“Come on, then.”  Though he had agreed, ’Frisco Kid did not quite like it, for it still seemed to savor of desertion.

They crawled forward and began to hoist the mainsail.  The anchor they could slip, if necessary, and save the time of pulling it up.  But at the first rattle of the halyards on the sheaves a warning “Hist!” came to them through the darkness, followed by a loudly whispered “Drop that!”

Glancing in the direction from which these sounds proceeded, they made out a white face peering at them from over the rail of the other sloop.

“Aw, it ’s only the Reindeer’s boy,” ’Frisco Kid said.  “Come on.”

Again they were interrupted at the first rattling of the blocks.

“I say, you fellers, you ’d better let go them halyards pretty quick, I ‘m a-tellin’ you, or I ’ll give you what for!”

This threat being dramatically capped by the click of a cocking pistol, ’Frisco Kid obeyed and went grumblingly back to the cockpit.  “Oh, there ’s plenty more chances to come,” he whispered consolingly to Joe.  “French Pete was cute, was n’t he?  He thought you might be trying to make a break, and put a guard on us.”

Nothing came from the shore to indicate how the pirates were faring.  Not a dog barked, not a light flared.  Yet the air seemed quivering with an alarm about to burst forth.  The night had taken on a strained feeling of intensity, as though it held in store all kinds of terrible things.  The boys felt this keenly as they huddled against each other in the cockpit and waited.

“You were going to tell me about your running away,” Joe ventured finally, “and why you came back again.”

’Frisco Kid took up the tale at once, speaking in a muffled undertone close to the other’s ear.

“You see, when I made up my mind to quit the life, there was n’t a soul to lend me a hand; but I knew that the only thing for me to do was to get ashore and find some kind of work, so I could study.  Then I figured there ’d be more chance in the country than in the city; so I gave Red Nelson the slip—­I was on the Reindeer then.  One night on the Alameda oyster-beds, I got ashore and headed back from the bay as fast as I could sprint.  Nelson did n’t catch me.  But they were all Portuguese farmers thereabouts, and none of them had work for me.  Besides, it was in the wrong time of the year—­winter.  That shows how much I knew about the land.

“I ’d saved up a couple of dollars, and I kept traveling back, deeper and deeper into the country, looking for work, and buying bread and cheese and such things from the storekeepers.  I tell you, it was cold, nights, sleeping out without blankets, and I was always glad when morning came.  But worse than that was the way everybody looked on me.  They were all suspicious, and not a bit afraid to show it, and sometimes they ’d set their dogs on me and tell me to get along.  Seemed as though there was n’t any place for me on the land.  Then my money gave out, and just about the time I was good and hungry I got captured.”