Brandon of the Engineers

The breeze had fallen and the shining sea was smooth as glass when the

launch passed Adexe. Dick, who lounged at the helm, was not going there.

Some alterations to a mole along the coast had just been finished, and

Stuyvesant had sent him to engage the contractor who had done the

concrete work. Jake, who occasionally found his duties irksome, had

insisted on coming.

As they crossed the mouth of the inlet, Dick glanced shorewards through

his glasses. The whitewashed coal-sheds glistened dazzlingly, and a

fringe of snowy surf marked the curve of beach, but outside this a belt

of cool, blue water extended to the wharf. The swell surged to and fro

among the piles, checkered with purple shadows and laced with threads of

foam, but it was the signs of human activity that occupied Dick's

attention. He noticed the cloud of dust that rolled about the mounds of

coal upon the wharf and blurred the figures of the toiling peons, and the

way the tubs swung up and down from the hatches of an American collier

until the rattle of her winches suddenly broke off.

"They seem to be doing a big business," he remarked. "It looks as if that

boat had stopped discharging, but she must have landed a large quantity

of coal."

"There's pretty good shelter at Adexe," Jake replied. "In ordinary

weather, steamers can come up to the wharf, instead of lying a quarter of

a mile off, as they do at Santa Brigida. However, there's not much cargo

shipped, and a captain who wanted his bunkers filled would have to make a

special call with little chance of picking up any freight. That must tell

against the place."

They were not steaming fast, and just before a projecting point shut in

the inlet the deep blast of a whistle rang across the water and the

collier's dark hull swung out from the wharf. A streak of foam, cut

sharply between her black side and the shadowed blue of the sea, marked

her load-line, and she floated high, but not as if she were empty.

"Going on somewhere else to finish, I guess," said Jake. "How much do you

reckon she has discharged?"

"Fifteen hundred tons, if she was full when she came in, and I imagine

they hadn't much room in the sheds before. I wonder where Kenwardine gets

the money, unless his friend, Richter, is rich."

"Richter has nothing to do with the business," Jake replied. "He was to

have had a share, but they couldn't come to a satisfactory agreement."

Dick looked at him sharply. "How do you know?"

"I really don't know much. Kenwardine said something about it one night

when I was at his house."

"Did somebody ask him?"

"No," said Jake, "I don't think so. The subject, so to speak, cropped up

and he offered us the information."