, and you must get it and run away. Do
you understand?"

The negro eyed the bundle suspiciously.

"Ain't no dinnymite, 'r nothin' er that sawt in hit, is dey, Cap'm?"

"No."

"Whut-all mus' I do when I's done tuk out wid hit?"

"Get away, first; then keep out of sight and hang around the levee for
an hour or two. If I don't turn up before you get tired, pitch the thing
into the river and go about your business. How much money does the
captain owe you?"

"Cap'm Mayfiel'? Shuh! he don't owe me nothin'. I done draw de las'
picayune dat was comin' to me yistiday--an' dat yaller nigger over
yonder got it in de crap-game, same as turrers."

Griswold put a twenty-dollar bill into the black palm, and when the crap
victim made out the figure of it by the glow of the furnace fires, his
eyes bulged. "Gorra-mighty!" he gasped; and would have given it back.

"No, keep it; it's yours. Do exactly as I have told you, and if I'm able
to keep my date with you, I'll double it. But if I don't show up,
remember--the bundle goes into the river just as it is. If you open it,
it'll conjure you worse than any Obi-man you ever heard of."

"No, _suh_! I ain't gwine open hit, Cap'm--not if dey's cunjah in hit;
no, suh!"

"Well, there is--the worst kind of conjure this old world has ever
known. But it won't hurt you if you don't meddle with it. Keep your wits
about you and be ready to grab it and run. Here we go."

The pilot had found his wharfage and was edging the _Belle Julie_ up to
it. The bow men paid out slack, and Griswold and the black, dropping
from the swinging stage, trailed the end of the wet hawser up to the
nearest mooring-ring. Though haste in making fast is the spring-line
man's first duty, Griswold took a fraction of a second to look around
him. The mooring-ring lay fair in the mock noonday of electric light,
and there was no cover near it save a tarpaulined pyramid of sugar
barrels. Up the levee slope the way was open to the one-sided
river-fronting street; and beyond the tarpaulin-covered sugar were more
freight pyramids, with shadowy alleys between them.

Satisfied with what he saw, Griswold bade the negro keep watch and knelt
to knot the hawser in the ring. The line was water-soaked and stiff, and
in the momentary struggle with it his caution relaxed its eyehold on the
pyramid of sugar barrels. The lapse was hardly more than a glance aside,
but it sufficed. While the negro sentinel was stammering, "L-l-lookout,
M