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Updated: June 22, 2025
Out of it was bulging some kind of dull white matter marbled with gray. It was a hard lump of irregular shape and about as big as a hogshead. Moran glanced over to the junk, some forty feet distant. The beach-combers were hoisting the lug-sail. Hoang was at the steering oar. "Get that stuff aboard," she commanded quietly. "That!" exclaimed Wilbur, pointing to the lump.
With forty men Walker was planning to conquer and rule Nicaragua, a country with a population of two hundred and fifty thousand souls and as large as the combined area of Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Connecticut. And yet, even seven years later, he records without a smile that two beach-combers gave his army "moral and material strength."
Wilbur turned to the Chinaman next him in line, exclaiming excitedly: "Here, say, have you got a knife something I can fight with? This gun's no good." There was a shout from Moran: "Look out, here they come!" Two of the beach-combers suddenly sprang over the sand breastworks and ran toward Charlie, their knives held low in front of them, ready to rip.
He had leaped the breastworks, he knew that, and between him and the vast bright blur of the ocean he saw one of the beach-combers backing away and watching him intently, his hatchet in his hand.
Then the jungle reabsorbed the nervous hillmen, and beach-combers straggled along the yellow sands. "Last scene of all, . . . Is second childishness and mere oblivion." A tottering old man, frail alike in frame and mind, squats dying in an alien camp. His teeth have almost disappeared, worn to the gums by the mastication of food in which sand has been mingled in immoderate proportion.
"See any rifles among them, Charlie?" shouted Moran, suddenly breaking the silence. "No, I tink no hab got," answered Charlie. Wilbur took another step forward and cocked his revolver. One of the beach-combers shouted out something in angry vernacular, and Charlie instantly responded.
See Yup China boy, velly bad. I b'long Sam Yup. Savvy?! "Ah! the Tongs?" "Yas. I Sam Yup. Him," and he pointed to the "Bertha's" crew, "Sam Yup. All we Sam Yup; nisi him," and he waved a hand toward the beach-combers' camp; "him See Yup. Savvy?" "It's a Tong row," said Wilbur. "They're blood enemies, the See Yups and Sam Yups."
"First thing to do now is to get him aboard the schooner," said Wilbur. "We'll take him right across in the beach-combers' dory here. By Jove!" he exclaimed on a sudden. "The ambergris I'd forgotten all about it." His heart sank. In the hideous confusion of that morning's work, all thought of the loot had been forgotten. Had the battle been for nothing, after all?
Papa Benson struck up a quickstep on the concertina, and, marching beside Bob Fletcher, helped to lead the van. The mutineers, beach-combers, and traders fell in two by two. The rear was brought up by the guard, loutish, hobbling, and out of step, bearing their rusty Springfields at all angles.
Why should I care for them, poor Kanakas and sailors, the refuse of civilization, the outlaws and beach-combers of the Pacific! Time and death seemed to transfigure them. Doubtless nearly all were dead; but how had they died, and where? In hospitals, in fever-climes, in dens of vice, or falling from the mast, or dropping exhausted from the wreck,
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