Redvig was a small, swarthy, muscular man, with coal-black, curling hair, short, curly beard and mustache, black eyes, with an aquiline nose, and both he and Brazzier had a fashion of wearing small gold ear-rings. Their arms and breast were plentifully tattooed, so that but for the great exception of their evil dispositions, they might well have passed for good specimens of the proverbial Jack tar.
It was different with the huge colored man, Pomp Cooper, who had been known about the wharves of San Francisco for a number of years. He was jolly and good-natured, possessed of prodigious strength, and had been on shipboard enough to acquire a fair knowledge of navigating a coasting vessel.
While many believed he possessed the proverbial loyalty of his race, and could not be induced to commit any grave crime, yet it must be admitted that there were ugly rumors afloat concerning him. It was asserted by more than one that he was a river and harbor pirate, and belonged to one of the worst gangs that ever infested the harbor of San Francisco.
While Captain Bergen was not ignorant of these rumors, yet he placed no credence in them, and believed Pomp to be one of the most valuable men he could obtain. Such in brief was the crew of the _Coral_, when she sailed on her long voyage to the South Seas, in quest of pearls--the location of which had been given by the dying sailor in the Boston hospital.
It was certainly very wonderful that little Inez Hawthorne should have been transferred from the steamer to the schooner, and that many hours should have passed before the discovery was made by the respective captains of the craft.
Yet such was the fact, and Captain Bergen and Mate Storms had no sooner learned the real situation than Hyde Brazzier was sent for to tell how it occurred. As he was the one who rowed the small boat, there could be no doubt that he knew. The story he told was the true one, with the exception of the supplement--that he actually forgot about the little girl after she went into the cabin and fell asleep.
It was impossible, it may be said, that such could be the fact, and the officers looked knowingly at each other. They knew he was falsifying, but they made no comment, except to declare that she must be taken back to the steamer without an hour's delay.