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Updated: May 4, 2025
"It's all right," said Millner, rising to his feet. Draper caught him by the wrist. "You're sure you're absolutely sure?" "Sure. They know they've got nothing to go on." Draper fell back a step and looked almost sternly at his friend. "You know that's not what I mean. I don't care a straw what they think they've got to go on. I want to know if my father's all right.
The "Bertha Millner" continued to the southward, gliding quietly over the oil-smoothness of the ocean under airs so light as hardly to ruffle the surface.
But Millner had begun to suspect that one might be necessary to Mr. Spence one day, and a superfluity, if not an obstacle, the next; and that it would take superhuman astuteness to foresee how and when the change would occur.
His heart sank with a sudden apprehension. A nervousness he could not overcome seized upon him. The "Bertha Millner" held tenaciously to the tack. Within fifty yards of the Presidio came the command again: "Stand by for stays." Once more, her bows dancing, her cordage rattling, her sails flapping noisily, the schooner came about.
Meanwhile, the waiting was an occupation in itself. Millner looked about his room with new eyes.
Millner, who had rapidly taken an opulent purple fig from the fruit-dish nearest him, paused in surprise in the act of hurrying it to his lips. "I mean," Draper hastened on, "the question as to the relation between business and private morality. It's such an interesting one, and he's just the person who ought to tackle it." Millner, despatching the fig, glanced down at his notes.
Now in the glare of the tropical day, with the "Bertha Millner" sitting the sea as placidly as a brooding gull, he was Talleyrand again. "I tinkum yas," he said vaguely. "Well, I think we had better try and fix the rudder and put back to Frisco," said Moran. "You're making no money this way. There are no shark to be caught. SOMETHING'S wrong. They're gone away somewhere.
Once again as the rudder went hard over, the "Bertha Millner" fretted and danced and shook her sails, calling impatiently for the wind, chafing at its absence like a child reft of a toy. Then again she scooped the nor'wester in the hollow palms of her tense canvases and settled quietly down on the new tack, her bowsprit pointing straight toward the Presidio.
The coolies of the "Bertha Millner" were pampered and effete in comparison. The beach-combers, thirteen in number, were a smaller class of men, their faces almost black with tan and dirt. Though they still wore the queue, their heads were not shaven, and mats and mops of stiff black hair fell over their eyes from under their broad, basket-shaped hats. They were barefoot.
Certainly a fellow who made his way at that rate had it "in him," and could afford to trust his star. Descending from this joyous flight he stooped his ear to the discourse of young Spence. "My father'll work you rather hard, you know: but you look as if you wouldn't mind that." Millner pulled up his inches with the self-consciousness of the man who had none to waste.
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