Vanderdecken
dunnage aboard. Come along ashore with me while I get some grub and a toothbrush.”

He slipped out of his overalls and they climbed ashore.

“She won’t take any harm for an hour or two by herself,” said Hank.

They found a street of shops boasting a drug store. Here Hank bought his toothbrush, then he bought a German sausage, some bread, six small apples and two bottles of tonic water, also an evening paper from a yelling newsboy. Then he remembered that he would want a candle to read49 the newspaper by and went into a ships chandler’s to buy one, leaving George outside.

49

George glanced at the paper, then he spread it open hurriedly and stood reading it, heedless of the passersby or the people who jostled him. Hank, coming out of the store with his candle, looked over George’s shoulder and this is what he read, in scare headlines across a double column of print:

HANK FISHER OF THE BOHEMIAN CLUB GOES AFTER THE DUTCHMAN

Joe Barrett Loses on the Deal But Comes Up Smiling at Josh Tyrebuck and Bud du Cane

Then came the details. The dollar tossed at the Bay Club, which gave Hank two thousand dollars’ worth of goods for nothing, the loan of the Wear Jack by Tyrebuck and George du Cane’s participation in the business.

George felt as though all his clothes had suddenly been stripped off him there in the street. Hank whistled.

Then he said: “That’s Barrett. Lord, I might have known. He didn’t toss fair, he wanted me to win, and now, look! He’s got the goods, five thousand dollars’ worth of advertising for a50 thousand dollars’ worth of bully beef and canned t’matoes. It won’t cost him more than that, for he’s giving me the stuff at retail prices. And now it will be all over the town and all over the waterside.”

50

“Curse him,” said George. His lips were dry. There was a jocular tone in that confounded press notice that cast a blight on everyone concerned except Joe Barrett. Joe, though he was the only loser of money in the business up to the present was, in some extraordinary way, put on a pedestal as a sport, whilst the others ran round the plinth like figures of fun.

“It’s him and his publicity man, Josh Scudder, who’ve done it,” said Hank. “I 
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