So hustle is the word for you
from the word 'go.' We got a good start o' the scoovy. He can't put to
sea within a week, while over yonder in Oakland Basin there's the _Idaho
Lass_, as good a schooner, boys, as ever wore paint, all ready but to
fit her new sails on her. Ye kin do it in less than no time. The stores
will be goin' into her while ye're workin', and within the week I expect
to see the _Idaho Lass_ showing her heels to the Presidio. You see the
point now, boys. If ye beat the scoovy--his name is Petersen, and his
boat is called the _Elftruda_--we're to the wind'ard of a pretty pot o'
money. If he gets away before you do--well, there's no telling; we
prob'ly lose the island."
II
About ten days before the morning set for their departure I went over to
the Oakland Basin to see how the Three Black Crows were getting on.
Hardenberg welcomed me as my boat bumped alongside, and extending a
great tarry paw, hauled me over the rail. The schooner was a wilderness
of confusion, with the sails covering, apparently, nine-tenths of the
decks, the remaining tenth encumbered by spars, cordage, tangled
rigging, chains, cables and the like, all helter-skeltered together in
such a haze of entanglements that my heart misgave me as I looked on it.
Surely order would not issue from this chaos in four days' time with
only three men to speed the work.
But Hardenberg was reassuring, and little Ally Bazan, the colonial, told
me they would "snatch her shipshape in the shorter end o' two days, if
so be they must.
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