How
much money do you suppose them bricks represent? Well, I'll tell
you; last week they represented seven hundred and eighty thousand
dollars. Well, now, I got a chart of the bay near Vallejo; the
channel's all right, but there are mudflats that run out from
shore three miles. Enough water for a whitehall, but not enough
for--well, for the patrol boat, for instance. Two or three slick
boys, of a foggy night--of course, I'm not in that kind of game,
but strike! it would be a deal now, wouldn't it?"
"Don't you believe him, miss," put in K. D. B. "He's just talking
to show off."
"I think your scheme of holding up a Cunard liner," said Condy,
with great earnestness, "is more feasible. You could lay across
her course and fly a distress signal. She'd have to heave to."
"Yes, I been thinkin' o' that; but look here--what's to prevent
the liner taking right after your schooner after you've got the
stuff aboard--just followin' you right around an' findin' out
where you land?"
"She'd be under contract to carry Government mails," contradicted
Condy. "She couldn't do that. You'd leave her mails aboard for
just that reason. You wouldn't rob her of her mails; just so long
as she was carrying government mails she couldn't stop."
The Captain clapped his palm down upon the gate-post.
"Strike me straight! I never thought of that."
Chapter XIV
Blix and Condy went on; on along the narrow road upon the edge of
the salt marshes and tules that lay between the station and the
Golden Gate; on to the Golden Gate itself, and around the old
grime-incrusted fort to the ocean shore, with its reaches of hard,
white sand, where the bowlders lay tumbled and the surf grumbled
incessantly.
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