"Well, there ain't no joy stewin' your life away over a boiler seven days a week. I gotter confess, Gib, that once a feller gets used to adventure, he'd sooner have it than money."
"But Scraggsy wants both," the commodore lamented, "an' by golly, I'm gettin' itchy myself. This gamblin' Sperrit seems to run in the Gibney blood like a wooden leg. I'm glad you've spoke up, Scraggsy, because I've been wantin' to take a long chance myself, only I dassent make the first crack, me handling the funds of the syndicate an' subject to criticism in case things don't turn out right. But if you want quick money an' a spice of adventure, I got an idea."
"Gib, my dear boy! Out with it."
"You noticed all the money them gamblers cleaned up on the Maggie III this summer?"
"Barrels of it" whispered McGuffey hoarsely.
"Well, we'll take it away from them."
Captain Scraggs sprang from his chair and seized Mr. Gibney's hand.
"Gib! You don't mean it."
"I do. I'll think up a scheme."
"Then it's a winner. Gib, my dear boy, I see that foggy look in your eye, an' it's a sure sign of a profitable idee. How're you goin' to skin these fly gamblers?"
"At their own game. We'll induce them to bet on a sure thing an' they'll lose. But we've got to risk our roll agin theirs."
McGuffey fidgeted. He had great confidence in Mr. Gibney, but he was lacking in the imagination that caused Captain Scraggs to discern that foggy look in Mr. Gibney's eyes.
"How'll you do it, Gib?" he demanded.
"Well, now, Mac," began Mr. Gibney pompously, "far be it from me to appear secretive, but I must decline to answer that question, for the reason that I ain't figgered out a way to do it yet."
Captain Scraggs' face fell. "Well, git busy with that imagination o' yours, Gib" he commanded.
"I will" the commodore assured him. "Just lemme alone for three days."
The meeting was adjourned and Mr. Gibney went ashore for three days to be alone with himself and think. At the end of three days he returned.
"Well, Gib," Captain Scraggs demanded, "you got them worthless gamblers on the run yet?"
"Scraggsy, old kiddo," Mr. Gibney admitted piteously, "I dunno what's gone wrong with my head. I can't seem to scheme out nothin' with a profit in it from them gamblers. I just got one idee an' I can't seem to think o' nothin' else."
"Well, out with it, Gib."
"Let's build or buy a sea-goin' launch with a ninety horse-power automobile engine in her an' get into the smugglin' business. Scraggs, there's big money in it if it's worked right, an' there's adventure. I been investigatin' and there's three hundred dollars a head for every Chink we land in the United States. An' there are a hundred Chinamen across the border in Mexico waitin' to get smuggled in."
Captain Scraggs cogitated. The idea sounded both reasonable and profitable, so McGuffey and Neils Halvorsen were called into consultation. They endorsed the proposition most heartily, and as a result Mr. Gibney was given a roving commission to set forth in search of a craft.
After a week of diligent search around San Francisco bay, Mr. Gibney decided to go south to San Pedro and try his luck there. At San Pedro he found no launch large enough or fast enough for his purpose, so he decided to go on to San Diego. He so advised the syndicate by letter, stating also that inasmuch as San Diego lay but a few miles from the Mexican border, he planned to cross over and investigate the Chinese situation there. He would write them fully from Ensenada.
A week passed, but still no letter came to the syndicate from Mr. Gibney. Another week passed and the silence remained unbroken. The syndicate commenced to worry. When another week had passed without word from Mr. Gibney they became frantic, and at the expiration of a month they gave him up for dead. At McGuffey's suggestion a private detective agency was furnished with a photograph of Mr. Gibney and the syndicate spent two hundred dollars tracing the lost member into a filthy little jail at Ensenada.
Alas! The government of Mexico had changed so often that Mr. Gibney had lost track of the sequence of provisional governors of Lower California. Upon his arrival in Ensenada Mr. Gibney had been recognized by a former rebel friend, who was now a federalist. Knowing Mr. Gibney for a daring Soldier of fortune and
