overheard. "I know."

"You know?"

"Yes; these are real beach-combers. I've heard of them along this
coast--heard our Chinamen speak of them. They beach that junk
every night and camp on shore. They're scavengers, as you might
say--pick up what they can find or plunder along shore--abalones,
shark-fins, pickings of wrecks, old brass and copper, seals
perhaps, turtle and shell. Between whiles they fish for shrimp,
and I've heard Kitchell tell how they make pearls by dropping
bird-shot into oysters. They are Kai-gingh to a man, and,
according to Kitchell, the wickedest breed of cats that ever cut
teeth."

The junk bore slowly down upon the schooner. In a few moments she
had hove to alongside. But for the enormous red eyes upon her bow
she was innocent of paint. She was grimed and shellacked with
dirt and grease, and smelled abominably. Her crew were Chinamen;
but such Chinamen! The coolies of the "Bertha Millner" were
pampered and effete in comparison. The beach-combers, thirteen in
number, were a smaller class of men, their faces almost black with
tan and dirt. Though they still wore the queue, their heads were
not shaven, and mats and mops of stiff black hair fell over their
eyes from under their broad, basket-shaped hats.

They were barefoot. None of them wore more than two garments--the
jeans and the blouse. They were the lowest type of men Wilbur had
ever seen. The faces were those of a higher order of anthropoid
apes: the lower portion--jaws, lips, and teeth--salient; the