They’re a precious pair, those two men. I don’t understand it at all.”
“What are you going to do about it?” Snow asked.
“Oh, hang around a while. There are some books ashore there I want to
read. Suppose you send that topmast down in the morning and generally
overhaul. We’ve been through a hurricane, you know. Set up the rigging
while you’re about it. Get things pretty well adrift, and take your time.”
VI
The next day Grief’s suspicions found further food. Ashore early, he
strolled across the little island to the barracks occupied by the divers. They
were just boarding the boats when he arrived, and it struck him that for
Kanakas they behaved more like chain-gang prisoners. The three white
men were there, and Grief noted that each carried a rifle. Hall greeted him
jovially enough, but Gorman and Watson scowled as they grunted curt
good mornings.
A moment afterward one of the Kanakas, as he bent to place his oar,
favoured Grief with a slow, deliberate wink. The man’s face was familiar,
one of the thousands of native sailors and divers he had encountered
drifting about in the island trade.
“Don’t tell them who I am,” Grief said, in Tahitian. “Did you ever sail for
me?”
The man’s head nodded and his mouth opened, but before he could speak
he was suppressed by a savage “Shut up!” from Watson, who was already
in the sternsheets.
“I beg pardon,” Grief said. “I ought to have known better.”
“That’s all right,” Hall interposed. “The trouble is they’re too much talk
and not enough work. Have to be severe with them, or they wouldn’t get
enough shell to pay their grub.”
Grief nodded sympathetically. “I know them. Got a crew of them
myself—the lazy swine. Got to drive them like niggers to get a half- day’s
work out of them.”
“What was you sayin’ to him?” Gorman blurted in bluntly.
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85
“I was asking how the shell was, and how deep they were diving.”
“Thick,” Hall took over the answering. “We’re working now in about ten
fathom. It’s right out there, not a hundred yards off. Want to come along?”
Half the day Grief spent with the boats, and had lunch in the bungalow. In
the afternoon he loafed, taking a siesta in the big living- room, reading
some, and talking for half an hour with Mrs. Hall. After dinner, he played
billiards with her husband. It chanced that Grief had never before
encountered Swithin Hall, yet the latter’s fame as an expert at billiards was
the talk of the beaches from Levuka to Honolulu. But the man Grief
played with this night proved most indifferent at the game. His wife
showed herself far cleverer with the cue.
When he went on board the Uncle Toby Grief routed Jackie- Jackie out of
bed. He described the location of the barracks, and told the Tongan to
swim softly around and have talk with the Kanakas. In two hours Jackie-
Jackie was back. He shook his head as he stood dripping before Grief.
“Very funny t’ing,” he reported. “One white man stop all the time. He has
big rifle. He lay in water and watch. Maybe twelve o’clock, other white
man come and take rifle. First white man go to bed. Other man stop now
with rifle. No good. Me cannot talk with Kanakas. Me come back.”
“By George!” Grief said to Snow, after the Tongan had gone back to his
bunk. “I smell something more than shell. Those three men are standing
watches over their Kanakas. That man’s no more Swithin Hall than I am.”
Snow whistled from the impact of a new idea.
“I’ve got it!” he cried.
“And I’ll name it,” Grief retorted. “It’s in your mind that the Emily L. was
their schooner?”
“Just that. They’re raising and rotting the shell, while she’s gone for more
divers, or provisions, or both.”
“And I agree with you.” Grief glanced at the cabin clock and evinced signs
of bed-going. “He’s a sailor. The three of them are. But they’re not island
men. They’re new in these waters.”
Again Snow whistled.
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“And the Emily L. is lost with all hands,” he said. “We know that. They’re
marooned here till Swithin Hall comes. Then he’ll catch them with all the
shell.”
“Or they’ll take possession of his schooner.”
“Hope they do!” Snow muttered vindictively. “Somebody ought to rob
him. Wish I was in their boots. I’d balance off that sixty thousand.”
VII
A week passed, during which time the Uncle Toby was ready for sea,
while Grief managed to allay any suspicion of him by the shore crowd.
Even Gorman and Watson accepted him at his self-description.
Throughout the week Grief begged and badgered them for the longitude of
the island.
“You wouldn’t have me leave here lost,” he finally urged. “I can’t get a line
on my chronometer without your longitude.”
Hall laughingly refused.
“You’re too good a navigator, Mr. Anstey, not to fetch New Guinea or
some other high land.”
“And you’re too good a navigator, Mr. Hall,” Grief replied, “not to know
that I can fetch your island any time by running down its latitude. ”
On the last evening, ashore, as usual, to dinner, Grief got his first view of
the pearls they had collected. Mrs. Hall, waxing enthusiastic, had asked
her husband to bring forth the “pretties,” and had spent half an hour
showing them to Grief. His delight in them was genuine, as well as was
his surprise that they had made so rich a haul.
“The lagoon is virgin,” Hall explained. “You saw yourself that most of the
shell is large and old. But it’s funny that we got most of the valuable pearls
in one small patch in the course of a week. It was a little treasure house.
Every oyster seemed filled—seed pearls by the quart, of course, but the
perfect ones, most of that bunch there, came out of the small patch.”
Grief ran his eye over them and knew their value ranged from one hundred
to a thousand dollars each, while the several selected large ones went far
beyond.
“Oh, the pretties! the pretties!” Mrs. Hall cried, bending forward suddenly
and kissing them.
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A few minutes later she arose to say good-night.
“It’s good-bye,” Grief said, as he took her hand. “We sail at daylight.”
“So suddenly!” she cried, while Grief could not help seeing the quick light
of satisfaction in her husband’s eyes.
“Yes,” Grief continued. “All the repairs are finished. I can’t get the
longitude of your island out of your husband, though I’m still in hopes he’ll
relent.”
Hall laughed and shook his head, and, as his wife left the room, proposed
a last farewell nightcap. They sat over it, smoking and talking.
“What do you estimate they’re worth?” Grief asked, indicating the spread
of pearls on the table. “I mean what the pearl-buyers would give you in
open market?”
“Oh, seventy-five or eighty thousand,” Hall said carelessly.
“I’m afraid you’re underestimating. I know pearls a bit. Take that biggest
one. It’s perfect. Not a cent less than five thousand dollars. Some
multimillionaire will pay double that some day, when the dealers have
taken their whack. And never minding the seed pearls, you’ve got quarts of
baroques there. And baroques are coming into fashion. They’re picking up
and doubling on themselves every year.”
Hall gave the trove of pearls a closer and longer scrutiny, estimating the
different parcels and adding the sum aloud.
“You’re right,” he admitted. “They’re worth a hundred thousand right
now.”
“And at what do you figure your working expenses?” Grief went on.
“Your time, and your two men’s, and the divers’?”
“Five thousand would cover it.”
“Then they stand to net you ninety-five thousand?”
“Something like that. But why so curious?”
“Why, I was just trying—” Grief paused and drained his glass. “Just trying
to reach some sort of an equitable arrangement. Suppose I should give you
and your people a passage to Sydney and the five thousand dollars—or,
better, seven thousand five hundred. You’ve worked hard.”
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88
Without commotion or muscular movement the other man became alert
and tense. His round-faced geniality went out like the flame of a snuffed
candle. No laughter clouded the surface of the eyes, and in their depths
showed the hard, dangerous soul of the man. He spoke in a low, deliberate
voice.
“Now just what in hell do you mean by that?”
Grief casually relighted his cigar.
“I don’t know just how to begin,” he said. “The situation is—er—is
embarrassing—for you. You see, I’m trying to be fair. As I say, you’ve
worked hard. I don’t want to confiscate the pearls. I want to pay you for
your time and trouble, and expense.”
Conviction, instantaneous and absolute, froze on the other’s face.
“And I thought you were in Europe,” he muttered. Hope flickered for a