Priscilla went on deck that night so angry with Joel that she could have
killed him; and Mark played upon her as a skilled hand plays upon the
harp. It was such a night as the South Seas know, warm and languorous,
the wind caressing, and the salt spray stinging gently on the cheek. The
moon was near the full, and it laid a path of silver on the water. This
path was like the road to fairyland; and Mark told Priscilla so. He
dropped into a gay little phantasy that he conceived on the moment, a
story of fairies, and of dancing in the moonlight, and of a man and a
woman, hand in hand....
She felt the spell he laid upon her, and struggled against it. "Tell me
about the last fight, when the little brown girl was killed," she begged.
He had told her snatches of his story here and there; but he had not,
till that night, spoken of the pearls. When Priss heard of them, she
swung about and lifted up her face to his, listening like a child. And
Mark told the story with a tongue of gold, so that she saw it all; the
lagoon, blue in the sun; and the schooner creeping in from the sea; and
the hours of flight through the semi-jungle of the island, with the
blacks in such hot pursuit. He told her of the times when they surrounded
him, when he fought himself free.... How he got a great stone and gripped
it in his hand, and how with this stone he crushed the skull of a young
black with but one eye. Priss shuddered with delicious horror at the
tale....
She loved best to hear of the little brown girl whom Mark had loved; and
that would have told either of them, if they had stopped to consider,
that she did not love Mark. Else she would have hated the other, brown or
white.... And he told how the brown girl saved him, and gave her life in
the saving, and how he had stopped at a little atoll on his homeward way
and buried her.... She had died in his arms, smiling because she lay
there....
"And the pearls?" Priss asked, when she had heard the story through. "You
left them there?"
"There they are still," he told her. "Safely hid away."
"How many?" she asked. "Are they lovely?"
"Three big ones, and thirty-two of a fair size, and enough little ones
and seeds to make a double handful."
"But why did you leave them there?"
"The black men were on the island. They were there, and watchful, and
very angry."
"Couldn't you have kept them in your pocket?"
He laughed. "That other schooner made me cautious. Man's life is cheap,
in such matters. And if they guessed I had such things upon me.... If I
slept too soundly, or the like.... D'ye see?"