Gordon Young

“ Besides, Swanson hated the captain.
What about Thompson?
I suggested that Thompson had seen fit to sell out his interest in the plan to me; that certain persuasions had been made which appealed to Thompson as irresistible; that whenever I saw a good thing, I naturally wanted to share.
"Is it or is it not a go?" I demanded.
He seemed to think I had the cards pretty well stacked; besides he wanted to even a grudge against the captain, and he believed in the map. A sailor always believes in a treasure-trove map. ”

“ I had been given to understand the ship was short-handed. It seemed overcrowded to me. Voices, harsh laughter and harder jokes, rose in every direction; figures scampered by, some with lanterns; calls rang to and fro. From the poop-deck I could hear the voice of Captain Whibley. Questions and answers and directions—and jokes—all around. And reports. A man came by and flashed a lantern in my face; it was the man who had been detailed by Swanson to let me—or rather Thompson—on board. ”

“ A fellow who had led my kind of life, and who has, on occasion, shot, has his reputation magnified and distorted; but such distortion has a wholesome effect on men like Thrope.
"Supposing," I suggested, ignoring his question, "we call in Captain Whibley."
Thrope swore and wanted to know if that—oh, I don't remember how many kinds of —— something or other—man had let me on this private ship, which, so Thrope said, belonged to him.
"Let the captain speak for himself. He didn't impress me as a man who would lie easily." ”

“ V I DID not sleep late, but I lay in the bunk long after I had dressed. I had nothing to do but think, and I let thoughts come and go as it pleased them.
The bustling around, the shouting and clamor, the creak of the donkey-engine and the gentle sway of the moving ship pleased me: we were under weigh.
A Chinaman, a Cantonese, came down with coffee and rice about nine o'clock.
"What is your name?" I asked.
He shook his head slightly, but there was no expression on his face: a rather old empty face, and a Chinaman's face can be blank and empty as the inside of a scooped cantaloup. ”

“ Their publics never forgive at the polls the debauchery of young girls, of girls out of homes. The public will smirk and smile and say "Oh well, no men are saints," if a politician is merely a rounder—but let him even be suspected of having invaded the sanctuary of the hearthstone—neither money, lies nor stolen votes can save him.
But, of course, Thrope had the drop on me, figuratively—or thought that he had. ”

“ His duplicity is so subterranean that he doesn't seem to hear the threat at all, though he is likely to accept it as a challenge to mortal combat and win by poison subsequently delivered with the humblest of smiles.
If he is a Cantonese he is more likely to use a dagger, gently slipping it between your ribs while you look upward to some spot on the ceiling, or to some cloud effect, that his esthetic perception points out. I am not, certainly not, a coward, but I never felt comfortable with strange Chinamen or any women. ”

“ Delaney was a power, a political power. He led the underworld to the polls. It was Delaney who knew best how to stuff and steal in a doubtful election, and Thrope was anxious to be governor. He would not want Delaney to be angry, even though he could shake much of the profit out of Delaney's business and graft. Still who could handle votes like Delaney? ”

“ When I seem to be taking a chance I am usually playing safe—dealing from the bottom of the deck.
He contained his anger and went out. I supposed he wished my soul on the toasting fork of his satanic majesty's chief cook, but Mr. Swanson had given himself a little lesson in self-control. Perhaps he did not play poker, except in the crude draw-and-bet manner of the win-or-be-broken gambler, and so understood nothing of the refinements of bluff. ”

“ They are—without exception—the cleverest gamblers in the world, and though this is largely due to the fact that they are the most crooked, they have the qualities of poise and bluff but, excepting the Cantonese, are not particularly distinguished for what in the Occident is regarded as courage.
They prefer to meet a man from behind rather than to his face: a Saxon doesn't feel that he has paid an enemy unless that enemy knows who has struck him to death; but a Chinaman's soul, and the soul of almost any Oriental, is satisfied with poison or a blow from the dark.
About noon Swanson came down. ”

“ A letter of the kind is not the sort that a woman would ever destroy—and then not without committing it to memory.
I put it into my pocket.
"Name your price," said Thrope.
"I prefer to auction it," I told him. "Congressman Bryan is not a rich man, but he has friends. Then, too, a woman may want to bid—and have nothing but tears. Did you ever try to bid against a woman's tears, Thrope? ”

“ Miss Helen Curwen was of the slim dark type that are full of passions and wilfulness.
All women like to do things they have no business to do; but not all of them lack discretion, or, as a woman might call it if she is one of the kind that does do those things, the courage. ”

“ The average woman feels that the world is cheating her: being filled with infinitely more desires, dreams, or whatever her urgent restlessness may be called, than can ever be gratified, she lives under a continual sense of repression—until at such a time as with a kind of volcanic folly she breaks loose. ”

“ With that I struck a match and burned the maps under his nose, while his mouth hung agape.
"There are a half-dozen desperate fellows," I explained lest his slow brain did not fully appreciate the peril in which I had placed him, "enlisted by Thompson on this boat. They expect to go after gold. The ship can't be worked without them. You arc their ringleader. If they find out you can't produce the maps, your life won't be worth a salted herring—and you can't produce the maps if anything should happen to me. ”

“ Incidentally, a sure way to make a normal girl interested in, if not in love with, a man—if he has any personality, good looks or suavity at all—is to try to tell her that he is "dangerous," color his reputation with black, call him those names that are sufficient to make him an outcast from society. ”

“ I let women strictly alone because—well, I like them when they are not interfering with me, when they are at a distance, on other men's arms. But I don't like to, know of their being mistreated. I am cruel and at times cold-blooded, but I don't want to see anybody cruel to women, children or dogs. ”

“ Let those who willingly make a study of the sex explain, if they can, why this is so. All, or at least most, of my experiences with women have been against my will. My knowledge of them has usually come from some such inescapable contact as discovering one of them ensconced in my bed, from which—as in this case literally, and in others figuratively, so to speak—they poke their heads to order me out of my own room. ”

“ The lookout knew nothing: he had said the mate was asleep, and I had known that meant in a drunken sleep, so the launch had gone back without Thompson coming on deck. Thompson did not intend to come on deck anyway: he would have explained from the launch.
The mate was mystified: but when I showed the maps, he realized that I had got pretty close into the confidence of Thompson; and if I had not intended to go on with the plot, why had I not carried my story straight to the captain? ”

“ The breaking loose may take the form of tearing up a dress that she really likes, of throwing a scalding coffee pot at her husband's head, or of throwing herself at some man mother and friends have warned her against. ”