housand dollars."

Wilbur looked at her in surprise. He had expected a refusal.

"You no hab got liver pill?" inquired Charlie blandly.

Moran turned her back on him. She and Wilbur conferred in a low voice.

"We'd better take them back, if we decently can," said Moran. "The
schooner is known, of course, in 'Frisco. She went out with Kitchell and
a crew of coolies, and she comes back with you and I aboard, and if we
tell the truth about it, it will sound like a lie, and we'll have no end
of trouble. Then again, can just you and I work the 'Bertha' into
port? In these kind of airs it's plain work, but suppose we have dirty
weather? I'm not so sure."

"I gib you ten dollah fo' ten liver pill," said Charlie.

"Will you give us a thousand dollars to set you down in San Francisco?"

Charlie rose. "I go back. I tell um China boy what you say 'bout liver
pill. Bime-by I come back."

"That means he'll take our offer back to his friends," said Wilbur, in
a low voice. "You best hurry chop-chop," he called after Charlie; "we go
home pretty soon!"

"He knows very well we can't get away before high tide to-morrow," said
Moran. "He'll take his time."

Later on in the afternoon Moran and Wilbur saw a small boat put off from
the junk and make a landing by the creek. The beach-combers were
taking on water. The boat made three trips before evening, but the
beach-combers made no show of molesting the undefended schooner, or in
any way interfering with Charlie's camp on the other side of the bay.

"No!" exclaimed Moran between her teeth, as she and Wilbur were cooking
supper; "no, they don't need to; they've got about a hundred and fifty
thousand dollars of loot on board--OUR loot, too! Good God! it goes
against the grain!"

The moon rose considerably earlier that night, and by twelve o'clock the
bay was flooded with its electrical whiteness. Wilbur and Moran could
plainly make out the junk tied up to the kelp off-shore. But toward one
o'clock Wilbur was awakened by Moran shaking his arm.

"There's something wrong out there," she whispered; "something wrong
with the junk. Hear 'em squealing? Look! look! look!" she cried of a
sudden; "it's their turn now!"

Wilbur could see the crank junk, with its staring red eyes, high stern
and prow, as distinctly as though at noonday. As he watched, it seemed
as if a great wave caught her suddenly underfoot. She heaved up bodily
out of the water, dropped again with a splash, rose again,