A SON OF THE SUN

BY JACK LONDON

1912

CONTENTS

 I. A Son of the Sun

 II. The Proud Goat of Aloysius Pankburn

 III. The Devils of Fuatino

 IV. The Jokers of New Gibbon

 V. A Little Account With Swithin Hall

 VI. A Goboto Night

 VII. The Feathers of the Sun

 VIII. The Peabls of Parlay

A SON OF THE SUN

Chapter One--A SON OF THE SUN

I

The _Willi-Waw_ lay in the passage between the shore-reef and theouter-reef. From the latter came the low murmur of a lazy surf, but thesheltered stretch of water, not more than a hundred yards across to thewhite beach of pounded coral sand, was of glass-like smoothness. Narrowas was the passage, and anchored as she was in the shoalest place thatgave room to swing, the _Willi-Waw's_ chain rode up-and-down a cleanhundred feet. Its course could be traced over the bottom of livingcoral. Like some monstrous snake, the rusty chain's slack wanderedover the ocean floor, crossing and recrossing itself several times andfetching up finally at the idle anchor. Big rock-cod, dun and mottled, played warily in and out of the coral. Other fish, grotesque of form andcolour, were brazenly indifferent, even when a big fish-shark driftedsluggishly along and sent the rock-cod scuttling for their favouritecrevices. 

On deck, for'ard, a dozen blacks pottered clumsily at scraping the teakrail. They were as inexpert at their work as so many monkeys. In factthey looked very much like monkeys of some enlarged and prehistorictype. Their eyes had in them the querulous plaintiveness of the monkey, their faces were even less symmetrical than the monkey's, and, hairlessof body, they were far more ungarmented than any monkey, for clothesthey had none. Decorated they were as no monkey ever was. In holes intheir ears they carried short clay pipes, rings of turtle shell, hugeplugs of wood, rusty wire nails, and empty rifle cartridges. The calibreof a Winchester rifle was the smallest hole an ear bore; some of thelargest holes were inches in diameter, and any single ear averaged fromthree to half a dozen holes. Spikes and bodkins of polished bone orpetrified shell were thrust through their noses. On the chest of onehung a white doorknob, on the chest of another the handle of a chinacup, on the chest of a third the brass cogwheel of an alarm clock. Theychattered in queer, falsetto voices, and, combined, did no more workthan a single white sailor. 

Aft, under an awning, were two white men. Each was clad in a six-pennyundershirt and wrapped about the loins with a strip of cloth. Beltedabout the middle of each was a revolver and tobacco pouch. The sweatstood out on their skin in myriads of globules. Here and there theglobules coalesced in tiny streams that dripped to the heated deck andalmost immediately evaporated. The lean, dark-eyed man wiped his fingerswet with a stinging stream from his forehead and flung it from him witha weary curse. Wearily, and without hope, he gazed seaward across theouter-reef, and at the tops of the palms along the beach. 

"Eight o'clock, an' hell don't get hot till noon, " he complained. "Wishtto God for a breeze. Ain't we never goin' to get away?"

The other man, a slender German of five and twenty, with the massiveforehead of a scholar and the tumble-home chin of a degenerate, did nottrouble to reply. He was busy emptying powdered quinine into a cigarettepaper. Rolling what was approximately fifty grains of the drug into atight wad, he tossed it into his mouth and gulped it down without theaid of water. 

"Wisht I had some whiskey, " the first man panted, after a fifteen-minuteinterval of silence. 

Another equal period elapsed ere the German enounced, relevant ofnothing:

"I'm rotten with fever. I'm going to quit you, Griffiths, when we get toSydney. No more tropics for me. I ought to known better when I signed onwith you. "

"You ain't been much of a mate, " Griffiths replied, too hot himself tospeak heatedly. "When the beach at Guvutu heard I'd shipped you, theyall laughed. 'What? Jacobsen?' they said. 'You can't hide a squareface of trade gin or sulphuric acid that he won't smell out!' You'vecertainly lived up to your reputation. I ain't had a drink for afortnight, what of your snoopin' my supply. "

"If the fever was as rotten in you as me, you'd understand, " the matewhimpered. 

"I ain't kickin', " Griffiths answered. "I only wisht God'd send me adrink, or a breeze of wind, or something. I'm ripe for my next chillto-morrow. "

The mate proffered him the quinine. Rolling a fifty-grain dose, hepopped the wad into his mouth and swallowed it dry. 

"God! God!" he moaned. "I dream of a land somewheres where they ain't noquinine. Damned stuff of hell! I've scoffed tons of it in my time. "

Again he quested seaward for signs of wind. The usual trade-wind cloudswere absent, and the sun, still low in its climb to meridian, turned allthe sky to heated brass. One seemed to see as well as feel this heat, and Griffiths sought vain relief by gazing shoreward. The white beachwas a searing ache to his eyeballs. The palm trees, absolutely still, outlined flatly against the unrefreshing green of the packed jungle, seemed so much cardboard scenery. The little black boys, playingnaked in the dazzle of sand and sun, were an affront and a hurt to thesun-sick man. He felt a sort of relief when one, running, tripped andfell on all-fours in the tepid sea-water. 

An exclamation from the blacks for'ard sent both men glancing seaward. Around the near point of land, a quarter of a mile away and skirting thereef, a long black canoe paddled into sight. 

"Gooma boys from the next bight, " was the mate's verdict. 

One of the blacks came aft, treading the hot deck with the unconcern ofone whose bare feet felt no heat. This, too, was a hurt to Griffiths, and he closed his eyes. But the next moment they were open wide. 

"White fella marster stop along Gooma boy, " the black said. 

Both men were on their feet and gazing at the canoe. Aft could be seenthe unmistakable sombrero of a white man. Quick alarm showed itself onthe face of the mate. 

"It's Grief, " he said. 

Griffiths satisfied himself by a long look, then ripped out a wrathfuloath. 

"What's he doing up here?" he demanded of the mate, of the aching seaand sky, of the merciless blaze of sun, and of the whole superheated andimplacable universe with which his fate was entangled. 

The mate began to chuckle. 

"I told you you couldn't get away with it, " he said. 

But Griffiths was not listening. 

"With all his money, coming around like a rent collector, " he chantedhis outrage, almost in an ecstasy of anger. "He's loaded with money, he's stuffed with money, he's busting with money. I know for a fact hesold his Yringa plantations for three hundred thousand pounds. Belltold me so himself last time we were drunk at Guvutu. Worth millions andmillions, and Shylocking me for what he wouldn't light his pipe with. "He whirled on the mate. "Of course you told me so. Go on and say it, andkeep on saying it. Now just what was it you did tell me so?"

"I told you you didn't know him, if you thought you could clear theSolomons without paying him. That man Grief is a devil, but he'sstraight. I know. I told you he'd throw a thousand quid away for the funof it, and for sixpence fight like a shark for a rusty tin, I tell you Iknow. Didn't he give his _Balakula_ to the Queensland Mission when theylost their _Evening Star_ on San Cristobal?--and the _Balakula_ worththree thousand pounds if she was worth a penny? And didn't he beat upStrothers till he lay abed a fortnight, all because of a difference oftwo pound ten in the account, and because Strothers got fresh and triedto make the gouge go through?"

"God strike me blind!" Griffiths cried in im-potency of rage. 

The mate went on with his exposition. 

"I tell you only a straight man can buck a straight man like him, andthe man's never hit the Solomons that could do it. Men like you and mecan't buck him. We're too rotten, too rotten all the way through. You'vegot plenty more than twelve hundred quid below. Pay him, and get it overwith. "

But Griffiths gritted his teeth and drew his thin lips tightly acrossthem. 

"I'll buck him, " he muttered--more to himself and the brazen ball of sunthan to the mate. He turned and half started to go below, then turnedback again. "Look here, Jacob-sen. He won't be here for quarter of anhour. Are you with me? Will you stand by me?"

"Of course I'll stand by you. I've drunk all your whiskey, haven't I?What are you going to do?"

"I'm not going to kill him if I can help it. But I'm not going to pay. Take that flat. "

Jacobsen shrugged his shoulders in calm acquiescence to fate, andGriffiths stepped to the companionway and went below. 

II

Jacobsen watched the canoe across the low reef as it came abreast andpassed on to the entrance of the passage. Griffiths, with ink-marks onright thumb and forefinger, returned on deck Fifteen minutes later thecanoe came alongside. The man with the sombrero stood up. 

"Hello, Griffiths!" he said. "Hello, Jacobsen!" With his hand on therail he turned to his dusky crew. "You fella boy stop along canoealtogether. "

As he swung over the rail and stepped on deck a hint of catlikelitheness showed in the apparently heavy body. Like the other two, hewas scantily clad. The cheap undershirt and white loin-cloth did notserve to hide the well put up body. Heavy muscled he was, but he wasnot lumped and hummocked by muscles. They were softly rounded, and, whenthey did move, slid softly and silkily under the smooth, tanned skin. Ardent suns had likewise tanned his face till it was swarthy as aSpaniard's. The yellow mustache appeared incongruous in the midst ofsuch swarthiness, while the clear blue of the eyes produced a feeling ofshock on the beholder. It was difficult to realize that the skin of thisman had once been fair. 

"Where did you blow in from?" Griffiths asked, as they shook hands. "Ithought you were over in the Santa Cruz. "

"I was, " the newcomer answered. "But we made a quick passage. The_Wonder's_ just around in the bight at Gooma, waiting for wind. Someof the bushmen reported a ketch here, and I just dropped around to see. Well, how goes it?"

"Nothing much. Copra sheds mostly empty, and not half a dozen tons ofivory nuts. The women all got rotten with fever and quit, and the mencan't chase them back into the swamps. They're a sick crowd. I'd ask youto have a drink, but the mate finished off my last bottle. I wisht toGod for a breeze of wind. "

Grief, glancing with keen carelessness from one to the other, laughed. 

"I'm glad the calm held, " he said. "It enabled me to get around to seeyou. My supercargo dug up that little note of yours, and I brought italong. "

The mate edged politely away, leaving his skipper to face his trouble. 

"I'm sorry, Grief, damned sorry, " Griffiths said, "but I ain't got it. You'll have to give me a little more time. "

Grief leaned up against the companionway, surprise and pain depicted onhis face. 

"It does beat hell, " he communed, "how men learn to lie in the Solomons. The truth's not in them. Now take Captain Jensen. I'd sworn by histruthfulness. Why, he told me only five days ago--do you want to knowwhat he told me?"

Griffiths licked his lips. 

"Go on. "

"Why, he told me that you'd sold out--sold out everything, cleaned up, and was pulling out for the New Hebrides. "

"He's a damned liar!" Griffiths cried hotly. 

Grief nodded. 

"I should say so. He even had the nerve to tell me that he'd bought twoof your stations from you--Mauri and Kahula. Said he paid you seventeenhundred gold sovereigns, lock, stock and barrel, good will, trade-goods, credit, and copra. "

Griffiths's eyes narrowed and glinted. The action was involuntary, andGrief noted it with a lazy sweep of his eyes. 

"And Parsons, your trader at Hickimavi, told me that the Fulcrum Companyhad bought that station from you. Now what did he want to lie for?"

Griffiths, overwrought by sun and sickness, exploded. All his bitternessof spirit rose up in his face and twisted his mouth into a snarl. 

"Look here, Grief, what's the good of playing with me that way? Youknow, and I know you know. Let it go at that. I _have_ sold out, and I_am_ getting away. And what are you going to do about it?"

Grief shrugged his shoulders, and no hint of resolve shadowed itself inhis own face. His expression was as of one in a quandary. 

"There's no law here, " Griffiths pressed home his advantage. "Tulagi isa hundred and fifty miles away. I've got my clearance papers, and I'mon my own boat. There's nothing to stop me from sailing. You've got noright to stop me just because I owe you a little money. And by God! youcan't stop me. Put that in your pipe. "

The look of pained surprise on Grief's face deepened. 

"You mean you're going to cheat me out of that twelve hundred, Griffiths?"

"That's just about the size of it, old man. And calling hard names won'thelp any. There's the wind coming. You'd better get overside before Ipull out, or I'll tow your canoe under. "

"Really, Griffiths, you sound almost right. I can't stop you. " Grieffumbled in the pouch that hung on his revolver-belt and pulled out acrumpled official-looking paper. "But maybe this will stop you. And it'ssomething for _your_ pipe. Smoke up. "

"What is it?"

"An admiralty warrant. Running to the New Hebrides won't save you. Itcan be served anywhere. "

Griffiths hesitated and swallowed, when he had finished glancing at thedocument. With knit brows he pondered this new phase of the situation. Then, abruptly, as he looked up, his face relaxed into all frankness. 

"You were cleverer than I thought, old man, " he said. "You've got mehip and thigh. I ought to have known better than to try and beat you. Jacobsen told me I couldn't, and I wouldn't listen to him. But he wasright, and so are you. I've got the money below. Come on down and we'llsettle. "

He started to go down, then stepped aside to let his visitor precedehim, at the same time glancing seaward to where the dark flaw of windwas quickening the water. 

"Heave short, " he told the mate. "Get up sail and stand ready to breakout. "

As Grief sat down on the edge of the mate's bunk, close against andfacing the tiny table, he noticed the butt of a revolver just projectingfrom under the pillow. On the table, which hung on hinges from thefor'ard bulkhead, were pen and ink, also a battered log-book. 

"Oh, I don't mind being caught in a dirty trick, " Griffiths was sayingdefiantly. "I've been in the tropics too long. I'm a sick man, a damnsick man. And the whiskey, and the sun, and the fever have made me sickin morals, too. Nothing's too mean and low for me now, and I canunderstand why the niggers eat each other, and take heads, and suchthings. I could do it myself. So I call trying to do you out of thatsmall account a pretty mild trick. Wisht I could offer you a drink. "

Grief made no reply, and the other busied himself in attempting tounlock a large and much-dented cash-box. From on deck came falsettocries and the creak and rattle of blocks as the black crew swung upmainsail and driver. Grief watched a large cockroach crawling over thegreasy paintwork. Griffiths, with an oath of irritation, carried thecash-box to the companion-steps for better light. Here, on his feet, andbending over the box, his back to his visitor, his hands shot out tothe rifle that stood beside the steps, and at the same moment he whirledabout. 

"Now don't you move a muscle, " he commanded. 

Grief smiled, elevated his eyebrows quizzically, and obeyed. His lefthand rested on the bunk beside him; his right hand lay on the table. 

His revolver hung on his right hip in plain sight. But in his mind wasrecollection of the other revolver under the pillow. 

"Huh!" Griffiths sneered. "You've got everybody in the Solomonshypnotized, but let me tell you you ain't got me. Now I'm going to throwyou off my vessel, along with your admiralty warrant, but first you'vegot to do something. Lift up that log-book. "

The other glanced curiously at the log-book, but did not move. 

"I tell you I'm a sick man, Grief; and I'd as soon shoot you as smash acockroach. Lift up that log-book, I say. "

Sick he did look, his lean face working nervously with the rage thatpossessed him. Grief lifted the book and set it aside. Beneath lay awritten sheet of tablet paper. 

"Read it, " Griffiths commanded. "Read it aloud. "

Grief obeyed; but while he read, the fingers of his left hand began aninfinitely slow and patient crawl toward the butt of the weapon underthe pillow. 

"On board the ketch Willi-Waw, Bombi Bight, Island of Anna, SolomonIslands, " he read. "Know all men by these presents that I do hereby signoff and release in full, for due value received, all debts whatsoeverowing to me by Harrison J. Griffiths, who has this day paid to me twelvehundred pounds sterling. "

"With that receipt in my hands, " Griffiths grinned, "your admiraltywarrant's not worth the paper it's written on. Sign it. "

"It won't do any good, Griffiths, " Grief said. "A document signed undercompulsion won't hold before the law. "

"In that case, what objection have you to signing it then?"

"Oh, none at all, only that I might save you heaps of trouble by notsigning it. "

Grief's fingers had gained the revolver, and, while he talked, with hisright hand he played with the pen and with his left began slowly andimperceptibly drawing the weapon to his side. As his hand finally closedupon it, second finger on trigger and forefinger laid past the cylinderand along the barrel, he wondered what luck he would have at left-handedsnap-shooting. 

"Don't consider me, " Griffiths gibed. "And just remember Jacobsen willtestify that he saw me pay the money over. Now sign, sign in full, atthe bottom, David Grief, and date it. "

From on deck came the jar of sheet-blocks and the rat-tat-tat ofthe reef-points against the canvas. In the cabin they could feel the_Willi-Waw_ heel, swing into the wind, and right. David Grief stillhesitated. From for'ard came the jerking rattle of headsail halyardsthrough the sheaves. The little vessel heeled, and through the cabinwalls came the gurgle and wash of water. 

"Get a move on!" Griffiths cried. "The anchor's out. "

The muzzle of the rifle, four feet away, was bearing directly on him, when Grief resolved to act. The rifle wavered as Griffiths kept hisbalance in the uncertain puffs of the first of the wind. Grief tookadvantage of the wavering, made as if to sign the paper, and at the sameinstant, like a cat, exploded into swift and intricate action. As heducked low and leaped forward with his body, his left hand flashed fromunder the screen of the table, and so accurately-timed was the singlestiff pull on the self-cocking trigger that the cartridge discharged asthe muzzle came forward. Not a whit behind was Griffiths. The muzzleof his weapon dropped to meet the ducking body, and, shot at snapdirection, rifle and revolver went off simultaneously. 

Grief felt the sting and sear of a bullet across the skin of hisshoulder, and knew that his own shot had missed. His forward rushcarried him to Griffiths before another shot could be fired, both ofwhose arms, still holding the rifle, he locked with a low tackle aboutthe body. He shoved the revolver muzzle, still in his left hand, deepinto the other's abdomen. Under the press of his anger and the sting ofhis abraded skin, Grief's finger was lifting the hammer, when the waveof anger passed and he recollected himself. Down the companion-way cameindignant cries from the Gooma boys in his canoe. 

Everything was happening in seconds. There was apparently no pause inhis actions as he gathered Griffiths in his arms and carried him up thesteep steps in a sweeping rush. Out into the blinding glare of sunshinehe came. A black stood grinning at the wheel, and the _Willi-Waw_, heeled over from the wind, was foaming along. Rapidly dropping asternwas his Gooma canoe. Grief turned his head. From amidships, revolver inhand, the mate was springing toward him. With two jumps, still holdingthe helpless Griffiths, Grief leaped to the rail and overboard. 

Both men were grappled together as they went down; but Grief, witha quick updraw of his knees to the other's chest, broke the grip andforced him down. With both feet on Griffiths's shoulder, he forced himstill deeper, at the same time driving himself to the surface. Scarcelyhad his head broken into the sunshine when two splashes of water, inquick succession and within a foot of his face, advertised that Jacobsenknew how to handle a revolver. There was a chance for no third shot, forGrief, filling his lungs with air, sank down. Under water he struckout, nor did he come up till he saw the canoe and the bubbling paddlesoverhead. As he climbed aboard, the _Wlli-Waw_ went into the wind tocome about. 

"Washee-washee!" Grief cried to his boys. "You fella make-um beach quickfella time!"

In all shamelessness, he turned his back on the battle and ran forcover. The _Willi-Waw_, compelled to deaden way in order to pick up itscaptain, gave Grief his chance for a lead. The canoe struck the beachfull-tilt, with every paddle driving, and they leaped out and ran acrossthe sand for the trees. But before they gained the shelter, three timesthe sand kicked into puffs ahead of them. Then they dove into the greensafety of the jungle. 

Grief watched the _Willi-Waw_ haul up close, go out the passage, thenslack its sheets as it headed south with the wind abeam. As it went outof sight past the point he could see the topsail being broken out. Oneof the Gooma boys, a black, nearly fifty years of age, hideously marredand scarred by skin diseases and old wounds, looked up into his face andgrinned. 

"My word, " the boy commented, "that fella skipper too much cross alongyou. "

Grief laughed, and led the way back across the sand to the canoe. 

III

How many millions David Grief was worth no man in the Solomons knew, forhis holdings and ventures were everywhere in the great South Pacific. From Samoa to New Guinea and even to the north of the Line hisplantations were scattered. He possessed pearling concessions in thePaumotus. Though his name did not appear, he was in truth the Germancompany that traded in the French Marquesas. His trading stations werein strings in all the groups, and his vessels that operated them weremany. He owned atolls so remote and tiny that his smallest schooners andketches visited the solitary agents but once a year. 

In Sydney, on Castlereagh Street, his offices occupied three floors. But he was rarely in those offices. He preferred always to be on the goamongst the islands, nosing out new investments, inspecting and shakingup old ones, and rubbing shoulders with fun and adventure in a thousandstrange guises. He bought the wreck of the great steamship _Gavonne_for a song, and in salving it achieved the impossible and cleaned up aquarter of a million. In the Louisiades he planted the first commercialrubber, and in Bora-Bora he ripped out the South Sea cotton and put thejolly islanders at the work of planting cacao. It was he who took thedeserted island of Lallu-Ka, colonized it with Polynesians from theOntong-Java Atoll, and planted four thousand acres to cocoanuts. And itwas he who reconciled the warring chief-stocks of Tahiti and swung thegreat deal of the phosphate island of Hikihu. 

His own vessels recruited his contract labour. They brought SantaCruz boys to the New Hebrides, New Hebrides boys to the Banks, and thehead-hunting cannibals of Malaita to the plantations of New Georgia. From Tonga to the Gilberts and on to the far Louisiades his recruiterscombed the islands for labour. His keels plowed all ocean stretches. Heowned three steamers on regular island runs, though he rarely elected totravel in them, preferring the wilder and more primitive way of wind andsail. 

At least forty years of age, he looked no more than thirty. Yetbeachcombers remembered his advent among the islands a score of yearsbefore, at which time the yellow mustache was already budding silkily onhis lip. Unlike other white men in the tropics, he was there because heliked it. His protective skin pigmentation was excellent. He hadbeen born to the sun. One he was in ten thousand in the matter ofsun-resistance. The invisible and high-velocity light waves failed tobore into him. Other white men were pervious. The sun drove throughtheir skins, ripping and smashing tissues and nerves, till they becamesick in mind and body, tossed most of the Decalogue overboard, descendedto beastliness, drank themselves into quick graves, or survived sosavagely that war vessels were sometimes sent to curb their license. 

But David Grief was a true son of the sun, and he flourished in all itsways. He merely became browner with the passing of the years, thoughin the brown was the hint of golden tint that glows in the skin of thePolynesian. Yet his blue eyes retained their blue, his mustache itsyellow, and the lines of his face were those which had persisted throughthe centuries in his English race. English he was in blood, yet thosethat thought they knew contended he was at least American born. Unlikethem, he had not come out to the South Seas seeking hearth and saddle ofhis own. In fact, he had brought hearth and saddle with him. His adventhad been in the Paumotus. He arrived on board a tiny schooner yacht, master and owner, a youth questing romance and adventure along thesun-washed path of the tropics. He also arrived in a hurricane, thegiant waves of which deposited him and yacht and all in the thick of acocoanut grove three hundred yards beyond the surf. Six months later hewas rescued by a pearling cutter. But the sun had got into his blood. At Tahiti, instead of taking a steamer home, he bought a schooner, outfitted her with trade-goods and divers, and went for a cruise throughthe Dangerous Archipelago. 

As the golden tint burned into his face it poured molten out of the endsof his fingers. His was the golden touch, but he played the game, notfor the gold, but for the game's sake. It was a man's game, the roughcontacts and fierce give and take of the adventurers of his own bloodand of half the bloods of Europe and the rest of the world, and it was agood game; but over and beyond was his love of all the other thingsthat go to make up a South Seas rover's life--the smell of the reef;the infinite exquisiteness of the shoals of living coral in themirror-surfaced lagoons; the crashing sunrises of raw colours spreadwith lawless cunning; the palm-tufted islets set in turquoise deeps;the tonic wine of the trade-winds; the heave and send of the orderly, crested seas; the moving deck beneath his feet, the straining canvasoverhead; the flower-garlanded, golden-glowing men and maids ofPolynesia, half-children and half-gods; and even the howling savages ofMelanesia, head-hunters and man-eaters, half-devil and all beast. 

And so, favoured child of the sun, out of munificence of energy andsheer joy of living, he, the man of many millions, forbore on his farway to play the game with Harrison J. Griffiths for a paltry sum. It washis whim, his desire, his expression of self and of the sun-warmth thatpoured through him. It was fun, a joke, a problem, a bit of play onwhich life was lightly hazarded for the joy of the playing. 

IV

The early morning found the _Wonder_ laying close-hauled along the coastof Guadalcanal She moved lazily through the water under the dying breathof the land breeze. To the east, heavy masses of clouds promised arenewal of the southeast trades, accompanied by sharp puffs and rainsqualls. Ahead, laying along the coast on the same course as the_Wonder_, and being slowly overtaken, was a small ketch. It was not the_Willi-Waw_, however, and Captain Ward, on the _Wonder_, putting downhis glasses, named it the _Kauri_. 

Grief, just on deck from below, sighed regretfully. 

"If it had only been the _Willi-Waw_" he said. 

"You do hate to be beaten, " Denby, the supercargo, remarkedsympathetically. 

"I certainly do. " Grief paused and laughed with genuine mirth. "It's myfirm conviction that Griffiths is a rogue, and that he treated me quitescurvily yesterday. 'Sign, ' he says, 'sign in full, at the bottom, anddate it, ' And Jacobsen, the little rat, stood in with him. It was rankpiracy, the days of Bully Hayes all over again. "

"If you weren't my employer, Mr. Grief, I'd like to give you a piece ofmy mind, " Captain Ward broke in. 

"Go on and spit it out, " Grief encouraged. 

"Well, then--" The captain hesitated and cleared his throat. "With allthe money you've got, only a fool would take the risk you did with thosetwo curs. What do you do it for?"

"Honestly, I don't know, Captain. I just want to, I suppose. And can yougive any better reason for anything you do?"

"You'll get your bally head shot off some fine day, " Captain Wardgrowled in answer, as he stepped to the binnacle and took the bearingof a peak which had just thrust its head through the clouds that coveredGuadalcanar. 

The land breeze strengthened in a last effort, and the _Wonder_, slipping swiftly through the water, ranged alongside the _Kauri_ andbegan to go by. Greetings flew back and forth, then David Grief calledout:

"Seen anything of the _Willi-Waw_?"

The captain, slouch-hatted and barelegged, with a rolling twist hitchedthe faded blue _lava-lava_ tighter around his waist and spat tobaccojuice overside. 

"Sure, " he answered. "Griffiths lay at Savo last night, taking on pigsand yams and filling his water-tanks. Looked like he was going for along cruise, but he said no. Why? Did you want to see him?"

"Yes; but if you see him first don't tell him you've seen me. "

The captain nodded and considered, and walked for'ard on his own deck tokeep abreast of the faster vessel. 

"Say!" he called. "Jacobsen told me they were coming down this afternoonto Gabera. Said they were going to lay there to-night and take on sweetpotatoes. "

"Gabera has the only leading lights in the Solomons, " Grief said, whenhis schooner had drawn well ahead. "Is that right, Captain Ward?"

The captain nodded. 

"And the little bight just around the point on this side, it's a rottenanchorage, isn't it?"

"No anchorage. All coral patches and shoals, and a bad surf. That'swhere the _Molly_ went to pieces three years ago. "

Grief stared straight before him with lustreless eyes for a full minute, as if summoning some vision to his inner sight. Then the corners of hiseyes wrinkled and the ends of his yellow mustache lifted in a smile. 

"We'll anchor at Gabera, " he said. "And run in close to the little bightthis side. I want you to drop me in a whaleboat as you go by. Also, give me six boys, and serve out rifles. I'll be back on board beforemorning. "

The captain's face took on an expression of suspicion, which swiftlyslid into one of reproach. 

"Oh, just a little fun, skipper, " Grief protested with the apologeticair of a schoolboy caught in mischief by an elder. 

Captain Ward grunted, but Denby was all alertness. 

"I'd like to go along, Mr. Grief, " he said. 

Grief nodded consent. 

"Bring some axes and bush-knives, " he said. "And, oh, by the way, acouple of bright lanterns. See they've got oil in them. "

V

An hour before sunset the _Wonder_ tore by the little bight. The windhad freshened, and a lively sea was beginning to make. The shoalstoward the beach were already white with the churn of water, while thosefarther out as yet showed no more sign than of discoloured water. Asthe schooner went into the wind and backed her jib and staysail thewhaleboat was swung out. Into it leaped six breech-clouted Santa Cruzboys, each armed with a rifle. Denby, carrying the lanterns, droppedinto the stern-sheets. Grief, following, paused on the rail. 

"Pray for a dark night, skipper, " he pleaded. 

"You'll get it, " Captain Ward answered. "There's no moon anyway, andthere won't be any sky. She'll be a bit squally, too. "

The forecast sent a radiance into Grief's face, making more pronouncedthe golden tint of his sunburn. He leaped down beside the supercargo. 

"Cast off!" Captain Ward ordered. "Draw the headsails! Put your wheelover! There! Steady! Take that course!"

The _Wonder_ filled away and ran on around the point for Gabera, whilethe whaleboat, pulling six oars and steered by Grief, headed for thebeach. With superb boatmanship he threaded the narrow, tortuous channelwhich no craft larger than a whaleboat could negotiate, until the shoalsand patches showed seaward and they grounded on the quiet, ripplingbeach. 

The next hour was filled with work. Moving about among the wildcocoanuts and jungle brush, Grief selected the trees. 

"Chop this fella tree; chop that fella tree, " he told his blacks. "Nochop that other fella, " he said, with a shake of head. 

In the end, a wedge-shaped segment of jungle was cleared. Near to thebeach remained one long palm. At the apex of the wedge stood another. Darkness was falling as the lanterns were lighted, carried up the twotrees, and made fast. 

"That outer lantern is too high. " David Grief studied it critically. "Put it down about ten feet, Denby. "

VI

The _Willi-Waw_ was tearing through the water with a bone in her teeth, for the breath of the passing squall was still strong. The blacks wereswinging up the big mainsail, which had been lowered on the run when thepuff was at its height. Jacobsen, superintending the operation, orderedthem to throw the halyards down on deck and stand by, then went for'ardon the lee-bow and joined Griffiths. Both men stared with wide-strainedeyes at the blank wall of darkness through which they were flying, theirears tense for the sound of surf on the invisible shore. It was by thissound that they were for the moment steering. 

The wind fell lighter, the scud of clouds thinned and broke, and in thedim glimmer of starlight loomed the jungle-clad coast. Ahead, and wellon the lee-bow, appeared a jagged rock-point. Both men strained to it. 

"Amboy Point, " Griffiths announced. "Plenty of water close up. Take thewheel, Jacobsen, till we set a course. Get a move on!"

Running aft, barefooted and barelegged, the rainwater dripping from hisscant clothing, the mate displaced the black at the wheel. 

"How's she heading?" Griffiths called. 

"South-a-half-west!"

"Let her come up south-by-west! Got it?"

"Right on it!"

Griffiths considered the changed relation of Amboy Point to the_Willi-Waw_'s course. 

"And a-half-west!" he cried. 

"And a-half-west!" came the answer. "Right on it!"

"Steady! That'll do!"

"Steady she is!" Jacobsen turned the wheel over to the savage. "Yousteer good fella, savve?" he warned. "No good fella, I knock your damnblack head off. "

Again he went for'ard and joined the other, and again the cloud-scudthickened, the star-glimmer vanished, and the wind rose and screamed inanother squall. 

"Watch that mainsail!" Griffiths yelled in the mate's ear, at the sametime studying the ketch's behaviour. 

Over she pressed, and lee-rail under, while he measured the weight ofthe wind and quested its easement. The tepid sea-water, with here andthere tiny globules of phosphorescence, washed about his ankles andknees. The wind screamed a higher note, and every shroud and staysharply chorused an answer as the _Willi-Waw_ pressed farther over anddown. 

"Down mainsail!" Griffiths yelled, springing to the peak-halyards, thrusting away the black who held on, and casting off the turn. 

Jacobsen, at the throat-halyards, was performing the like office. Thebig sail rattled down, and the blacks, with shouts and yells, threwthemselves on the battling canvas. The mate, finding one skulking in thedarkness, flung his bunched knuckles into the creature's face and drovehim to his work. 

The squall held at its high pitch, and under her small canvas the_Willi-Waw_ still foamed along. Again the two men stood for'ard andvainly watched in the horizontal drive of rain. 

"We're all right, " Griffiths said. "This rain won't last. We can holdthis course till we pick up the lights. Anchor in thirteen fathoms. You'd better overhaul forty-five on a night like this. After that getthe gaskets on the mainsail. We won't need it. "

Half an hour afterward his weary eyes were rewarded by a glimpse of twolights. 

"There they are, Jacobsen. I'll take the wheel. Run down thefore-staysail and stand by to let go. Make the niggers jump. "

Aft, the spokes of the wheel in his hands, Griffiths held the coursetill the two lights came in line, when he abruptly altered and headeddirectly in for them. He heard the tumble and roar of the surf, butdecided it was farther away--as it should be, at Gabera. 

He heard the frightened cry of the mate, and was grinding the wheel downwith all his might, when the _Willi-Waw_ struck. At the same instanther mainmast crashed over the bow. Five wild minutes followed. All handsheld on while the hull upheaved and smashed down on the brittlecoral and the warm seas swept over them. Grinding and crunching, the_Willi-Waw_ worked itself clear over the shoal patch and came solidly torest in the comparatively smooth and shallow channel beyond. 

Griffiths sat down on the edge of the cabin, head bowed on chest, insilent wrath and bitterness. Once he lifted his face to glare at the twowhite lights, one above the other and perfectly in line. 

"There they are, " he said. "And this isn't Gabera. Then what the hell isit?"

Though the surf still roared and across the shoal flung its sprayand upper wash over them, the wind died down and the stars came out. Shoreward came the sound of oars. 

"What have you had?--an earthquake?" Griffiths called out. "The bottom'sall changed. I've anchored here a hundred times in thirteen fathoms. Isthat you, Wilson?"

A whaleboat came alongside, and a man climbed over the rail. In thefaint light Griffiths found an automatic Colt's thrust into his face, and, looking up, saw David Grief. 

"No, you never anchored here before, " Grief laughed. "Gabera's justaround the point, where I'll be as soon as I've collected that littlesum of twelve hundred pounds. We won't bother for the receipt. I've yournote here, and I'll just return it. "

"You did this!" Griffiths cried, springing to his feet in a sudden gustof rage. "You faked those leading lights! You've wrecked me, and by--"

"Steady! Steady!" Grief's voice was cool and menacing. "I'll trouble youfor that twelve hundred, please. "

To Griffiths, a vast impotence seemed to descend upon him. He wasoverwhelmed by a profound disgust--disgust for the sunlands and thesun-sickness, for the futility of all his endeavour, for this blue-eyed, golden-tinted, superior man who defeated him on all his ways. 

"Jacobsen, " he said, "will you open the cash-box and pay this--thisbloodsucker--twelve hundred pounds?"

Chapter Two--THE PROUD GOAT OF ALOYSIUS PANKBURN

I

Quick eye that he had for the promise of adventure, prepared always forthe unexpected to leap out at him from behind the nearest cocoanuttree, nevertheless David Grief received no warning when he laid eyes onAloysius Pankburn. It was on the little steamer _Berthe_. Leaving hisschooner to follow, Grief had taken passage for the short run acrossfrom Raiatea to Papeete. When he first saw Aloysius Pankburn, thatsomewhat fuddled gentleman was drinking a lonely cocktail at the tinybar between decks next to the barber shop. And when Grief left thebarber's hands half an hour later Aloysius Pankburn was still hangingover the bar still drinking by himself. 

Now it is not good for man to drink alone, and Grief threw sharpscrutiny into his pass-ing glance. He saw a well-built young man ofthirty, well-featured, well-dressed, and evidently, in the world'scatalogue, a gentleman. But in the faint hint of slovenliness, inthe shaking, eager hand that spilled the liquor, and in the nervous, vacillating eyes, Grief read the unmistakable marks of the chronicalcoholic. 

After dinner he chanced upon Pankburn again. This time it was on deck, and the young man, clinging to the rail and peering into the distanceat the dim forms of a man and woman in two steamer chairs drawn closelytogether, was crying, drunkenly. Grief noted that the man's arm wasaround the woman's waist. Aloysius Pankburn looked on and cried. 

"Nothing to weep about, " Grief said genially. 

Pankburn looked at him, and gushed tears of profound self-pity. 

"It's hard, " he sobbed. "Hard. Hard. That man's my business manager. Iemploy him. I pay him a good screw. And that's how he earns it. "

"In that case, why don't you put a stop to it?" Grief advised. 

"I can't. She'd shut off my whiskey. She's my trained nurse. "

"Fire _her_, then, and drink your head off. "

"I can't. He's got all my money. If I did, he wouldn't give me sixpenceto buy a drink with. "

This woful possibility brought a fresh wash of tears. Grief wasinterested. Of all unique situations he could never have imagined such aone as this. 

"They were engaged to take care of me, " Pankburn was blubbering, "tokeep me away from the drink. And that's the way they do it, lollygaggingall about the ship and letting me drink myself to death. It isn't right, I tell you. It isn't right. They were sent along with me for the expresspurpose of not letting me drink, and they let me drink to swinishnessas long as I leave them alone. If I complain they threaten not to let mehave another drop. What can a poor devil do? My death will be on theirheads, that's all. Come on down and join me. "

He released his clutch on the rail, and would have fallen had Griefnot caught his arm. He seemed to undergo a transformation, to stiffenphysically, to thrust his chin forward aggressively, and to glintharshly in his eyes. 

"I won't let them kill me. And they'll be sorry. I've offered them fiftythousand--later on, of course. They laughed. They don't know. But Iknow. " He fumbled in his coat pocket and drew forth an object thatflashed in the faint light. "They don't know the meaning of that. But Ido. " He looked at Grief with abrupt suspicion. "What do you make out ofit, eh? What do you make out of it?"

David Grief caught a swift vision of an alcoholic degenerate puttinga very loving young couple to death with a copper spike, for acopper spike was what he held in his hand, an evident old-fashionedship-fastening. 

"My mother thinks I'm up here to get cured of the booze habit. Shedoesn't know. I bribed the doctor to prescribe a voyage. When we get toPapeete my manager is going to charter a schooner and away we'll sail. But they don't dream. They think it's the booze. I know. I only know. Good night, sir. I'm going to bed--unless--er--you'll join me in a nightcap. One last drink, you know. "

II

In the week that followed at Papeete Grief caught numerous and bizarreglimpses of Aloysius Pankburn. So did everybody else in the littleisland capital; for neither the beach nor Lavina's boarding househad been so scandalized in years. In midday, bareheaded, clad onlyin swimming trunks, Aloysius Pankburn ran down the main street fromLavina's to the water front. He put on the gloves with a fireman fromthe _Berthe_ in a scheduled four-round bout at the _Folies Bergères_, and was knocked out in the second round. He tried insanely to drownhimself in a two-foot pool of water, dived drunkenly and splendidly fromfifty feet up in the rigging of the _Mariposa_ lying at the wharf, andchartered the cutter _Toerau_ at more than her purchase price and wasonly saved by his manager's refusal financially to ratify the agreement. He bought out the old blind leper at the market, and sold breadfruit, plantains, and sweet potatoes at such cut-rates that the gendarmeswere called out to break the rush of bargain-hunting natives. For thatmatter, three times the gendarmes arrested him for riotous behaviour, and three times his manager ceased from love-making long enough to paythe fines imposed by a needy colonial administration. 

Then the _Mariposa_ sailed for San Francisco, and in the bridal suitewere the manager and the trained nurse, fresh-married. Before departing, the manager had thoughtfully bestowed eight five-pound banknotes onAloysius, with the foreseen result that Aloysius awoke several dayslater to find himself broke and perilously near to delirium tremens. Lavina, famed for her good heart even among the driftage of SouthPacific rogues and scamps, nursed him around and never let it filterinto his returning intelligence that there was neither manager nor moneyto pay his board. 

It was several evenings after this that David Grief, lounging underthe after deck awning of the _Kittiwake_ and idly scanning the meagrecolumns of the Papeete _Avant-Coureur_, sat suddenly up and almostrubbed his eyes. It was unbelievable, but there it was. The old SouthSeas Romance was not dead. He read:

 WANTED--To exchange a half interest in buried treasure, worth five million francs, for transportation for one to an unknown island in the Pacific and facilities for carrying away the loot. Ask for FOLLY, at Lavina's. 

Grief looked at his watch. It was early yet, only eight o'clock. 

"Mr. Carlsen, " he called in the direction of a glowing pipe. "Get thecrew for the whale-boat. I'm going ashore. "

The husky voice of the Norwegian mate was raised for'ard, and half adozen strapping Rapa Islanders ceased their singing and manned the boat. 

"I came to see Folly, Mr. Folly, I imagine, " David Grief told Lavina. 

He noted the quick interest in her eyes as she turned her head and flunga command in native across two open rooms to the outstanding kitchen. Afew minutes later a barefooted native girl padded in and shook her head. 

Lavina's disappointment was evident. 

"You're stopping aboard the _Kittiwake_, aren't you?" she said. "I'lltell him you called. "

"Then it is a _he?_" Grief queried. 

Lavina nodded. 

"I hope you can do something for him, Captain Grief. I'm only agood-natured woman. I don't know. But he's a likable man, and he may betelling the truth; I don't know. You'll know. You're not a soft-heartedfool like me. Can't I mix you a cocktail?"

III

Back on board his schooner and dozing in a deck chair under athree-months-old magazine, David Grief was aroused by a sobbing, slubbering noise from overside. He opened his eyes. From the Chiliancruiser, a quarter of a mile away, came the stroke of eight bells. Itwas midnight. From overside came a splash and another slubbering noise. To him it seemed half amphibian, half the sounds of a man crying tohimself and querulously chanting his sorrows to the general universe. 

A jump took David Grief to the low rail. Beneath, centred about theslubbering noise, was an area of agitated phosphorescence. Leaning over, he locked his hand under the armpit of a man, and, with pull and heaveand quick-changing grips, he drew on deck the naked form of AloysiusPankburn. 

"I didn't have a sou-markee, " he complained. "I had to swim it, and Icouldn't find your gangway. It was very miserable. Pardon me. If youhave a towel to put about my middle, and a good stiff drink, I'll bemore myself. I'm Mr. Folly, and you're the Captain Grief, I presume, who called on me when I was out. No, I'm not drunk. Nor am I cold. Thisisn't shivering. Lavina allowed me only two drinks to-day. I'm on theedge of the horrors, that's all, and I was beginning to see thingswhen I couldn't find the gangway. If you'll take me below I'll be verygrateful. You are the only one that answered my advertisement. "

He was shaking pitiably in the warm night, and down in the cabin, beforehe got his towel, Grief saw to it that a half-tumbler of whiskey was inhis hand. 

"Now fire ahead, " Grief said, when he had got his guest into a shirtand a pair of duck trousers. "What's this advertisement of yours? I'mlistening. "

Pankburn looked at the whiskey bottle, but Grief shook his head. 

"All right, Captain, though I tell you on whatever is left of my honourthat I am not drunk--not in the least. Also, what I shall tell you istrue, and I shall tell it briefly, for it is clear to me that you area man of affairs and action. Likewise, your chemistry is good. To youalcohol has never been a million maggots gnawing at every cell of you. You've never been to hell. I am there now. I am scorching. Now listen. 

"My mother is alive. She is English. I was born in Australia. Iwas educated at York and Yale. I am a master of arts, a doctor ofphilosophy, and I am no good. Furthermore, I am an alcoholic. I havebeen an athlete. I used to swan-dive a hundred and ten feet in theclear. I hold several amateur records. I am a fish. I learned thecrawl-stroke from the first of the Cavilles. I have done thirty milesin a rough sea. I have another record. I have punished more whiskey thanany man of my years. I will steal sixpence from you for the price of adrink. Finally, I will tell you the truth. 

"My father was an American--an Annapolis man. He was a midshipman in theWar of the Rebellion. In '66 he was a lieutenant on the _Suwanee_. Hercaptain was Paul Shirley. In '66 the Suwanee coaled at an island in thePacific which I do not care to mention, under a protectorate which didnot exist then and which shall be nameless. Ashore, behind the bar of apublic house, my father saw three copper spikes--ship's spikes. "

David Grief smiled quietly. 

"And now I can tell you the name of the coaling station and of theprotectorate that came afterward, " he said. 

"And of the three spikes?" Pankburn asked with equal quietness. "Goahead, for they are in my possession now. "

"Certainly. They were behind German Oscar's bar at Peenoo-Peenee. JohnnyBlack brought them there from off his schooner the night he died. He wasjust back from a long cruise to the westward, fishing beche-de-mer andsandalwood trading. All the beach knows the tale. "

Pankburn shook his head. 

"Go on, " he urged. 

"It was before my time, of course, " Grief explained. "I only tell whatI've heard. Next came the Ecuadoran cruiser, of all directions, in fromthe westward, and bound home. Her officers recognized the spikes. JohnnyBlack was dead. They got hold of his mate and logbook. Away to thewestward went she. Six months after, again bound home, she dropped in atPeenoo-Peenee. She had failed, and the tale leaked out. "

"When the revolutionists were marching on Guayaquil, " Pankburn took itup, "the federal officers, believing a defence of the city hopeless, salted down the government treasure chest, something like a milliondollars gold, but all in English coinage, and put it on board theAmerican schooner _Flirt_. They were going to run at daylight. TheAmerican captain skinned out in the middle of the night. Go on. "

"It's an old story, " Grief resumed. "There was no other vessel in theharbour. The federal leaders couldn't run. They put their backs to thewall and held the city. Rohjas Salced, making a forced march from Quito, raised the siege. The revolution was broken, and the one ancient steamerthat constituted the Ecuadoran navy was sent in pursuit of the _Flirt_. They caught her, between the Banks Group and the New Hebrides, hoveto and flying distress signals. The captain had died the daybefore--blackwater fever. "

"And the mate?" Pankburn challenged. 

"The mate had been killed a week earlier by the natives on one of theBanks, when they sent a boat in for water. There were no navigatorsleft. The men were put to the torture. It was beyond international law. They wanted to confess, but couldn't. They told of the three spikes inthe trees on the beach, but where the island was they did not know. Tothe westward, far to the westward, was all they knew. The tale now goestwo ways. One is that they all died under the torture. The other is thatthe survivors were swung at the yardarm. At any rate, the Ecuadorancruiser went home without the treasure. Johnny Black brought the threespikes to Peenoo-Peenee, and left them at German Oscar's, but how andwhere he found them he never told. "

Pankburn looked hard at the whiskey bottle. 

"Just two fingers, " he whimpered. 

Grief considered, and poured a meagre drink. Pankburn's eyes sparkled, and he took new lease of life. 

"And this is where I come in with the missing details, " he said. "JohnnyBlack did tell. He told my father. Wrote him from Levuka, before he cameon to die at Peenoo-Peenee. My father had saved his life one rough-housenight in Valparaiso. A Chink pearler, out of Thursday Island, prospecting for new grounds to the north of New Guinea, traded for thethree spikes with a nigger. Johnny Black bought them for copper weight. He didn't dream any more than the Chink, but coming back he stopped forhawksbill turtle at the very beach where you say the mate of the_Flirt_ was killed. Only he wasn't killed. The Banks Islanders heldhim prisoner, and he was dying of necrosis of the jawbone, caused by anarrow wound in the fight on the beach. Before he died he told the yarnto Johnny Black. Johnny Black wrote my father from Levuka. He was at theend of his rope--cancer. My father, ten years afterward, when captain ofthe _Perry_, got the spikes from German Oscar. And from my father, lastwill and testament, you know, came the spikes and the data. I have theisland, the latitude and longitude of the beach where the three spikeswere nailed in the trees. The spikes are up at Lavina's now. Thelatitude and longitude are in my head. Now what do you think?"

"Fishy, " was Grief's instant judgment. "Why didn't your father go andget it himself?"

"Didn't need it. An uncle died and left him a fortune. He retired fromthe navy, ran foul of an epidemic of trained nurses in Boston, and mymother got a divorce. Also, she fell heir to an income of something likethirty thousand dollars, and went to live in New Zealand. I was dividedbetween them, half-time New Zealand, half-time United States, until myfather's death last year. Now my mother has me altogether. He left mehis money--oh, a couple of millions--but my mother has had guardiansappointed on account of the drink. I'm worth all kinds of money, but Ican't touch a penny save what is doled out to me. But the old man, whohad got the tip on my drinking, left me the three spikes and the datathereunto pertaining. Did it through his lawyers, unknown to my mother;said it beat life insurance, and that if I had the backbone to go andget it I could drink my back teeth awash until I died. Millions in thehands of my guardians, slathers of shekels of my mother's that'll bemine if she beats me to the crematory, another million waiting to be dugup, and in the meantime I'm cadging on Lavina for two drinks a day. It'shell, isn't it?--when you consider my thirst. "

"Where's the island?"

"It's a long way from here. "

"Name it. "

"Not on your life, Captain Grief. You're making an easy half-million outof this. You will sail under my directions, and when we're well to seaand on our way I'll tell you and not before. "

Grief shrugged his shoulders, dismissing the subject. 

"When I've given you another drink I'll send the boat ashore with you, "he said. 

Pankburn was taken aback. For at least five minutes he debated withhimself, then licked his lips and surrendered. 

"If you promise to go, I'll tell you now. "

"Of course I'm willing to go. That's why I asked you. Name the island. "

Pankburn looked at the bottle. 

"I'll take that drink now, Captain. "

"No you won't. That drink was for you if you went ashore. If you aregoing to tell me the island, you must do it in your sober senses. "

"Francis Island, if you will have it. Bougainville named it BarbourIsland. "

"Off there all by its lonely in the Little Coral Sea, " Grief said. "Iknow it. Lies between New Ireland and New Guinea. A rotten hole now, though it was all right when the _Flirt_ drove in the spikes and theChink pearler traded for them. The steamship _Castor_, recruiting labourfor the Upolu plantations, was cut off there with all hands two yearsago. I knew her captain well. The Germans sent a cruiser, shelled thebush, burned half a dozen villages, killed a couple of niggers and a lotof pigs, and--and that was all. The niggers always were bad there, butthey turned really bad forty years ago. That was when they cut off awhaler. Let me see? What was her name?"

He stepped to the bookshelf, drew out the bulky "South PacificDirectory, " and ran through its pages. 

"Yes. Here it is. Francis, or Barbour, " he skimmed. "Natives warlike andtreacherous--Melanesian--cannibals. Whaleship _Western_ cut off--thatwas her name. Shoals--points--anchorages--ah, Redscar, Owen Bay, Likikili Bay, that's more like it; deep indentation, mangroveswamps, good holding in nine fathoms when white scar in bluff bearswest-southwest. " Grief looked up. "That's your beach, Pankburn, I'llswear. "

"Will you go?" the other demanded eagerly. 

Grief nodded. 

"It sounds good to me. Now if the story had been of a hundred millions, or some such crazy sum, I wouldn't look at it for a moment. We'll sailto-morrow, but under one consideration. You are to be absolutely undermy orders. "

His visitor nodded emphatically and joyously. 

"And that means no drink. "

"That's pretty hard, " Pankburn whined. 

"It's my terms. I'm enough of a doctor to see you don't come to harm. And you are to work--hard work, sailor's work. You'll stand regularwatches and everything, though you eat and sleep aft with us. "

"It's a go. " Pankburn put out his hand to ratify the agreement. "If itdoesn't kill me, " he added. 

David Grief poured a generous three-fingers into the tumbler andextended it. 

"Then here's your last drink. Take it. "

Pankburn's hand went halfway out. With a sudden spasm of resolution, hehesitated, threw back his shoulders, and straightened up his head. 

"I guess I won't, " he began, then, feebly surrendering to the gnaw ofdesire, he reached hastily for the glass, as if in fear that it would bewithdrawn. 

IV

It is a long traverse from Papeete in the Societies to the Little CoralSea--from 100 west longitude to 150 east longitude--as the crow fliesthe equivalent to a voyage across the Atlantic. But the _Kittiwake_ didnot go as the crow flies. David Grief's numerous interests divertedher course many times. He stopped to take a look-in at uninhabited RoseIsland with an eye to colonizing and planting cocoa-nuts. Next, he paidhis respects to Tui Manua, of Eastern Samoa, and opened an intrigue fora share of the trade monopoly of that dying king's three islands. FromApia he carried several relief agents and a load of trade goods to theGilberts. He peeped in at Ontong-Java Atoll, inspected his plantationson Ysabel, and purchased lands from the salt-water chiefs ofnorthwestern Malaita. And all along this devious way he made a man ofAloysius Pankburn. 

That thirster, though he lived aft, was compelled to do the work of acommon sailor. And not only did he take his wheel and lookout, and heaveon sheets and tackles, but the dirtiest and most arduous tasks wereappointed him. Swung aloft in a bosun's chair, he scraped the masts andslushed down. Holystoning the deck or scrubbing it with fresh limesmade his back ache and developed the wasted, flabby muscles. Whenthe _Kittiwake_ lay at anchor and her copper bottom was scrubbed withcocoa-nut husks by the native crew, who dived and did it under water, Pankburn was sent down on his shift and as many times as any on theshift. 

"Look at yourself, " Grief said. "You are twice the man you were when youcame on board. You haven't had one drink, you didn't die, and the poisonis pretty well worked out of you. It's the work. It beats trained nursesand business managers. Here, if you're thirsty. Clap your lips to this. "

With several deft strokes of his heavy-backed sheath-knife, Griefclipped a triangular piece of shell from the end of a huskeddrinking-cocoa-nut. The thin, cool liquid, slightly milky andeffervescent, bubbled to the brim. With a bow, Pankburn took the naturalcup, threw his head back, and held it back till the shell was empty. Hedrank many of these nuts each day. The black steward, a New Hebrides boysixty years of age, and his assistant, a Lark Islander of eleven, saw toit that he was continually supplied. 

Pankburn did not object to the hard work. He devoured work, nevershirking and always beating the native sailors in jumping to obey acommand. But his sufferings during the period of driving the alcohol outof his system were truly heroic. Even when the last shred of the poisonwas exuded, the desire, as an obsession, remained in his head. So itwas, when, on his honour, he went ashore at Apia, that he attempted toput the public houses out of business by drinking up their stocks intrade. And so it was, at two in the morning, that David Grief found himin front of the Tivoli, out of which he had been disorderly thrown byCharley Roberts. Aloysius, as of old, was chanting his sorrows to thestars. Also, and more concretely, he was punctuating the rhythm withcobbles of coral stone, which he flung with amazing accuracy throughCharley Roberts's windows. 

David Grief took him away, but not till next morning did he take himin hand. It was on the deck of the _Kittiwake_, and there was nothingkindergarten about it. Grief struck him, with bare knuckles, punched himand punished him--gave him the worst thrashing he had ever received. 

"For the good of your soul, Pankburn, " was the way he emphasized hisblows. "For the good of your mother. For the progeny that will comeafter. For the good of the world, and the universe, and the whole raceof man yet to be. And now, to hammer the lesson home, we'll do it allover again. That, for the good of your soul; and that, for your mother'ssake; and that, for the little children, undreamed of and unborn, whosemother you'll love for their sakes, and for love's sake, in the leaseof manhood that will be yours when I am done with you. Come on and takeyour medicine. I'm not done with you yet. I've only begun. There aremany other reasons which I shall now proceed to expound. " The brownsailors and the black stewards and cook looked on and grinned. Far fromthem was the questioning of any of the mysterious and incomprehensibleways of white men. As for Carlsen, the mate, he was grimly in accordwith the treatment his employer was administering; while Albright, thesupercargo, merely played with his mustache and smiled. They were menof the sea. They lived life in the rough. And alcohol, in themselves aswell as in other men, was a problem they had learned to handle in waysnot taught in doctors' schools. 

"Boy! A bucket of fresh water and a towel, " Grief ordered, when he hadfinished. "Two buckets and two towels, " he added, as he surveyed his ownhands. 

"You're a pretty one, " he said to Pankburn. "You've spoiled everything. I had the poison completely out of you. And now you are fairly reekingwith it. We've got to begin all over again. Mr. Albright! You know thatpile of old chain on the beach at the boat-landing. Find the owner, buyit, and fetch it on board. There must be a hundred and fifty fathoms ofit. Pankburn! To-morrow morning you start in pounding the rust off ofit. When you've done that, you'll sandpaper it. Then you'll paint it. And nothing else will you do till that chain is as smooth as new. "

Aloysius Pankburn shook his head. 

"I quit. Francis Island can go to hell for all of me. I'm done with yourslave-driving. Kindly put me ashore at once. I'm a white man. You can'ttreat me this way. "

"Mr. Carlsen, you will see that Mr. Pankburn remains on board. "

"I'll have you broken for this!" Aloysius screamed. "You can't stop me. "

"I can give you another licking, " Grief answered. "And let me tell youone thing, you besotted whelp, I'll keep on licking you as long as myknuckles hold out or until you yearn to hammer chain rust. I've takenyou in hand, and I'm going to make a man out of you if I have to killyou to do it. Now go below and change your clothes. Be ready to turnto with a hammer this afternoon. Mr. Albright, get that chain aboardpronto. Mr. Carlsen, send the boats ashore after it. Also, keep your eyeon Pankburn. If he shows signs of keeling over or going into the shakes, give him a nip--a small one. He may need it after last night. "

V

For the rest of the time the _Kittiwake_ lay in Apia Aloysius Pankburnpounded chain rust. Ten hours a day he pounded. And on the long stretchacross to the Gilberts he still pounded. 

Then came the sandpapering. One hundred and fifty fathoms is ninehundred feet, and every link of all that length was smoothed andpolished as no link ever was before. And when the last link had receivedits second coat of black paint, he declared himself. 

"Come on with more dirty work, " he told Grief. "I'll overhaul the otherchains if you say so. And you needn't worry about me any more. I'm notgoing to take another drop. I'm going to train up. You got my proudgoat when you beat me, but let me tell you, you only got it temporarily. Train! I'm going to train till I'm as hard all the way through, andclean all the way through, as that chain is. And some day, Mister DavidGrief, somewhere, somehow, I'm going to be in such shape that I'll lickyou as you licked me. I'm going to pulp your face till your own niggerswon't know you. "

Grief was jubilant. 

"Now you're talking like a man, " he cried. "The only way you'll everlick me is to become a man. And then, maybe--"

He paused in the hope that the other would catch the suggestion. Aloysius groped for it, and, abruptly, something akin to illuminationshone in his eyes. 

"And then I won't want to, you mean?"

Grief nodded. 

"And that's the curse of it, " Aloysius lamented. "I really believe Iwon't want to. I see the point. But I'm going to go right on and shapemyself up just the same. "

The warm, sunburn glow in Grief's face seemed to grow warmer. His handwent out. 

"Pankburn, I love you right now for that. "

Aloysius grasped the hand, and shook his head in sad sincerity. 

"Grief, " he mourned, "you've got my goat, you've got my proud goat, andyou've got it permanently, I'm afraid. "

VI

On a sultry tropic day, when the last flicker of the far southeast tradewas fading out and the seasonal change for the northwest monsoon wascoming on, the _Kittiwake_ lifted above the sea-rim the jungle-cladcoast of Francis Island. 

Grief, with compass bearings and binoculars, identified the volcano thatmarked Redscar, ran past Owen Bay, and lost the last of the breeze atthe entrance to Likikili Bay. With the two whaleboats out and towing, and with Carl-sen heaving the lead, the _Kittiwake_ sluggishly entered adeep and narrow indentation. There were no beaches. The mangroves beganat the water's edge, and behind them rose steep jungle, broken here andthere by jagged peaks of rock. At the end of a mile, when the white scaron the bluff bore west-southwest, the lead vindicated the "Directory, "and the anchor rumbled down in nine fathoms. 

For the rest of that day and until the afternoon of the day followingthey remained on the _Kittiwake_ and waited. No canoes appeared. Therewere no signs of human life. Save for the occasional splash of a fish orthe screaming of cockatoos, there seemed no other life. Once, however, ahuge butterfly, twelve inches from tip to tip, fluttered high over theirmastheads and drifted across to the opposing jungle. 

"There's no use in sending a boat in to be cut up, " Grief said. 

Pankburn was incredulous, and volunteered to go in alone, to swim it ifhe couldn't borrow the dingey. 

"They haven't forgotten the German cruiser, " Grief explained. "And I'llwager that bush is alive with men right now. What do you think, Mr. Carlsen?"

That veteran adventurer of the islands was emphatic in his agreement. 

In the late afternoon of the second day Grief ordered a whaleboat intothe water. He took his place in the bow, a live cigarette in his mouthand a short-fused stick of dynamite in his hand, for he was bent onshooting a mess of fish. Along the thwarts half a dozen Winchesters wereplaced. Albright, who took the steering-sweep, had a Mauser within reachof hand. They pulled in and along the green wall of vegetation. At timesthey rested on the oars in the midst of a profound silence. 

"Two to one the bush is swarming with them--in quids, " Albrightwhispered. 

Pankburn listened a moment longer and took the bet. Five minutes laterthey sighted a school of mullet. The brown rowers held their oars. Grieftouched the short fuse to his cigarette and threw the stick. So shortwas the fuse that the stick exploded in the instant after it struck thewater. And in that same instant the bush exploded into life. There werewild yells of defiance, and black and naked bodies leaped forward likeapes through the mangroves. 

In the whaleboat every rifle was lifted. Then came the wait. A hundredblacks, some few armed with ancient Sniders, but the greater portionarmed with tomahawks, fire-hardened spears, and bone-tipped arrows, clustered on the roots that rose out of the bay. No word was spoken. Each party watched the other across twenty feet of water. An old, one-eyed black, with a bristly face, rested a Snider on his hip, themuzzle directed at Albright, who, in turn, covered him back with theMauser. A couple of minutes of this tableau endured. The stricken fishrose to the surface or struggled half-stunned in the clear depths. 

"It's all right, boys, " Grief said quietly. "Put down your guns andover the side with you. Mr. Albright, toss the tobacco to that one-eyedbrute. "

While the Rapa men dived for the fish, Albright threw a bundle oftrade tobacco ashore. The one-eyed man nodded his head and writhed hisfeatures in an attempt at amiability. Weapons were lowered, bows unbent, and arrows put back in their quivers. 

"They know tobacco, " Grief announced, as they rowed back aboard. "We'llhave visitors. You'll break out a case of tobacco, Mr. Albright, and afew trade-knives. There's a canoe now. "

Old One-Eye, as befitted a chief and leader, paddled out alone, facingperil for the rest of the tribe. As Carlsen leaned over the rail to helpthe visitor up, he turned his head and remarked casually:

"They've dug up the money, Mr. Grief. The old beggar's loaded with it. "

One-Eye floundered down on deck, grinning appeasingly and failing tohide the fear he had overcome but which still possessed him. He was lameof one leg, and this was accounted for by a terrible scar, inches deep, which ran down the thigh from hip to knee. No clothes he wore whatever, not even a string, but his nose, perforated in a dozen places and eachperforation the setting for a carved spine of bone, bristled like aporcupine. Around his neck and hanging down on his dirty chest was astring of gold sovereigns. His ears were hung with silver half-crowns, and from the cartilage separating his nostrils depended a big Englishpenny, tarnished and green, but unmistakable. 

"Hold on, Grief, " Pankburn said, with perfectly assumed carelessness. "You say they know only beads and tobacco. Very well. You follow mylead. They've found the treasure, and we've got to trade them out of it. Get the whole crew aside and lecture them that they are to be interestedonly in the pennies. Savve? Gold coins must be beneath contempt, andsilver coins merely tolerated. Pennies are to be the only desirablethings. "

Pankburn took charge of the trading. For the penny in One-Eye's nose hegave ten sticks of tobacco. Since each stick cost David Grief a cent, the bargain was manifestly unfair. But for the half-crowns Pankburn gaveonly one stick each. The string of sovereigns he refused to consider. The more he refused, the more One-Eye insisted on a trade. At last, withan appearance of irritation and anger, and as a palpable concession, Pankburn gave two sticks for the string, which was composed of tensovereigns. 

"I take my hat off to you, " Grief said to Pankburn that night at dinner. "The situation is patent. You've reversed the scale of value. They'llfigure the pennies as priceless possessions and the sovereigns asbeneath price. Result: they'll hang on to the pennies and force us totrade for sovereigns. Pankburn, I drink your health! Boy!--another cupof tea for Mr. Pankburn. "

VII

Followed a golden week. From dawn till dark a row of canoes restedon their paddles two hundred feet away. This was the deadline. Rapasailors, armed with rifles, maintained it. But one canoe at a time waspermitted alongside, and but one black at a time was permitted to comeover the rail. Here, under the awning, relieving one another in hourlyshifts, the four white men carried on the trade. The rate of exchangewas that established by Pankburn with One-Eye. Five sovereigns fetcheda stick of tobacco; a hundred sovereigns, twenty sticks. Thus, acrafty-eyed cannibal would deposit on the table a thousand dollars ingold, and go back over the rail, hugely-satisfied, with forty cents'worth of tobacco in his hand. 

"Hope we've got enough tobacco to hold out, " Carlsen muttered dubiously, as another case was sawed in half. 

Albright laughed. 

"We've got fifty cases below, " he said, "and as I figure it, three casesbuy a hundred thousand dollars. There was only a million dollars buried, so thirty cases ought to get it. Though, of course, we've got to allowa margin for the silver and the pennies. That Ecuadoran bunch must havesalted down all the coin in sight. "

Very few pennies and shillings appeared, though Pankburn continually andanxiously inquired for them. Pennies were the one thing he seemed todesire, and he made his eyes flash covetously whenever one was produced. True to his theory, the savages concluded that the gold, being of slightvalue, must be disposed of first. A penny, worth fifty times as much asa sovereign, was something to retain and treasure. Doubtless, in theirjungle-lairs, the wise old gray-beards put their heads together andagreed to raise the price on pennies when the worthless gold was allworked off. Who could tell? Mayhap the strange white men could be madeto give even twenty sticks for a priceless copper. 

By the end of the week the trade went slack. There was only theslightest dribble of gold. An occasional penny was reluctantly disposedof for ten sticks, while several thousand dollars in silver came in. 

On the morning of the eighth day no trading was done. The gray-beardshad matured their plan and were demanding twenty sticks for a penny, One-Eye delivered the new rate of exchange. The white men appeared totake it with great seriousness, for they stood together debating in lowvoices. Had One-Eye understood English he would have been enlightened. 

"We've got just a little over eight hundred thousand, not counting thesilver, " Grief said. "And that's about all there is. The bush tribesbehind have most probably got the other two hundred thousand. Returnin three months, and the salt-water crowd will have traded back for it;also they will be out of tobacco by that time. "

"It would be a sin to buy pennies, " Albright grinned. "It goes againstthe thrifty grain of my trader's soul. "

"There's a whiff of land-breeze stirring, " Grief said, looking atPankburn. "What do you say?"

Pankburn nodded. 

"Very well. " Grief measured the faintness and irregularity of the windagainst his cheek. 

"Mr. Carlsen, heave short, and get off the gaskets. And stand by withthe whaleboats to tow. This breeze is not dependable. "

He picked up a part case of tobacco, containing six or seven hundredsticks, put it in One-Eye's hands, and helped that bewildered savageover the rail. As the foresail went up the mast, a wail of consternationarose from the canoes lying along the dead-line. And as the anchorbroke out and the _Kittiwake's_ head paid off in the light breeze, oldOne-Eye, daring the rifles levelled on him, paddled alongside andmade frantic signs of his tribe's willingness to trade pennies for tensticks. 

"Boy!--a drinking nut, " Pankburn called. 

"It's Sydney Heads for you, " Grief said. "And then what?"

"I'm coming back with you for that two hundred thousand, " Pankburnanswered. "In the meantime I'm going to build an island schooner. Also, I'm going to call those guardians of mine before the court to show causewhy my father's money should not be turned over to me. Show cause? I'llshow them cause why it should. "

He swelled his biceps proudly under the thin sleeve, reached for the twoblack stewards, and put them above his head like a pair of dumbbells. 

"Come on! Swing out on that fore-boom-tackle!" Carlsen shouted from aft, where the mainsail was being winged out. 

Pankburn dropped the stewards and raced for it, beating a Rapa sailor bytwo jumps to the hauling part. 

Chapter Three--THE DEVILS OF FUATINO

I

Of his many schooners, ketches and cutters that nosed about among thecoral isles of the South Seas, David Grief loved most the _Rattler_--ayacht-like schooner of ninety tons with so swift a pair of heels thatshe had made herself famous, in the old days, opium-smuggling from SanDiego to Puget Sound, raiding the seal-rookeries of Bering Sea, andrunning arms in the Far East. A stench and an abomination to governmentofficials, she had been the joy of all sailormen, and the pride of theshipwrights who built her. Even now, after forty years of driving, shewas still the same old _Rattler_, fore-reaching in the same marvellousmanner that compelled sailors to see in order to believe and thatpunctuated many an angry discussion with words and blows on the beachesof all the ports from Valparaiso to Manila Bay. 

On this night, close-hauled, her big mainsail preposterously flatteneddown, her luffs pulsing emptily on the lift of each smooth swell, shewas sliding an easy four knots through the water on the veriest whisperof a breeze. For an hour David Grief had been leaning on the rail at thelee fore-rigging, gazing overside at the steady phosphorescence of hergait. The faint back-draught from the headsails fanned his cheek andchest with a wine of coolness, and he was in an ecstasy of appreciationof the schooner's qualities. 

"Eh!--She's a beauty, Taute, a beauty, " he said to the Kanaka lookout, at the same time stroking the teak of the rail with an affectionatehand. 

"Ay, skipper, " the Kanaka answered in the rich, big-chested tones ofPolynesia. "Thirty years I know ships, but never like 'this. On Raiateawe call her _Fanauao_. "

"The Dayborn, " Grief translated the love-phrase. "Who named her so?"

About to answer, Taute peered ahead with sudden intensity. Grief joinedhim in the gaze. 

"Land, " said Taute. 

"Yes; Fuatino, " Grief agreed, his eyes still fixed on the spot wherethe star-luminous horizon was gouged by a blot of blackness. "It's allright. I'll tell the captain. "

The _Rattler_ slid along until the loom of the island could be seen aswell as sensed, until the sleepy roar of breakers and the blatting ofgoats could be heard, until the wind, off the land, was flower-drenchedwith perfume. 

"If it wasn't a crevice, she could run the passage a night like this, "Captain Glass remarked regretfully, as he watched the wheel lashed harddown by the steersman. 

The _Rattler_, run off shore a mile, had been hove to to wait untildaylight ere she attempted the perilous entrance to Fuatino. It was aperfect tropic night, with no hint of rain or squall. For'ard, wherevertheir tasks left them, the Raiatea sailors sank down to sleep on deck. Aft, the captain and mate and Grief spread their beds with similarlanguid unconcern. They lay on their blankets, smoking and murmuringsleepy conjectures about Mataara, the Queen of Fuatino, and about thelove affair between her daughter, Naumoo, and Motuaro. 

"They're certainly a romantic lot, " Brown, the mate, said. "As romanticas we whites. "

"As romantic as Pilsach, " Grief laughed, "and that is going some. Howlong ago was it, Captain, that he jumped you?"

"Eleven years, " Captain Glass grunted resentfully. 

"Tell me about it, " Brown pleaded. "They say he's never left Fuatinosince. Is that right?"

"Right O, " the captain rumbled. "He's in love with his wife--the littlehussy! Stole him from me, and as good a sailorman as the trade has everseen--if he is a Dutchman. "

"German, " Grief corrected. 

"It's all the same, " was the retort. "The sea was robbed of a good manthat night he went ashore and Notutu took one look at him. I reckon theylooked good to each other. Before you could say skat, she'd put a wreathof some kind of white flowers on his head, and in five minutes they wereoff down the beach, like a couple of kids, holding hands and laughing. Ihope he's blown that big coral patch out of the channel. I always starta sheet or two of copper warping past. "

"Go on with the story, " Brown urged. 

"That's all. He was finished right there. Got married that night. Nevercame on board again. I looked him up next day. Found him in a strawhouse in the bush, barelegged, a white savage, all mixed up with flowersand things and playing a guitar. Looked like a bally ass. Told me tosend his things ashore. I told him I'd see him damned first. And that'sall. You'll see her to-morrow. They've got three kiddies now--wonderfullittle rascals. I've a phonograph down below for him, and about amillion records. "

"And then you made him trader?" the mate inquired of Grief. 

"What else could I do? Fuatino is a love island, and Filsach is a lover. He knows the native, too--one of the best traders I've got, or ever had. He's responsible. You'll see him to-morrow. "

"Look here, young man, " Captain Glass rumbled threateningly at his mate. "Are you romantic? Because if you are, on board you stay. Fuatino's theisland of romantic insanity. Everybody's in love with somebody. Theylive on love. It's in the milk of the cocoa-nuts, or the air, or thesea. The history of the island for the last ten thousand years isnothing but love affairs. I know. I've talked with the old men. And if Icatch you starting down the beach hand in hand--"

His sudden cessation caused both the other men to look at him. Theyfollowed his gaze, which passed across them to the main rigging, and sawwhat he saw, a brown hand and arm, muscular and wet, being joined fromoverside by a second brown hand and arm. A head followed, thatched withlong elfin locks, and then a face, with roguish black eyes, lined withthe marks of wildwood's laughter. 

"My God!" Brown breathed. "It's a faun--a sea-faun. "

"It's the Goat Man, " said Glass. 

"It is Mauriri, " said Grief. "He is my own blood brother by sacredplight of native custom. His name is mine, and mine is his. "

Broad brown shoulders and a magnificent chest rose above the rail, and, with what seemed effortless ease, the whole grand body followed overthe rail and noiselessly trod the deck. Brown, who might have been otherthings than the mate of an island schooner, was enchanted. All that hehad ever gleaned from the books proclaimed indubitably the faun-likenessof this visitant of the deep. "But a sad faun, " was the young man'sjudgment, as the golden-brown woods god strode forward to where DavidGrief sat up with outstretched hand. 

"David, " said David Grief. 

"Mauriri, Big Brother, " said Mauriri. 

And thereafter, in the custom of men who have pledged blood brotherhood, each called the other, not by the other's name, but by his own. Also, they talked in the Polynesian tongue of Fuatino, and Brown could onlysit and guess. 

"A long swim to say _talofa_, " Grief said, as the other sat and streamedwater on the deck. 

"Many days and nights have I watched for your coming, Big Brother, "Mauriri replied. "I have sat on the Big Rock, where the dynamiteis kept, of which I have been made keeper. I saw you come up to theentrance and run back into darkness. I knew you waited till morning, andI followed. Great trouble has come upon us. Mataara has cried these manydays for your coming. She is an old woman, and Motauri is dead, and sheis sad. "

"Did he marry Naumoo?" Grief asked, after he had shaken his head andsighed by the custom. 

"Yes. In the end they ran to live with the goats, till Mataara forgave, when they returned to live with her in the Big House. But he is nowdead, and Naumoo soon will die. Great is our trouble, Big Brother. Toriis dead, and Tati-Tori, and Petoo, and Nari, and Pilsach, and others. "

"Pilsach, too!" Grief exclaimed. "Has there been a sickness?"

"There has been much killing. Listen, Big Brother, Three weeks ago astrange schooner came. From the Big Rock I saw her topsails above thesea. She towed in with her boats, but they did not warp by the bigpatch, and she pounded many times. She is now on the beach, where theyare strengthening the broken timbers. There are eight white men onboard. They have women from some island far to the east. The womentalk a language in many ways like ours, only different. But we canunderstand. They say they were stolen by the men on the schooner. We donot know, but they sing and dance and are happy. "

"And the men?" Grief interrupted. 

"They talk French. I know, for there was a mate on your schooner whotalked French long ago. There are two chief men, and they do not looklike the others. They have blue eyes like you, and they are devils. Oneis a bigger devil than the other. The other six are also devils. They donot pay us for our yams, and taro, and breadfruit. They take everythingfrom us, and if we complain they kill us. Thus was killed Tori, andTati-Tori, and Petoo, and others. We cannot fight, for we have noguns--only two or three old guns. 

"They ill-treat our women. Thus was killed Motuaro, who made defence ofNaumoo, whom they have now taken on board their schooner. It was becauseof this that Pilsach was killed. Him the chief of the two chief men, theBig Devil, shot once in his whaleboat, and twice when he tried to crawlup the sand of the beach. Pilsach was a brave man, and Notutu now sitsin the house and cries without end. Many of the people are afraid, andhave run to live with the goats. But there is not food for all in thehigh mountains. And the men will not go out and fish, and they work nomore in the gardens because of the devils who take all they have. And weare ready to fight. 

"Big Brother, we need guns, and much ammunition. I sent word before Iswam out to you, and the men are waiting. The strange white men do notknow you are come. Give me a boat, and the guns, and I will go backbefore the sun. And when you come to-morrow we will be ready for theword from you to kill the strange white men. They must be killed. BigBrother, you have ever been of the blood with us, and the men and womenhave prayed to many gods for your coming. And you are come. "

"I will go in the boat with you, " Grief said. 

"No, Big Brother, " was Mauriri's reply. "You must be with the schooner. The strange white men will fear the schooner, not us. We will have theguns, and they will not know. It is only when they see your schoonercome that they will be alarmed. Send the young man there with the boat. "

So it was that Brown, thrilling with all the romance and adventure hehad read and guessed and never lived, took his place in the sternsheetsof a whaleboat, loaded with rifles and cartridges, rowed by four Baiateasailors, steered by a golden-brown, sea-swimming faun, and directedthrough the warm tropic darkness toward the half-mythical love island ofFuatino, which had been invaded by twentieth century pirates. 

II

If a line be drawn between Jaluit, in the Marshall Group, andBougainville, in the Solomons, and if this line be bisected at twodegrees south of the equator by a line drawn from Ukuor, in theCarolines, the high island of Fuatino will be raised in that sun-washedstretch of lonely sea. Inhabited by a stock kindred to the Hawaiian, the Samoan, the Tahitian, and the Maori, Fuatino becomes the apex of thewedge driven by Polynesia far to the west and in between Melanesia andMicronesia. And it was Fuatino that David Grief raised next morning, two miles to the east and in direct line with the rising sun. The samewhisper of a breeze held, and the _Rattler_ slid through the smooth seaat a rate that would have been eminently proper for an island schoonerhad the breeze been thrice as strong. 

Fuatino was nothing else than an ancient crater, thrust upward from thesea-bottom by some primordial cataclysm. The western portion, brokenand crumbled to sea level, was the entrance to the crater itself, whichconstituted the harbour. Thus, Fuatino was like a rugged horseshoe, theheel pointing to the west. And into the opening at the heel the Rattlersteered. Captain Glass, binoculars in hand and peering at the chart madeby himself, which was spread on top the cabin, straightened up with anexpression on his face that was half alarm, half resignation. 

"It's coming, " he said. "Fever. It wasn't due till to-morrow. It alwayshits me hard, Mr. Grief. In five minutes I'll be off my head. You'llhave to con the schooner in. Boy! Get my bunk ready! Plenty of blankets!Fill that hot-water bottle! It's so calm, Mr. Grief, that I think youcan pass the big patch without warping. Take the leading wind and shoother. She's the only craft in the South Pacific that can do it, and Iknow you know the trick. You can scrape the Big Rock by just watchingout for the main boom. "

He had talked rapidly, almost like a drunken man, as his reeling brainbattled with the rising shock of the malarial stroke. When he stumbledtoward the companionway, his face was purpling and mottling as ifattacked by some monstrous inflammation or decay. His eyes were settingin a glassy bulge, his hands shaking, his teeth clicking in the spasmsof chill. 

"Two hours to get the sweat, " he chattered with a ghastly grin. "And acouple more and I'll be all right. I know the damned thing to the lastminute it runs its course. Y-y-you t-t-take ch-ch-ch-ch----"

His voice faded away in a weak stutter as he collapsed down into thecabin and his employer took charge. The _Rattler_ was just entering thepassage. The heels of the horseshoe island were two huge mountains ofrock a thousand feet high, each almost broken off from the mainland andconnected with it by a low and narrow peninsula. Between the heels wasa half-mile stretch, all but blocked by a reef of coral extending acrossfrom the south heel. The passage, which Captain Glass had called acrevice, twisted into this reef, curved directly to the north heel, andran along the base of the perpendicular rock. At this point, with themain-boom almost grazing the rock on the port side, Grief, peering downon the starboard side, could see bottom less than two fathoms beneathand shoaling steeply. With a whaleboat towing for steerage and as aprecaution against back-draughts from the cliff, and taking advantage ofa fan of breeze, he shook the Rattler full into it and glided by the bigcoral patch without warping. As it was, he just scraped, but so softlyas not to start the copper. 

The harbour of Fuatino opened before him. It was a circular sheet ofwater, five miles in diameter, rimmed with white coral beaches, fromwhich the verdure-clad slopes rose swiftly to the frowning crater walls. The crests of the walls were saw-toothed, volcanic peaks, capped andhalo'd with captive trade-wind clouds. Every nook and crevice of thedisintegrating lava gave foothold to creeping, climbing vines andtrees--a green foam of vegetation. Thin streams of water, that weremere films of mist, swayed and undulated downward in sheer descentsof hundreds of feet. And to complete the magic of the place, the warm, moist air was heavy with the perfume of the yellow-blossomed _cassi_. 

Fanning along against light, vagrant airs, the _Rattler_ worked in. Calling the whale-boat on board, Grief searched out the shore with hisbinoculars. There was no life. In the hot blaze of tropic sun the placeslept. There was no sign of welcome. Up the beach, on the north shore, where the fringe of cocoanut palms concealed the village, he could seethe black bows of the canoes in the canoe-houses. On the beach, on evenkeel, rested the strange schooner. Nothing moved on board of her oraround her. Not until the beach lay fifty yards away did Grief let gothe anchor in forty fathoms. Out in the middle, long years before, hehad sounded three hundred fathoms without reaching bottom, which was tobe expected of a healthy crater-pit like Fuatino. As the chain roaredand surged through the hawse-pipe he noticed a number of native women, lusciously large as only those of Polynesia are, in flowing _ahu's_, flower-crowned, stream out on the deck of the schooner on the beach. Also, and what they did not see, he saw from the galley the squat figureof a man steal for'ard, drop to the sand, and dive into the green screenof bush. 

While the sails were furled and gasketed, awnings stretched, and sheetsand tackles coiled harbour fashion, David Grief paced the deck andlooked vainly for a flutter of life elsewhere than on the strangeschooner. Once, beyond any doubt, he heard the distant crack of a riflein the direction of the Big Rock. There were no further shots, and hethought of it as some hunter shooting a wild goat. 

At the end of another hour Captain Glass, under a mountain of blankets, had ceased shivering and was in the inferno of a profound sweat. 

"I'll be all right in half an hour, " he said weakly. 

"Very well, " Grief answered. "The place is dead, and I'm going ashore tosee Mataara and find out the situation. "

"It's a tough bunch; keep your eyes open, " the captain warned him. "Ifyou're not back in an hour, send word off. "

Grief took the steering-sweep, and four of his Raiatea men bent to theoars. As they landed on the beach he looked curiously at the women underthe schooner's awning. He waved his hand tentatively, and they, aftergiggling, waved back. 

"_Talofa!_" he called. 

They understood the greeting, but replied, "_Iorana_, " and he knew theycame from the Society Group. 

"Huahine, " one of his sailors unhesitatingly named their island. Griefasked them whence they came, and with giggles and laughter they replied, "Huahine. "

"It looks like old Dupuy's schooner, " Grief said, in Tahitian, speakingin a low voice. "Don't look too hard. What do you think, eh? Isn't itthe _Valetta?_"

As the men climbed out and lifted the whale-boat slightly up the beachthey stole careless glances at the vessel. 

"It is the _Valetta_, " Taute said. "She carried her topmast away sevenyears ago. At Papeete they rigged a new one. It was ten feet shorter. That is the one. "

"Go over and talk with the women, you boys. You can almost see Huahinefrom Raiatea, and you'll be sure to know some of them. Find out all youcan. And if any of the white men show up, don't start a row. "

An army of hermit crabs scuttled and rustled away before him as headvanced up the beach, but under the palms no pigs rooted and grunted. The cocoanuts lay where they had fallen, and at the copra-sheds therewere no signs of curing. Industry and tidiness had vanished. Grasshouse after grass house he found deserted. Once he came upon an oldman, blind, toothless, prodigiously wrinkled, who sat in the shade andbabbled with fear when he spoke to him. It was as if the place had beenstruck with the plague, was Grief's thought, as he finally approachedthe Big House. All was desolation and disarray. There were noflower-crowned men and maidens, no brown babies rolling in the shade ofthe avocado trees. In the doorway, crouched and rocking back and forth, sat Mataara, the old queen. She wept afresh at sight of him, dividedbetween the tale of her woe and regret that no follower was left todispense to him her hospitality. 

"And so they have taken Naumoo, " she finished. "Motauri is dead. Mypeople have fled and are starving with the goats. And there is no one toopen for you even a drinking cocoa-nut. O Brother, your white brothersbe devils. "

"They are no brothers of mine, Mataara, " Grief consoled. "They arerobbers and pigs, and I shall clean the island of them----"

He broke off to whirl half around, his hand flashing to his waist andback again, the big Colt's levelled at the figure of a man, bent double, that rushed at him from out of the trees. He did not pull the trigger, nor did the man pause till he had flung himself headlong at Grief'sfeet and begun to pour forth a stream of uncouth and awful noises. Herecognized the creature as the one he had seen steal from the _Valetta_and dive into the bush; but not until he raised him up and watchedthe contortions of the hare-lipped mouth could he understand what heuttered. 

"Save me, master, save me!" the man yammered, in English, though he wasunmistakably a South Sea native. "I know you! Save me!"

And thereat he broke into a wild outpour of incoherence that didnot cease until Grief seized him by the shoulders and shook him intosilence. 

"I know you, " Grief said. "You were cook in the French Hotel at Papeetetwo years ago. Everybody called you 'Hare-Lip. '"

The man nodded violently. 

"I am now cook of the _Valetta_, " he spat and spluttered, his mouthwrithing in a fearful struggle with its defect. "I know you. I saw youat the hotel. I saw you at Lavina's. I saw you on the _Kittiwake_. I sawyou at the _Mariposa_ wharf. You are Captain Grief, and you will saveme. Those men are devils. They killed Captain Dupuy. Me they made killhalf the crew. Two they shot from the cross-trees. The rest they shotin the water. I knew them all. They stole the girls from Huahine. Theyadded to their strength with jail-men from Noumea. They robbed thetraders in the New Hebrides. They killed the trader at Vanikori, andstole two women there. They----"

But Grief no longer heard. Through the trees, from the direction ofthe harbour, came a rattle of rifles, and he started on the run for thebeach. Pirates from Tahiti and convicts from New Caledonia! A prettybunch of desperadoes that even now was attacking his schooner. Hare-Lipfollowed, still spluttering and spitting his tale of the white devils'doings. 

The rifle-firing ceased as abruptly as it had begun, but Grief ranon, perplexed by ominous conjectures, until, in a turn of the path, heencountered Mauriri running toward him from the beach. 

"Big Brother, " the Goat Man panted, "I was too late. They have takenyour schooner. Come! For now they will seek for you. "

He started back up the path away from the beach. 

"Where is Brown?" Grief demanded. 

"On the Big Rock. I will tell you afterward. Come now!"

"But my men in the whaleboat?"

Mauriri was in an agony of apprehension. 

"They are with the women on the strange schooner. They will not bekilled. I tell you true. The devils want sailors. But you they willkill. Listen!" From the water, in a cracked tenor voice, came a Frenchhunting song. "They are landing on the beach. They have taken yourschooner--that I saw. Come!"

III

Careless of his own life and skin, nevertheless David Grief waspossessed of no false hardihood. He knew when to fight and when to run, and that this was the time for running he had no doubt. Up the path, past the old men sitting in the shade, past Mataara crouched in thedoorway of the Big House, he followed at the heels of Mauriri. At hisown heels, doglike, plodded Hare-Lip. From behind came the cries of thehunters, but the pace Mauriri led them was heartbreaking. The broad pathnarrowed, swung to the right, and pitched upward. The last grass housewas left, and through high thickets of _cassi_ and swarms of greatgolden wasps the way rose steeply until it became a goat-track. Pointingupward to a bare shoulder of volcanic rock, Mauriri indicated the trailacross its face. 

"Past that we are safe, Big Brother, " he said. "The white devils neverdare it, for there are rocks we roll down on their heads, and thereis no other path. Always do they stop here and shoot when we cross therock. Come!"

A quarter of an hour later they paused where the trail went naked on theface of the rock. 

"Wait, and when you come, come quickly, " Mauriri cautioned. 

He sprang into the blaze of sunlight, and from below several riflespumped rapidly. Bullets smacked about him, and puffs of stone-dustflew out, but he won safely across. Grief followed, and so near didone bullet come that the dust of its impact stung his cheek. Nor wasHare-Lip struck, though he essayed the passage more slowly. 

For the rest of the day, on the greater heights, they lay in a lava glenwhere terraced taro and _papaia_ grew. And here Grief made his plans andlearned the fulness of the situation. 

"It was ill luck, " Mauriri said. "Of all nights this one night wasselected by the white devils to go fishing. It was dark as we camethrough the passage. They were in boats and canoes. Always do they havetheir rifles with them. One Raiatea man they shot. Brown was very brave. We tried to get by to the top of the bay, but they headed us off, and wewere driven in between the Big Rock and the village. We saved the gunsand all the ammunition, but they got the boat. Thus they learned of yourcoming. Brown is now on this side of the Big Rock with the guns and theammunition. "

"But why didn't he go over the top of the Big Rock and give me warningas I came in from the sea?" Grief criticised. 

"They knew not the way. Only the goats and I know the way. And this Iforgot, for I crept through the bush to gain the water and swim to you. But the devils were in the bush shooting at Brown and the Raiatea men;and me they hunted till daylight, and through the morning they huntedme there in the low-lying land. Then you came in your schooner, and theywatched till you went ashore, and I got away through the bush, but youwere already ashore. "

"You fired that shot?"

"Yes; to warn you. But they were wise and would not shoot back, and itwas my last cartridge. "

"Now you, Hare-Lip?" Grief said to the _Valetta's_ cook. 

His tale was long and painfully detailed. For a year he had been sailingout of Tahiti and through the Paumotus on the _Valetta_. Old Dupuy wasowner and captain. On his last cruise he had shipped two strangers inTahiti as mate and supercargo. Also, another stranger he carried to behis agent on Fanriki. Raoul Van Asveld and Carl Lepsius were the namesof the mate and supercargo. 

"They are brothers, I know, for I have heard them talk in the dark, ondeck, when they thought no one listened, " Hare-Lip explained. 

The _Valetta_ cruised through the Low Islands, picking up shell andpearls at Dupuy's stations. Frans Amundson, the third stranger, relievedPierre Gollard at Fanriki. Pierre Gollard came on board to go back toTahiti. The natives of Fanriki said he had a quart of pearls to turnover to Dupuy. The first night out from Fanriki there was shootingin the cabin. Then the bodies of Dupuy and Pierre Gollard were thrownoverboard. The Tahitian sailors fled to the forecastle. For two days, with nothing to eat and the _Valetta_ hove to, they remained below. ThenRaoul Van Asveld put poison in the meal he made Hare-Lip cook and carryfor'ard. Half the sailors died. 

"He had a rifle pointed at me, master; what could I do?" Hare-Lipwhimpered. "Of the rest, two went up the rigging and were shot. Fanrikiwas ten miles away. The others went overboard to swim. They were shotas they swam. I, only, lived, and the two devils; for me they wanted tocook for them. That day, with the breeze, they went back to Fanrika andtook on Frans Amundson, for he was one of them. "

Then followed Hare-Lip's nightmare experiences as the schooner wanderedon the long reaches to the westward. He was the one living witness andknew they would have killed him had he not been the cook. At Noumea fiveconvicts had joined them. Hare-Lip was never permitted ashore at any ofthe islands, and Grief was the first outsider to whom he had spoken. 

"And now they will kill me, " Hare-Lip spluttered, "for they will knowI have told you. Yet am I not all a coward, and I will stay with you, master, and die with you. "

The Goat Man shook his head and stood up. 

"Lie here and rest, " he said to Grief. "It will be a long swim to-night. As for this cook-man, I will take him now to the higher places where mybrothers live with the goats. "

IV

"It is well that you swim as a man should, Big Brother, " Mauririwhispered. 

From the lava glen they had descended to the head of the bay and takento the water. They swam softly, without splash, Mauriri in the lead. Theblack walls of the crater rose about them till it seemed they swamon the bottom of a great bowl. Above was the sky of faintly luminousstar-dust. Ahead they could see the light which marked the Rattler, andfrom her deck, softened by distance, came a gospel hymn played on thephonograph intended for Pilsach. 

The two swimmers bore to the left, away from the captured schooner. Laughter and song followed on board after the hymn, then the phonographstarted again. Grief grinned to himself at the appositeness of it as"Lead, Kindly Light, " floated out over the dark water. 

"We must take the passage and land on the Big Rock, " Mauriri whispered. "The devils are holding the low land. Listen!"

Half a dozen rifle shots, at irregular intervals, attested that Brownstill held the Rock and that the pirates had invested the narrowpeninsula. 

At the end of another hour they swam under the frowning loom of the BigRock. Mauriri, feeling his way, led the landing in a crevice, up whichfor a hundred feet they climbed to a narrow ledge. 

"Stay here, " said Mauriri. "I go to Brown. In the morning I shallreturn. "

"I will go with you, Brother, " Grief said. 

Mauriri laughed in the darkness. 

"Even you, Big Brother, cannot do this thing. I am the Goat Man, andI only, of all Fuatino, can go over the Big Rock in the night. Furthermore, it will be the first time that even I have done it. Put outyour hand. You feel it? That is where Pilsach's dynamite is kept. Lieclose beside the wall and you may sleep without falling. I go now. "

And high above the sounding surf, on a narrow shelf beside a ton ofdynamite, David Grief planned his campaign, then rested his cheek on hisarm and slept. 

In the morning, when Mauriri led him over the summit of the Big Rock, David Grief understood why he could not have done it in the night. Despite the accustomed nerve of a sailor for height and precariousclinging, he marvelled that he was able to do it in the broad light ofday. There were places, always under minute direction of Mauriri, thathe leaned forward, falling, across hundred-foot-deep crevices, until hisoutstretched hands struck a grip on the opposing wall and his legs couldthen be drawn across after. Once, there was a ten-foot leap, above halfa thousand feet of yawning emptiness and down a fathom's length to ameagre foothold. And he, despite his cool head, lost it another time ona shelf, a scant twelve inches wide, where all hand-holds seemed to failhim. And Mauriri, seeing him sway, swung his own body far out and overthe gulf and passed him, at the same time striking him sharply on theback to brace his reeling brain. Then it was, and forever after, that hefully knew why Mauriri had been named the Goat Man. 

V

The defence of the Big Rock had its good points and its defects. Impregnable to assault, two men could hold it against ten thousand. Also, it guarded the passage to open sea. The two schooners, Raoul VanAsveld, and his cutthroat following were bottled up. Grief, with the tonof dynamite, which he had removed higher up the rock, was master. Thishe demonstrated, one morning, when the schooners attempted to put tosea. The _Valetta_ led, the whaleboat towing her manned by capturedFuatino men. Grief and the Goat Man peered straight down from a saferock-shelter, three hundred feet above. Their rifles were beside them, also a glowing fire-stick and a big bundle of dynamite sticks with fusesand decanators attached. As the whaleboat came beneath, Mauriri shookhis head. 

"They are our brothers. We cannot shoot. "

For'ard, on the _Valetta_, were several of Grief's own Raiatea sailors. Aft stood another at the wheel. The pirates were below, or on the otherschooner, with the exception of one who stood, rifle in hand, amidships. For protection he held Naumoo, the Queen's daughter, close to him. 

"That is the chief devil, " Mauriri whispered, "and his eyes are bluelike yours. He is a terrible man. See! He holds Naumoo that we may notshoot him. "

A light air and a slight tide were making into the passage, and theschooner's progress was slow. 

"Do you speak English?" Grief called down. 

The man startled, half lifted his rifle to the perpendicular, and lookedup. There was something quick and catlike in his movements, and in hisburned blond face a fighting eagerness. It was the face of a killer. 

"Yes, " he answered. "What do you want?"

"Turn back, or I'll blow your schooner up, " Grief warned. He blew on thefire-stick and whispered, "Tell Naumoo to break away from him and runaft. "

From the _Rattler_, close astern, rifles cracked, and bullets spattedagainst the rock. Van Asveld laughed defiantly, and Mauriri calleddown in the native tongue to the woman. When directly beneath, Grief, watching, saw her jerk away from the man. On the instant Grief touchedthe fire-stick to the match-head in the split end of the short fuse, sprang into view on the face of the rock, and dropped the dynamite. VanAsveld had managed to catch the girl and was struggling with her. TheGoat Man held a rifle on him and waited a chance. The dynamite struckthe deck in a compact package, bounded, and rolled into the portscupper. Van Asveld saw it and hesitated, then he and the girl ran aftfor their lives. The Goat Man fired, but splintered the corner of thegalley. The spattering of bullets from the _Rattler_ increased, and thetwo on the rock crouched low for shelter and waited. Mauriri tried tosee what was happening below, but Grief held him back. 

"The fuse was too long, " he said. "I'll know better next time. "

It was half a minute before the explosion came. What happened afterward, for some little time, they could not tell, for the Rattler's marksmenhad got the range and were maintaining a steady fire. Once, fanned by acouple of bullets, Grief risked a peep. The _Valetta_, her port deckand rail torn away, was listing and sinking as she drifted back into theharbour. Climbing on board the _Rattler_ were the men and the Huahinewomen who had been hidden in the _Valetta's_ cabin and who had swum forit under the protecting fire. The Fuatino men who had been towing in thewhaleboat had cast off the line, dashed back through the passage, andwere rowing wildly for the south shore. 

From the shore of the peninsula the discharges of four rifles announcedthat Brown and his men had worked through the jungle to the beach andwere taking a hand. The bullets ceased coming, and Grief and Mauririjoined in with their rifles. But they could do no damage, for the men ofthe _Rattler_ were firing from the shelter of the deck-houses, while thewind and tide carried the schooner farther in. 

There was no sign of the _Valetta_, which had sunk in the deep water ofthe crater. 

Two things Raoul Van Asveld did that showed his keenness and coolnessand that elicited Grief's admiration. Under the _Rattler's_ rifle fireRaoul compelled the fleeing Fuatino men to come in and surrender. And atthe same time, dispatching half his cutthroats in the _Rattler's_ boat, he threw them ashore and across the peninsula, preventing Brown fromgetting away to the main part of the island. And for the rest of themorning the intermittent shooting told to Grief how Brown was beingdriven in to the other side of the Big Rock. The situation wasunchanged, with the exception of the loss of the _Valetta_. 

VI

The defects of the position on the Big Rock were vital. There wasneither food nor water. For several nights, accompanied by one of theRaiatea men, Mauriri swam to the head of the bay for supplies. Then camethe night when lights flared on the water and shots were fired. Afterthat the water-side of the Big Rock was invested as well. 

"It's a funny situation, " Brown remarked, who was getting all theadventure he had been led to believe resided in the South Seas. "We'vegot hold and can't let go, and Raoul has hold and can't let go. He can'tget away, and we're liable to starve to death holding him. "

"If the rain came, the rock-basins would fill, " said Mauriri. It wastheir first twenty-four hours without water. "Big Brother, to-night youand I will get water. It is the work of strong men. "

That night, with cocoanut calabashes, each of quart capacity and tightlystoppered, he led Grief down to the water from the peninsula side of theBig Rock. They swam out not more than a hundred feet. Beyond, they couldhear the occasional click of an oar or the knock of a paddle againsta canoe, and sometimes they saw the flare of matches as the men in theguarding boats lighted cigarettes or pipes. 

"Wait here, " whispered Mauriri, "and hold the calabashes. "

Turning over, he swam down. Grief, face downward, watched hisphosphorescent track glimmer, and dim, and vanish. A long minuteafterward Mauriri broke surface noiselessly at Grief's side. 

"Here! Drink!"

The calabash was full, and Grief drank sweet fresh water which had comeup from the depths of the salt. 

"It flows out from the land, " said Mauriri. 

"On the bottom?"

"No. The bottom is as far below as the mountains are above. Fifty feetdown it flows. Swim down until you feel its coolness. "

Several times filling and emptying his lungs in diver fashion, Griefturned over and went down through the water. Salt it was to his lips, and warm to his flesh; but at last, deep down, it perceptibly chilledand tasted brackish. Then, suddenly, his body entered the cold, subterranean stream. He removed the small stopper from the calabash, and, as the sweet water gurgled into it, he saw the phosphorescentglimmer of a big fish, like a sea ghost, drift sluggishly by. 

Thereafter, holding the growing weight of the calabashes, he remained onthe surface, while Mauriri took them down, one by one, and filled them. 

"There are sharks, " Grief said, as they swam back to shore. 

"Pooh!" was the answer. "They are fish sharks. We of Fuatino arebrothers to the fish sharks. "

"But the tiger sharks? I have seen them here. "

"When they come, Big Brother, we will have no more water todrink--unless it rains. "

VII

A week later Mauriri and a Raiatea man swam back with empty calabashes. The tiger sharks had arrived in the harbour. The next day they thirstedon the Big Rock. 

"We must take our chance, " said Grief. "Tonight I shall go after waterwith Mautau. Tomorrow night, Brother, you will go with Tehaa. "

Three quarts only did Grief get, when the tiger sharks appeared anddrove them in. There were six of them on the Rock, and a pint a day, inthe sweltering heat of the mid-tropics, is not sufficient moisture for aman's body. The next night Mauriri and Tehaa returned with no water. Andthe day following Brown learned the full connotation of thirst, when thelips crack to bleeding, the mouth is coated with granular slime, and theswollen tongue finds the mouth too small for residence. 

Grief swam out in the darkness with Mautau. Turn by turn, they went downthrough the salt, to the cool sweet stream, drinking their fill whilethe calabashes were filling. It was Mau-tau's turn to descend with thelast calabash, and Grief, peering down from the surface, saw the glimmerof sea-ghosts and all the phosphorescent display of the struggle. Heswam back alone, but without relinquishing the precious burden of fullcalabashes. 

Of food they had little. Nothing grew on the Rock, and its sides, covered with shellfish at sea level where the surf thundered in, weretoo precipitous for access. Here and there, where crevices permitted, afew rank shellfish and sea urchins were gleaned. Sometimes frigate birdsand other sea birds were snared. Once, with a piece of frigate bird, they succeeded in hooking a shark. After that, with jealously guardedshark-meat for bait, they managed on occasion to catch more sharks. 

But water remained their direst need. Mauriri prayed to the GoatGod for rain. Taute prayed to the Missionary God, and his two fellowislanders, backsliding, invoked the deities of their old heathen days. Grief grinned and considered. But Brown, wild-eyed, with protrudingblackened tongue, cursed. Especially he cursed the phonograph thatin the cool twilights ground out gospel hymns from the deck of the_Rattler_. One hymn in particular, "Beyond the Smiling and the Weeping, "drove him to madness. It seemed a favourite on board the schooner, forit was played most of all. Brown, hungry and thirsty, half out ofhis head from weakness and suffering, could lie among the rocks withequanimity and listen to the tinkling of ukuleles and guitars, andthe hulas and himines of the Huahine women. But when the voices of theTrinity Choir floated over the water he was beside himself. One eveningthe cracked tenor took up the song with the machine:

 "Beyond the smiling and the weeping, I shall be soon. Beyond the waking and the sleeping, Beyond the sowing and the reaping, I shall be soon, I shall be soon. "

Then it was that Brown rose up. Again and again, blindly, he emptied hisrifle at the schooner. Laughter floated up from the men and women, andfrom the peninsula came a splattering of return bullets; but the crackedtenor sang on, and Brown continued to fire, until the hymn was playedout. 

It was that night that Grief and Mauriri came back with but one calabashof water. A patch of skin six inches long was missing from Grief'sshoulder in token of the scrape of the sandpaper hide of a shark whosedash he had eluded. 

VIII

In the early morning of another day, before the sun-blaze had gained itsfull strength, came an offer of a parley from Raoul Van Asveld. 

Brown brought the word in from the outpost among the rocks a hundredyards away. Grief was squatted over a small fire, broiling a strip ofshark-flesh. The last twenty-four hours had been lucky. Seaweed and seaurchins had been gathered. Tehaa had caught a shark, and Mauriri hadcaptured a fair-sized octopus at the base of the crevice where thedynamite was stored. Then, too, in the darkness they had made twosuccessful swims for water before the tiger sharks had nosed them out. 

"Said he'd like to come in and talk with you, " Brown said. "But I knowwhat the brute is after. Wants to see how near starved to death we are. "

"Bring him in, " Grief said. 

"And then we will kill him, " the Goat Man cried joyously. 

Grief shook his head. 

"But he is a killer of men, Big Brother, a beast and a devil, " the GoatMan protested. 

"He must not be killed, Brother. It is our way not to break our word. "

"It is a foolish way. "

"Still it is our way, " Grief answered gravely, turning the strip ofshark-meat over on the coals and noting the hungry sniff and look ofTehaa. "Don't do that, Tehaa, when the Big Devil comes. Look as if youand hunger were strangers. Here, cook those sea urchins, you, and you, Big Brother, cook the squid. We will have the Big Devil to feast withus. Spare nothing. Cook all. "

And, still broiling meat, Grief arose as Raoul Van Asveld, followed by alarge Irish terrier, strode into camp. Raoul did not make the mistake ofholding out his hand. 

"Hello!" he said. "I've heard of you. "

"I wish I'd never heard of you, " Grief answered. 

"Same here, " was the response. "At first, before I knew who it was, I thought I had to deal with an ordinary trading captain. That's whyyou've got me bottled up. "

"And I am ashamed to say that I underrated you, " Grief smiled. "I tookyou for a thieving beachcomber, and not for a really intelligent pirateand murderer. Hence, the loss of my schooner. Honours are even, I fancy, on that score. "

Raoul flushed angrily under his sunburn, but he contained himself. Hiseyes roved over the supply of food and the full water-calabashes, thoughhe concealed the incredulous surprise he felt. His was a tall, slender, well-knit figure, and Grief, studying him, estimated his characterfrom his face. The eyes were keen and strong, but a bit too closetogether--not pinched, however, but just a trifle near to balance thebroad forehead, the strong chin and jaw, and the cheekbones wide apart. Strength! His face was filled with it, and yet Grief sensed in it theintangible something the man lacked. 

"We are both strong men, " Raoul said, with a bow. "We might have beenfighting for empires a hundred years ago. "

It was Grief's turn to bow. 

"As it is, we are squalidly scrapping over the enforcement of thecolonial laws of those empires whose destinies we might possibly havedetermined a hundred years ago. "

"It all comes to dust, " Raoul remarked sen-tentiously, sitting down. "Goahead with your meal. Don't let me interrupt. "

"Won't you join us?" was Grief's invitation. 

The other looked at him with sharp steadiness, then accepted. 

"I'm sticky with sweat, " he said. "Can I wash?"

Grief nodded and ordered Mauriri to bring a calabash. Raoul looked intothe Goat Man's eyes, but saw nothing save languid uninterest as theprecious quart of water was wasted on the ground. 

"The dog is thirsty, " Raoul said. 

Grief nodded, and another calabash was presented to the animal. 

Again Raoul searched the eyes of the natives and learned nothing. 

"Sorry we have no coffee, " Grief apologized. "You'll have to drink plainwater. A calabash, Tehaa. Try some of this shark. There is squid tofollow, and sea urchins and a seaweed salad. I'm sorry we haven't anyfrigate bird. The boys were lazy yesterday, and did not try to catchany. "

With an appetite that would not have stopped at wire nails dipped inlard, Grief ate perfunctorily, and tossed the scraps to the dog. 

"I'm afraid I haven't got down to the primitive diet yet, " he sighed, as he sat back. "The tinned goods on the _Rattler_, now I could make ahearty meal off of them, but this muck----" He took a half-pound stripof broiled shark and flung it to the dog. "I suppose I'll come to it ifyou don't surrender pretty soon. "

Raoul laughed unpleasantly. 

"I came to offer terms, " he said pointedly. 

Grief shook his head. 

"There aren't any terms. I've got you where the hair is short, and I'mnot going to let go. "

"You think you can hold me in this hole!" Raoul cried. 

"You'll never leave it alive, except in double irons. " Grief surveyedhis guest with an air of consideration. "I've handled your kind before. We've pretty well cleaned it out of the South Seas. But you are a--howshall I say?--a sort of an anachronism. You're a throwback, and we'vegot to get rid of you. Personally, I would advise you to go back to theschooner and blow your brains out. It is the only way to escape whatyou've got coming to you. "

The parley, so far as Raoul was concerned, proved fruitless, and he wentback into his own lines convinced that the men on the Big Rock couldhold out for years, though he would have been swiftly unconvinced couldhe have observed Tehaa and the Raiateans, the moment his back wasturned and he was out of sight, crawling over the rocks and sucking andcrunching the scraps his dog had left uneaten. 

IX

"We hunger now, Brother, " Grief said, "but it is better than to hungerfor many days to come. The Big Devil, after feasting and drinking goodwater with us in plenty, will not stay long in Fuatino. Even to-morrowmay he try to leave. To-night you and I sleep over the top of the Rock, and Tehaa, who shoots well, will sleep with us if he can dare the Rock. "

Tehaa, alone among the Raiateans, was cragsman enough to venture theperilous way, and dawn found him in a rock-barricaded nook, a hundredyards to the right of Grief and Mauriri. 

The first warning was the firing of rifles from the peninsula, whereBrown and his two Raiateans signalled the retreat and followed thebesiegers through the jungle to the beach. From the eyrie on the faceof the rock Grief could see nothing for another hour, when the _Rattler_appeared, making for the passage. As before, the captive Fuatino mentowed in the whaleboat. Mauriri, under direction of Grief, called downinstructions to them as they passed slowly beneath. By Grief's sidelay several bundles of dynamite sticks, well-lashed together and withextremely short fuses. 

The deck of the _Rattler_ was populous. For'ard, rifle in hand, amongthe Raiatean sailors, stood a desperado whom Mauriri announced wasRaoul's brother. Aft, by the helmsman, stood another. Attached to him, tied waist to waist, with slack, was Mataara, the old Queen. On theother side of the helmsman, his arm in a sling, was Captain Glass. Amidships, as before, was Raoul, and with him, lashed waist to waist, was Naumoo. 

"Good morning, Mister David Grief, " Raoul called up. 

"And yet I warned you that only in double irons would you leave theisland, " Grief murmured down with a sad inflection. 

"You can't kill all your people I have on board, " was the answer. 

The schooner, moving slowly, jerk by jerk, as the men pulled in thewhaleboat, was almost directly beneath. The rowers, without ceasing, slacked on their oars, and were immediately threatened with the rifle ofthe man who stood for'ard. 

"Throw, Big Brother!" Naumoo called up in the Fuatino tongue. "I amfilled with sorrow and am willed to die. His knife is ready with whichto cut the rope, but I shall hold him tight. Be not afraid, Big Brother. Throw, and throw straight, and good-bye. "

Grief hesitated, then lowered the fire-stick which he had been blowingbright. 

"Throw!" the Goat Man urged. 

Still Grief hesitated. 

"If they get to sea, Big Brother, Naumoo dies just the same. And thereare all the others. What is her life against the many?"

"If you drop any dynamite, or fire a single shot, we'll kill all onboard, " Raoul cried up to them. "I've got you, David Grief. You can'tkill these people, and I can. Shut up, you!"

This last was addressed to Naumoo, who was calling up in her nativetongue and whom Raoul seized by the neck with one hand to choketo silence. In turn, she locked both arms about him and looked upbeseechingly to Grief. 

"Throw it, Mr. Grief, and be damned to them, " Captain Glass rumbledin his deep voice. "They're bloody murderers, and the cabin's full ofthem. "

The desperado who was fastened to the old Queen swung half about tomenace Captain Glass with his rifle, when Tehaa, from his positionfarther along the Rock, pulled trigger on him. The rifle dropped fromthe man's hand, and on his face was an expression of intense surprise ashis legs crumpled under him and he sank down on deck, dragging the Queenwith him. 

"Port! Hard a port!" Grief cried. 

Captain Glass and the Kanaka whirled the wheel over, and the bow of the_Rattler_ headed in for the Rock. Amidships Raoul still struggled withNaumoo. His brother ran from for'ard to his aid, being missed by thefusillade of quick shots from Tehaa and the Goat Man. As Raoul's brotherplaced the muzzle of his rifle to Naumoo's side Grief touched thefire-stick to the match-head in the split end of the fuse. Even as withboth hands he tossed the big bundle of dynamite, the rifle went off, and Naumoo's fall to the deck was simultaneous with the fall of thedynamite. This time the fuse was short enough. The explosion occurredat the instant the deck was reached, and that portion of the _Rattler_, along with Raoul, his brother, and Naumoo, forever disappeared. 

The schooner's side was shattered, and she began immediately to settle. For'ard, every Raiatean sailor dived overboard. Captain Glass met thefirst man springing up the com-panionway from the cabin, with a kickfull in the face, but was overborne and trampled on by the rush. Following the desperadoes came the Huahine women, and as they wentoverboard, the _Rattler_ sank on an even keel close to the base of theRock. Her cross-trees still stuck out when she reached bottom. 

Looking down, Grief could see all that occurred beneath the surface. Hesaw Mataara, a fathom deep, unfasten herself from the dead pirate andswim upward. As her head emerged she saw Captain Glass, who could notswim, sinking several yards away. The Queen, old woman that she was, but an islander, turned over, swam down to him, and held him up as shestruck out for the unsubmerged cross-trees. 

Five heads, blond and brown, were mingled with the dark heads ofPolynesia that dotted the surface. Grief, rifle in hand, watched for achance to shoot. The Goat Man, after a minute, was successful, and theysaw the body of one man sink sluggishly. But to the Raiatean sailors, big and brawny, half fish, was the vengeance given. Swimming swiftly, they singled out the blond heads and the brown. Those from above watchedthe four surviving desperadoes, clutched and locked, dragged far downbeneath and drowned like curs. 

In ten minutes everything was over. The Huahine women, laughing andgiggling, were holding on to the sides of the whaleboat which had donethe towing. The Raiatean sailors, waiting for orders, were about thecross-tree to which Captain Glass and Mataara clung. 

"The poor old _Rattler_, " Captain Glass lamented. 

"Nothing of the sort, " Grief answered. "In a week we'll have her raised, new timbers amidships, and we'll be on our way. " And to the Queen, "Howis it with you, Sister?"

"Naumoo is gone, and Motauri, Brother, but Fuatino is ours again. Theday is young. Word shall be sent to all my people in the high placeswith the goats. And to-night, once again, and as never before, we shallfeast and rejoice in the Big House. "

"She's been needing new timbers abaft the beam there for years, " quothCaptain Glass. "But the chronometers will be out of commission for therest of the cruise. "

Chapter Four--THE JOKERS OF NEW GIBBON

I

"I'm almost afraid to take you in to New Gibbon, " David Grief said. "Itwasn't until you and the British gave me a free hand and let the placealone that any results were accomplished. "

Wallenstein, the German Resident Commissioner from Bougainville, pouredhimself a long Scotch and soda and smiled. 

"We take off our hats to you, Mr. Grief, " he said in perfectly goodEnglish. "What you have done on the devil island is a miracle. And weshall continue not to interfere. It _is_ a devil island, and old Koho isthe big chief devil of them all. We never could bring him to terms. Heis a liar, and he is no fool. He is a black Napoleon, a head-hunting, man-eating Talleyrand. I remember six years ago, when I landed there inthe British cruiser. The niggers cleared out for the bush, of course, but we found several who couldn't get away. One was his latest wife. Shehad been hung up by one arm in the sun for two days and nights. Wecut her down, but she died just the same. And staked out in the freshrunning water, up to their necks, were three more women. All their boneswere broken and their joints crushed. The process is supposed to makethem tender for the eating. They were still alive. Their vitality wasremarkable. One woman, the oldest, lingered nearly ten days. Well, thatwas a sample of Koho's diet. No wonder he's a wild beast. How you everpacified him is our everlasting puzzlement. "

"I wouldn't call him exactly pacified, " Grief answered. "Though he comesin once in a while and eats out of the hand. "

"That's more than we accomplished with our cruisers. Neither the Germannor the English ever laid eyes on him. You were the first. "

"No; McTavish was the first, " Grief disclaimed. 

"Ah, yes, I remember him--the little, dried-up Scotchman. " Wallensteinsipped his whiskey. "He's called the Trouble-mender, isn't he?"

Grief nodded. 

"And they say the screw you pay him is bigger than mine or the BritishResident's?"

"I'm afraid it is, " Grief admitted. "You see, and no offence, he'sreally worth it. He spends his time wherever the trouble is. He is awizard. He's the one who got me my lodgment on New Gibbon. He's down onMalaita now, starting a plantation for me. "

"The first?"

"There's not even a trading station on all Malaita. The recruiters stilluse covering boats and carry the old barbed wire above their rails. There's the plantation now. We'll be in in half an hour. " He handed thebinoculars to his guest. "Those are the boat-sheds to the left of thebungalow. Beyond are the barracks. And to the right are the copra-sheds. We dry quite a bit already. Old Koho's getting civilized enough to makehis people bring in the nuts. There's the mouth of the stream where youfound the three women softening. "

The _Wonder_, wing-and-wing, was headed directly in for the anchorage. She rose and fell lazily over a glassy swell flawed here and there bycatspaws from astern. It was the tail-end of the monsoon season, and theair was heavy and sticky with tropic moisture, the sky a florid, leadenmuss of formless clouds. The rugged land was swathed with cloud-banksand squall wreaths, through which headlands and interior peaks thrustdarkly. On one promontory a slant of sunshine blazed torridly, onanother, scarcely a mile away, a squall was bursting in furious downpourof driving rain. 

This was the dank, fat, savage island of New Gibbon, lying fifty milesto leeward of Choiseul. Geographically, it belonged to the SolomonGroup. Politically, the dividing line of German and Britishinfluence cut it in half, hence the joint control by the two ResidentCommissioners. In the case of New Gibbon, this control existed only onpaper in the colonial offices of the two countries. There was no realcontrol at all, and never had been. The bêche de mer fishermen ofthe old days had passed it by. The sandalwood traders, after sternexperiences, had given it up. The blackbirders had never succeeded inrecruiting one labourer on the island, and, after the schooner _Dorset_had been cut off with all hands, they left the place severely alone. Later, a German company had attempted a cocoanut plantation, which wasabandoned after several managers and a number of contract labourers hadlost their heads. German cruisers and British cruisers had failed toget the savage blacks to listen to reason. Four times the missionarysocieties had essayed the peaceful conquest of the island, and fourtimes, between sickness and massacre, they had been driven away, Morecruisers, more pacifications, had followed, and followed fruitlessly. The cannibals had always retreated into the bush and laughed at thescreaming shells. When the warships left it was an easy matterto rebuild the burned grass houses and set up the ovens in theold-fashioned way. 

New Gibbon was a large island, fully one hundred and fifty miles longand half as broad. 

Its windward coast was iron-bound, without anchorages or inlets, and itwas inhabited by scores of warring tribes--at least it had been, until Koho had arisen, like a Kamehameha, and, by force of arms andconsiderable statecraft, firmly welded the greater portion of the tribesinto a confederation. His policy of permitting no intercourse with whitemen had been eminently right, so far as survival of his own people wasconcerned; and after the visit of the last cruiser he had had his ownway until David Grief and McTavish the Trouble-mender landed on thedeserted beach where once had stood the German bungalow and barracks andthe various English mission-houses. 

Followed wars, false peaces, and more wars. The weazened littleScotchman could make trouble as well as mend it, and, not content withholding the beach, he imported bushmen from Malaita and invaded thewild-pig runs of the interior jungle. He burned villages until Kohowearied of rebuilding them, and when he captured Koho's eldest son hecompelled a conference with the old chief. It was then that McTavishlaid down the rate of head-exchange. For each head of his own peoplehe promised to take ten of Koho's. After Koho had learned that theScotchman was a man of his word, the first true peace was made. Inthe meantime McTavish had built the bungalow and barracks, cleared thejungle-land along the beach, and laid out the plantation. After thathe had gone on his way to mend trouble on the atoll of Tasman, wherea plague of black measles had broken out and been ascribed to Grief'splantation by the devil-devil doctors. Once, a year later, he had beencalled back again to straighten up New Gibbon; and Koho, after paying aforced fine of two hundred thousand cocoanuts, decided it was cheaperto keep the peace and sell the nuts. Also, the fires of his youthhad burned down. He was getting old and limped of one leg where aLee-Enfield bullet had perforated the calf. 

II

"I knew a chap in Hawaii, " Grief said, "superintendent of a sugarplantation, who used a hammer and a ten-penny nail. "

They were sitting on the broad bungalow veranda, and watching Worth, themanager of New Gibbon, doctoring the sick squad. They were New Georgiaboys, a dozen of them, and the one with the aching tooth had been putback to the last. Worth had just failed in his first attempt. He wipedthe sweat from his forehead with one hand and waved the forceps with theother. 

"And broke more than one jaw, " he asserted grimly. 

Grief shook his head. Wallenstein smiled and elevated his brows. 

"He said not, at any rate, " Grief qualified. "He assured me, furthermore, that he always succeeded on the first trial. "

"I saw it done when I was second mate on a lime-juicer, " Captain Wardspoke up. "The old man used a caulking mallet and a steel marlin-spike. He took the tooth out with the first stroke, too, clean as a whistle. "

"Me for the forceps, " Worth muttered grimly, inserting his own pair inthe mouth of the black. As he pulled, the man groaned and rose in theair. "Lend a hand, somebody, and hold him down, " the manager appealed. 

Grief and Wallenstein, on either side, gripped the black and held him. And he, in turn, struggled against them and clenched his teeth on theforceps. The group swayed back and forth. Such exertion, in the stagnantheat, brought the sweat out on all of them. The black sweated, too, buthis was the sweat of excruciating pain. The chair on which he sat wasoverturned. Captain Ward paused in the act of pouring himself a drink, and called encouragement. Worth pleaded with his assistants to hangon, and hung on himself, twisting the tooth till it crackled and thenattempting a straightaway pull. 

Nor did any of them notice the little black man who limped up the stepsand stood looking on. Koho was a conservative. His fathers before himhad worn no clothes, and neither did he, not even a gee-string. The manyempty perforations in nose and lips and ears told of decorative passionslong since dead. The holes on both ear-lobes had been torn out, buttheir size was attested by the strips of withered flesh that hung downand swept his shoulders. He cared now only for utility, and in one ofthe half dozen minor holes in his right ear he carried a short claypipe. Around his waist was buckled a cheap trade-belt, and between theimitation leather and the naked skin was thrust the naked blade of along knife. Suspended from the belt was his bamboo betel-nut and limebox. In his hand was a short-barrelled, large-bore Snider rifle. Hewas indescribably filthy, and here and there marred by scars, the worstbeing the one left by the Lee-Enfield bullet, which had withered thecalf to half the size of its mate. His shrunken mouth showed that fewteeth were left to serve him. Face and body were shrunken and withered, but his black, bead-like eyes, small and close together, were verybright, withal they were restless and querulous, and more like amonkey's than a man's. 

He looked on, grinning like a shrewd little ape. His joy in the tormentof the patient was natural, for the world he lived in was a world ofpain. He had endured his share of it, and inflicted far more than hisshare on others. When the tooth parted from its locked hold in the jawand the forceps raked across the other teeth and out of the mouth with anerve-rasping sound, old Koho's eyes fairly sparkled, and he lookedwith glee at the poor black, collapsed on the veranda floor and groaningterribly as he held his head in both his hands. 

"I think he's going to faint, " Grief said, bending over the victim. "Captain Ward, give him a drink, please. You'd better take one yourself, Worth; you're shaking like a leaf. "

"And I think I'll take one, " said Wallenstein, wiping the sweat from hisface. His eye caught the shadow of Koho on the floor and followed it upto the old chief himself. "Hello! who's this?"

"Hello, Koho!" Grief said genially, though he knew better than to offerto shake hands. 

It was one of Koho's _tambos_, given him by the devil-devil doctors whenhe was born, that never was his flesh to come in contact with the fleshof a white man. Worth and Captain Ward, of the _Wonder_, greeted Koho, but Worth frowned at sight of the Snider, for it was one of his _tambos_that no visiting bushman should carry a weapon on the plantation. Rifleshad a nasty way of going off at the hip under such circumstances. Themanager clapped his hands, and a black house-boy, recruited from SanCristobal, came running. At a sign from Worth, he took the rifle fromthe visitor's hand and carried it inside the bungalow. 

"Koho, " Grief said, introducing the German Resident, "this big fellamarster belong Bougainville--my word, big fella marster too much. "

Koho, remembering the visits of the various German cruisers, smiled witha light of unpleasant reminiscence in his eyes. 

"Don't shake hands with him, Wallenstein, " Grief warned. "_Tambo_, youknow. " Then to Koho, "My word, you get 'm too much fat stop along you. Bime by you marry along new fella Mary, eh?"

"Too old fella me, " Koho answered, with a weary shake of the head. "Meno like 'm Mary. Me no like 'm _kai-kai_ (food). Close up me die alongaltogether. " He stole a significant glance at Worth, whose head wastilted back to a long glass. "Me like 'm rum. "

Grief shook his head. 

"_Tambo_ along black fella. "

"He black fella no tambo, " Koho retorted, nodding toward the groaninglabourer. 

"He fella sick, " Grief explained. 

"Me fella sick. "

"You fella big liar, " Grief laughed. "Rum tambo, all the time tambo. Now, Koho, we have big fella talk along this big fella mar-ster. "

And he and Wallenstein and the old chief sat down on the veranda toconfer about affairs of state. Koho was complimented on the peace hehad kept, and he, with many protestations of his aged decrepitude, sworepeace again and everlasting. Then was discussed the matter of starting aGerman plantation twenty miles down the coast. The land, of course, wasto be bought from Koho, and the price was arranged in terms of tobacco, knives, beads, pipes, hatchets, porpoise teeth and shell-money--in termsof everything except rum. While the talk went on, Koho, glancing throughthe window, could see Worth mixing medicines and placing bottles back inthe medicine cupboard. Also, he saw the manager complete his labours bytaking a drink of Scotch. Koho noted the bottle carefully. And, thoughhe hung about for an hour after the conference was over, there was nevera moment when some one or another was not in the room. When Grief andWorth sat down to a business talk, Koho gave it up. 

"Me go along schooner, " he announced, then turned and limped out. 

"How are the mighty fallen, " Grief laughed. "To think that used to beKoho, the fiercest red-handed murderer in the Solomons, who defied allhis life two of the greatest world powers. And now he's going aboard totry and cadge Denby for a drink. "

III

For the last time in his life the supercargo of the _Wonder_ perpetrateda practical joke on a native. He was in the main cabin, checking off thelist of goods being landed in the whaleboats, when Koho limped down thecom-panionway and took a seat opposite him at the table. 

"Close up me die along altogether, " was the burden of the old chief'splaint. All the delights of the flesh had forsaken him. "Me no like'm Mary. Me no like 'm _kai-kai_. Me too much sick fella. Me close upfinish. " A long, sad pause, in which his face expressed unutterableconcern for his stomach, which he patted gingerly and with an assumptionof pain. "Belly belong me too much sick. " Another pause, which was aninvitation to Denby to make suggestions. Then followed a long, weary, final sigh, and a "Me like 'm rum. "

Denby laughed heartlessly. He had been cadged for drinks before by theold cannibal, and the sternest _tambo_ Grief and McTavish had laid downwas the one forbidding alcohol to the natives of New Gibbon. 

The trouble was that Koho had acquired the taste. In his younger dayshe had learned the delights of drunkenness when he cut off the schooner_Dorset_, but unfortunately he had learned it along with all histribesmen, and the supply had not held out long. Later, when he led hisnaked warriors down to the destruction of the German plantation, he waswiser, and he appropriated all the liquors for his sole use. The resulthad been a gorgeous mixed drunk, on a dozen different sorts of drink, ranging from beer doctored with quinine to absinthe and apricot brandy. The drunk had lasted for months, and it had left him with a thirst thatwould remain with him until he died. Predisposed toward alcohol, afterthe way of savages, all the chemistry of his flesh clamoured for it. This craving was to him expressed in terms of tingling and sensation, ofmaggots crawling warmly and deliciously in his brain, of good feeling, and well being, and high exultation. And in his barren old age, whenwomen and feasting were a weariness, and when old hates had smouldereddown, he desired more and more the revivifying fire that came liquid outof bottles--out of all sorts of bottles--for he remembered them well. He would sit in the sun for hours, occasionally drooling, in mournfulcontemplation of the great orgy which had been his when the Germanplantation was cleaned out. 

Denby was sympathetic. He sought out the old chief's symptoms andoffered him dyspeptic tablets from the medicine chest, pills, anda varied assortment of harmless tabloids and capsules. But Kohosteadfastly declined. Once, when he cut the _Dorset_ off, he had bittenthrough a capsule of quinine; in addition, two of his warriors hadpartaken of a white powder and laid down and died very violently in avery short time. No; he did not believe in drugs. But the liquids frombottles, the cool-flaming youth-givers and warm-glowing dream-makers. Nowonder the white men valued them so highly and refused to dispense them. 

"Rum he good fella, " he repeated over and over, plaintively and with theweary patience of age. 

And then Denby made his mistake and played his joke. Stepping aroundbehind Koho, he unlocked the medicine closet and took out a four-ouncebottle labelled _essence of mustard_. As he made believe to draw thecork and drink of the contents, in the mirror on the for'ard bulkhead heglimpsed Koho, twisted half around, intently watching him. Denby smackedhis lips and cleared his throat appreciatively as he replaced thebottle. Neglecting to relock the medicine closet, he returned to hischair, and, after a decent interval, went on deck. He stood beside thecompanionway and listened. After several moments the silence below wasbroken by a fearful, wheezing, propulsive, strangling cough. He smiledto himself and returned leisurely down the companionway. The bottle wasback on the shelf where it belonged, and the old man sat in the sameposition. Denby marvelled at his iron control. Mouth and lips andtongue, and all sensitive membranes, were a blaze of fire. He gaspedand nearly coughed several times, while involuntary tears brimmed inhis eyes and ran down his cheeks. An ordinary man would have coughed andstrangled for half an hour. But old Koho's face was grimly composed. Itdawned on him that a trick had been played, and into his eyes came anexpression of hatred and malignancy so primitive, so abysmal, that itsent the chills up and down Denby's spine. Koho arose proudly. 

"Me go along, " he said. "You sing out one fella boat stop along me. "

IV

Having seen Grief and Worth start for a ride over the plantation, Wallenstein sat down in the big living-room and with gun-oil and oldrags proceeded to take apart and clean his automatic pistol. On thetable beside him stood the inevitable bottle of Scotch and numerous sodabottles. Another bottle, part full, chanced to stand there. It was alsolabelled Scotch, but its content was liniment which Worth had mixed forthe horses and neglected to put away. 

As Wallenstein worked, he glanced through the window and saw Koho comingup the compound path. He was limping very rapidly, but when he camealong the veranda and entered the room his gait was slow and dignified. He sat down and watched the gun-cleaning, Though mouth and lips andtongue were afire, he gave no sign. At the end of five minutes he spoke. 

"Rum he good fella. Me like 'm rum. " Wallenstein smiled and shook hishead, and then it was that his perverse imp suggested what was to be hislast joke on a native. The similarity of the two bottles was the realsuggestion. He laid his pistol parts on the table and mixed himselfa long drink. Standing as he did between Koho and the table, heinterchanged the two bottles, drained his glass, made as if to searchfor something, and left the room. From outside he heard the surprisedsplutter and cough; but when he returned the old chief sat as before. The liniment in the bottle, however, was lower, and it still oscillated. 

Koho stood up, clapped his hands, and, when the house-boy answered, signed that he desired his rifle. The boy fetched the weapon, andaccording to custom preceded the visitor down the pathway. Notuntil outside the gate did the boy turn the rifle over to its owner. Wallenstein, chuckling to himself, watched the old chief limp along thebeach in the direction of the river. 

A few minutes later, as he put his pistol together, Wallenstein heardthe distant report of a gun. For the instant he thought of Koho, thendismissed the conjecture from his mind. Worth and Grief had takenshotguns with them, and it was probably one of their shots at a pigeon. Wallenstein lounged back in his chair, chuckled, twisted his yellowmustache, and dozed. He was aroused by the excited voice of Worth, crying out:

"Ring the big fella bell! Ring plenty too much! Ring like hell!"

Wallenstein gained the veranda in time to see the manager jump his horseover the low fence of the compound and dash down the beach after Grief, who was riding madly ahead. A loud crackling and smoke rising throughthe cocoanut trees told the story. The boat-houses and the barrackswere on fire. The big plantation bell was ringing wildly as the GermanResident ran down the beach, and he could see whaleboats hastily puttingoff from the schooner. 

Barracks and boat-houses, grass-thatched and like tinder, were wrappedin flames. Grief emerged from the kitchen, carrying a naked black childby the leg. Its head was missing. 

"The cook's in there, " he told Worth. "Her head's gone, too. She was tooheavy, and I had to clear out. "

"It was my fault, " Wallenstein said. "Old Koho did it. But I let himtake a drink of Worth's horse liniment. "

"I guess he's headed for the bush, " Worth said, springing astride hishorse and starting. "Oliver is down there by the river. Hope he didn'tget _him_. "

The manager galloped away through the trees. A few minutes later, asthe charred wreck of the barracks crashed in, they heard him calling andfollowed. On the edge of the river bank they came upon him. He still saton his horse, very white-faced, and gazed at something on the ground. Itwas the body of Oliver, the young assistant manager, though it was hardto realize it, for the head was gone. The black labourers, breathlessfrom their run in from the fields, were now crowding around, and underconches to-night, and the war-drums, "all merry hell will break loose. They won't rush us, but keep all the boys close up to the house, Mr. Worth. Come on!"

As they returned along the path they came upon a black who whimpered andcried vociferously. 

"Shut up mouth belong you!" Worth shouted. "What name you make 'mnoise?"

"Him fella Koho finish along two fella bulla-macow, " the black answered, drawing a forefinger significantly across his throat. 

"He's knifed the cows, " Grief said. "That means no more milk for sometime for you, Worth. I'll see about sending a couple up from Ugi. "

Wallenstein proved inconsolable, until Denby, coming ashore, confessedto the dose of essence of mustard. Thereat the German Resident becameeven cheerful, though he twisted his yellow mustache up more fiercelyand continued to curse the Solomons with oaths culled from fourlanguages. 

Next morning, visible from the masthead of the _Wonder_, the bushwas alive with signal-smokes. From promontory to promontory, and backthrough the solid jungle, the smoke-pillars curled and puffed andtalked. Remote villages on the higher peaks, beyond the farthest raidsMcTavish had ever driven, joined in the troubled conversation. Fromacross the river persisted a bedlam of conches; while from everywhere, drifting for miles along the quiet air, came the deep, boomingreverberations of the great war-drums--huge tree trunks, hollowed byfire and carved with tools of stone and shell. "You're all right as longas you stay close, " Grief told his manager. "I've got to get alongto Guvutu. They won't come out in the open and attack you. Keep thework-gangs close. Stop the clearing till this blows over. They'll getany detached gangs you send out. And, whatever you do, don't be fooledinto going into the bush after Koho. If you do, he'll get you. Allyou've got to do is wait for McTavish. I'll send him up with a bunch ofhis Malaita bush-men. He's the only man who can go inside. Also, untilhe comes, I'll leave Denby with you. You don't mind, do you, Mr. Denby?I'll send McTavish up with the _Wanda_, and you can go back on her andrejoin the _Wonder_. Captain Ward can manage without you for a trip. "

"It was just what I was going to volunteer, " Denby answered. "I neverdreamed all this muss would be kicked up over a joke. You see, in a wayI consider myself responsible for it. "

"So am I responsible, " Wallenstein broke in. 

"But I started it, " the supercargo urged. 

"Maybe you did, but I carried it along. "

"And Koho finished it, " Grief said. 

"At any rate, I, too, shall remain, " said the German. 

"I thought you were coming to Guvutu with me, " Grief protested. 

"I was. But this is my jurisdiction, partly, and I have made a fool ofmyself in it completely. I shall remain and help get things straightagain. "

At Guvutu, Grief sent full instructions to McTavish by a recruitingketch which was just starting for Malaita. Captain Ward sailed in the_Wonder_ for the Santa Cruz Islands; and Grief, borrowing a whaleboatand a crew of black prisoners from the British Resident, crossed thechannel to Guadalcanar, to examine the grass lands back of Penduffryn. 

Three weeks later, with a free sheet and a lusty breeze, he threaded thecoral patches and surged up the smooth water to Guvutu anchorage. Theharbour was deserted, save for a small ketch which lay close in to theshore reef. Grief recognized it as the _Wanda_. She had evidently justgot in by the Tulagi Passage, for her black crew was still at workfurling the sails. As he rounded alongside, McTavish himself extended ahand to help him over the rail. 

"What's the matter?" Grief asked. "Haven't you started yet?"

McTavish nodded. "And got back. Everything's all right on board. "

"How's New Gibbon?"

"All there, the last I saw of it, barrin' a few inconsequential frillsthat a good eye could make out lacking from the landscape. "

He was a cold flame of a man, small as Koho, and as dried up, with amahogany complexion and small, expressionless blue eyes that were morelike gimlet-points than the eyes of a Scotchman. Without fear, withoutenthusiasm, impervious to disease and climate and sentiment, he was leanand bitter and deadly as a snake. That his present sour look boded illnews, Grief was well aware. 

"Spit it out!" he said. "What's happened?"

"'Tis a thing severely to be condemned, a damned shame, this joking withheathen niggers, " was the reply. "Also, 'tis very expensive. Come below, Mr. Grief. You'll be better for the information with a long glass inyour hand. After you. "

"How did you settle things?" his employer demanded as soon as they wereseated in the cabin. 

The little Scotchman shook his head. "There was nothing to settle. Itall depends how you look at it. The other way would be to say it wassettled, entirely settled, mind you, before I got there. "

"But the plantation, man? The plantation?"

"No plantation. All the years of our work have gone for naught. 'Tisback where we started, where the missionaries started, where the Germansstarted--and where they finished. Not a stone stands on another at thelanding pier. The houses are black ashes. Every tree is hacked down, andthe wild pigs are rooting out the yams and sweet potatoes. Those boysfrom New Georgia, a fine bunch they were, five score of them, and theycost you a pretty penny. Not one is left to tell the tale. "

He paused and began fumbling in a large locker under thecompanion-steps. 

"But Worth? And Denby? And Wallenstein?"

"That's what I'm telling you. Take a look. "

McTavish dragged out a sack made of rice matting and emptied itscontents on the floor. David Grief pulled himself together with a jerk, for he found himself gazing fascinated at the heads of the three men hehad left at New Gibbon. The yellow mustache of Wallenstein had lost itsfierce curl and drooped and wilted on the upper lip. 

"I don't know how it happened, " the Scotchman's voice went on drearily. "But I surmise they went into the bush after the old devil. "

"And where is Koho?" Grief asked. 

"Back in the bush and drunk as a lord. That's how I was able to recoverthe heads. He was too drunk to stand. They lugged him on their backs outof the village when I rushed it. And if you'll relieve me of the heads, I'll be well obliged. " He paused and sighed. "I suppose they'll haveregular funerals over them and put them in the ground. But in my way ofthinking they'd make excellent curios. Any respectable museum would paya hundred quid apiece. Better have another drink. You're looking a bitpale---- There, put that down you, and if you'll take my advice, Mr. Grief, I would say, set your face sternly against any joking withthe niggers. It always makes trouble, and it is a very expensivedivertisement. "

Chapter Five--A LITTLE ACCOUNT WITH SWITHIN HALL

I

With a last long scrutiny at the unbroken circle of the sea, David Griefswung out of the cross-trees and slowly and dejectedly descended theratlines to the deck. 

"Leu-Leu Atoll is sunk, Mr. Snow, " he said to the anxious-faced youngmate. "If there is anything in navigation, the atoll is surely under thesea, for we've sailed clear over it twice--or the spot where it ought tobe. It's either that or the chronometer's gone wrong, or I've forgottenmy navigation. "

"It must be the chronometer, sir, " the mate reassured his owner. "Youknow I made separate sights and worked them up, and that they agreedwith yours. "

"Yes, " Grief muttered, nodding glumly, "and where your Summer linescrossed, and mine, too, was the dead centre of Leu-Leu Atoll. It must bethe chronometer--slipped a cog or something. "

He made a short pace to the rail and back, and cast a troubled eye atthe _Uncle Toby's_ wake. The schooner, with a fairly strong breeze onher quarter, was logging nine or ten knots. 

"Better bring her up on the wind, Mr. Snow. Put her under easy sail andlet her work to windward on two-hour legs. It's thickening up, and Idon't imagine we can get a star observation to-night; so we'll just holdour weather position, get a latitude sight to-morrow, and run Leu-Leudown on her own latitude. That's the way all the old navigators did. "

Broad of beam, heavily sparred, with high freeboard and bluff, Dutchybow, the _Uncle Toby_ was the slowest, tubbiest, safest, and mostfool-proof schooner David Grief possessed. Her run was in the Banks andSanta Cruz groups and to the northwest among the several isolated atollswhere his native traders collected copra, hawksbill turtle, andan occasional ton of pearl shell. Finding the skipper down with aparticularly bad stroke of fever, Grief had relieved him and taken the_Uncle Toby_ on her semiannual run to the atolls. He had elected to makehis first call at Leu-Leu, which lay farthest, and now found himselflost at sea with a chronometer that played tricks. 

II

No stars showed that night, nor was the sun visible next day. A stuffy, sticky calm obtained, broken by big wind-squalls and heavy downpours. From fear of working too far to windward, the Uncle Toby was hove to, and four days and nights of cloud-hidden sky followed. Never did the sunappear, and on the several occasions that stars broke through they weretoo dim and fleeting for identification. By this time it was patent tothe veriest tyro that the elements were preparing to break loose. Grief, coming on deck from consulting the barometer, which steadfastly remainedat 29. 90, encountered Jackie-Jackie, whose face was as broodingand troublous as the sky and air. Jackie-Jackie, a Tongan sailor ofexperience, served as a sort of bosun and semi-second mate over themixed Kanaka crew. 

"Big weather he come, I think, " he said. "I see him just the same beforemaybe five, six times. "

Grief nodded. "Hurricane weather, all right, Jackie-Jackie. Pretty soonbarometer go down--bottom fall out. "

"Sure, " the Tongan concurred. "He goin' to blow like hell. "

Ten minutes later Snow came on deck. 

"She's started, " he said; "29. 85, going down and pumping at the sametime. It's stinking hot--don't you notice it?" He brushed his foreheadwith his hands. "It's sickening. I could lose my breakfast withouttrying. "

Jackie-Jackie grinned. "Just the same me. Everything inside walk about. Always this way before big blow. But _Uncle Toby_ all right. He gothrough anything. "

"Better rig that storm-trysail on the main, and a storm-jib, " Grief saidto the mate. "And put all the reefs into the working canvas before youfurl down. No telling what we may need. Put on double gaskets whileyou're about it. "

In another hour, the sultry oppressiveness steadily increasing and thestark calm still continuing, the barometer had fallen to 29. 70. Themate, being young, lacked the patience of waiting for the portentous. Heceased his restless pacing, and waved his arms. 

"If she's going to come let her come!" he cried. "There's no useshilly-shallying this way! Whatever the worst is, let us know it andhave it! A pretty pickle--lost with a crazy chronometer and a hurricanethat won't blow!"

The cloud-mussed sky turned to a vague copper colour, and seemed toglow as the inside of a huge heated caldron. Nobody remained below. Thenative sailors formed in anxious groups amidships and for'ard, wherethey talked in low voices and gazed apprehensively at the ominoussky and the equally ominous sea that breathed in long, low, oilyundulations. 

"Looks like petroleum mixed with castor oil, " the mate grumbled, as hespat his disgust overside. "My mother used to dose me with messes likethat when I was a kid. Lord, she's getting black!"

The lurid coppery glow had vanished, and the sky thickened and lowereduntil the darkness was as that of a late twilight. David Grief, whowell knew the hurricane rules, nevertheless reread the "Laws of Storms, "screwing his eyes in the faint light in order to see the print. Therewas nothing to be done save wait for the wind, so that he might knowhow he lay in relation to the fast-flying and deadly centre that fromsomewhere was approaching out of the gloom. 

It was three in the afternoon, and the glass had sunk to 29:45, whenthe wind came. They could see it on the water, darkening the face of thesea, crisping tiny whitecaps as it rushed along. It was merely a stiffbreeze, and the _Uncle Toby_, filling away under her storm canvas tillthe wind was abeam, sloshed along at a four-knot gait. 

"No weight to that, " Snow sneered. "And after such grand preparation!"

"Pickaninny wind, " Jackie-Jackie agreed. "He grow big man pretty quick, you see. "

Grief ordered the foresail put on, retaining the reefs, and the _UncleToby_ mended her pace in the rising breeze. The wind quickly grew toman's size, but did not stop there. It merely blew hard, and harder, andkept on blowing harder, advertising each increase by lulls followed byfierce, freshening gusts. Ever it grew, until the _Uncle Toby's_ railwas more often pressed under than not, while her waist boiled withfoaming water which the scuppers could not carry off. Grief studied thebarometer, still steadily falling. 

"The centre is to the southward, " he told Snow, "and we're runningacross its path and into it. Now we'll turn about and run the other way. That ought to bring the glass up. Take in the foresail--it's more thanshe can carry already--and stand by to wear her around. "

The maneuver was accomplished, and through the gloom that was almostthat of the first darkness of evening the _Uncle Toby_ turned and racedmadly north across the face of the storm. 

"It's nip and tuck, " Grief confided to the mate a couple of hourslater. "The storm's swinging a big curve--there's no calculating thatcurve--and we may win across or the centre may catch us. Thank the Lord, the glass is holding its own. It all depends on how big the curve is. The sea's too big for us to keep on. Heave her to! She'll keep workingalong out anyway. "

"I thought I knew what wind was, " Snow shouted in his owner's ear nextmorning. "This isn't wind. It's something unthinkable. It's impossible. It must reach ninety or a hundred miles an hour in the gusts. That don'tmean anything. How could I ever tell it to anybody? I couldn't. And lookat that sea! I've run my Easting down, but I never saw anything likethat. "

Day had come, and the sun should have been up an hour, yet the bestit could produce was a sombre semi-twilight. The ocean was a statelyprocession of moving mountains. A third of a mile across yawned thevalleys between the great waves. Their long slopes, shielded somewhatfrom the full fury of the wind, were broken by systems of smallerwhitecapping waves, but from the high crests of the big waves themselvesthe wind tore the whitecaps in the forming. This spume drove mastheadhigh, and higher, horizontally, above the surface of the sea. 

"We're through the worst, " was Grief's judgment. "The glass is comingalong all the time. The sea will get bigger as the wind eases down. I'mgoing to turn in. Watch for shifts in the wind. They'll be sure to come. Call me at eight bells. "

By mid-afternoon, in a huge sea, with the wind after its last shift nomore than a stiff breeze, the Tongan bosun sighted a schooner bottomup. The _Uncle Toby's_ drift took them across the bow and they couldnot make out the name; but before night they picked up with a small, round-bottom, double-ender boat, swamped but with white letteringvisible on its bow. Through the binoculars, Gray made out: _Emily L No. 3_. 

"A sealing schooner, " Grief said. "But what a sealer's doing in thesewaters is beyond me. "

"Treasure-hunters, maybe?" Snow speculated. "The _Sophie Sutherland_ andthe _Herman_ were sealers, you remember, chartered out of San Franciscoby the chaps with the maps who can always go right to the spot untilthey get there and don't. "

III

After a giddy night of grand and lofty tumbling, in which, over a bigand dying sea, without a breath of wind to steady her, the Uncle Tobyrolled every person on board sick of soul, a light breeze sprang upand the reefs were shaken out. By midday, on a smooth ocean floor, theclouds thinned and cleared and sights of the sun were obtained. Twodegrees and fifteen minutes south, the observation gave them. With abroken chronometer longitude was out of the question. 

"We're anywhere within five hundred and a thousand miles along thatlatitude line, " Grief remarked, as he and the mate bent over the chart. 

"Leu-Leu is to the south'ard somewhere, and this section of ocean is allblank. There is neither an island nor a reef by which we can regulatethe chronometer. The only thing to do--"

"Land ho, skipper!" the Tongan called down the companionway. 

Grief took a quick glance at the empty blank of the chart, whistled hissurprise, and sank back feebly in a chair. 

"It gets me, " he said. "There can't be land around here. We neverdrifted or ran like that. The whole voyage has been crazy. Will youkindly go up, Mr. Snow, and see what's ailing Jackie. "

"It's land all right, " the mate called down a minute afterward. "You cansee it from the deck--tops of cocoanuts--an atoll of some sort. Maybeit's Leu-Leu after all. "

Grief shook his head positively as he gazed at the fringe of palms, onlythe tops visible, apparently rising out of the sea. 

"Haul up on the wind, Mr. Snow, close-and-by, and we'll take a look. We can just reach past to the south, and if it spreads off in thatdirection we'll hit the southwest corner. "

Very near must palms be to be seen from the low deck of a schooner, and, slowly as the _Uncle Toby_ sailed, she quickly raised the low land abovethe sea, while more palms increased the definition of the atoll circle. 

"She's a beauty, " the mate remarked. "A perfect circle. .. . Looks as ifit might be eight or nine miles across. .. . Wonder if there's an entranceto the lagoon. .. . Who knows? Maybe it's a brand new find. "

They coasted up the west side of the atoll, making short tacks in tothe surf-pounded coral rock and out again. From the masthead, acrossthe palm-fringe, a Kanaka announced the lagoon and a small island in themiddle. 

"I know what you're thinking, " Grief said to his mate. 

Snow, who had been muttering and shaking his head, looked up with quickand challenging incredulity. 

"You're thinking the entrance will be on the northwest. " Grief went on, as if reciting. 

"Two cable lengths wide, marked on the north by three separatedcocoanuts, and on the south by pandanus trees. Eight miles in diameter, a perfect circle, with an island in the dead centre. "

"I _was_ thinking that, " Snow acknowledged. 

"And there's the entrance opening up just where it ought to be----"

"And the three palms, " Snow almost whispered, "and the pandanus trees. If there's a windmill on the island, it's it--Swithin Hall's island. Butit can't be. Everybody's been looking for it for the last ten years. "

"Hall played you a dirty trick once, didn't he?" Grief queried. 

Snow nodded. "That's why I'm working for you. He broke me flat. It wasdownright robbery. I bought the wreck of the _Cascade_, down in Sydney, out of a first instalment of a legacy from home. "

"She went on Christmas Island, didn't she?"

"Yes, full tilt, high and dry, in the night. They saved the passengersand mails. Then I bought a little island schooner, which took the restof my money, and I had to wait the final payment by the executors to fither out. What did Swithin Hall do--he was at Honolulu at the time--butmake a straightaway run for Christmas Island. Neither right nor titledid he have. When I got there, the hull and engines were all that wasleft of the _Cascade_. She had had a fair shipment of silk on board, too. And it wasn't even damaged. I got it afterward pretty straight fromhis supercargo. He cleared something like sixty thousand dollars. "

Snow shrugged his shoulders and gazed bleakly at the smooth surface ofthe lagoon, where tiny wavelets danced in the afternoon sun. 

"The wreck was mine. I bought her at public auction. I'd gambled big, and I'd lost. When I got back to Sydney, the crew, and some of thetradesmen who'd extended me credit, libelled the schooner. I pawnedmy watch and sextant, and shovelled coal one spell, and finally got abillet in the New Hebrides on a screw of eight pounds a month. Then Itried my luck as independent trader, went broke, took a mate's billet ona recruiter down to Tanna and over to Fiji, got a job as overseer on aGerman plantation back of Apia, and finally settled down on the _UncleToby_. "

"Have you ever met Swithin Hall?"

Snow shook his head. 

"Well, you're likely to meet him now. There's the windmill. "

In the centre of the lagoon, as they emerged from the passage, theyopened a small, densely wooded island, among the trees of which a largeDutch windmill showed plainly. 

"Nobody at home from the looks of it, " Grief said, "or you might have achance to collect. "

The mate's face set vindictively, and his fists clenched. 

"Can't touch him legally. He's got too much money now. But I can takesixty thousand dollars' worth out of his hide. I hope he is at home. "

"Then I hope he is, too, " Grief said, with an appreciative smile. "Yougot the description of his island from Bau-Oti, I suppose?"

"Yes, as pretty well everybody else has. The trouble is that Bau-Otican't give latitude or longitude. Says they sailed a long way from theGilberts--that's all he knows. I wonder what became of him. "

"I saw him a year ago on the beach at Tahiti. Said he was thinking aboutshipping for a cruise through the Paumotus. Well, here we are, gettingclose in. Heave the lead, Jackie-Jackie. Stand by to let go, Mr. Snow. According to Bau-Oti, anchorage three hundred yards off the west shorein nine fathoms, coral patches to the southeast. There are the patches. What do you get, Jackie?"

"Nine fadom. "

"Let go, Mr. Snow. "

The _Uncle Toby_ swung to her chain, head-sails ran down, and the Kanakacrew sprang to fore and main-halyards and sheets. 

IV

The whaleboat laid alongside the small, coral-stone landing-pier, andDavid Grief and his mate stepped ashore. 

"You'd think the place deserted, " Grief said, as they walked up a sandedpath to the bungalow. "But I smell a smell that I've often smelled. Something doing, or my nose is a liar. The lagoon is carpeted withshell. They're rotting the meat out not a thousand miles away. Get thatwhiff?"

Like no bungalow in the tropics was this bungalow of Swithin Hall. Ofmission architecture, when they had entered through the unlatched screendoor they found decoration and furniture of the same mission style. Thefloor of the big living-room was covered with the finest Samoan mats. There were couches, window seats, cozy corners, and a billiard table. Asewing table, and a sewing-basket, spilling over with sheer linen in theFrench embroidery of which stuck a needle, tokened a woman's presence. By screen and veranda the blinding sunshine was subdued to a cool, dimradiance. The sheen of pearl push-buttons caught Grief's eye. 

"Storage batteries, by George, run by the windmill!" he exclaimed as hepressed the buttons. "And concealed lighting!"

Hidden bowls glowed, and the room was filled with diffused golden light. Many shelves of books lined the walls. Grief fell to running overtheir titles. A fairly well-read man himself, for a sea-adventurer, heglimpsed a wide-ness of range and catholicity of taste that were beyondhim. Old friends he met, and others that he had heard of but never read. There were complete sets of Tolstoy, Turgenieff, and Gorky; of Cooperand Mark Twain; of Hugo, and Zola, and Sue; and of Flaubert, DeMaupassant, and Paul de Koch. He glanced curiously at the pages ofMetchnikoff, Weininger, and Schopenhauer, and wonderingly at thoseof Ellis, Lydston, Krafft-Ebbing, and Forel. Woodruff's "Expansion ofRaces" was in his hands when Snow returned from further exploration ofthe house. 

"Enamelled bath-tub, separate room for a shower, and a sitz-bath!" heexclaimed. "Fitted up for a king! And I reckon some of my money went topay for it. The place must be occupied. I found fresh-opened butter andmilk tins in the pantry, and fresh turtle-meat hanging up. I'm going tosee what else I can find. "

Grief, too, departed, through a door that led out of the opposite endof the living-room. He found himself in a self-evident woman's bedroom. Across it, he peered through a wire-mesh door into a screened anddarkened sleeping porch. On a couch lay a woman asleep. In the softlight she seemed remarkably beautiful in a dark Spanish way. By herside, opened and face downward, a novel lay on a chair. From thecolour in her cheeks, Grief concluded that she had not been long in thetropics. After the one glimpse he stole softly back, in time to see Snowentering the living-room through the other door. By the naked arm he wasclutching an age-wrinkled black who grinned in fear and made signs ofdumbness. 

"I found him snoozing in a little kennel out back, " the mate said. "He'sthe cook, I suppose. Can't get a word out of him. What did you find?"

"A sleeping princess. S-sh! There's somebody now. "

"If it's Hall, " Snow muttered, clenching his fist. 

Grief shook his head. "No rough-house. There's a woman here. And if itis Hall, before we go I'll maneuver a chance for you to get action. "

The door opened, and a large, heavily built man entered. In his belt wasa heavy, long-barrelled Colt's. One quick, anxious look he gave them, then his face wreathed in a genial smile and his hand was extended. 

"Welcome, strangers. But if you don't mind my asking, how, by all that'ssacred, did you ever manage to find my island?"

"Because we were out of our course, " Grief answered, shaking hands. 

"My name's Hall, Swithin Hall, " the other said, turning to shake Snow'shand. "And I don't mind telling you that you're the first visitors I'veever had. "

"And this is your secret island that's had all the beaches talking foryears?" Grief answered. "Well, I know the formula now for finding it. "

"How's that?" Hall asked quickly. 

"Smash your chronometer, get mixed up with a hurricane, and then keepyour eyes open for cocoanuts rising out of the sea. "

"And what is your name?" Hall asked, after he had laughed perfunctorily. 

"Anstey--Phil Anstey, " Grief answered promptly. "Bound on the _UncleToby_ from the Gilberts to New Guinea, and trying to find my longitude. This is my mate, Mr. Gray, a better navigator than I, but who has losthis goat just the same to the chronometer. "

Grief did not know his reason for lying, but he had felt the promptingand succumbed to it. He vaguely divined that something was wrong, butcould not place his finger on it. Swithin Hall was a fat, round-facedman, with a laughing lip and laughter-wrinkles in the corners of hiseyes. But Grief, in his early youth, had learned how deceptive this typecould prove, as well as the deceptiveness of blue eyes that screened thesurface with fun and hid what went on behind. 

"What are you doing with my cook?--lost yours and trying to shanghaihim?" Hall was saying. "You'd better let him go, if you're going to haveany supper. My wife's here, and she'll be glad to meet you--dinner, shecalls it, and calls me down for misnaming it, but I'm old fashioned. Myfolks always ate dinner in the middle of the day. Can't get over earlytraining. Don't you want to wash up? I do. Look at me. I've been workinglike a dog--out with the diving crew--shell, you know. But of course yousmelt it. "

V

Snow pleaded charge of the schooner, and went on board. In addition tohis repugnance at breaking salt with the man who had robbed him, it wasnecessary for him to impress the in-violableness of Grief's lies on theKanaka crew. By eleven o'clock Grief came on board, to find his matewaiting up for him. 

"There's something doing on Swithin Hall's island, " Grief said, shakinghis head. "I can't make out what it is, but I get the feel of it. Whatdoes Swithin Hall look like?"

Snow shook his head. 

"That man ashore there never bought the books on the shelves, " Griefdeclared with conviction. "Nor did he ever go in for concealed lighting. He's got a surface flow of suavity, but he's rough as a hoof-raspunderneath. He's an oily bluff. And the bunch he's got with him--Watsonand Gorman their names are; they came in after you left--real sea-dogs, middle-aged, marred and battered, tough as rusty wrought-iron nails andtwice as dangerous; real ugly customers, with guns in their belts, whodon't strike me as just the right sort to be on such comradely termswith Swithin Hall. And the woman! She's a lady. I mean it. She knows awhole lot of South America, and of China, too. I'm sure she's Spanish, though her English is natural. She's travelled. We talked bull-fights. She's seen them in Guayaquil, in Mexico, in Seville. She knows a lotabout sealskins. 

"Now here's what bothers me. She knows music. I asked her if she played. And he's fixed that place up like a palace. That being so, why hasn'the a piano for her? Another thing: she's quick and lively and he watchesher whenever she talks. He's on pins and needles, and continuallybreaking in and leading the conversation. Say, did you ever hear thatSwithin Hall was married?"

"Bless me, I don't know, " the mate replied. "Never entered my head tothink about it. "

"He introduced her as Mrs. Hall. And Watson and Gorman call him Hall. 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 toread. Suppose you send that topmast down in the morning and generallyoverhaul. We've been through a hurricane, you know. Set up the riggingwhile you're about it. Get things pretty well adrift, and take yourtime. "

VI

The next day Grief's suspicions found further food. Ashore early, he strolled across the little island to the barracks occupied by thedivers. 

They were just boarding the boats when he arrived, and it struck himthat for Kanakas they behaved more like chain-gang prisoners. The threewhite men were there, and Grief noted that each carried a rifle. Hallgreeted him jovially enough, but Gorman and Watson scowled as theygrunted 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 wasfamiliar, one of the thousands of native sailors and divers he hadencountered drifting about in the island trade. 

"Don't tell them who I am, " Grief said, in Tahitian. "Did you ever sailfor me?"

The man's head nodded and his mouth opened, but before he could speakhe was suppressed by a savage "Shut up!" from Watson, who was already inthe sternsheets. 

"I beg pardon, " Grief said. "I ought to have known better. "

"That's all right, " Hall interposed. "The trouble is they're too muchtalk and not enough work. Have to be severe with them, or they wouldn'tget enough shell to pay their grub. "

Grief nodded sympathetically. "I know them. Got a crew of themmyself--the lazy swine. Got to drive them like niggers to get ahalf-day's work out of them. "

"What was you sayin' to him?" Gorman blurted in bluntly. 

"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 tenfathom. It's right out there, not a hundred yards off. Want to comealong?"

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 neverbefore encountered Swithin Hall, yet the latter's fame as an expert atbilliards was the talk of the beaches from Levuka to Honolulu. But theman 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 ofbed. He described the location of the barracks, and told the Tonganto swim softly around and have talk with the Kanakas. In two hoursJackie-Jackie was back. He shook his head as he stood dripping beforeGrief. 

"Very funny t'ing, " he reported. "One white man stop all the time. Hehas big rifle. He lay in water and watch. Maybe twelve o'clock, otherwhite man come and take rifle. First white man go to bed. Other man stopnow 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 hisbunk. "I smell something more than shell. Those three men are standingwatches 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 _EmilyL. _ was their schooner?"

"Just that. They're raising and rotting the shell, while she's gone formore divers, or provisions, or both. "

"And I agree with you. " Grief glanced at the cabin clock and evincedsigns of bed-going. "He's a sailor. The three of them are. But they'renot island men. They're new in these waters. "

Again Snow whistled. 

"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 themwith 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. Throughoutthe 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 aline on my chronometer without your longitude. "

Hall laughingly refused. 

"You're too good a navigator, Mr. Anstey, not to fetch New Guinea orsome other high land. "

"And you're too good a navigator, Mr. Hall, " Grief replied, "not to knowthat I can fetch your island any time by running down its latitude. "

On the last evening, ashore, as usual, to dinner, Grief got his firstview of the pearls they had collected. Mrs. Hall, waxing enthusiastic, had asked her husband to bring forth the "pretties, " and had spent halfan hour showing them to Grief. His delight in them was genuine, as wellas was his surprise that they had made so rich a haul. 

"The lagoon is virgin, " Hall explained. "You saw yourself that mostof the shell is large and old. But it's funny that we got most of thevaluable pearls in one small patch in the course of a week. It was alittle treasure house. Every oyster seemed filled--seed pearls by thequart, of course, but the perfect ones, most of that bunch there, cameout of the small patch. "

Grief ran his eye over them and knew their value ranged from one hundredto a thousand dollars each, while the several selected large ones wentfar beyond. 

"Oh, the pretties! the pretties!" Mrs. Hall cried, bending forwardsuddenly and kissing them. 

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 quicklight of satisfaction in her husband's eyes. 

"Yes, " Grief continued. "All the repairs are finished. I can't get thelongitude of your island out of your husband, though I'm still in hopeshe'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 andtalking. 

"What do you estimate they're worth?" Grief asked, indicating the spreadof pearls on the table. "I mean what the pearl-buyers would give you inopen market?"

"Oh, seventy-five or eighty thousand, " Hall said carelessly. 

"I'm afraid you're underestimating. I know pearls a bit. Take thatbiggest one. It's perfect. Not a cent less than five thousand dollars. Some multimillionaire will pay double that some day, when the dealershave taken their whack. And never minding the seed pearls, you've gotquarts of baroques there. And baroques are coming into fashion. They'repicking up and doubling on themselves every year. "

Hall gave the trove of pearls a closer and longer scrutiny, estimatingthe different parcels and adding the sum aloud. 

"You're right, " he admitted. "They're worth a hundred thousand rightnow. "

"And at what do you figure your working expenses?" Grief went on. "Yourtime, 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. "Justtrying to reach some sort of an equitable arrangement. Suppose I shouldgive you and your people a passage to Sydney and the five thousanddollars--or, better, seven thousand five hundred. You've worked hard. "

Without commotion or muscular movement the other man became alert andtense. His round-faced geniality went out like the flame of a snuffedcandle. No laughter clouded the surface of the eyes, and in theirdepths 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--isembarrassing for you. You see, I'm trying to be fair. As I say, you'veworked hard. I don't want to confiscate the pearls. I want to pay youfor 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 fora moment. "Look here, you're joking me. How do I know you're SwithinHall?"

Grief shrugged his shoulders. "Such a joke would be in poor taste, afteryour hospitality. And it is equally in poor taste to have two SwithinHalls on the island. "

"Since you're Swithin Hall, then who the deuce am I? Do you know that, too?"

"No, " Grief answered airily. "But I'd like to know. "

"Well, it's none of your business. "

"I grant it. Your identity is beside the point. Besides, I know yourschooner, and I can find out who you are from that. "

"What's her name?"

"The _Emily L. _

"Correct. I'm Captain Raffy, owner and master. "

"The seal-poacher? I've heard of you. What under the sun brought youdown here on my preserves?"

"Needed the money. The seal herds are about finished. "

"And the out-of-the-way places of the world are better policed, eh?"

"Pretty close to it. And now about this present scrape, Mr. Hall. I canput up a nasty fight. What are you going to do about it?"

"What I said. Even better. What's the _Emily L. _ worth?"

"She's seen her day. Not above ten thousand, which would be robbery. Every time she's in a rough sea I'm afraid she'll jump her ballastthrough her planking. "

"She has jumped it, Captain Raffy. I sighted her bottom-up after theblow. Suppose we say she was worth seven thousand five hundred. I'llpay over to you fifteen thousand and give you a passage. Don't move yourhands from your lap. " Grief stood up, went over to him, and took hisrevolver. "Just a necessary precaution, Captain. Now you'll go on boardwith me. I'll break the news to Mrs. Raffy afterward, and fetch her outto join you. "

"You're behaving handsomely, Mr. Hall, I must say, " Captain Raffyvolunteered, as the whaleboat came alongside the _Uncle Toby_. "Butwatch out for Gorman and Watson. They're ugly customers. And, by theway, I don't like to mention it, but you've seen my wife. I've given herfour or five pearls. Watson and Gorman were willing. "

"Say no more, Captain. Say no more. They shall remain hers. Is that you, Mr. Snow? Here's a friend I want you to take charge of--Captain Raffy. I'm going ashore for his wife. "

VIII

David Grief sat writing at the library table in the bungalowliving-room. Outside, the first pale of dawn was showing. He had had abusy night. Mrs. Raffy had taken two hysterical hours to pack her andCaptain Raffy's possessions. Gorman had been caught asleep, but Watson, standing guard over the divers, had shown fight. Matters did not reachthe shooting stage, but it was only after it had been demonstrated tohim that the game was up that he consented to join his companions onboard. For temporary convenience, he and Gorman were shackled in themate's room, Mrs. Raffy was confined in Grief's, and Captain Raffy madefast to the cabin table. 

Grief finished the document and read over what he had written:

 To Swithin Hall, for pearls taken from his lagoon (estimated) $100, 000

 To Herbert Snow, paid in full for salvage from steamship Cascade in pearls (estimated) $60, 000

 To Captain Raffy, salary and expenses for collecting pearls 7, 500

 To Captain Raffy, reimbursement for schooner Emily L. , lost in hurricane 7, 500

 To Mrs. Raffy, for good will, five fair pearls (estimated) 1, 100

 To passage to Syndey, four persons, at $120. 480

 To white lead for painting Swithin Hall's two whaleboats 9

 To Swithin Hall, balance in pearls (estimated) which are to be found in drawer of library table 23, 411

 $100, 000--$100, 000

Grief signed and dated, paused, and added at the bottom:

 _P. S. --Still owing to Swithin Hall three books, borrowed from library: Hudson's "Law of Psychic Phenomena, " Zola's "Paris, " and Mahan's "Problem of Asia. " These books, or full value, can be collected of said David Griefs Sydney office_. 

He shut off the electric light, picked up the bundle of books, carefullylatched the front door, and went down to the waiting whaleboat. 

Chapter Six--A GOBOTO NIGHT

I

At Goboto the traders come off their schooners and the planters driftin from far, wild coasts, and one and all they assume shoes, white ducktrousers, and various other appearances of civilization. At Goboto mailis received, bills are paid, and newspapers, rarely more than five weeksold, are accessible; for the little island, belted with its coral reefs, affords safe anchorage, is the steamer port of call, and serves as thedistributing point for the whole wide-scattered group. 

Life at Goboto is heated, unhealthy, and lurid, and for its size itasserts the distinction of more cases of acute alcoholism than any otherspot in the world. Guvutu, over in the Solomons, claims that it drinksbetween drinks. Goboto does not deny this. It merely states, in passing, that in the Goboton chronology no such interval of time is known. Italso points out its import statistics, which show a far larger percapita consumption of spiritous liquors. Guvutu explains this on thebasis that Goboto does a larger business and has more visitors. Gobotoretorts that its resident population is smaller and that its visitorsare thirstier. And the discussion goes on interminably, principallybecause of the fact that the disputants do not live long enough tosettle it. 

Goboto is not large. The island is only a quarter of a mile in diameter, and on it are situated an admiralty coal-shed (where a few tons of coalhave lain untouched for twenty years), the barracks for a handful ofblack labourers, a big store and warehouse with sheet-iron roofs, and abungalow inhabited by the manager and his two clerks. They are the whitepopulation. An average of one man out of the three is always to be founddown with fever. The job at Goboto is a hard one. It is the policy ofthe company to treat its patrons well, as invading companies have foundout, and it is the task of the manager and clerks to do the treating. Throughout the year traders and recruiters arrive from far, dry cruises, and planters from equally distant and dry shores, bringing with themmagnificent thirsts. Goboto is the mecca of sprees, and when they havespread they go back to their schooners and plantations to recuperate. 

Some of the less hardy require as much as six months between visits. Butfor the manager and his assistants there are no such intervals. They areon the spot, and week by week, blown in by monsoon or southeasttrade, the schooners come to anchor, cargo'd with copra, ivory nuts, pearl-shell, hawksbill turtle, and thirst. 

It is a very hard job at Goboto. That is why the pay is twice that onother stations, and that is why the company selects only courageous andintrepid men for this particular station. They last no more than a yearor so, when the wreckage of them is shipped back to Australia, or theremains of them are buried in the sand across on the windward side ofthe islet. Johnny Bassett, almost the legendary hero of Goboto, brokeall records. He was a remittance man with a remarkable constitution, and he lasted seven years. His dying request was duly observed by hisclerks, who pickled him in a cask of trade-rum (paid for out oftheir own salaries) and shipped him back to his people in England. Nevertheless, at Goboto, they tried to be gentlemen. For that matter, though something was wrong with them, they were gentlemen, and had beengentlemen. That was why the great unwritten rule of Goboto was thatvisitors should put on pants and shoes. Breech-clouts, lava-lavas, andbare legs were not tolerated. When Captain Jensen, the wildest of theBlackbirders though descended from old New York Knickerbocker stock, surged in, clad in loin-cloth, undershirt, two belted revolvers anda sheath-knife, he was stopped at the beach. This was in the days ofJohnny Bassett, ever a stickler in matters of etiquette. Captain Jensenstood up in the sternsheets of his whaleboat and denied the existence ofpants on his schooner. Also, he affirmed his intention of coming ashore. They of Goboto nursed him back to health from a bullet-hole through hisshoulder, and in addition handsomely begged his pardon, for no pantshad they found on his schooner. And finally, on the first day he sat up, Johnny Bassett kindly but firmly assisted his guest into a pair of pantsof his own. This was the great precedent. In all the succeeding years ithad never been violated. White men and pants were undivorce-able. Onlyniggers ran naked. Pants constituted caste. 

II

On this night things were, with one exception, in nowise different fromany other night. Seven of them, with glimmering eyes and steady legs, had capped a day of Scotch with swivel-sticked cocktails and sat down todinner. Jacketed, trousered, and shod, they were: Jerry McMurtrey, themanager; Eddy Little and Jack Andrews, clerks; Captain Stapler, of therecruiting ketch _Merry_; Darby Shryleton, planter from Tito-Ito; PeterGee, a half-caste Chinese pearl-buyer who ranged from Ceylon to thePaumotus, and Alfred Deacon, a visitor who had stopped off from the laststeamer. At first wine was served by the black servants to those thatdrank it, though all quickly shifted back to Scotch and soda, picklingtheir food as they ate it, ere it went into their calcined, pickledstomachs. 

Over their coffee, they heard the rumble of an anchor-chain through ahawse-pipe, tokening the arrival of a vessel. 

"It's David Grief, " Peter Gee remarked. 

"How do you know?" Deacon demanded truculently, and then went on to denythe half-caste's knowledge. "You chaps put on a lot of side over a newchum. I've done some sailing myself, and this naming a craft whenits sail is only a blur, or naming a man by the sound of hisanchor--it's--it's unadulterated poppycock. "

Peter Gee was engaged in lighting a cigarette, and did not answer. 

"Some of the niggers do amazing things that way, " McMurtrey interposedtactfully. 

As with the others, this conduct of their visitor jarred on the manager. From the moment of Peter Gee's arrival that afternoon Deacon hadmanifested a tendency to pick on him. He had disputed his statements andbeen generally rude. 

"Maybe it's because Peter's got Chink blood in him, " had been Andrews'hypothesis. "Deacon's Australian, you know, and they're daffy down thereon colour. "

"I fancy that's it, " McMurtrey had agreed. "But we can't permit anybullying, especially of a man like Peter Gee, who's whiter than mostwhite men. "

In this the manager had been in nowise wrong. Peter Gee was that rarecreature, a good as well as clever Eurasian. In fact, it was thestolid integrity of the Chinese blood that toned the recklessness andlicentiousness of the English blood which had run in his father's veins. Also, he was better educated than any man there, spoke better Englishas well as several other tongues, and knew and lived more of their ownideals of gentlemanness than they did themselves. And, finally, he wasa gentle soul. Violence he deprecated, though he had killed men in histime. Turbulence he abhorred. 

He always avoided it as he would the plague. 

Captain Stapler stepped in to help McMurtrey:

"I remember, when I changed schooners and came into Altman, the niggersknew right off the bat it was me. I wasn't expected, either, much lessto be in another craft. They told the trader it was me. He used theglasses, and wouldn't believe them. But they did know. Told me afterwardthey could see it sticking out all over the schooner that I was runningher. "

Deacon ignored him, and returned to the attack on the pearl-buyer. 

"How do you know from the sound of the anchor that it was thiswhatever-you-called-him man?" he challenged. 

"There are so many things that go to make up such a judgment, " PeterGee answered. "It's very hard to explain. It would require almost a textbook. "

"I thought so, " Deacon sneered. "Explanation that doesn't explain iseasy. "

"Who's for bridge?" Eddy Little, the second clerk, interrupted, lookingup expectantly and starting to shuffle. "You'll play, won't you, Peter?"

"If he does, he's a bluffer, " Deacon cut back. "I'm getting tired of allthis poppycock. Mr. Gee, you will favour me and put yourself in abetter light if you tell how you know who that man was that just droppedanchor. After that I'll play you piquet. "

"I'd prefer bridge, " Peter answered. "As for the other thing, it's something like this: By the sound it was a small craft--nosquare-rigger. No whistle, no siren, was blown--again a small craft. Itanchored close in--still again a small craft, for steamers and big shipsmust drop hook outside the middle shoal. Now the entrance is tortuous. There is no recruiting nor trading captain in the group who dares to runthe passage after dark. Certainly no stranger would. There _were_ twoexceptions. The first was Margonville. But he was executed by the HighCourt at Fiji. Remains the other exception, David Grief. Night orday, in any weather, he runs the passage. This is well known to all. Apossible factor, in case Grief were somewhere else, would be some youngdare-devil of a skipper. In this connection, in the first place, I don'tknow of any, nor does anybody else. In the second place, David Grief isin these waters, cruising on the _Gunga_, which is shortly scheduled toleave here for Karo-Karo. I spoke to Grief, on the _Gunga_, in SandflyPassage, day before yesterday. He was putting a trader ashore on a newstation. He said he was going to call in at Babo, and then come on toGoboto. He has had ample time to get here. I have heard an anchor drop. Who else than David Grief can it be? Captain Donovan is skipper of the_Gunga_, and him I know too well to believe that he'd run in to Gobotoafter dark unless his owner were in charge. In a few minutes DavidGrief will enter through that door and say, 'In Guvutu they merely drinkbetween drinks. ' I'll wager fifty pounds he's the man that enters andthat his words will be, 'In Guvutu they merely drink between drinks. '"Deacon was for the moment crushed. The sullen blood rose darkly in hisface. 

"Well, he's answered you, " McMurtrey laughed genially. "And I'll backhis bet myself for a couple of sovereigns. "

"Bridge! Who's going to take a hand?" Eddy Little cried impatiently. "Come on, Peter!"

"The rest of you play, " Deacon said. "He and I are going to playpiquet. "

"I'd prefer bridge, " Peter Gee said mildly. 

"Don't you play piquet?"

The pearl-buyer nodded. 

"Then come on. Maybe I can show I know more about that than I do aboutanchors. "

"Oh, I say----" McMurtrey began. 

"You can play bridge, " Deacon shut him off. "We prefer piquet. "

Reluctantly, Peter Gee was bullied into a game that he knew would beunhappy. 

"Only a rubber, " he said, as he cut for deal. 

"For how much?" Deacon asked. 

Peter Gee shrugged his shoulders. "As you please. "

"Hundred up--five pounds a game?"

Peter Gee agreed. 

"With the lurch double, of course, ten pounds?"

"All right, " said Peter Gee. 

At another table four of the others sat in at bridge. Captain Stapler, who was no card-player, looked on and replenished the long glassesof Scotch that stood at each man's right hand. McMurtrey, with poorlyconcealed apprehension, followed as well as he could what went on atthe piquet table. His fellow Englishmen as well were shocked by thebehaviour of the Australian, and all were troubled by fear of someuntoward act on his part. That he was working up his animosity againstthe half-caste, and that the explosion might come any time, was apparentto all. 

"I hope Peter loses, " McMurtrey said in an undertone. 

"Not if he has any luck, " Andrews answered. "He's a wizard at piquet. Iknow by experience. "

That Peter Gee was lucky was patent from the continual badgering ofDeacon, who filled his glass frequently. He had lost the first game, and, from his remarks, was losing the second, when the door opened andDavid Grief entered. 

"In Guvutu they merely drink between drinks, " he remarked casually tothe assembled company, ere he gripped the manager's hand. "Hello, Mac!Say, my skipper's down in the whaleboat. He's got a silk shirt, a tie, and tennis shoes, all complete, but he wants you to send a pair of pantsdown. Mine are too small, but yours will fit him. Hello, Eddy! How'sthat _ngari-ngari?_ You up, Jock? The miracle has happened. No one downwith fever, and no one remarkably drunk. " He sighed, "I suppose thenight is young yet. Hello, Peter! Did you catch that big squall an hourafter you left us? We had to let go the second anchor. "

While he was being introduced to Deacon, McMurtrey dispatched ahouse-boy with the pants, and when Captain Donovan came in it was as awhite man should--at least in Goboto. 

Deacon lost the second game, and an outburst heralded the fact. PeterGee devoted himself to lighting a cigarette and keeping quiet. 

"What?--are you quitting because you're ahead?" Deacon demanded. 

Grief raised his eyebrows questioningly to McMurtrey, who frowned backhis own disgust. 

"It's the rubber, " Peter Gee answered. 

"It takes three games to make a rubber. It's my deal. Come on!"

Peter Gee acquiesced, and the third game was on. 

"Young whelp--he needs a lacing, " McMurtrey muttered to Grief. "Come on, let us quit, you chaps. I want to keep an eye on him. If he goes too farI'll throw him out on the beach, company instructions or no. "

"Who is he?" Grief queried. 

"A left-over from last steamer. Company's orders to treat him nice. He'slooking to invest in a plantation. Has a ten-thousand-pound letter ofcredit with the company. He's got 'all-white Australia' on the brain. Thinks because his skin is white and because his father was onceAttorney-General of the Commonwealth that he can be a cur. That's whyhe's picking on Peter, and you know Peter's the last man in the worldto make trouble or incur trouble. Damn the company. I didn't engageto wet-nurse its infants with bank accounts. Come on, fill your glass, Grief. The man's a blighter, a blithering blighter. "

"Maybe he's only young, " Grief suggested. 

"He can't contain his drink--that's clear. " The manager glared hisdisgust and wrath. "If he raises a hand to Peter, so help me, I'll givehim a licking myself, the little overgrown cad!"

The pearl-buyer pulled the pegs out of the cribbage board on which hewas scoring and sat back. He had won the third game. He glanced acrossto Eddy Little, saying:

"I'm ready for the bridge, now. "

"I wouldn't be a quitter, " Deacon snarled. 

"Oh, really, I'm tired of the game, " Peter Gee assured him with hishabitual quietness. 

"Come on and be game, " Deacon bullied. "One more. You can't take mymoney that way. I'm out fifteen pounds. Double or quits. "

McMurtrey was about to interpose, but Grief restrained him with hiseyes. 

"If it positively is the last, all right, " said Peter Gee, gathering upthe cards. "It's my deal, I believe. As I understand it, this final isfor fifteen pounds. Either you owe me thirty or we quit even?"

"That's it, chappie. Either we break even or I pay you thirty. "

"Getting blooded, eh?" Grief remarked, drawing up a chair. 

The other men stood or sat around the table, and Deacon played againin bad luck. That he was a good player was clear. The cards were merelyrunning against him. That he could not take his ill luck with equanimitywas equally clear. He was guilty of sharp, ugly curses, and he snappedand growled at the imperturbable half-caste. In the end Peter Geecounted out, while Deacon had not even made his fifty points. Heglowered speechlessly at his opponent. 

"Looks like a lurch, " said Grief. 

"Which is double, " said Peter Gee. 

"There's no need your telling me, " Deacon snarled. "I've studiedarithmetic. I owe you forty-five pounds. There, take it!"

The way in which he flung the nine five-pound notes on the table wasan insult in itself. Peter Gee was even quieter, and flew no signals ofresentment. 

"You've got fool's luck, but you can't play cards, I can tell you thatmuch, " Deacon went on. "I could teach you cards. "

The half-caste smiled and nodded acquiescence as he folded up the money. 

"There's a little game called casino--I wonder if you ever heard ofit?--a child's game. "

"I've seen it played, " the half-caste murmured gently. 

"What's that?" snapped Deacon. "Maybe you think you can play it?"

"Oh, no, not for a moment. I'm afraid I haven't head enough for it. "

"It's a bully game, casino, " Grief broke in pleasantly. "I like it verymuch. "

Deacon ignored him. 

"I'll play you ten quid a game--thirty-one points out, " was thechallenge to Peter Gee. "And I'll show you how little you know aboutcards. Come on! Where's a full deck?"

"No, thanks, " the half-caste answered. "They are waiting for me in orderto make up a bridge set. "

"Yes, come on, " Eddy Little begged eagerly. "Come on, Peter, let's getstarted. "

"Afraid of a little game like casino, " Deacon girded. "Maybe the stakesare too high. I'll play you for pennies--or farthings, if you say so. "

The man's conduct was a hurt and an affront to all of them. McMurtreycould stand it no longer. 

"Now hold on, Deacon. He says he doesn't want to play. Let him alone. "

Deacon turned raging upon his host; but before he could blurt out hisabuse, Grief had stepped into the breach. 

"I'd like to play casino with you, " he said. 

"What do you know about it?"

"Not much, but I'm willing to learn. "

"Well, I'm not teaching for pennies to-night. "

"Oh, that's all right, " Grief answered. "I'll play for almost anysum--within reason, of course. "

Deacon proceeded to dispose of this intruder with one stroke. 

"I'll play you a hundred pounds a game, if that will do you any good. "

Grief beamed his delight. "That will be all right, very right. Let usbegin. Do you count sweeps?"

Deacon was taken aback. He had not expected a Goboton trader to beanything but crushed by such a proposition. 

"Do you count sweeps?" Grief repeated. 

Andrews had brought him a new deck, and he was throwing out the joker. 

"Certainly not, " Deacon answered. "That's a sissy game. "

"I'm glad, " Grief coincided. "I don't like sissy games either. "

"You don't, eh? Well, then, I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll play forfive hundred pounds a game. "

Again Deacon was taken aback. 

"I'm agreeable, " Grief said, beginning to shuffle. "Cards and spades goout first, of course, and then big and little casino, and the aces inthe bridge order of value. Is that right?"

"You're a lot of jokers down here, " Deacon laughed, but his laughter wasstrained. "How do I know you've got the money?"

"By the same token I know you've got it. Mac, how's my credit with thecompany?"

"For all you want, " the manager answered. 

"You personally guarantee that?" Deacon demanded. 

"I certainly do, " McMurtrey said. "Depend upon it, the company willhonour his paper up and past your letter of credit. "

"Low deals, " Grief said, placing the deck before Deacon on the table. 

The latter hesitated in the midst of the cut and looked around withquerulous misgiving at the faces of the others. The clerks and captainsnodded. 

"You're all strangers to me, " Deacon complained. "How am I to know?Money on paper isn't always the real thing. "

Then it was that Peter Gee, drawing a wallet from his pocket andborrowing a fountain pen from McMurtrey, went into action. 

"I haven't gone to buying yet, " the half-caste explained, "so theaccount is intact. I'll just indorse it over to you, Grief. It's forfifteen thousand. There, look at it. "

Deacon intercepted the letter of credit as it was being passed acrossthe table. He read it slowly, then glanced up at McMurtrey. 

"Is that right?"

"Yes. It's just the same as your own, and just as good. The company'spaper is always good. "

Deacon cut the cards, won the deal, and gave them a thorough shuffle. But his luck was still against him, and he lost the game. 

"Another game, " he said. "We didn't say how many, and you can't quitwith me a loser. I want action. "

Grief shuffled and passed the cards for the cut. 

"Let's play for a thousand, " Deacon said, when he had lost the secondgame. And when the thousand had gone the way of the two five hundredbets he proposed to play for two thousand. 

"That's progression, " McMurtrey warned, and was rewarded by a glarefrom Deacon. But the manager was insistent. "You don't have to playprogression, Grief, unless you're foolish. "

"Who's playing this game?" Deacon flamed at his host; and then, toGrief: "I've lost two thousand to you. Will you play for two thousand?"

Grief nodded, the fourth game began, and Deacon won. The manifestunfairness of such betting was known to all of them. Though he had lostthree games out of four, Deacon had lost no money. By the child's deviceof doubling his wager with each loss, he was bound, with the first gamehe won, no matter how long delayed, to be even again. 

He now evinced an unspoken desire to stop, but Grief passed the deck tobe cut. 

"What?" Deacon cried. "You want more?"

"Haven't got anything yet, " Grief murmured whimsically, as he began thedeal. "For the usual five hundred, I suppose?"

The shame of what he had done must have tingled in Deacon, for heanswered, "No, we'll play for a thousand. And say! Thirty-one points istoo long. Why not twenty-one points out--if it isn't too rapid for you?"

"That will make it a nice, quick, little game, " Grief agreed. 

The former method of play was repeated. Deacon lost two games, doubledthe stake, and was again even. But Grief was patient, though the thingoccurred several times in the next hour's play. Then happened what hewas waiting for--a lengthening in the series of losing games for Deacon. The latter doubled to four thousand and lost, doubled to eight thousandand lost, and then proposed to double to sixteen thousand. 

Grief shook his head. "You can't do that, you know. You're only tenthousand credit with the company. "

"You mean you won't give me action?" Deacon asked hoarsely. "You meanthat with eight thousand of my money you're going to quit?"

Grief smiled and shook his head. 

"It's robbery, plain robbery, " Deacon went on. "You take my money andwon't give me action. "

"No, you're wrong. I'm perfectly willing to give you what action you'vegot coming to you. You've got two thousand pounds of action yet. "

"Well, we'll play it, " Deacon took him up. "You cut. "

The game was played in silence, save for irritable remarks and cursesfrom Deacon. Silently the onlookers filled and sipped their longScotch glasses. Grief took no notice of his opponent's outbursts, butconcentrated on the game. He was really playing cards, and there werefifty-two in the deck to be kept track of, and of which he did keeptrack. Two thirds of the way through the last deal he threw down hishand. 

"Cards put me out, " he said. "I have twenty-seven. "

"If you've made a mistake, " Deacon threatened, his face white and drawn. 

"Then I shall have lost. Count them. "

Grief passed over his stack of takings, and Deacon, with tremblingfingers, verified the count. He half shoved his chair back from thetable and emptied his glass. He looked about him at unsympathetic faces. 

"I fancy I'll be catching the next steamer for Sydney, " he said, and forthe first time his speech was quiet and without bluster. 

As Grief told them afterward: "Had he whined or raised a roar I wouldn'thave given him that last chance. As it was, he took his medicine like aman, and I had to do it. "

Deacon glanced at his watch, simulated a weary yawn, and started torise. 

"Wait, " Grief said. "Do you want further action?"

The other sank down in his chair, strove to speak, but could not, lickedhis dry lips, and nodded his head. 

"Captain Donovan here sails at daylight in the _Gunga_ for Karo-Karo, "Grief began with seeming irrelevance. "Karo-Karo is a ring of sand inthe sea, with a few thousand cocoa-nut trees. Pandanus grows there, butthey can't grow sweet potatoes nor taro. There aremabout eight hundrednatives, a king and two prime ministers, and the last three named arethe only ones who wear any clothes. It's a sort of God-forsaken littlehole, and once a year I send a schooner up from Goboto. The drinkingwater is brackish, but old Tom Butler has survived on it for a dozenyears. He's the only white man there, and he has a boat's crew of fiveSanta Cruz boys who would run away or kill him if they could. That iswhy they were sent there. They can't run away. He is always suppliedwith the hard cases from the plantations. There are no missionaries. Two native Samoan teachers were clubbed to death on the beach when theylanded several years ago. 

"Naturally, you are wondering what it is all about. But have patience. As I have said, Captain Donovan sails on the annual trip to Karo-Karo atdaylight to-morrow. Tom Butler is old, and getting quite helpless. I'vetried to retire him to Australia, but he says he wants to remain anddie on Karo-Karo, and he will in the next year or so. He's a queer oldcodger. Now the time is due for me to send some white man up to take thework off his hands. I wonder how you'd like the job. You'd have to staytwo years. 

"Hold on! I've not finished. You've talked frequently of action thisevening. There's no action in betting away what you've never sweatedfor. The money you've lost to me was left you by your father or someother relative who did the sweating. But two years of work as trader onKaro-Karo would mean something. I'll bet the ten thousand I've won fromyou against two years of your time. If you win, the money's yours. Ifyou lose, you take the job at Karo-Karo and sail at daylight. Now that'swhat might be called real action. Will you play?"

Deacon could not speak. His throat lumped and he nodded his head as hereached for the cards. 

"One thing more, " Grief said. "I can do even better. If you lose, twoyears of your time are mine--naturally without wages. Nevertheless, I'll pay you wages. If your work is satisfactory, if you observe allinstructions and rules, I'll pay you five thousand pounds a year for twoyears. The money will be deposited with the company, to be paid to you, with interest, when the time expires. Is that all right?"

"Too much so, " Deacon stammered. "You are unfair to yourself. A traderonly gets ten or fifteen pounds a month. "

"Put it down to action, then, " Grief said, with an air of dismissal. "And before we begin, I'll jot down several of the rules. These you willrepeat aloud every morning during the two years--if you lose. Theyare for the good of your soul. When you have repeated them aloud sevenhundred and thirty Karo-Karo mornings I am confident they will be inyour memory to stay. Lend me your pen, Mac. Now, let's see----"

He wrote steadily and rapidly for some minutes, then proceeded to readthe matter aloud:

"_I must always remember that one man is as good as another, save andexcept when he thinks he is better. _

"_No matter how drunk I am I must not fail to be a gentleman. Agentleman is a man who is gentle. Note: It would be better not to getdrunk_. 

"_When I play a man's game with men, I must play like a man_. 

"_A good curse, rightly used and rarely, is an efficient thing. Too manycurses spoil the cursing. Note: A curse cannot change a card seguencenor cause the wind to blow. _

"_There is no license for a man to be less than a man. Ten thousandpounds cannot purchase such a license. _"

At the beginning of the reading Deacon's face had gone white with anger. Then had arisen, from neck to forehead, a slow and terrible flush thatdeepened to the end of the reading. 

"There, that will be all, " Grief said, as he folded the paper and tossedit to the centre of the table. "Are you still ready to play the game?"

"I deserve it, " Deacon muttered brokenly. "I've been an ass. Mr. Gee, before I know whether I win or lose, I want to apologize. Maybe it wasthe whiskey, I don't know, but I'm an ass, a cad, a bounder--everythingthat's rotten. "

He held out his hand, and the half-caste took it beamingly. 

"I say, Grief, " he blurted out, "the boy's all right. Call the wholething off, and let's forget it in a final nightcap. "

Grief showed signs of debating, but Deacon cried:

"No; I won't permit it. I'm not a quitter. If it's Karo-Karo, it'sKaro-Karo. There's nothing more to it. "

"Right, " said Grief, as he began the shuffle. "If he's the right stuffto go to Karo-Karo, Karo-Karo won't do him any harm. "

The game was close and hard. Three times they divided the deck betweenthem and "cards" was not scored. At the beginning of the fifth andlast deal, Deacon needed three points to go out, and Grief needed four. "Cards" alone would put Deacon out, and he played for "cards". He nolonger muttered or cursed, and played his best game of the evening. Incidentally he gathered in the two black aces and the ace of hearts. 

"I suppose you can name the four cards I hold, " he challenged, as thelast of the deal was exhausted and he picked up his hand. 

Grief nodded. 

"Then name them. "

"The knave of spades, the deuce of spades, the tray of hearts, and theace of diamonds, " Grief answered. 

Those behind Deacon and looking at his hand made no sign. Yet the naminghad been correct. 

"I fancy you play casino better than I, " Deacon acknowledged. "I canname only three of yours, a knave, an ace, and big casino. "

"Wrong. There aren't five aces in the deck. You've taken in three andyou hold the fourth in your hand now. "

"By Jove, you're right, " Deacon admitted. "I did scoop in three. Anyway, I'll make 'cards' on you. That's all I need. "

"I'll let you save little casino----" Grief paused to calculate. "Yes, and the ace as well, and still I'll make 'cards' and go out with bigcasino. Play. "

"No 'cards' and I win!" Deacon exulted as the last of the hand wasplayed. "I go out on little casino and the four aces. 'Big casino' and'spades' only bring you to twenty. "

Grief shook his head. "Some mistake, I'm afraid. "

"No, " Deacon declared positively. "I counted every card I took in. That's the one thing I was correct on. I've twenty-six, and you'vetwenty-six. "

"Count again, " Grief said. 

Carefully and slowly, with trembling fingers, Deacon counted the cardshe had taken. There were twenty-five. He reached over to the corner ofthe table, took up the rules Grief had written, folded them, and putthem in his pocket. Then he emptied his glass, and stood up. CaptainDonovan looked at his watch, yawned, and also arose. 

"Going aboard, Captain?" Deacon asked. 

"Yes, " was the answer. "What time shall I send the whaleboat for you?"

"I'll go with you now. We'll pick up my luggage from the _Billy_ as wego by, I was sailing on her for Babo in the morning. "

Deacon shook hands all around, after receiving a final pledge of goodluck on Karo-Karo. 

"Does Tom Butler play cards?" he asked Grief. 

"Solitaire, " was the answer. 

"Then I'll teach him double solitaire. " Deacon turned toward the door, where Captain Donovan waited, and added with a sigh, "And I fancy he'llskin me, too, if he plays like the rest of you island men. "

Chapter Seven--THE FEATHERS OF THE SUN

I

It was the island of Fitu-Iva--the last independent Polynesianstronghold in the South Seas. Three factors conduced to Fitu-Iva'sindependence. The first and second were its isolation and thewarlikeness of its population. But these would not have saved it inthe end had it not been for the fact that Japan, France, GreatBritain, Germany, and the United States discovered its desirablenesssimultaneously. It was like gamins scrambling for a penny. They gotin one another's way. The war vessels of the five Powers clutteredFitu-Iva's one small harbour. There were rumours of war and threats ofwar. Over its morning toast all the world read columns about Fitu-Iva. As a Yankee blue jacket epitomized it at the time, they all got theirfeet in the trough at once. 

So it was that Fitu-Iva escaped even a joint protectorate, and KingTulifau, otherwise Tui Tulifau, continued to dispense the high justiceand the low in the frame-house palace built for him by a Sydney traderout of California redwood. Not only was Tui Tulifau every inch a king, but he was every second a king. When he had ruled fifty-eight years andfive months, he was only fifty-eight years and three months old. Thatis to say, he had ruled over five million seconds more than he hadbreathed, having been crowned two months before he was born. 

He was a kingly king, a royal figure of a man, standing six feet anda half, and, without being excessively fat, weighing three hundred andtwenty pounds. But this was not unusual for Polynesian "chief stock. "Sepeli, his queen, was six feet three inches and weighed two hundredand sixty, while her brother, Uiliami, who commanded the army in theintervals of resignation from the premiership, topped her by an inch andnotched her an even half-hundredweight. Tui Tulifau was a merry soul, agreat feaster and drinker. So were all his people merry souls, save inanger, when, on occasion, they could be guilty even of throwing deadpigs at those who made them wroth. Nevertheless, on occasion, they couldfight like Maoris, as piratical sandalwood traders and Blackbirders inthe old days learned to their cost. 

II

Grief's schooner, the _Cantani_, had passed the Pillar Rocks at theentrance two hours before and crept up the harbour to the whisperingflutters of a breeze that could not make up its mind to blow. It wasa cool, starlight evening, and they lolled about the poop waiting tilltheir snail's pace would bring them to the anchorage. Willie Smee, thesupercargo, emerged from the cabin, conspicuous in his shore clothes. The mate glanced at his shirt, of the finest and whitest silk, andgiggled significantly. 

"Dance, to-night, I suppose?" Grief observed. 

"No, " said the mate. "It's Taitua. Willie's stuck on her. "

"Catch me, " the supercargo disclaimed. 

"Then she's stuck on you, and it's all the same, " the mate went on. "Youwon't be ashore half an hour before you'll have a flower behind yourear, a wreath on your head, and your arm around Taitua. "

"Simple jealousy, " Willie Smee sniffed. "You'd like to have heryourself, only you can't. "

"I can't find shirts like that, that's why. I'll bet you half a crownyou won't sail from Fitu-Iva with that shirt. "

"And if Taitua doesn't get it, it's an even break Tui Tulifau does, "Grief warned. "Better not let him spot that shirt, or it's all day withit. "

"That's right, " Captain Boig agreed, turning his head from watching thehouse lights on the shore. "Last voyage he fined one of my Kanakas outof a fancy belt and sheath-knife. " He turned to the mate. "You can letgo any time, Mr. Marsh. Don't give too much slack. There's no sign ofwind, and in the morning we may shift opposite the copra-sheds. "

A minute later the anchor rumbled down. The whaleboat, already hoistedout, lay alongside, and the shore-going party dropped into it. Save forthe Kanakas, who were all bent for shore, only Grief and the supercargowere in the boat. At the head of the little coral-stone pier WillieSmee, with an apologetic gurgle, separated from his employer anddisappeared down an avenue of palms. Grief turned in the oppositedirection past the front of the old mission church. Here, amongthe graves on the beach, lightly clad in _ahu's_ and _lava-lavas_, flower-crowned and garlanded, with great phosphorescent hibiscusblossoms in their hair, youths and maidens were dancing. Farther on, Grief passed the long, grass-built _himine_ house, where a few scoreof the elders sat in long rows chanting the old hymns taught them byforgotten missionaries. He passed also the palace of Tui Tulifau, where, by the lights and sounds, he knew the customary revelry was goingon. For of the happy South Sea isles, Fitu-Iva was the happiest. Theyfeasted and frolicked at births and deaths, and the dead and the unbornwere likewise feasted. 

Grief held steadily along the Broom Road, which curved and twistedthrough a lush growth of flowers and fern-like algarobas. The warm airwas rich with perfume, and overhead, outlined against the stars, werefruit-burdened mangoes, stately avocado trees, and slender-tufted palms. Every here and there were grass houses. Voices and laughter rippledthrough the darkness. Out on the water flickering lights and soft-voicedchoruses marked the fishers returning from the reef. 

At last Grief stepped aside from the road, stumbling over a pig thatgrunted indignantly. Looking through an open door, he saw a stout andelderly native sitting on a heap of mats a dozen deep. From time totime, automatically, he brushed his naked legs with a cocoa-nut-fibrefly-flicker. He wore glasses, and was reading methodically in what Griefknew to be an English Bible. For this was Ieremia, his trader, so namedfrom the prophet Jeremiah. 

Ieremia was lighter-skinned than the Fitu-Ivans, as was natural in afull-blooded Samoan. Educated by the missionaries, as lay teacher he hadserved their cause well over in the cannibal atolls to the westward. Asa reward, he had been sent to the paradise of Fitu-Iva, where all wereor had been good converts, to gather in the backsliders. Unfortunately, Ieremia had become too well educated. A stray volume of Darwin, anagging wife, and a pretty Fitu-Ivan widow had driven him into the ranksof the backsliders. It was not a case of apostasy. The effect of Darwinhad been one of intellectual fatigue. What was the use of trying tounderstand this vastly complicated and enigmatical world, especiallywhen one was married to a nagging woman? As Ieremia slackened in hislabours, the mission board threatened louder and louder to send him backto the atolls, while his wife's tongue grew correspondingly sharper. TuiTulifau was a sympathetic monarch, whose queen, on occasions when he wasparticularly drunk, was known to beat him. For political reasons--thequeen belonging to as royal stock as himself and her brother commandingthe army--Tui Tulifau could not divorce her, but he could and diddivorce Ieremia, who promptly took up with commercial life and the ladyof his choice. As an independent trader he had failed, chiefly becauseof the disastrous patronage of Tui Tulifau. To refuse credit to thatmerry monarch was to invite confiscation; to grant him credit wascertain bankruptcy. After a year's idleness on the beach, leremia hadbecome David Grief's trader, and for a dozen years his service hadbeen honourable and efficient, for Grief had proven the first man whosuccessfully refused credit to the king or who collected when it hadbeen accorded. 

Ieremia looked gravely over the rims of his glasses when his employerentered, gravely marked the place in the Bible and set it aside, andgravely shook hands. 

"I am glad you came in person, " he said. 

"How else could I come?" Grief laughed. 

But Ieremia had no sense of humour, and he ignored the remark. 

"The commercial situation on the island is damn bad, " he said with greatsolemnity and an unctuous mouthing of the many-syllabled words. "Myledger account is shocking. "

"Trade bad?"

"On the contrary. It has been excellent. The shelves are empty, exceedingly empty. But----" His eyes glistened proudly. "But there aremany goods remaining in the storehouse; I have kept it carefullylocked. "

"Been allowing Tui Tulifau too much credit?"

"On the contrary. There has been no credit at all. And every old accounthas been settled up. "

"I don't follow you, Ieremia, " Grief confessed. "What's thejoke?--shelves empty, no credit, old accounts all square, storehousecarefully locked--what's the answer?"

Ieremia did not reply immediately. Reaching under the rear corner of themats, he drew forth a large cash-box. Grief noted and wondered thatit was not locked. The Samoan had always been fastidiously cautious inguarding cash. The box seemed filled with paper money. He skinned offthe top note and passed it over. 

"There is the answer. "

Grief glanced at a fairly well executed banknote. "_The First Royal Bankof Fitu-Iva will pay to bearer on demand one pound sterling_, " he read. In the centre was the smudged likeness of a native face. At the bottomwas the signature of Tui Tulifau, and the signature of Fulualea, withthe printed information appended, "_Chancellor of the Exchequer. _"

"Who the deuce is Fulualea?" Grief demanded. "It's Fijian, isn'tit?--meaning the feathers of the sun?"

"Just so. It means the feathers of the sun. Thus does this baseinterloper caption himself. He has come up from Fiji to turn Fitu-Ivaupside down--that is, commercially. "

"Some one of those smart Levuka boys, I suppose?"

Ieremia shook his head sadly. "No, this low fellow is a white man anda scoundrel. He has taken a noble and high-sounding Fijian name anddragged it in the dirt to suit his nefarious purposes. He has made TuiTulifau drunk. He has made him very drunk. He has kept him very drunkall the time. In return, he has been made Chancellor of the Exchequerand other things. He has issued this false paper and compelled thepeople to receive it. He has levied a store tax, a copra tax, and atobacco tax. There are harbour dues and regulations, and other taxes. But the people are not taxed--only the traders. When the copra tax waslevied, I lowered the purchasing price accordingly. Then the peoplebegan to grumble, and Feathers of the Sun passed a new law, settingthe old price back and forbidding any man to lower it. Me he fined twopounds and five pigs, it being well known that I possessed five pigs. You will find them entered in the ledger. Hawkins, who is trader forthe Fulcrum Company, was fined first pigs, then gin, and, because hecontinued to make loud conversation, the army came and burned his store. When I declined to sell, this Feathers of the Sun fined me once more andpromised to burn the store if again I offended. So I sold all that wason the shelves, and there is the box full of worthless paper. I shallbe chagrined if you pay me my salary in paper, but it would be just, nomore than just. Now, what is to be done?"

Grief shrugged his shoulders. "I must first see this Feathers of the Sunand size up the situation. "

"Then you must see him soon, " Ieremia advised. "Else he will have anaccumulation of many fines against you. Thus does he absorb all thecoin of the realm. He has it all now, save what has been buried in theground. "

III

On his way back along the Broom Road, under the lighted lamps thatmarked the entrance to the palace grounds, Grief encountered a short, rotund gentleman, in unstarched ducks, smooth-shaven and of floridcomplexion, who was just emerging. Something about his tentative, saturated gait was familiar. Grief knew it on the instant. On thebeaches of a dozen South Sea ports had he seen it before. 

"Of all men, Cornelius Deasy!" he cried. 

"If it ain't Grief himself, the old devil, " was the return greeting, asthey shook hands. 

"If you'll come on board I've some choice smoky Irish, " Grief invited. 

Cornelius threw back his shoulders and stiffened. 

"Nothing doin', Mr. Grief. 'Tis Fulualea I am now. No blarneyin' ofold times for me. Also, and by the leave of his gracious Majesty KingTulifau, 'tis Chancellor of the Exchequer I am, an' Chief Justice I am, save in moments of royal sport when the king himself chooses to toy withthe wheels of justice. "

Grief whistled his amazement. "So you're Feathers of the Sun!"

"I prefer the native idiom, " was the correction. "Fulualea, an' itplease you. Not forgettin' old times, Mr. Grief, it sorrows the heartof me to break you the news. You'll have to pay your legitimate importduties same as any other trader with mind intent on robbin' the gentlePolynesian savage on coral isles implanted. ----Where was I? Ah! Iremember. You've violated the regulations. With malice intent have youentered the port of Fitu-Iva after sunset without sidelights burnin'. Don't interrupt. With my own eyes did I see you. For which offence areyou fined the sum of five pounds. Have you any gin? 'Tis a seriousoffence. Not lightly are the lives of the mariners of our commodiousport to be risked for the savin' of a penny'orth of oil. Did I ask: haveyou any gin? Tis the harbour master that asks. "

"You've taken a lot on your shoulders, " Grief grinned. 

"'Tis the white man's burden. These rapscallion traders have beenputtin' it all over poor Tui Tulif, the best-hearted old monarchthat ever sat a South Sea throne an' mopped grog-root from the imperialcalabash. 'Tis I, Cornelius--Fulualea, rather--that am here to seejustice done. Much as I dislike the doin' of it, as harbour master 'tismy duty to find you guilty of breach of quarantine. "

"Quarantine?"

"'Tis the rulin' of the port doctor. No intercourse with the shore tillthe ship is passed. What dire calamity to the confidin' native ifchicken pox or whoopin' cough was aboard of you! Who is there to protectthe gentle, confidin' Polynesian? I, Fulualea, the Feathers of the Sun, on my high mission. "

"Who in hell is the port doctor?" Grief queried. 

"'Tis me, Fulualea. Your offence is serious. Consider yourself finedfive cases of first-quality Holland gin. "

Grief laughed heartily. "We'll compromise, Cornelius. Come aboard andhave a drink. "

The Feathers of the Sun waved the proffer aside grandly. "'Tis bribery. I'll have none of it--me faithful to my salt. And wherefore did you notpresent your ship's papers? As chief of the custom house you are finedfive pounds and two more cases of gin. "

"Look here, Cornelius. A joke's a joke, but this one has gone farenough. This is not Levuka. I've half a mind to pull your nose for you. You can't buck me. "

The Feathers of the Sun retreated unsteadily and in alarm. 

"Lay no violence on me, " he threatened. "You're right. This is notLevuka. And by the same token, with Tui Tulifau and the royal armybehind me, buck you is just the thing I can and will. You'll pay themfines promptly, or I'll confiscate your vessel. You're not the first. What does that Chink pearl-buyer, Peter Gee, do but slip into harbour, violatin' all regulations an' makin' rough house for the matter of afew paltry fines. No; he wouldn't pay 'em, and he's on the beach nowthinkin' it over. "

"You don't mean to say----"

"Sure an' I do. In the high exercise of office I seized his schooner. Afifth of the loyal army is now in charge on board of her. She'll be soldthis day week. Some ten tons of shell in the hold, and I'm wonderin'if I can trade it to you for gin. I can promise you a rare bargain. Howmuch gin did you say you had?"

"Still more gin, eh?"

"An' why not? 'Tis a royal souse is Tui Tulifau. Sure it keeps my witsworkin' overtime to supply him, he's that amazin' liberal with it. Thewhole gang of hanger-on chiefs is perpetually loaded to the guards. It'sdisgraceful. Are you goin' to pay them fines, Mr. Grief, or is it toharsher measures I'll be forced?"

Grief turned impatiently on his heel. 

"Cornelius, you're drunk. Think it over and come to your senses. Theold rollicking South Sea days are gone. You can't play tricks like thatnow. "

"If you think you're goin' on board, Mr. Grief, I'll save you thetrouble. I know your kind, I foresaw your stiff-necked stubbornness. An'it's forestalled you are. 'Tis on the beach you'll find your crew. Thevessel's seized. "

Grief turned back on him in the half-belief still that he was joking. Fulualea again retreated in alarm. The form of a large man loomed besidehim in the darkness. 

"Is it you, Uiliami?" Fulualea crooned. "Here is another sea pirate. Stand by me with the strength of thy arm, O Herculean brother. "

"Greeting, Uiliami, " Grief said. "Since when has Fitu-Iva come to berun by a Levuka beachcomber? He says my schooner has been seized. Is ittrue?"

"It is true, " Uiliami boomed from his deep chest. "Have you any moresilk shirts like Willie Smee's? Tui Tulifau would like such a shirt. Hehas heard of it. "

"'Tis all the same, " Fulualea interrupted. "Shirts or schooners, theking shall have them. "

"Rather high-handed, Cornelius, " Grief murmured. "It's rank piracy. Youseized my vessel without giving me a chance. "

"A chance is it? As we stood here, not five minutes gone, didn't yourefuse to pay your fines?"

"But she was already seized. "

"Sure, an' why not? Didn't I know you'd refuse? 'Tis all fair, an' noinjustice done--Justice, the bright, particular star at whose shiningaltar Cornelius Deasy--or Fulualea, 'tis the same thing--ever worships. Get thee gone, Mr. Trader, or I'll set the palace guards on you. Uiliami, 'tis a desperate character, this trader man. Call the guards. "

Uiliami blew the whistle suspended on his broad bare chest by a cordof cocoanut sennit. Grief reached out an angry hand for Cornelius, whotitubated into safety behind Uiliami's massive bulk. A dozen strappingPolynesians, not one under six feet, ran down the palace walk and rangedbehind their commander. 

"Get thee gone, Mr. Trader, " Cornelius ordered. "The interview isterminated. We'll try your several cases in the mornin'. Appear promptlyat the palace at ten o'clock to answer to the followin' charges, towit: breach of the peace; seditious and treasonable utterance; violentassault on the chief magistrate with intent to cut, wound, maim, an'bruise; breach of quarantine; violation of harbour regulations; andgross breakage of custom house rules. In the mornin', fellow, in themornin', justice shall be done while the breadfruit falls. And the Lordhave mercy on your soul. "

III

Before the hour set for the trial Grief, accompanied by Peter Gee, wonaccess to Tui Tulifau. The king, surrounded by half a dozen chiefs, layon mats under the shade of the avocados in the palace compound. Earlyas was the hour, palace maids were industriously serving squarefaces ofgin. The king was glad to see his old friend Davida, and regretfulthat he had run foul of the new regulations. Beyond that he steadfastlyavoided discussion of the matter in hand. All protests of theexpropriated traders were washed away in proffers of gin. "Have adrink, " was his invariable reply, though once he unbosomed himselfenough to say that Feathers of the Sun was a wonderful man. Never hadpalace affairs been so prosperous. Never had there been so much moneyin the treasury, nor so much gin in circulation. "Well pleased am I withFulualea, " he concluded. "Have a drink. "

"We've got to get out of this _pronto_, " Grief whispered to Peter Gee afew minutes later, "or we'll be a pair of boiled owls. Also, I am to betried for arson, or heresy, or leprosy, or something, in a few minutes, and I must control my wits. "

As they withdrew from the royal presence, Grief caught a glimpse ofSepeli, the queen. She was peering out at her royal spouse and hisfellow tipplers, and the frown on her face gave Grief his cue. Whateverwas to be accomplished must be through her. 

In another shady corner of the big compound Cornelius was holding court. He had been at it early, for when Grief arrived the case of Willie Smeewas being settled. The entire royal army, save that portion in charge ofthe seized vessels, was in attendance. 

"Let the defendant stand up, " said Cornelius, "and receive the just andmerciful sentence of the Court for licentious and disgraceful conductunbecomin' a supercargo. The defendant says he has no money. Very well. The Court regrets it has no calaboose. In lieu thereof, and in viewof the impoverished condition of the defendant, the Court fines saiddefendant one white silk shirt of the same kind, make and quality atpresent worn by defendant. "

Cornelius nodded to several of the soldiers, who led the supercargo awaybehind an avocado tree. A minute later he emerged, minus the garment inquestion, and sat down beside Grief. 

"What have you been up to?" Grief asked. 

"Blessed if I know. What crimes have you committed?"

"Next case, " said Cornelius in his most extra-legal tones. "David Grief, defendant, stand up. The Court has considered the evidence in the case, or cases, and renders the following judgment, to wit:--Shut up!" hethundered at Grief, who had attempted to interrupt. "I tell you theevidence has been considered, deeply considered. It is no wish of theCourt to lay additional hardship on the defendant, and the Court takesthis opportunity to warn the defendant that he is liable for contempt. For open and wanton violation of harbour rules and regulations, breachof quarantine, and disregard of shipping laws, his schooner, the_Cantani_, is hereby declared confiscated to the Government ofFitu-Iva, to be sold at public auction, ten days from date, withall appurtenances, fittings, and cargo thereunto pertaining. For thepersonal crimes of the defendant, consisting of violent and turbulentconduct and notorious disregard of the laws of the realm, he is fined inthe sum of one hundred pounds sterling and fifteen cases of gin. I willnot ask you if you have anything to say. But will you pay? That is thequestion. "

Grief shook his head. 

"In the meantime, " Cornelius went on, "consider yourself a prisoner atlarge. There is no calaboose in which to confine you. And finally, ithas come to the knowledge of the Court, that at an early hour of thismorning, the defendant did wilfully and deliberately send Kanakas in hisemploy out on the reef to catch fish for breakfast. This is distinctlyan infringement of the rights of the fisherfolk of Fitu-Iva. Homeindustries must be protected. This conduct of the defendant is severelyreprehended by the Court, and on any repetition of the offence theoffender and offenders, all and sundry, shall be immediately put to hardlabour on the improvement of the Broom Road. The court is dismissed. "

As they left the compound, Peter Gee nudged Grief to look where TuiTulifau reclined on the mats. The supercargo's shirt, stretched andbulged, already encased the royal fat. 

IV

"The thing is clear, " said Peter Gee, at a conference in Ieremia'shouse. "Deasy has about gathered in all the coin. In the meantime hekeeps the king going on the gin he's captured, on our vessels. As soonas he can maneuver it he'll take the cash and skin out on your craft ormine. "

"He is a low fellow, " Ieremia declared, pausing in the polishing of hisspectacles. "He is a scoundrel and a blackguard. He should be struck bya dead pig, by a particularly dead pig. "

"The very thing, " said Grief. "He shall be struck by a dead pig. Ieremia, I should not be surprised if you were the man to strike himwith the dead pig. Be sure and select a particularly dead one. TuiTulifau is down at the boat house broaching a case of my Scotch. I'mgoing up to the palace to work kitchen politics with the queen. In themeantime you get a few things on your shelves from the store-room. I'lllend you some, Hawkins. And you, Peter, see the German store. Start inall of you, selling for paper. Remember, I'll back the losses. IfI'm not mistaken, in three days we'll have a national council or arevolution. You, Ieremia, start messengers around the island to thefishers and farmers, everywhere, even to the mountain goat-hunters. Tellthem to assemble at the palace three days from now. "

"But the soldiers, " Ieremia objected. 

"I'll take care of them. They haven't been paid for two months. Besides, Uiliami is the queen's brother. Don't have too much on your shelves at atime. As soon as the soldiers show up with paper, stop selling. "

"Then will they burn the stores, " said Ieremia. 

"Let them. King Tulifau will pay for it if they do. "

"Will he pay for my shirt?" Willie Smee demanded. 

"That is purely a personal and private matter between you and TuiTulifau, " Grief answered. 

"It's beginning to split up the back, " the supercargo lamented. "Inoticed that much this morning when he hadn't had it on ten minutes. Itcost me thirty shillings and I only wore it once. "

"Where shall I get a dead pig?" Ieremia asked. 

"Kill one, of course, " said Grief. "Kill a small one. "

"A small one is worth ten shillings. "

"Then enter it in your ledger under operating expenses. " Grief paused amoment. "If you want it particularly dead, it would be well to kill itat once. "

V

"You have spoken well, Davida, " said Queen Sepeli. "This Fulualea hasbrought a madness with him, and Tui Tulifau is drowned in gin. If hedoes not grant the big council, I shall give him a beating. He is easyto beat when he is in drink. "

She doubled up her fist, and such were her Amazonian proportions and thedetermination in her face that Grief knew the council would be called. So akin was the Fitu-Ivan tongue to the Samoan that he spoke it like anative. 

"And you, Uiliami, " he said, "have pointed out that the soldiers havedemanded coin and refused the paper Fulualea has offered them. Tell themto take the paper and see that they be paid to-morrow. "

"Why trouble?" Uiliami objected. "The king remains happily drunk. Thereis much money in the treasury. And I am content. In my house are twocases of gin and much goods from Hawkins's store. "

"Excellent pig, O my brother!" Sepeli erupted. "Has not Davida spoken?Have you no ears? When the gin and the goods in your house are gone, andno more traders come with gin and goods, and Feathers of the Sun has runaway to Levuka with all the cash money of Fitu-Iva, what then will youdo? Cash money is silver and gold, but paper is only paper. I tell youthe people are grumbling. There is no fish in the palace. Yams andsweet potatoes seem to have fled from the soil, for they come not. Themountain dwellers have sent no wild goat in a week. Though Feathers ofthe Sun compels the traders to buy copra at the old price, the peoplesell not, for they will have none of the paper money. Only to-day have Isent messengers to twenty houses. There are no eggs. Has Feathers of theSun put a blight upon the hens? I do not know. All I know is that thereare no eggs. Well it is that those who drink much eat little, else wouldthere be a palace famine. Tell your soldiers to receive their pay. Letit be in his paper money. "

"And remember, " Grief warned, "though there be selling in the stores, when the soldiers come with their paper it will be refused. And in threedays will be the council, and Feathers of the Sun will be as dead as adead pig. "

VI

The day of the council found the population of the island crowded intothe capital. By canoe and whaleboat, on foot and donkey-back, the fivethousand inhabitants of Fitu-Iva had trooped in. The three interveningdays had had their share of excitement. At first there had been muchselling from the sparse shelves of the traders. But when the soldiersappeared, their patronage was declined and they were told to go toFulualea for coin. "Says it not so on the face of the paper, " thetraders demanded, "that for the asking the coin will be given inexchange?"

Only the strong authority of Uiliami had prevented the burning of thetraders' houses. As it was, one of Grief's copra-sheds went up in smokeand was duly charged by Ieremia to the king's account. Ieremia himselfhad been abused and mocked, and his spectacles broken. The skin wasoff Willie Smee's knuckles. This had been caused by three boisteroussoldiers who violently struck their jaws thereon in quick succession. Captain Boig was similarly injured. Peter Gee had come off undamaged, because it chanced that it was bread-baskets and not jaws that struckhim on the fists. 

Tui Tulifau, with Sepeli at his side and surrounded by his convivialchiefs, sat at the head of the council in the big compound. Hisright eye and jaw were swollen as if he too had engaged in assaultingsomebody's fist. It was palace gossip that morning that Sepeli hadadministered a conjugal beating. At any rate, her spouse was sober, and his fat bulged spiritlessly through the rips in Willie Smee's silkshirt. His thirst was prodigious, and he was continually served withyoung drinking nuts. Outside the compound, held back by the army, wasthe mass of the common people. Only the lesser chiefs, village maids, village beaux, and talking men with their staffs of office werepermitted inside. Cornelius Deasy, as befitted a high and favouredofficial, sat near to the right hand of the king. On the left of thequeen, opposite Cornelius and surrounded by the white traders he wasto represent, sat Ieremia. Bereft of his spectacles, he peeredshort-sightedly across at the Chancellor of the Exchequer. 

In turn, the talking man of the windward coast, the talking man of theleeward coast, and the talking man of the mountain villages, each backedby his group of lesser talking men and chiefs, arose and made oration. What they said was much the same. They grumbled about the paper money. Affairs were not prosperous. No more copra was being smoked. The peoplewere suspicious. To such a pass had things come that all people wantedto pay their debts and no one wanted to be paid. Creditors made apractice of running away from debtors. The money was cheap. Prices weregoing up and commodities were getting scarce. It cost three times theordinary price to buy a fowl, and then it was tough and like to dieof old age if not immediately sold. The outlook was gloomy. There weresigns and omens. There was a plague of rats in some districts. The cropswere bad. The custard apples were small. The best-bearing avocado on thewindward coast had mysteriously shed all its leaves. The taste hadgone from the mangoes. The plantains were eaten by a worm. The fish hadforsaken the ocean and vast numbers of tiger-sharks appeared. The wildgoats had fled to inaccessible summits. The poi in the poi-pits hadturned bitter. There were rumblings in the mountains, night-walkingof spirits; a woman of Punta-Puna had been struck speechless, and afive-legged she-goat had been born in the village of Eiho. And that allwas due to the strange money of Fulualea was the firm conviction of theelders in the village councils assembled. 

Uiliami spoke for the army. His men were discontented and mutinous. Though by royal decree the traders were bidden accept the money, yet didthey refuse it. He would not say, but it looked as if the strange moneyof Fulualea had something to do with it. 

Ieremia, as talking man of the traders, next spoke. When he arose, itwas noticeable that he stood with legs spraddled over a large grassbasket. He dwelt upon the cloth of the traders, its variety and beautyand durability, which so exceeded the Fitu-Ivan wet-pounded tapa, fragile and coarse. No one wore tapa any more. Yet all had worntapa, and nothing but tapa, before the traders came. There was themosquito-netting, sold for a song, that the cleverest Fitu-Ivannet-weaver could not duplicate in a thousand years. He enlarged on theincomparable virtues of rifles, axes, and steel fishhooks, down throughneedles, thread and cotton fish-lines to white flour and kerosene oil. 

He expounded at length, with firstlies and secondlies and all minorsubdivisions of argument, on organization, and order, and civilization. He contended that the trader was the bearer of civilization, and thatthe trader must be protected in his trade else he would not come. Overto the westward were islands which would not protect the traders. Whatwas the result? The traders would not come, and the people were likewild animals. They wore no clothes, no silk shirts (here he peered andblinked significantly at the king), and they ate one another. 

The queer paper of the Feathers of the Sun was not money. The tradersknew what money was, and they would not receive it. If Fitu-Ivapersisted in trying to make them receive it they would go away and nevercome back. And then the Fitu-Ivans, who had forgotten how to make tapa, would run around naked and eat one another. 

Much more he said, talking a solid hour, and always coming back to whattheir dire condition would be when the traders came no more. "And inthat day, " he perorated, "how will the Fitu-Ivan be known in the greatworld? _Kai-kanak_* will men call him. '_Kiakanak! Kai-kanak!_"

 * Man-eater. 

Tui Tulifau spoke briefly. The case had been presented, he said, for thepeople, the army, and the traders. It was now time for Feathers of theSun to present his side. It could not be denied that he had wroughtwonders with his financial system. "Many times has he explained to methe working of his system, " Tui Tulif au concluded. "It is very simple. And now he will explain it to you. "

It was a conspiracy of the white traders, Cornelius contended. Ieremiawas right so far as concerned the manifold blessings of white flourand kerosene oil. Fitu-Iva did not want to become _kai-kanak_. Fitu-Ivawanted civilization; it wanted more and more civilization. Now that wasthe very point, and they must follow him closely. Paper money was anearmark of higher civilization. That was why he, the Feathers of theSun, had introduced it. And that was why the traders opposed it. Theydid not want to see Fitu-Iva civilized. Why did they come across the farocean stretches with their goods to Fitu-Iva? He, the Feathers of theSun, would tell them why, to their faces, in grand council assembled. Intheir own countries men were too civilized to let the traders make theimmense profits that they made out of the Fitu-Ivans. If the Fitu-Ivansbecame properly civilized, the trade of the traders would be gone. Inthat day every Fitu-Ivan could become a trader if he pleased. 

That was why the white traders fought the system of paper money, thathe, the Feathers of the Sun, had brought. Why was he called the Feathersof the Sun? Because he was the Light-Bringer from the World Beyond theSky. The paper money was the light. The robbing white traders could notflourish in the light. Therefore they fought the light. 

He would prove it to the good people of Fitu-Iva, and he would proveit out of the mouths of his enemies. It was a well-known fact that allhighly civilized countries had paper-money systems. He would ask Ieremiaif this was not so. 

Ieremia did not answer. 

"You see, " Cornelius went on, "he makes no answer. He cannot deny whatis true. England, France, Germany, America, all the great _Papalangi_countries, have the paper-money system. It works. From century tocentury it works. I challenge you, Ieremia, as an honest man, as onewho was once a zealous worker in the Lord's vineyard, I challenge you todeny that in the great _Papalangi_ countries the system works. "

Ieremia could not deny, and his fingers played nervously with thefastening of the basket on his knees. 

"You see, it is as I have said, " Cornelius continued. "Ieremia agreesthat it is so. Therefore, I ask you, all good people of Fitu-Iva, ifa system is good for the _Papalangi_ countries, why is it not good forFitu-Iva?"

"It is not the same!" Ieremia cried. "The paper of the Feathers of theSun is different from the paper of the great countries. "

That Cornelius had been prepared for this was evident. He held up aFitu-Ivan note that was recognized by all. 

"What is that?" he demanded. 

"Paper, mere paper, " was Ieremia's reply. 

"And that?"

This time Cornelius held up a Bank of England note. 

"It is the paper money of the English, " he explained to the Council, at the same time extending it for Ieremia to examine. "Is it not true, Ieremia, that it is paper money of the English?"

Ieremia nodded reluctantly. 

"You have said that the paper money of Fitu-Iva was paper, now how aboutthis of the English? What is it?. .. . You must answer like a true man. .. All wait for your answer, Ieremia. "

"It is--it is----" the puzzled Ieremia began, then splutteredhelplessly, the fallacy beyond his penetration. 

"Paper, mere paper, " Cornelius concluded for him, imitating his haltingutterance. 

Conviction sat on the faces of all. The king clapped his handsadmiringly and murmured, "It is most clear, very clear. "

"You see, he himself acknowledges it. " Assured triumph was in Deasy'svoice and bearing. "He knows of no difference. There is no difference. 'Tis the very image of money. 'Tis money itself. "

In the meantime Grief was whispering in Ieremia's ear, who nodded andbegan to speak. 

"But it is well known to all the _Papalangi_ that the English Governmentwill pay coin money for the paper. "

Deasy's victory was now absolute. He held aloft a Fitu-Ivan note. 

"Is it not so written on this paper as well?"

Again Grief whispered. 

"That Fitu-Iva will pay coin money?" asked Ieremia

"It is so written. "

A third time Grief prompted. 

"On demand?" asked Ieremia. 

"On demand, " Cornelius assured him. 

"Then I demand coin money now, " said Ieremia, drawing a small package ofnotes from the pouch at his girdle. 

Cornelius scanned the package with a quick, estimating eye. 

"Very well, " he agreed. "I shall give you the coin money now. How much?"

"And we will see the system work, " the king proclaimed, partaking in hisChancellor's triumph. 

"You have heard!--He will give coin money now!" Ieremia cried in a loudvoice to the assemblage. 

At the same time he plunged both hands in the basket and drew forth manypackages of Fitu-Ivan notes. It was noticed that a peculiar odour wasadrift about the council. 

"I have here, " Ieremia announced, "one thousand and twenty-eight poundstwelve shillings and sixpence. Here is a sack to put the coin money in. "

Cornelius recoiled. He had not expected such a sum, and everywhere aboutthe council his uneasy eyes showed him chiefs and talking men drawingout bundles of notes. The army, its two months' pay in its hands, pressed forward to the edge of the council, while behind it thepopulace, with more money, invaded the compound. 

"'Tis a run on the bank you've precipitated, " he said reproachfully toGrief. 

"Here is the sack to put the coin money in, " Ieremia urged. 

"It must be postponed, " Cornelius said desperately, "'Tis not in bankinghours. "

Ieremia flourished a package of money. "Nothing of banking hours iswritten here. It says on demand, and I now demand. "

"Let them come to-morrow, O Tui Tulifau, " Cornelius appealed to theking. "They shall be paid to-morrow. "

Tui Tulifau hesitated, but his spouse glared at him, her brawny armtensing as the fist doubled into a redoubtable knot, Tui Tulifau triedto look away, but failed. He cleared his throat nervously. 

"We will see the system work, " he decreed. "The people have come far. "

"'Tis good money you're asking me to pay out, " Deasy muttered in a lowvoice to the king. 

Sepeli caught what he said, and grunted so savagely as to startle theking, who involuntarily shrank away from her. 

"Forget not the pig, " Grief whispered to Ieremia, who immediately stoodup. 

With a sweeping gesture he stilled the babel of voices that wasbeginning to rise. 

"It was an ancient and honourable custom of Fitu-Iva, " he said, "thatwhen a man was proved a notorious evildoer his joints were broken witha club and he was staked out at low water to be fed upon alive by thesharks. Unfortunately, that day is past. Nevertheless another ancientand honourable custom remains with us. You all know what it is. When aman is a proven thief and liar he shall be struck with a dead pig. "

His right hand went into the basket, and, despite the lack of hisspectacles, the dead pig that came into view landed accurately onDeasy's neck. With such force was it thrown that the Chancellor, inhis sitting position, toppled over sidewise. Before he could recover, Sepeli, with an agility unexpected of a woman who weighed two hundredand sixty pounds, had sprung across to him. One hand clutched his shirtcollar, the other hand brandished the pig, and amid the vast uproar of adelighted kingdom she royally swatted him. 

There remained nothing for Tui Tulifau but to put a good face on hisfavourite's disgrace, and his mountainous fat lay back on the mats andshook in a gale of Gargantuan laughter. 

When Sepeli dropped both pig and Chancellor, a talking man from thewindward coast picked up the carcass. Cornelius was on his feet andrunning, when the pig caught him on the legs and tripped him. The peopleand the army, with shouts and laughter, joined in the sport. 

Twist and dodge as he would, everywhere the ex-Chancellor of theExchequer was met or overtaken by the flying pig. He scuttled like afrightened rabbit in and out among the avocados and the palms. No handwas laid upon him, and his tormentors made way before him, but ever theypursued, and ever the pig flew as fast as hands could pick it up. 

As the chase died away down the Broom Road, Grief led the traders to theroyal treasury, and the day was well over ere the last Fitu-Ivan banknote had been redeemed with coin. 

VII

Through the mellow cool of twilight a man paddled out from a clump ofjungle to the _Cantani_. It was a leaky and abandoned dugout, and hepaddled slowly, desisting from time to time in order to bale. TheKanaka sailors giggled gleefully as he came alongside and painfullydrew himself over the rail. He was bedraggled and filthy, and seemedhalf-dazed. 

"Could I speak a word with you, Mr. Grief?" he asked sadly and humbly. 

"Sit to leeward and farther away, " Grief answered. "A little fartheraway. That's better. "

Cornelius sat down on the rail and held his head in both his hands. 

"'Tis right, " he said. "I'm as fragrant as a recent battlefield. My headaches to burstin'. My neck is fair broken. The teeth are loose in myjaws. There's nests of hornets buzzin' in my ears. My medulla oblongatais dislocated. I've been through earthquake and pestilence, and theheavens have rained pigs. " He paused with a sigh that ended in a groan. "'Tis a vision of terrible death. One that the poets never dreamed. Tobe eaten by rats, or boiled in oil, or pulled apart by wild horses--thatwould be unpleasant. But to be beaten to death with a dead pig!"He shuddered at the awfulness of it. "Sure it transcends the humanimagination. "

Captain Boig sniffed audibly, moved his canvas chair farther towindward, and sat down again. 

"I hear you're runnin' over to Yap, Mr. Grief, " Cornelius went on. "An'two things I'm wantin' to beg of you: a passage an' the nip of the oldsmoky I refused the night you landed. "

Grief clapped his hands for the black steward and ordered soap andtowels. 

"Go for'ard, Cornelius, and take a scrub first, " he said. "The boy willbring you a pair of dungarees and a shirt. And by the way, before yougo, how was it we found more coin in the treasury than paper you hadissued?"

"'Twas the stake of my own I'd brought with me for the adventure. "

"We've decided to charge the demurrage and other expenses and loss toTui Tulifau, " Grief said. "So the balance we found will be turned overto you. But ten shillings must be deducted. "

"For what?"

"Do you think dead pigs grow on trees? The sum of ten shillings for thatpig is entered in the accounts. "

Cornelius bowed his assent with a shudder. 

"Sure it's grateful I am it wasn't a fifteen-shilling pig or atwenty-shilling one. "

Chapter Eight--THE PEARLS OF PARLAY

I

The Kanaka helmsman put the wheel down, and the _Malahini_ slipped intothe eye of the wind and righted to an even keel. Her head-sails emptied, there was a rat-tat of reef-points and quick shifting of boom-tackles, and she was heeled over and filled away on the other tack. Though it wasearly morning and the wind brisk, the five white men who lounged onthe poop-deck were scantily clad. David Grief, and his guest, GregoryMulhall, an Englishman, were still in pajamas, their naked feet thrustinto Chinese slippers. The captain and mate were in thin undershirts andunstarched duck pants, while the supercargo still held in his handsthe undershirt he was reluctant to put on. The sweat stood out on hisforehead, and he seemed to thrust his bare chest thirstily into the windthat did not cool. 

"Pretty muggy, for a breeze like this, " he complained. 

"And what's it doing around in the west? That's what I want to know, "was Grief's contribution to the general plaint. 

"It won't last, and it ain't been there long, " said Hermann, the Hollandmate. "She is been chop around all night--five minutes here, ten minutesthere, one hour somewhere other quarter. "

"Something makin ', something makin ', " Captain Warfield croaked, spreading his bushy beard with the fingers of both hands and shovingthe thatch of his chin into the breeze in a vain search for coolness. "Weather's been crazy for a fortnight. Haven't had the proper trades inthree weeks. Everything's mixed up. Barometer was pumping at sunset lastnight, and it's pumping now, though the weather sharps say it don't meananything. All the same, I've got a prejudice against seeing it pump. Gets on my nerves, sort of, you know. She was pumping that way the timewe lost the _Lancaster_. I was only an apprentice, but I can rememberthat well enough. Brand new, four-masted steel ship; first voyage; brokethe old man's heart. He'd been forty years in the company. Just fadedway and died the next year. "

Despite the wind and the early hour, the heat was suffocating. The windwhispered coolness, but did not deliver coolness. It might have blownoff the Sahara, save for the extreme humidity with which it was laden. There was no fog nor mist, nor hint of fog or mist, yet the dimness ofdistance produced the impression. There were no defined clouds, yetso thickly were the heavens covered by a messy cloud-pall that the sunfailed to shine through. 

"Ready about!" Captain Warfield ordered with slow sharpness. 

The brown, breech-clouted Kanaka sailors moved languidly but quickly tohead-sheets and boom-tackles. 

"Hard a-lee!"

The helmsman ran the spokes over with no hint of gentling, and the_Malahini_ darted prettily into the wind and about. 

"Jove! she's a witch!" was Mulhall's appreciation. "I didn't know youSouth Sea traders sailed yachts. "

"She was a Gloucester fisherman originally, " Grief explained, "andthe Gloucester boats are all yachts when it comes to build, rig, andsailing. "

"But you're heading right in--why don't you make it?" came theEnglishman's criticism. 

"Try it, Captain Warfield, " Grief suggested. "Show him what a lagoonentrance is on a strong ebb. "

"Close-and-by!" the captain ordered. 

"Close-and-by, " the Kanaka repeated, easing half a spoke. 

The _Malahini_ laid squarely into the narrow passage which was thelagoon entrance _of_ a large, long, and narrow oval of an atoll. Theatoll was shaped as if three atolls, in the course of building, hadcollided and coalesced and failed to rear the partition walls. Cocoanutpalms grew in spots on the circle of sand, and there were many gapswhere the sand was too low to the sea for cocoanuts, and through whichcould be seen the protected lagoon where the water lay flat like theruffled surface of a mirror. Many square miles of water were in theirregular lagoon, all of which surged out on the ebb through the onenarrow channel. So narrow was the channel, so large the outflow ofwater, that the passage was more like the rapids of a river than themere tidal entrance to an atoll. The water boiled and whirled andswirled and drove outward in a white foam of stiff, serrated waves. Eachheave and blow on her bows of the upstanding waves of the current swungthe Malahini off the straight lead and wedged her as with wedges ofsteel toward the side of the passage. Part way in she was, when hercloseness to the coral edge compelled her to go about. On the oppositetack, broadside to the current, she swept seaward with the current'sspeed. 

"Now's the time for that new and expensive engine of yours, " Griefjeered good-naturedly. 

That the engine was a sore point with Captain Warfield was patent. Hehad begged and badgered for it, until in the end Grief had given hisconsent. 

"It will pay for itself yet, " the captain retorted, "You wait andsee. It beats insurance and you know the underwriters won't stand forinsurance in the Paumotus. "

Grief pointed to a small cutter beating up astern of them on the samecourse. 

"I'll wager a five-franc piece the little Nuhiva beats us in. "

"Sure, " Captain Warfield agreed. "She's overpowered. We're like a lineralongside of her, and we've only got forty horsepower. She's got tenhorse, and she's a little skimming dish. She could skate across thefroth of hell, but just the same she can't buck this current. It'srunning ten knots right now. "

And at the rate of ten knots, buffeted and jerkily rolled, the_Malahini_ went out to sea with the tide. 

"She'll slacken in half an hour--then we'll make headway, " CaptainWarfield said, with an irritation explained by his next words. "He hasno right to call it Parlay. It's down on the admiralty charts, and theFrench charts, too, as Hikihoho. Bougainville discovered it and named itfrom the natives. "

"What's the name matter?" the supercargo demanded, taking advantage ofspeech to pause with arms shoved into the sleeves of the undershirt. "There it is, right under our nose, and old Parlay is there with thepearls. "

"Who see them pearl?" Hermann queried, looking from one to another. 

"It's well known, " was the supercargo's reply. He turned to thesteersman: "Tai-Hotauri, what about old Parlay's pearls?"

The Kanaka, pleased and self-conscious, took and gave a spoke. 

"My brother dive for Parlay three, four month, and he make much talkabout pearl. Hikihoho very good place for pearl. "

"And the pearl-buyers have never got him to part with a pearl, " thecaptain broke in. 

"And they say he had a hatful for Armande when he sailed for Tahiti, "the supercargo carried on the tale. "That's fifteen years ago, and he'sbeen adding to it ever since--stored the shell as well. Everybody's seenthat--hundreds of tons of it. They say the lagoon's fished clean now. Maybe that's why he's announced the auction. "

"If he really sells, this will be the biggest year's output of pearls inthe Paumotus, " Grief said. 

"I say, now, look here!" Mulhall burst forth, harried by the humidheat as much as the rest of them. "What's it all about? Who's the oldbeachcomber anyway? What are all these pearls? Why so secretious aboutit?"

"Hikihoho belongs to old Parlay, " the supercargo answered. "He's got afortune in pearls, saved up for years and years, and he sent the wordout weeks ago that he'd auction them off to the buyers to-morrow. Seethose schooners' masts sticking up inside the lagoon?"

"Eight, so I see, " said Hermann. 

"What are they doing in a dinky atoll like this?" the supercargo wenton. "There isn't a schooner-load of copra a year in the place. They'vecome for the auction. That's why we're here. That's why the little_Nuhiva's_ bumping along astern there, though what she can buy is beyondme. Narii Herring--he's an English Jew half-caste--owns and runs her, and his only assets are his nerve, his debts, and his whiskey bills. He's a genius in such things. He owes so much that there isn't amerchant in Papeete who isn't interested in his welfare. They go out oftheir way to throw work in his way. They've got to, and a dandy stunt itis for Narii. Now I owe nobody. What's the result? If I fell down ina fit on the beach they'd let me lie there and die. They wouldn't loseanything. But Narii Herring?--what wouldn't they do if he fell in a fit?Their best wouldn't be too good for him. They've got too much moneytied up in him to let him lie. They'd take him into their homes andhand-nurse him like a brother. Let me tell you, honesty in paying billsain't what it's cracked up to be. "

"What's this Narii chap got to do with it?" was the Englishman'sshort-tempered demand. And, turning to Grief, he said, "What's all thispearl nonsense? Begin at the beginning. "

"You'll have to help me out, " Grief warned the others, as he began. "OldParlay is a character. From what I've seen of him I believe he's partlyand mildly insane. Anyway, here's the story: Parlay's a full-bloodedFrenchman. He told me once that he came from Paris. His accent is thetrue Parisian. He arrived down here in the old days. Went to tradingand all the rest. That's how he got in on Hikihoho. Came in trading whentrading was the real thing. About a hundred miserable Paumotans livedon the island. He married the queen--native fashion. When she died, everything was his. Measles came through, and there weren't more than adozen survivors. He fed them, and worked them, and was king. Now beforethe queen died she gave birth to a girl. That's Armande. When she wasthree he sent her to the convent at Papeete. When she was seven or eighthe sent her to France. You begin to glimpse the situation. The bestand most aristocratic convent in France was none too good for the onlydaughter of a Paumotan island king and capitalist, and you know the oldcountry French draw no colour line. She was educated like a princess, and she accepted herself in much the same way. Also, she thought she wasall-white, and never dreamed of a bar sinister. 

"Now comes the tragedy. The old man had always been cranky and erratic, and he'd played the despot on Hikihoho so long that he'd got the ideain his head that there was nothing wrong with the king--or the princesseither. When Armande was eighteen he sent for her. He had slews andslathers of money, as Yankee Bill would say. He'd built the big house onHikihoho, and a whacking fine bungalow in Papeete. She was to arrive onthe mail boat from New Zealand, and he sailed in his schooner to meether at Papeete. And he might have carried the situation off, despite thehens and bull-beasts of Papeete, if it hadn't been for the hurricane. That was the year, wasn't it, when Manu-Huhi was swept and elevenhundred drowned?"

The others nodded, and Captain Warfield said: "I was in the _Magpie_that blow, and we went ashore, all hands and the cook, _Magpie_ and all, a quarter of a mile into the cocoanuts at the head of Taiohae Bay--andit a supposedly hurricane-proof harbour. "

"Well, " Grief continued, "old Parlay got caught in the same blow, andarrived in Papeete with his hatful of pearls three weeks too late. He'dhad to jack up his schooner and build half a mile of ways before hecould get her back into the sea. 

"And in the meantime there was Armande at Papeete. Nobody called on her. She did, French fashion, make the initial calls on the Governor and theport doctor. They saw her, but neither of their hen-wives was at home toher nor returned the call. She was out of caste, without caste, thoughshe had never dreamed it, and that was the gentle way they broke theinformation to her. There was a gay young lieutenant on the Frenchcruiser. He lost his heart to her, but not his head. You can imaginethe shock to this young woman, refined, beautiful, raised like anaristocrat, pampered with the best of old France that money could buy. And you can guess the end. " He shrugged his shoulders. "There was aJapanese servant in the bungalow. He saw it. Said she did it with theproper spirit of the Samurai. Took a stiletto--no thrust, no drive, no wild rush for annihilation--took the stiletto, placed the pointcarefully against her heart, and with both hands, slowly and steadily, pressed home. 

"Old Parlay arrived after that with his pearls. There was one single oneof them, they say, worth sixty thousand francs. Peter Gee saw it, andhas told me he offered that much for it. The old man went clean off fora while. They had him strait-jacketed in the Colonial Club two days----"

"His wife's uncle, an old Paumotan, cut him out of the jacket and turnedhim loose, " the supercargo corroborated. 

"And then old Parlay proceeded to eat things up, " Grief went on. "Pumpedthree bullets into the scalawag of a lieutenant----"

"Who lay in sick bay for three months, " Captain Warfield contributed. 

"Flung a glass of wine in the Governor's face; fought a duel with theport doctor; beat up his native servants; wrecked the hospital; broketwo ribs and the collarbone of a man nurse, and escaped; and went downto his schooner, a gun in each hand, daring the chief of police and allthe gendarmes to arrest him, and sailed for Hikihoho. And they say he'snever left the island since. "

The supercargo nodded. "That was fifteen years ago, and he's neverbudged. "

"And added to his pearls, " said the captain. "He's a blithering oldlunatic. Makes my flesh creep. He's a regular Finn. "

"What's that?" Mulhall inquired. 

"Bosses the weather--that's what the natives believe, at any rate. AskTai-Hotauri there. Hey, Tai-Hotauri! what you think old Parlay do alongweather?"

"Just the same one big weather devil, " came the Kanaka's answer. "Iknow. He want big blow, he make big blow. He want no wind, no windcome. "

"A regular old Warlock, " said Mulhall. 

"No good luck them pearl, " Tai-Hotauri blurted out, rolling his headominously. "He say he sell. Plenty schooner come. Then he make bighurricane, everybody finish, you see. All native men say so. "

"It's hurricane season now, " Captain War-field laughed morosely. "They're not far wrong. It's making for something right now, and I'dfeel better if the _Malahini_ was a thousand miles away from here. "

"He is a bit mad, " Grief concluded. "I've tried to get his point ofview. It's--well, it's mixed. For eighteen years he'd centred everythingon Armande. Half the time he believes she's still alive, not yet comeback from France. That's one of the reasons he held on to the pearls. And all the time he hates white men. He never forgets they killed her, though a great deal of the time he forgets she's dead. Hello! Where'syour wind?"

The sails bellied emptily overhead, and Captain Warfield grunted hisdisgust. Intolerable as the heat had been, in the absence of wind itwas almost overpowering. The sweat oozed out on all their faces, and nowone, and again another, drew deep breaths, involuntarily questing formore air. 

"Here she comes again--an eight point haul! Boom-tackles across! Jump!"

The Kanakas sprang to the captain's orders, and for five minutes theschooner laid directly into the passage and even gained on the current. Again the breeze fell flat, then puffed from the old quarter, compellinga shift back of sheets and tackles. 

"Here comes the _Nuhiva_" Grief said. "She's got her engine on. Look ather skim. "

"All ready?" the captain asked the engineer, a Portuguese half-caste, whose head and shoulders protruded from the small hatch just for'ard ofthe cabin, and who wiped the sweat from his face with a bunch of greasywaste. 

"Sure, " he replied. 

"Then let her go. "

The engineer disappeared into his den, and a moment later the exhaustmuffler coughed and spluttered overside. But the schooner could not holdher lead. The little cutter made three feet to her two and was quicklyalongside and forging ahead. Only natives were on her deck, and the mansteering waved his hand in derisive greeting and farewell. 

"That's Narii Herring, " Grief told Mulhall. "The big fellow at thewheel--the nerviest and most conscienceless scoundrel in the Paumotus. "

Five minutes later a cry of joy from their own Kanakas centred all eyeson the _Nuhiva_. Her engine had broken down and they were overtakingher. The _Malahini's_ sailors sprang into the rigging and jeered as theywent by; the little cutter heeled over by the wind with a bone in herteeth, going backward on the tide. 

"Some engine that of ours, " Grief approved, as the lagoon opened beforethem and the course was changed across it to the anchorage. 

Captain Warfield was visibly cheered, though he merely grunted, "It'llpay for itself, never fear. "

The _Malahini_ ran well into the centre of the little fleet ere shefound swinging room to anchor. 

"There's Isaacs on the _Dolly_, " Grief observed, with a hand wave ofgreeting. "And Peter Gee's on the _Roberta_. Couldn't keep him away froma pearl sale like this. And there's Francini on the _Cactus_. They'reall here, all the buyers. Old Parlay will surely get a price. "

"They haven't repaired the engine yet, " Captain Warfield grumbledgleefully. 

He was looking across the lagoon to where the _Nuhiva's_ sails showedthrough the sparse cocoa-nuts. 

II

The house of Parlay was a big two-story frame affair, built ofCalifornia lumber, with a galvanized iron roof. So disproportionatewas it to the slender ring of the atoll that it showed out upon thesand-strip and above it like some monstrous excrescence. They of the_Malahini_ paid the courtesy visit ashore immediately after anchoring. Other captains and buyers were in the big room examining the pearls thatwere to be auctioned next day. Paumotan servants, natives of Hikihoho, and relatives of the owner, moved about dispensing whiskey and absinthe. And through the curious company moved Parlay himself, cackling andsneering, the withered wreck of what had once been a tall and powerfulman. His eyes were deep sunken and feverish, his cheeks fallen in andcavernous. The hair of his head seemed to have come out in patches, andhis mustache and imperial had shed in the same lopsided way. 

"Jove!" Mulhall muttered under his breath. "A long-legged Napoleon theThird, but burnt out, baked, and fire-crackled. And mangy! No wonder hecrooks his head to one side. He's got to keep the balance. "

"Goin' to have a blow, " was the old man's greeting to Grief. "You mustthink a lot of pearls to come a day like this. "

"They're worth going to inferno for, " Grief laughed genially back, running his eyes over the surface of the table covered by the display. 

"Other men have already made that journey for them, " old Parlay cackled. "See this one!" He pointed to a large, perfect pearl the size of a smallwalnut that lay apart on a piece of chamois. "They offered me sixtythousand francs for it in Tahiti. They'll bid as much and more for itto-morrow, if they aren't blown away. Well, that pearl, it was found bymy cousin, my cousin by marriage. He was a native, you see. Also, hewas a thief. He hid it. It was mine. His cousin, who was also mycousin--we're all related here--killed him for it and fled away in acutter to Noo-Nau. I pursued, but the chief of Noo-Nau had killed himfor it before I got there. Oh, yes, there are many dead men representedon the table there. Have a drink, Captain. Your face is not familiar. You are new in the islands?"

"It's Captain Robinson of the _Roberta_, " Grief said, introducing them. 

In the meantime Mulhall had shaken hands with Peter Gee. 

"I never fancied there were so many pearls in the world, " Mulhall said. 

"Nor have I ever seen so many together at one time, " Peter Gee admitted. 

"What ought they to be worth?"

"Fifty or sixty thousand pounds--and that's to us buyers. InParis----" He shrugged his shoulders and lifted his eyebrows at theincommunicableness of the sum. 

Mulhall wiped the sweat from his eyes. All were sweating profuselyand breathing hard. There was no ice in the drink that was served, andwhiskey and absinthe went down lukewarm. 

"Yes, yes, " Parlay was cackling. "Many dead men lie on the tablethere. I know those pearls, all of them. You see those three! Perfectlymatched, aren't they? A diver from Easter Island got them for me insidea week. Next week a shark got him; took his arm off and blood poison didthe business. And that big baroque there--nothing much--if I'moffered twenty francs for it to-morrow I'll be in luck; it came out oftwenty-two fathoms of water. The man was from Raratonga. He broke alldiving records. He got it out of twenty-two fathoms. I saw him. And heburst his lungs at the same time, or got the 'bends, ' for he died in twohours. He died screaming. They could hear him for miles. He was the mostpowerful native I ever saw. Half a dozen of my divers have died of thebends. And more men will die, more men will die. "

"Oh, hush your croaking, Parlay, " chided one of the captains. "It ain'tgoing to blow. "

"If I was a strong man, I couldn't get up hook and get out fast enough, "the old man retorted in the falsetto of age. "Not if I was a strong manwith the taste for wine yet in my mouth. But not you. You'll all stay, Iwouldn't advise you if I thought you'd go, You can't drive buzzards awayfrom the carrion. Have another drink, my brave sailor-men. Well, well, what men will dare for a few little oyster drops! There they are, thebeauties! Auction to-morrow, at ten sharp. Old Parlay's selling out, andthe buzzards are gathering--old Parlay who was a stronger man in his daythan any of them and who will see most of them dead yet. "

"If he isn't a vile old beast!" the supercargo of the _Malahini_whispered to Peter Gee. 

"What if she does blow?" said the captain of the _Dolly_. "Hikihoho'snever been swept. "

"The more reason she will be, then, " Captain Warfield answered back. "Iwouldn't trust her. "

"Who's croaking now?" Grief reproved. 

"I'd hate to lose that new engine before it paid for itself, " CaptainWarfield replied gloomily. 

Parlay skipped with astonishing nimbleness across the crowded room tothe barometer on the wall. 

"Take a look, my brave sailormen!" he cried exultantly. 

The man nearest read the glass. The sobering effect showed plainly onhis face. 

"It's dropped ten, " was all he said, yet every face went anxious, andthere was a look as if every man desired immediately to start for thedoor. 

"Listen!" Parlay commanded. 

In the silence the outer surf seemed to have become unusually loud. There was a great rumbling roar. 

"A big sea is beginning to set, " some one said; and there was a movementto the windows, where all gathered. 

Through the sparse cocoanuts they gazed seaward. An orderly successionof huge smooth seas was rolling down upon the coral shore. For someminutes they gazed on the strange sight and talked in low voices, and inthose few minutes it was manifest to all that the waves were increasingin size. It was uncanny, this rising sea in a dead calm, and theirvoices unconsciously sank lower. Old Parlay shocked them with his abruptcackle. 

"There is yet time to get away to sea, brave gentlemen. You can towacross the lagoon with your whaleboats. "

"It's all right, old man, " said Darling, the mate of the _Cactus_, astalwart youngster of twenty-five. "The blow's to the southward andpassing on. We'll not get a whiff of it. "

An air of relief went through the room. Conversations were started, andthe voices became louder. Several of the buyers even went back to thetable to continue the examination of the pearls. 

Parlay's shrill cackle rose higher. 

"That's right, " he encouraged. "If the world was coming to an end you'dgo on buying. "

"We'll buy these to-morrow just the same, " Isaacs assured him. 

"Then you'll be doing your buying in hell. "

The chorus of incredulous laughter incensed the old man. He turnedfiercely on Darling. 

"Since when have children like you come to the knowledge of storms? Andwho is the man who has plotted the hurricane-courses of the Paumotus?What books will you find it in? I sailed the Paumotus before the oldestof you drew breath. I know. To the eastward the paths of the hurricanesare on so wide a circle they make a straight line. To the westward herethey make a sharp curve. Remember your chart. How did it happen thehurricane of '91 swept Auri and Hiolau? The curve, my brave boy, thecurve! In an hour, or two or three at most, will come the wind. Listento that!"

A vast rumbling crash shook the coral foundations of the atoll. Thehouse quivered to it. The native servants, with bottles of whiskey andabsinthe in their hands, shrank together as if for protection and staredwith fear through the windows at the mighty wash of the wave lapping farup the beach to the corner of a copra-shed. 

Parlay looked at the barometer, giggled, and leered around at hisguests. Captain War-field strode across to see. 

"29:75, " he read. "She's gone down five more. By God! the old devil'sright. She's a-coming, and it's me, for one, for aboard. "

"It's growing dark, " Isaacs half whispered. 

"Jove! it's like a stage, " Mulhall said to Grief, looking at his watch. "Ten o'clock in the morning, and it's like twilight. Down go the lightsfor the tragedy. Where's the slow music!"

In answer, another rumbling crash shook the atoll and the house. Almostin a panic the company started for the door. In the dim light theirsweaty faces appeared ghastly. Isaacs panted asthmatically in thesuffocating heat. 

"What's your haste?" Parlay chuckled and girded at his departing guests. "A last drink, brave gentlemen. " No one noticed him. As they took theshell-bordered path to the beach he stuck his head out the door andcalled, "Don't forget, gentlemen, at ten to-morrow old Parlay sells hispearls. "

III

On the beach a curious scene took place. Whaleboat after whaleboat wasbeing hurriedly manned and shoved off. It had grown still darker. Thestagnant calm continued, and the sand shook under their feet with eachbuffet of the sea on the outer shore. Narii Herring walked leisurelyalong the sand. He grinned at the very evident haste of the captains andbuyers. With him were three of his Kanakas, and also Tai-Hotauri. 

"Get into the boat and take an oar, " Captain Warfield ordered thelatter. 

Tai-Hotauri came over jauntily, while Narii Herring and his threeKanakas paused and looked on from forty feet away. 

"I work no more for you, skipper, " Tai-Hotauri said insolently andloudly. But his face belied his words, for he was guilty of aprodigious wink. "Fire me, skipper, " he huskily whispered, with a secondsignificant wink. 

Captain Warfield took the cue and proceeded to do some acting himself. He raised his fist and his voice. 

"Get into that boat, " he thundered, "or I'll knock seven bells out ofyou!"

The Kanaka drew back truculently, and Grief stepped between to placatehis captain. 

"I go to work on the _Nuhiva_, " Tai-Hotauri said, rejoining the othergroup. 

"Come back here!" the captain threatened. 

"He's a free man, skipper, " Narii Herring spoke up. "He's sailed with mein the past, and he's sailing again, that's all. "

"Come on, we must get on board, " Grief urged. "Look how dark it'sgetting. "

Captain Warfield gave in, but as the boat shoved off he stood up in thesternsheets and shook his fist ashore. 

"I'll settle with you yet, Narii, " he cried. "You're the only skipper inthe group that steals other men's sailors, " He sat down, and in loweredvoice queried: "Now what's Tai-Hotauri up to? He's on to something, butwhat is it?"

IV

As the boat came alongside the _Malahini_, Hermann's anxious facegreeted them over the rail. 

"Bottom out fall from barometer, " he announced. "She's goin' to blow. Igot starboard anchor overhaul. "

"Overhaul the big one, too, " Captain Warfield ordered, taking charge. "And here, some of you, hoist in this boat. Lower her down to the deckand lash her bottom up. "

Men were busy at work on the decks of all the schooners. There was agreat clanking of chains being overhauled, and now one craft, andnow another, hove in, veered, and dropped a second anchor. Like the_Malahini_, those that had third anchors were preparing to drop themwhen the wind showed what quarter it was to blow from. 

The roar of the big surf continually grew though the lagoon lay in themirror-like calm. 

There was no sign of life where Parlay's big house perched on the sand. Boat and copra-sheds and the sheds where the shell was stored weredeserted. 

"For two cents I'd up anchors and get out, " Grief said. "I'd do itanyway if it were open sea. But those chains of atolls to the north andeast have us pocketed. We've a better chance right here. What do youthink, Captain Warfield?"

"I agree with you, though a lagoon is no mill-pond for riding it out. I wonder where she's going to start from? Hello! There goes one ofParlay's copra-sheds. "

They could see the grass-thatched shed lift and collapse, while a frothof foam cleared the crest of the sand and ran down to the lagoon. 

"Breached across!" Mulhall exclaimed. "That's something for a starter. There she comes again!"

The wreck of the shed was now flung up and left on the sand-crest, Athird wave buffeted it into fragments which washed down the slope towardthe lagoon. 

"If she blow I would as be cooler yet, " Hermann grunted. "No longer canI breathe. It is damn hot. I am dry like a stove. "

He chopped open a drinking cocoanut with his heavy sheath-knife anddrained the contents. The rest of them followed his example, pausingonce to watch one of Parlay's shell sheds go down in ruin. The barometernow registered 29:50. 

"Must be pretty close to the centre of the area of low pressure, " Griefremarked cheerfully. "I was never through the eye of a hurricane before. It will be an experience for you, too, Mulhall. From the speed thebarometer's dropped, it's going to be a big one. "

Captain Warfield groaned, and all eyes drew to him. He was lookingthrough the glasses down the length of the lagoon to the southeast. 

"There she comes, " he said quietly. 

They did not need glasses to see. A flying film, strangely marked, seemed drawing over the surface of the lagoon. Abreast of it, along theatoll, travelling with equal speed, was a stiff bending of the cocoanutpalms and a blur of flying leaves. The front of the wind on the waterwas a solid, sharply defined strip of dark-coloured, wind-vexed water. In advance of this strip, like skirmishers, were flashes of windflaws. Behind this strip, a quarter of a mile in width, was a strip of whatseemed glassy calm. Next came another dark strip of wind, and behindthat the lagoon was all crisping, boiling whiteness. 

"What is that calm streak?" Mulhall asked. 

"Calm, " Warfield answered. 

"But it travels as fast as the wind, " was the other's objection. 

"It has to, or it would be overtaken and it wouldn't be any calm. It'sa double-header, I saw a big squall like that off Savaii once. A regulardouble-header. Smash! it hit us, then it lulled to nothing, and smashedus a second time. Stand by and hold on! Here she is on top of us. Lookat the _Roberta!_"

The Roberta, lying nearest to the wind at slack chains, was swept offbroadside like a straw. Then her chains brought her up, bow on to thewind, with an astonishing jerk. Schooner after schooner, the _Malahini_with them, was now sweeping away with the first gust and fetching upon taut chains. Mulhall and several of the Kanakas were taken off theirfeet when the _Malahini_ jerked to her anchors. 

And then there was no wind. The flying calm streak had reachedthem. Grief lighted a match, and the unshielded flame burned withoutflickering in the still air. A very dim twilight prevailed. Thecloud-sky, lowering as it had been for hours, seemed now to havedescended quite down upon the sea. 

The Roberta tightened to her chains when the second head of thehurricane hit, as did schooner after schooner in swift succession. Thesea, white with fury, boiled in tiny, spitting wavelets. The deck of the_Malahini_ vibrated under the men's feet. The taut-stretched halyardsbeat a tattoo against the masts, and all the rigging, as if smote bysome mighty hand, set up a wild thrumming. It was impossible to face thewind and breathe. Mulhall, crouching with the others behind the shelterof the cabin, discovered this, and his lungs were filled in an instantwith so great a volume of driven air which he could not expel that henearly strangled ere he could turn his head away. 

"It's incredible, " he gasped, but no one heard him. 

Hermann and several Kanakas were crawling for'ard on hands and knees tolet go the third anchor. Grief touched Captain Warfield and pointed tothe _Roberta_. She was dragging down upon them. Warfield put his mouthto Grief's ear and shouted:

"We're dragging, too!"

Grief sprang to the wheel and put it hard over, veering the _Mahhini_to port. The third anchor took hold, and the _Roberta_ went by, stern-first, a dozen yards away. They waved their hands to Peter Geeand Captain Robinson, who, with a number of sailors, were at work on thebow. 

"He's knocking out the shackles!" Grief shouted. "Going to chance thepassage! Got to! Anchors skating!"

"We're holding now!" came the answering shout. "There goes the _Cactus_down on the _Misi_. That settles them!"

The _Misi_ had been holding, but the added windage of the _Cactus_was too much, and the entangled schooners slid away across the boilingwhite. Their men could be seen chopping and fighting to get them apart. The _Roberta_, cleared of her anchors, with a patch of tarpaulin setfor'ard, was heading for the passage at the northwestern end of thelagoon. They saw her make it and drive out to sea. But the _Misi_ and_Cactus_, unable to get clear of each other, went ashore on the atollhalf a mile from the passage. The wind merely increased on itself andcontinued to increase. To face the full blast of it required all one'sstrength, and several minutes of crawling on deck against it tired a manto exhaustion. Hermann, with his Kanakas, plodded steadily, lashing andmaking secure, putting ever more gaskets on the sails. The wind rippedand tore their thin undershirts from their backs. They moved slowly, asif their bodies weighed tons, never releasing a hand-hold until anotherhad been secured. Loose ends of rope stood out stiffly horizontal, and, when a whipping gave, the loose end frazzled and blew away. 

Mulhall touched one and then another and pointed to the shore. Thegrass-sheds had disappeared, and Parlay's house rocked drunkenly, Because the wind blew lengthwise along the atoll, the house had beensheltered by the miles of cocoanut trees. But the big seas, breakingacross from outside, were undermining it and hammering it to pieces. Already tilted down the slope of sand, its end was imminent. Here andthere in the cocoanut trees people had lashed themselves. The trees didnot sway or thresh about. Bent over rigidly from the wind, they remainedin that position and vibrated monstrously. Underneath, across the sand, surged the white spume of the breakers. A big sea was likewise makingdown the length of the lagoon. It had plenty of room to kick up inthe ten-mile stretch from the windward rim of the atoll, and all theschooners were bucking and plunging into it. The _Malahini_ had begunshoving her bow and fo'c'sle head under the bigger ones, and at timesher waist was filled rail-high with water. 

"Now's the time for your engine!" Grief bellowed; and Captain Warfield, crawling over to where the engineer lay, shouted emphatic commands. 

Under the engine, going full speed ahead, the _Malahini_ behaved better. While she continued to ship seas over her bow, she was not jerked downso fiercely by her anchors. On the other hand, she was unable to get anyslack in the chains. The best her forty horsepower could do was to easethe strain. 

Still the wind increased. The little _Nuhiva_, lying abreast of the_Malahini_ and closer in to the beach, her engine still unrepaired andher captain ashore, was having a bad time of it. She buried herself sofrequently and so deeply that they wondered each time if she could clearherself of the water. At three in the afternoon buried by a second seabefore she could free herself of the preceding one, she did not come up. 

Mulhall looked at Grief. 

"Burst in her hatches, " was the bellowed answer. 

Captain Warfield pointed to the _Winifred_, a little schooner plungingand burying outside of them, and shouted in Grief's ear. His voice camein patches of dim words, with intervals of silence when whisked away bythe roaring wind. 

"Rotten little tub. .. Anchors hold. .. But how she holds together. .. Oldas the ark----"

An hour later Hermann pointed to her. Her for'ard bitts, foremast, andmost of her bow were gone, having been jerked out of her by her anchors. She swung broadside, rolling in the trough and settling by the head, andin this plight was swept away to leeward. 

Five vessels now remained, and of them the _Malahini_ was the only onewith an engine. Fearing either the _Nuhiva's_ or the _Winifdred's_fate, two of them followed the _Roberta's_ example, knocking out thechain-shackles and running for the passage. The _Dolly_ was the first, but her tarpaulin was carried away, and she went to destruction on thelee-rim of the atoll near the _Misi_ and the _Cactus_. Undeterred bythis, the _Moana_ let go and followed with the same result. 

"Pretty good engine that, eh?" Captain Warfield yelled to his owner. 

Grief put out his hand and shook. "She's paying for herself!" he yelledback. "The wind's shifting around to the southward, and we ought to lieeasier!"

Slowly and steadily, but with ever-increasing velocity, the wind veeredaround to the south and the southwest, till the three schooners thatwere left pointed directly in toward the beach. The wreck of Parlay'shouse was picked up, hurled into the lagoon, and blown out upon them. Passing the _Malahini_, it crashed into the _Papara_, lying a quarter ofa mile astern. There was wild work for'ard on her, and in a quarter ofan hour the house went clear, but it had taken the _Papara's_ foremastand bowsprit with it. 

Inshore, on their port bow, lay the _Tahaa_, slim and yacht-like, but excessively oversparred. Her anchors still held, but her captain, finding no abatement in the wind, proceeded to reduce windage bychopping down his masts. 

"Pretty good engine that, " Grief congratulated his skipper, "It willsave our sticks for us yet. "

Captain Warfield shook his head dubiously. 

The sea on the lagoon went swiftly down with the change of wind, butthey were beginning to feel the heave and lift of the outer sea breakingacross the atoll. There were not so many trees remaining. Some had beenbroken short off, others uprooted. One tree they saw snap off halfwayup, three persons clinging to it, and whirl away by the wind into thelagoon. Two detached themselves from it and swam to the Tahaa. Notlong after, just before darkness, they saw one jump overboard from thatschooner's stern and strike out strongly for the Malahini through thewhite, spitting wavelets. 

"It's Tai-Hotauri, " was Grief's judgment. "Now we'll have the news. "

The Kanaka caught the bobstay, climbed over the bow, and crawled aft. Time was given him to breathe, and then, behind the part shelter of thecabin, in broken snatches and largely by signs, he told his story. 

"Narii. .. Damn robber. .. He want steal. .. Pearls. .. Kill Parlay. .. Oneman kill Parlay. .. No man know what man. .. Three Kanakas, Narii, me. .. Five beans. .. Hat. .. Narii say one bean black. .. Nobody know. .. KillParlay. .. Narii damn liar. .. All beans black. .. Five black. .. Copra-sheddark. .. Every man get black bean. .. Big wind come. .. No chance. .. Everybody get up tree. .. No good luck them pearls. .. I tell youbefore. .. No good luck. "

"Where's Parlay?" Grief shouted. 

"Up tree. .. Three of his Kanakas same tree. Narii and one Kanaka'nothertree. .. My tree blow to hell, then I come on board. "

"Where's the pearls?"

"Up tree along Parlay. Mebbe Narii get them pearl yet. "

In the ear of one after another Grief passed on Tai-Hotauri's story. Captain Warfield was particularly incensed, and they could see himgrinding his teeth. 

Hermann went below and returned with a riding light, but the moment itwas lifted above the level of the cabin wall the wind blew it out. Hehad better success with the binnacle lamp, which was lighted only aftermany collective attempts. 

"A fine night of wind!" Grief yelled in Mulhall's ear. "And blowingharder all the time. "

"How hard?"

"A hundred miles an hour. .. Two hundred. .. I don't know. .. Harder thanI've ever seen it. "

The lagoon grew more and more troubled by the sea that swept acrossthe atoll. Hundreds of leagues of ocean was being backed up by thehurricane, which more than overcame the lowering effect of the ebb tide. Immediately the tide began to rise the increase in the size of the seaswas noticeable. Moon and wind were heaping the South Pacific on Hikihohoatoll. 

Captain Warfield returned from one of his periodical trips to the engineroom with the word that the engineer lay in a faint. 

"Can't let that engine stop!" he concluded helplessly. 

"All right!" Grief said, "Bring him on deck. I'll spell him. "

The hatch to the engine room was battened down, access being gainedthrough a narrow passage from the cabin. The heat and gas fumes werestifling. Grief took one hasty, comprehensive examination of the engineand the fittings of the tiny room, then blew out the oil-lamp. Afterthat he worked in darkness, save for the glow from endless cigars whichhe went into the cabin to light. Even-tempered as he was, he soon beganto give evidences of the strain of being pent in with a mechanicalmonster that toiled, and sobbed, and slubbered in the shouting dark. Naked to the waist, covered with grease and oil, bruised and skinnedfrom being knocked about by the plunging, jumping vessel, his headswimming from the mixture of gas and air he was compelled to breathe, he laboured on hour after hour, in turns petting, blessing, nursing, andcursing the engine and all its parts. The ignition began to go bad. Thefeed grew worse. And worst of all, the cylinders began to heat. Ina consultation held in the cabin the half-caste engineer begged andpleaded to stop the engine for half an hour in order to cool it andto attend to the water circulation. Captain Warfield was against anystopping. The half-caste swore that the engine would ruin itself andstop anyway and for good. Grief, with glaring eyes, greasy and battered, yelled and cursed them both down and issued commands. Mulhall, the supercargo, and Hermann were set to work in the cabin atdouble-straining and triple-straining the gasoline. A hole was choppedthrough the engine room floor, and a Kanaka heaved bilge-water over thecylinders, while Grief continued to souse running parts in oil. 

"Didn't know you were a gasoline expert, " Captain Warfield admired whenGrief came into the cabin to catch a breath of little less impure air. 

"I bathe in gasoline, " he grated savagely through his teeth. "I eat it. "

What other uses he might have found for it were never given, for at thatmoment all the men in the cabin, as well as the gasoline being strained, were smashed forward against the bulkhead as the _Malahini_ took anabrupt, deep dive. For the space of several minutes, unable to gaintheir feet, they rolled back and forth and pounded and hammered fromwall to wall. The schooner, swept by three big seas, creaked and groanedand quivered, and from the weight of water on her decks behaved logily. Grief crept to the engine, while Captain Warfield waited his chance toget through the companion-way and out on deck. 

It was half an hour before he came back. 

"Whaleboat's gone!" he reported. "Galley's gone! Everything gone exceptthe deck and hatches! And if that engine hadn't been going we'd be gone!Keep up the good work!"

By midnight the engineer's lungs and head had been sufficiently clearedof gas fumes to let him relieve Grief, who went on deck to get his ownhead and lungs clear. He joined the others, who crouched behindthe cabin, holding on with their hands and made doubly secure byrope-lashings. It was a complicated huddle, for it was the only placeof refuge for the Kanakas. Some of them had accepted the skipper'sinvitation into the cabin but had been driven out by the fumes. The_Malahini_ was being plunged down and swept frequently, and what theybreathed was air and spray and water commingled. 

"Making heavy weather of it, Mulhall!" Grief shouted to his guestbetween immersions. 

Mulhall, strangling and choking, could only nod. The scuppers could notcarry off the burden of water on the schooner's deck. She rolled it outand took it in over one rail and the other; and at times, nose thrownskyward, sitting down on her heel, she avalanched it aft. It surgedalong the poop gangways, poured over the top of the cabin, submergingand bruising those that clung on, and went out over the stern-rail. 

Mulhall saw him first, and drew Grief's attention. It was Narii Herring, crouching and holding on where the dim binnacle light shone upon him. Hewas quite naked, save for a belt and a bare-bladed knife thrust betweenit and the skin. 

Captain Warfield untied his lashings and made his way over the bodies ofthe others. When his face became visible in the light from the binnacleit was working with anger. They could see him speak, but the wind torethe sound away. He would not put his lips to Narii's ear. Instead, hepointed over the side. Narii Herring understood. His white teeth showedin an amused and sneering smile, and he stood up, a magnificent figureof a man. 

"It's murder!" Mulhall yelled to Grief. 

"He'd have murdered Old Parlay!" Grief yelled back. 

For the moment the poop was clear of water and the _Malahini_ on an evenkeel. Narii made a bravado attempt to walk to the rail, but was flungdown by the wind. Thereafter he crawled, disappearing in the darkness, though there was certitude in all of them that he had gone over theside. The Malahini dived deep, and when they emerged from the flood thatswept aft, Grief got Mulhall's ear. 

"Can't lose him! He's the Fish Man of Tahiti! He'll cross the lagoon andland on the other rim of the atoll if there's any atoll left!"

Five minutes afterward, in another submergence, a mess of bodies poureddown on them over the top of the cabin. These they seized and heldtill the water cleared, when they carried them below and learned theiridentity. Old Parlay lay oh his back on the floor, with closed eyes andwithout movement. The other two were his Kanaka cousins. All three werenaked and bloody. The arm of one Kanaka hung helpless and broken at hisside. The other man bled freely from a hideous scalp wound. 

"Narii did that?" Mulhall demanded. 

Grief shook his head. "No; it's from being smashed along the deck andover the house!"

Something suddenly ceased, leaving them in dizzying uncertainty. Forthe moment it was hard to realize there was no wind. With the absoluteabruptness of a sword slash, the wind had been chopped off. The schoonerrolled and plunged, fetching up on her anchors with a crash which forthe first time they could hear. Also, for the first time they could hearthe water washing about on deck. The engineer threw off the propellerand eased the engine down. 

"We're in the dead centre, " Grief said. "Now for the shift. It will comeas hard as ever. " He looked at the barometer. "29:32, " he read. 

Not in a moment could he tone down the voice which for hours had battledagainst the wind, and so loudly did he speak that in the quiet it hurtthe others' ears. 

"All his ribs are smashed, " the supercargo said, feeling along Parlay'sside. "He's still breathing, but he's a goner. "

Old Parlay groaned, moved one arm impotently, and opened his eyes. Inthem was the light of recognition. 

"My brave gentlemen, " he whispered haltingly. "Don't forget. .. Theauction. .. At ten o'clock. .. In hell. "

His eyes dropped shut and the lower jaw threatened to drop, but hemastered the qualms of dissolution long enough to omit one final, loud, derisive cackle. 

Above and below pandemonium broke out. 

The old familiar roar of the wind was with them. The _Malahini_, caughtbroadside, was pressed down almost on her beam ends as she swung thearc compelled by her anchors. They rounded her into the wind, where shejerked to an even keel. The propeller was thrown on, and the engine tookup its work again. 

"Northwest!" Captain Warfield shouted to Grief when he came on deck. "Hauled eight points like a shot!"

"Narii'll never get across the lagoon now!" Grief observed. 

"Then he'll blow back to our side, worse luck!"

V

After the passing of the centre the barometer began to rise. Equallyrapid was the fall of the wind. When it was no more than a howlinggale, the engine lifted up in the air, parted its bed-plates with a lastconvulsive effort of its forty horsepower, and lay down on its side. A wash of water from the bilge sizzled over it and the steam arose inclouds. The engineer wailed his dismay, but Grief glanced over the wreckaffectionately and went into the cabin to swab the grease off his chestand arms with bunches of cotton waste. 

The sun was up and the gentlest of summer breezes blowing when he cameon deck, after sewing up the scalp of one Kanaka and setting the other'sarm. The _Malahini_ lay close in to the beach. For'ard, Hermann and thecrew were heaving in and straightening out the tangle of anchors. The_Papara_ and the _Tahaa_ were gone, and Captain Warfield, through theglasses, was searching the opposite rim of the atoll. 

"Not a stick left of them, " he said. "That's what comes of not havingengines. They must have dragged across before the big shift came. "

Ashore, where Parlay's house had been, was no vestige of any house. Forthe space of three hundred yards, where the sea had breached, no tree oreven stump was left. Here and there, farther along, stood an occasionalpalm, and there were numbers which had been snapped off above theground. In the crown of one surviving palm Tai-Hotauri asserted he sawsomething move. There were no boats left to the _Malahini_, and theywatched him swim ashore and climb the tree. 

When he came back, they helped over the rail a young native girl ofParley's household. But first she passed up to them a battered basket. In it was a litter of blind kittens--all dead save one, that feeblymewed and staggered on awkward legs. 

"Hello!" said Mulhall. "Who's that?"

Along the beach they saw a man walking. He moved casually, as if outfor a morning stroll. Captain Warfield gritted his teeth. It was NariiHerring. 

"Hello, skipper!" Narii called, when he was abreast of them. "Can I comeaboard and get some breakfast?"

Captain Warfield's face and neck began to swell and turn purple. Hetried to speak, but choked. 

"For two cents--for two cents----" was all he could manage toarticulate. 

THE END