Part 12 (2/2)

”There's risk in it, Joe; big risk,” declared the President nervously.

”But I'd only ask fifteen per cent.”

”You _have_ worked out the scheme, then.”

”Well--ah--y'see, there's the risk, and--ah--” Suddenly Ryder leaned forward, his watery blue eyes glinting: ”Boys, it's a _jewel_. It's just your kind. I'd a-sent for you, to try on this very scheme, if you hadn't shown up. You kin have the _Bertha Millner_--I've a year's charter o'

her from Wilbur--and I'll only ask you fifteen per cent. of the _net_ profits--_net_, mind you.”

”I ain't buyin' no dead horse, Cap'n,” returned Hardenberg, ”but I'll say this: we pay no fifteen per cent.”

”Banks and the Ruggles were daft to try it and give me twenty-five.”

”An' where would Banks land the scheme? I know him. You put him on that German cipher-code job down Honolulu way, an' it cost you about a thousand before you could pull out. We'll give you seven an' a half.”

”Ten,” declared Ryder, ”ten, Joe, at the very least. Why, how much do you suppose just the stores would cost me? And Point Barrow--why, Joe, that's right up in the Arctic. I got to run the risk o' you getting the _Bertha_ smashed in the ice.”

”What do _we_ risk?” retorted Hardenberg; and it was the monosyllabic Strokher who gave the answer:

”Chokee, by Jove!”

”Ten is fair. It's ten or nothing,” answered Hardenberg.

”Gross, then, Joe. Ten on the gross--or I give the job to the Ruggles and Banks.”

”Who's your bloomin' agent?” put in Ally Bazan.

”Nickerson. I sent him with Peterson on that _Mary Archer_ wreck scheme.

An' you know what Peterson says of him--didn't give him no trouble at all. One o' my best men, boys.”

”There have been,” observed Strokher stolidly, ”certain stories told about Nickerson. Not that _I_ wish to seem suspicious, but I put it to you as man to man.”

”Ay,” exclaimed Ally Bazan. ”He was fair nutty once, they tell me. Threw some kind o' bally fit an' come aout all skew-jee'd in his mind. Forgot his nyme an' all. I s'y, how abaout him, anyw'y?”

”Boys,” said Ryder, ”I'll tell you. Nickerson--yes, I know the yarns about him. It was this way--y'see, I ain't keeping anything from you, boys. Two years ago he was a Methody preacher in Santa Clara. Well, he was what they call a revivalist, and he was holding forth one blazin'

hot day out in the sun when all to once he goes down, _flat,_ an' don't come round for the better part o' two days. When he wakes up he's _another person;_ he'd forgot his name, forgot his job, forgot the whole blamed shooting-match. _And he ain't never remembered them since._ The doctors have names for that kind o' thing. It seems it does happen now and again. Well, he turned to an' began sailoring first off--soon as the hospitals and medicos were done with him--an' him not having any friends as you might say, he was let go his own gait. He got to be third mate of some kind o' dough-dish down Mexico way; and then I got hold o' him an'

took him into the Comp'ny. He's been with me ever since. He ain't got the faintest kind o' recollection o' his Methody days, an' believes he's always been a sailorman. Well, that's _his_ business, ain't it? If he takes my orders an' walks chalk, what do I care about his Methody game?

There, boys, is the origin, history and development of Slick d.i.c.k Nickerson. If you take up this sea-otter deal and go to Point Barrow, naturally Nick has got to go as owner's agent and representative of the Comp'ny. But I couldn't send a easier fellow to get along with. Honest, now, I couldn't. Boys, you think over the proposition between now and tomorrow an' then come around and let me know.”

And the upshot of the whole matter was that one month later the _Bertha Millner_, with Nickerson, Hardenberg, Strokher and Ally Bazan on board, cleared from San Francisco, bound--the papers were beautifully precise--for Seattle and Tacoma with a cargo of general merchandise.

As a matter of fact, the bulk of her cargo consisted of some odd hundreds of very fine lumps of rock--which as ballast is cheap by the ton--and some odd dozen cases of conspicuously labeled champagne.

The Pacific and Oriental Flotation Company made this champagne out of Rhine wine, effervescent salts, raisins, rock candy and alcohol. It was from the same stock of wine of which Ryder had sold some thousand cases to the Coreans the year before.

II

”Not that I care a curse,” said Strokher, the Englishman. ”But I put it to you squarely that this voyage lacks that certain indescribable charm.”

<script>