The daily pioneer. [volume] (Bemidji, Beltrami Co., Minn.) 1903-1904, 1903-06-03


ship within twenty miles, and made
almost sure of them di'monds and the
gold.
Between you and me, James,
meant to retire from business Il We
! pulled it off, and | shouldn't have been
| over particular about settling up with
the syndicate
This confession of dishonesty
panied me, but l let it pass. To re-
prove pirate for swindling his en-
ployers seemed on the whole incon-
1 sistent.
1--WE slowed down. continued Uncle
Jonah, impressively, wound up all
the dummies and stood by to give her
a couple of rounds from our Al gun.
The chap who bossed that gun had
been a navy man, and he could hit a
funnel at 1000 yards four times out
of six.
when the Rhodes Castle closed
within about five cables gave the
word and ran UP the black flag. The
] navy man let rip and the foremost
/ funnel went over like a candle in a
hot room. The second shot carried
away the chart house and part of the
bridge, and then the captain stopped
engines.
Now, you must bear in mind we
only had twelve hands besides the
German dummies, and the mail boat
carried big crew without reckoning
the passengers. We could have sunk
her in half an hour, but it was nc
good doing that till I'd got the stuff
out of her.
my plan was this: / left the mate
and the navy man in charge of the
Falcon and took the other nine along
with me in the boat to overhaul the
mail We was armed, of course, but
/ trusted more to the dummies than
our revolvers, and told the mate not
/ to close nearer to the mail than 500
yards. At that distance our dummies
looked right enough, but they seemed
a bit stiff in the joints at close quar-
tiers.
perhaps | was bit Hurried. Any
way, didn't notice anything wrong
with the mate when gave him the
orders When we got alongside the
mail hailed the captain and told him
to send all hands forward except him
self and the mates Then we board
ed the ship, and l had a few words
/ with tho cantain
II told him we'd come for the gold
and the diamonds and the loose cash
and the wimmens jewelry, and if
they gave any trouble should sink
the ship with all hands. | meant to
sink her, anyway, but there wouldn't
have been any sense in making them
desperate. My instructions from the
agent was to sink every prize we took
and spare no lives.
"The skipper cheered up consider
able when told him we hoped to get
| through the job without cutting a
throat and he handed over the keys
of the safe like a lamb. Those two
shots from the AZ had done our BUSH
ness, and to look at the Falcon you'd
never have doubted she carried a
strong crew Of ou.-and-out murdefers.
With that followed the captain
4 down to the strong room, taking four
4 hands with me to carry up the gold.
My idea was to hang on to the dr.
| monds myself until could get 'em
under lock and key il my own cabin.
SO you see, James, I couldn't avoid
going below to the strong room, and
If that lurid ass OF mate had obeyed
orders, might have been in South
America by now, living like lord
mayor"
At this point in his narrative my
Uncle Jonah fell into a gloomy rev.
erie, from which | had to rouse him
before he resumed it.
There was 100000 guilds worth of
gold in that strong room, or I'm a
] liar he continued, and enough dr.
monds to have half-filled bread bag.
1t took us some little time to get the
gold on deck and lower it into the
boat, but l never tackled any job that
seemed to tire me so little
! when got on deck the third time,
! saw in a shake that something was
| wrong. The crew and passengers Of
the mail was all craning their necks
over the side, and staring at the Fal-
con.
Il took peep at her nvself, and
/ ID if the mate hadn't closed in that
near that you could have heaved bis
/ cult aboard her. The fool must have
been drunk, l suppose, or he'd have
had the sense to know that he was
risSing all our necks and his own, too.
We might have pulled through af-
ter all, but just as was shouting to
the mate to go farther off, the spit
ting dummy got out of gear. The
/ inards of the dummies were full of
long steel springs, and they had to be
oiled twice a week Oiled they were,
too; so it was no fault of mine that
about three fathoms of spring came
jerking out of the spittil-~ dummy's
ugly mug, in full sight of everybody.
Nov it stands to reason no hui