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"Right," she answered; adding upon the moment: "Huh! more Chinamen; the thing is alive with coolies; she's a junk." "Oh!" exclaimed Wilbur, recollecting some talk of Charlie's he had overheard. "I know." "You know?" "Yes; these are real beach-combers. I've heard of them along this coast heard our Chinamen speak of them. They beach that junk every night and camp on shore.
You catch um slop-chest; you gib me five, seven liver pill. Sabe?" "I'll tell you what you want," cried Moran, aiming a forefinger at him, pistol fashion; "you've got a blue funk because those Kai-gingh beach-combers have come into the bay, and you're more frightened of them than you are of the schooner; and now you want us to take you home." "How muchee?" "A thousand dollars."
Then the pictures began to thicken fast: the derelict bark "Lady Letty" rolling to her scuppers, abandoned and lonely; the "boy" in the wheel-box; Kitchell wrenching open the desk in the captain's stateroom; Captain Sternersen buried at sea, his false teeth upside down; the black fury of the squall, and Moran at the wheel; Moran lying at full length on the deck, getting the altitude of a star; Magdalena Bay; the shark-fishing; the mysterious lifting and shuddering of the schooner; the beach-combers' junk, with its staring red eyes; Hoang, naked to the waist, gleaming with sweat and whale-oil; the ambergris; the race to beach the sinking schooner; the never-to-be-forgotten night when he and Moran had camped together on the beach; Hoang taken prisoner, and the hideous filing of his teeth; the beach-combers, silent and watchful behind their sand breastworks; the Chinaman he had killed twitching and hic-coughing at his feet; Moran turned Berserker, bursting down upon him through a haze of smoke; Charlie dying in the hammock aboard the schooner, ordering his funeral with its "four-piecee horse"; Coronado; the incongruous scene in the ballroom; and, last of all, Josie Herrick in white duck and kid shoes, giving her hand to Moran in her boots and belt, hatless as ever, her sleeves rolled up to above the elbows, her white, strong arm extended, her ruddy face, and pale, milk-blue eyes gravely observant, her heavy braids, yellow as ripening rye, hanging over her shoulder and breast.
The beach-combers have got the stuff. It's mine I'm going to have it back. Here's the lay. Your men can fight you can fight yourself. We'll make it a business proposition. Help me to get that ambergris, and if we get it I'll give each one of the men $1,000, and I'll give you $1,500. You can take that up and be independent rich the rest of your life.
Seeing that it would be suicide to attempt to maintain our ground, and that we already were cut off from the party on the quarter-deck, we retreated forward, fighting off the enemy as we went, and ten or a dozen of us took our stand on the forecastle. Kipping and Falk and the beach-combers they had gathered together had conducted their campaign well.
"We findum w'ale," said Hoang; "you no find w'ale; him b'long to we eve'yt'ing in um w'ale b'long to we, savvy?" "No, you promised us a third of everything you found." Even in the confusion of the moment it occurred to Wilbur that it was quite possible that at least two-thirds of the ambergris did belong to the beach-combers by right of discovery.
Others were wild, good-for-nothing runaways from whaleships, who then were generally known as "beach-combers" that is, combing the beach for a living though that, indeed, was a misnomer, for in those days, except one of these men was either a murderer or a tyrant, he did not "comb" for his living, but simply lived a life of luxurious, sensuous ease among the copper-coloured people with whom he dwelt.
They put him down at last; and in half a dozen sentences Wilbur told them of how he had been shanghaied told them of Magdalena Bay, his fortune in the ambergris, and the fight with the beach-combers. "You people are going down there for target-practice, aren't you?" he said, turning to one of the "Monterey's" officers in the crowd about him. "Yes?
Here already were missionaries and beach-combers of many nationalities, ardent spirits all, fighting each other for the souls of the natives; gin and the commandments at odds, ritual and exploitation contending. Unable to subdue the forces that threatened the peace of his people, Iotete, Vait-hua's chief, sent a message asking the help of the French admiral.
He turned about sharply. "I I I'll go down the beach here a ways," he said quickly. "I can't stand I'll keep watch to see if the beach-combers come up." A few minutes later he heard Charlie hailing him. "Chin-chin heap plenty now," said he, with a grin, as Wilbur came up. Hoang sat on the sand in the midst of the circle. The file and coil of rope lay on the ground near by.
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