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the uprights in the starboard rail and clung to it, coughing and choking. Too much black powder and not enough bracing , he thought. Then he thought: I hope Hattie had the good sense to stay where she was on the deckhouse.
    The steamer was in a state of bedlam: everyone on each of the three decks screaming or shouting. Some of the passengers thought a boiler had exploded, a common steamboat hazard. When the smoke finally began to dissipate, O'Hara looked in the direction of the center taffrail and discovered that most of it, like the cannon, was missing. The deck in that area was blackened and scarred, some of the boarding torn into splinters.
    But there did not seem to have been any casualties. A few passengers had received minor injuries, most of them Mulrooney Guards, and several were speckled with black soot. No one had fallen overboard. Even Chadwick had miraculously managed to survive the concussion, despite his proximity to the cannon when it and the powder keg had gone up. He was moaning feebly and moving his arms and legs, looking like a bedraggled chimney sweep, when O'Hara reached his side.
    The grip containing the gold had fared somewhat better. Chadwick had been shielding it with his body at the moment of the blast, and while it was torn open and the leather pouches scattered about, most of the sacks were intact. One or two had split open, and particles of gold dust glittered in the sooty air. The preponderance of passengers were too concerned with their own welfare to notice; those who did stared with disbelief but kept their distance, for no sooner had O'Hara reached Chadwick than the captain and half a dozen of the deck crew arrived.
    "Chadwick?" the captain said in amazement. " Chadwick's the thief?"
    "Aye, he's the one."
    "But . . . what happened? What was he doing here with the gold?"
    "I was chasing him, the spalpeen."
    "You were? Then . . . you knew of his guilt before the explosion? How?"
    "I'll explain it all to ye later," O'Hara said. "Right now there's me wife to consider."
    He left the bewildered captain and his crew to attend to Chadwick and the gold, and went to find Hattie.
    Shortly past nine, an hour after the Delta Star had docked at the foot of Stockton's Center Street, O'Hara stood with Hattie and a group of men on the landing. He wore his last clean suit, a broadcloth, and a bright green tie in honor of St. Patrick's Day. The others, clustered around him, were Bridgeman, the captain, the Nevada reporter, a hawkish man who was Stockton's sheriff, and two officials of the California Merchants Bank. Chadwick had been removed to the local jail in the company of a pair of deputies and a doctor. The Mulrooney Guards, after medical treatment, a severe reprimand, and a promise to pay all damages to the packet, had been released to continue their merrymaking in Green Park.
    The captain was saying, "We are all deeply indebted to you, Mr. O'Hara. It would have been a black day if Chadwick had succeeded in escaping with the gold a black day for us all."
    "I only did me duty," O'Hara said solemnly.
    "It is unfortunate that the California Merchants Bank cannot offer you a reward," one of the bank officials said. "However, we are not a wealthy concern, as our urgent need for the consignment of dust attests. But I don't suppose you could accept a reward in any case; the Pinkertons never do, I'm told."
    "Aye, that's true."
    Bridgeman said, "Will you explain now how you knew Chadwick was the culprit? And how he accomplished the theft? He refused to confess, you know."
    O'Hara nodded. He told them of finding the war-issue coin under the pilothouse stove; his early suspicions of the gambler, Colfax; the reporter's remark that such coins were being used in California to decorate leather goods; his growing certainty that he had seen and heard enough to piece together the truth, and yet his maddening inability to cudgel forth the necessary scraps from his memory.
    "It wasn't until this morning that the doors in me