They had sent her to Valdivia on some business, and
on the return from the southern port to 'Frisco she had, true to her
instincts and helped by a gale, run on San Juan, a scrap of an island
north of the Channel Islands of the California coast. Every soul had
been lost with the exception of two Chinese coolies, who, drifting on a
raft, had been picked up and brought to San Francisco.
She had a general cargo and twenty thousand dollars in gold coin on
board, but the coolies had declared her to be a total wreck, said, in
fact, when they had last sighted her she was going to pieces.
That was the yarn Harman heard through Clancy, with the intimation that
the wreck was not worth two dollars, let alone the expenses of a
salvage ship.
The story had eaten into Harman's mind; he knew San Juan better than
any man in 'Frisco, and he considered that a ship once ashore there
would stick; then Ginnell turned up, and the luminous idea of inducing
Ginnell to shanghai Blood so that Blood might with his, Harman's,
assistance shanghai Ginnell and use the _Heart of Ireland_ for the
picking of the _Yan-Shan's_ pocket, entered his mind.
"It's just when we come alongside the _Yan-Shan_ we may find our worst
bother," said Blood.
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