The next day Grief's suspicions found further food. Ashore early,
he strolled across the little island to the barracks occupied by the
divers.
They were just boarding the boats when he arrived, and it struck him
that for Kanakas they behaved more like chain-gang prisoners. The three
white men were there, and Grief noted that each carried a rifle. Hall
greeted him jovially enough, but Gorman and Watson scowled as they
grunted curt good mornings.
A moment afterward one of the Kanakas, as he bent to place his oar,
favoured Grief with a slow, deliberate wink. The man's face was
familiar, one of the thousands of native sailors and divers he had
encountered drifting about in the island trade.
“Don't tell them who I am,” Grief said, in Tahitian. “Did you ever sail
for me?”
The man's head nodded and his mouth opened, but before he could speak
he was suppressed by a savage “Shut up!” from Watson, who was already in
the sternsheets.
“I beg pardon,” Grief said. “I ought to have known better.”
“That's all right,” Hall interposed. “The trouble is they're too much
talk and not enough work. Have to be severe with them, or they wouldn't
get enough shell to pay their grub.”
Grief nodded sympathetically. “I know them. Got a crew of them
myself--the lazy swine. Got to drive them like niggers to get a
half-day's work out of them.”
“What was you sayin' to him?” Gorman blurted in bluntly.
“I was asking how the shell was, and how deep they were diving.”
“Thick,” Hall took over the answering. “We're working now in about ten
fathom. It's right out there, not a hundred yards off. Want to come
along?”
Half the day Grief spent with the boats, and had lunch in the bungalow.
In the afternoon he loafed, taking a siesta in the big living-room,
reading some, and talking for half an hour with Mrs. Hall. After dinner,
he played billiards with her husband. It chanced that Grief had never
before encountered Swithin Hall, yet the latter's fame as an expert at
billiards was the talk of the beaches from Levuka to Honolulu. But the
man Grief played with this night proved most indifferent at the game.
His wife showed herself far cleverer with the cue.
When he went on board the _Uncle Toby_ Grief routed Jackie-Jackie out of
bed. He described the location of the barracks, and told the Tongan
to swim softly around and have talk with the Kanakas. In two hours
Jackie-Jackie was back. He shook his head as he stood dripping before
Grief.
“Very funny t'ing,” he reported. “One white man stop all the time. He
has big rifle. He lay in water and watch. Maybe twelve o'clock, other
white man come and take rifle. First white man go to bed. Other man stop
now with rifle. No good. Me cannot talk with Kanakas. Me come back.”
“By George!” Grief said to Snow, after the Tongan had gone back to his
bunk. “I smell something more than shell. Those three men are standing
watches over their Kanakas. That man's no more Swithin Hall than I am.”
Snow whistled from the impact of a new idea.
“I've got it!” he cried.
“And I'll name it,” Grief retorted, “It's in your mind that the _Emily
L._ was their schooner?”
“Just that. They're raising and rotting the shell, while she's gone for
more divers, or provisions, or both.”
“And I agree with you.” Grief glanced at the cabin clock and evinced
signs of bed-going. “He's a sailor. The three of them are. But they're
not island men. They're new in these waters.”
Again Snow whistled.
“And the _Emily L._ is lost with all hands,” he said. “We know that.
They're marooned here till Swithin Hall comes. Then he'll catch them
with all the shell.”
“Or they'll take possession of his schooner.”
“Hope they do!” Snow muttered vindictively. “Somebody ought to rob him.
Wish I was in their boots. I'd balance off that sixty thousand.”