The President, unable to remember, turned to his one clerk: "Hyers, what's 301? Isn't that
Peterson?"
The clerk ran his finger down a column: "No, sir; 301 is the Whisky Ship."
"Ah! So it is. I remember. You remember, too, Joe. Little schooner, the Tropic Bird--sixty
days out from Callao--five hundred cases of whisky aboard--sunk in squall. It was thirty
years ago. Think of five hundred cases of thirty-year-old whisky! There's money in that if
I can lay my hands on the schooner. Suppose you try that, you boys--on a twenty per
cent. basis. Come now, what do you say?"
"Not for five per cent.," declared Hardenberg. "How'd we raise her? How'd we know how
deep she lies? Not for Joe. What's the matter with landing arms down here in Central
America for Bocas and his gang?"
"I'm out o' that, Joe. Too much competition."
"What's doing here in Tahiti--No. 88? It ain't lettered."
Once more the President consulted his books.
"Ah!--88. Here we are. Cache o' illicit pearls. I had it looked up. Nothing in it."
"Say, Cap'n!"--Hardenberg's eye had traveled to the upper edge of the map--"whatever
did you strike up here in Alaska? At Point Barrow, s'elp me Bob! It's 48 B."
The President stirred uneasily in his place. "Well, I ain't quite worked that scheme out,
Joe. But I smell the deal. There's a Russian post along there some'eres. Where they catch
sea-otters. And the skins o' sea-otters are selling this very day for seventy dollars at any
port in China."
"I s'y," piped up Ally Bazan, "I knows a bit about that gyme. They's a bally kind o' Lum-
tums among them Chinese as sports those syme skins on their bally clothes--as a mark o'
rank, d'ye see."
"Have you figured at all on the proposition, Cap'n?" inquired Hardenberg.
"There's risk in it, Joe; big risk," declared the President nervously. "But I'd only ask
fifteen per cent."
"You have worked out the scheme, then."
"Well--ah--y'see, there's the risk, and--ah--" Suddenly Ryder leaned forward, his watery
blue eyes glinting: "Boys, it's a jewel. It's just your kind. I'd a-sent for you, to try on this
very scheme, if you hadn't shown up. You kin have the Bertha Millner--I've a year's
