after all my moving adven- 
 [243] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 tures by land and sea, and I had fetched home with me 
 the golden treasure of my dreams, safe from all the 
 covetous hands that had reached forth to clutch it and 
 wrest it from me. To say that I was glad but poorly 
 expresses the delight I felt when the plank was lowered 
 and we all crowded to the side. Doctor Quaritch had 
 undertaken the task of informing the Federal author 
 ities about the prisoners, and I ran down the gang-plank, 
 jumped into a cab, and in a few minutes was flying up 
 Market street. 
 
 I burst in upon my good people, who were soon all 
 in a high state of excitement, my mother weeping and 
 laughing all at once, my sisters and brothers making 
 wild demonstrations of welcome, and my father s wan 
 face he had just come safely out of his long siege of 
 illness wreathed in glad smiles. 
 
 " About the gold," asked my father, after I had been 
 nearly smothered by my affectionate sisters, " is it safe ? " 
 
 "It will be in the Mint to-morrow." I showed him 
 the purser s receipt. 
 
 "Did you have any trouble bringing it down?" 
 asked he, considerately. 
 
 "Did I have any trouble?" I repeated. "Well, 
 yes a little!" 
 
 [244] 
 
M y Burden is Resumed 
 
 And then I gave him an outline of the adventures 
 that I have detailed more fully to the readers of the fore 
 going chapters. 
 
 The next day, after the gold had been deposited in 
 the Mint, I saw Trust and the others in prison, which I 
 visited in company with Doctor Quaritch. Somers and 
 Bill were lying on their cots behind the bars, apparently 
 asleep. Fishley was reading a newspaper, and per 
 sistently kept his face away from us. Trust was smok 
 ing a cigarette and writing in a corner of his cell. 
 
 " Wait a minute," said he, as we turned to go. " I m 
 just putting the finishing touches to this." 
 
 A moment later he rose, gathered up a half-dozen 
 sheets of writing paper that lay before him, and passed 
 them through the bars to me, saying : 
 
 " Here s something I wrote for you." 
 
 " For me ? " I asked, wondering. 
 
 " Yes, for you to read." 
 
 I surmised that the scrawl he had penciled on the 
 paper was some sort of plea for clemency on the part 
 of the complaining witness against him. But it con 
 sisted of eleven stanzas of what purported to be poetry, 
 at the top of which I read the title : " The Gold-Seeker s 
 Lament." 
 
 [245] 
 
The Lure o 9 Gold 
 
 I handed the manuscript to the Doctor, who glanced 
 at it askance for a moment, then took it and looked it 
 over with a smile. 
 
 "I know one gold-seeker who will lament long 
 enough," he said, in an undertone to me, as he glanced 
 toward Trust significantly. "He ll have plenty of 
 time where he s going for writing poetry. Let us hope 
 that while he s there he ll improve his style as well as 
 his morals." 
 
 The Doctor and I left the prison and took a street 
 car to go down to the wharf and visit the old Modesto, 
 now in the hands of the repair gang, and pay our re 
 spects to Captain Head. As we passed along East 
 street, by the wharves, and saw the great hulks lying 
 in the bright sunshine that glinted over a summer sea, 
 I bethought myself of the cold, forbidding Bering coast, 
 and shivered a little in spite of the warmth of the day. 
 
 As we neared the dock, we heard one of the passen 
 gers in the car, who was going aboard an Australian 
 steamer, remark in a sophisticated tone to another, in 
 reply to a question as to the probable dangers and ad 
 ventures of his proposed voyage: 
 
 "Oh, no! Life on board ship is tame enough in 
 these commercial days. All the romance is gone out 
 [246] 
 
My Burden is Resumed 
 
 of it. Now you take a big ocean steamer, either on 
 the Atlantic or the Pacific, or anywhere you want to 
 go life aboard of her is no more adventurous or in 
 teresting than it is on a railroad train. Everything 
 goes along about as smoothly as on the rail, and the 
 experiences of a steamer captain are not much different 
 from those of a conductor. Romance? adventure? 
 there isn t a bit of it left on the sea." 
 
 I looked at the Doctor, and the Doctor looked at me. 
 
 [247] 
 
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 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY