He sank back weakly, but his eyes implored.  Benito took a seat beside the bunk.  For a moment he thought the man was dead.  He lay so limp, so silent!

Then McTurpin whispered.  “Bend closer.  I will tell you how to serve your country....  There’s a schooner called the ‘J.M.  Chapman.’  Do you know where it lies?”

“No,” Benito answered, “but that’s easily discovered.  If you’ve anything to say—­go on.”

McTurpin’s bony fingers clutched Benito’s sleeve.  “Listen,” he said.  “Bend nearer.”

His voice droned on, at times imperceptible, again hoarse with excitement.  Benito sat moveless, absorbed.

Above the iron-trap doors Po Lun waited patiently.

* * * * *

In an unlighted alley back of the American Exchange Hotel two figures waited, as if by appointment on the night of March 14.  One was Ashbury Harpending, a young Southerner, and one of the Committee of Thirty which, several years before, had hatched an unsuccessful plot to capture California for the hosts of slavery.  The other was an English boy named Alfred Rubery, large, good-looking, adventurous, nephew of the great London publicist, John Bright.  It was he who spoke first in a guarded undertone: 

“Is everything ready—­safe?”

“Far as I can tell,” responded Harpending.

“How many men d’you get?” asked Rubery.

“Twenty ... that’s enough.  We’ll pick up more at Manzanillo.  There we’ll dress the Chapman into fighting trim, set up our guns aboard and capture the first Pacific Mail liner with gold out of California.”

“You’re a clever fellow, Harpending.  How’d you get those guns aboard without suspicion?”

“Through a Mexican friend,” replied Harpending.  “He said he needed them to protect his mine in South America.  Besides, we’ve a large assortment of rifles, revolvers, cutlasses.  They’re boxed and marked ‘machinery.’”

Further talk was interrupted by a group of men who approached, saluted, gave a whispered countersign.  Others came, still others till the quota of a full score had arrived.  At Harpending’s command they separated to avoid attention.  Silently they slipped through dimly-lighted streets, past roaring saloons and sailors’ boarding houses to an unfrequented portion of the waterfront.  There the trim black silhouetted shape of the schooner Chapman loomed against a cloudy sky.

At the rail stood Ridgely Greathouse, big, florid, his burnside whiskers twitching.

“Where the devil’s Law?” he bellowed.  “Lord Almighty!  Here it’s nearly midnight and no captain.”

“He’s not with us,” said Harpending quietly.  But his face paled.  Navigator William Law was the only one of whom he had a doubt.  But the men must not suspect.  “Law will be along soon,” he added.  “Let us all get aboard and make ready to sail.”

The men followed him and went below.  Harpending, Greathouse and Rubery paced the deck.  “He’s drunk probably,” commented Greathouse savagely.