H. Bedford-Jones

“ Hampton occupied himself with cleaning the knife, and presently slung it about his neck once more, beneath his shirt.
The afternoon was nearly gone, and the sun went westering with never a fleck of sail to break the rim of the horizon. The boat rose and fell monotonously to the lift of the long seas, and as the slow darkness drew down the two men who sat in her were fully aware of what future they faced. The crafty guile of Dias, who had so cunningly twisted to his own advantage all the little happenings aboard ship and so masterfully dominated the sequence of events, had doomed them. ”

“ Lured by the prospect of an assured and swift California passage under experienced auspices, they had trusted themselves to Dias—and what would be the end of this affair?
“Damnation, damnation!” cried Hampton, as the prospect burned into him, torturing him with the anguish of his own futility. “Those whom he can't rob and strip along the isthmus, he'll pack into his schooners at Panama and rob on the way north—they'll never see California at all! He'll land them somewhere in Mexico, penniless and broken—he's not a man but a devil! ”

“ This adventurer must have operated under a dozen names; no wonder that Job Warlock had heard of the filibuster Day, and again of the supposed Mexican Dias. Hampton saw that from the moment he had told James Day of his errand, he had been marked for death. At first eager to enlist a lieutenant and assistant, Day had then become more desperately eager to get rid of a man who might surprize his secret at any time. ”