Through the mellow cool of twilight a man paddled out from a clump of
jungle to the _Cantani_. It was a leaky and abandoned dugout, and he
paddled slowly, desisting from time to time in order to bale. The
Kanaka sailors giggled gleefully as he came alongside and painfully
drew himself over the rail. He was bedraggled and filthy, and seemed
half-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 farther
away. 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 head
aches to burstin'. My neck is fair broken. The teeth are loose in my
jaws. There's nests of hornets buzzin' in my ears. My medulla oblongata
is dislocated. I've been through earthquake and pestilence, and the
heavens 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. To
be eaten by rats, or boiled in oil, or pulled apart by wild horses--that
would be unpleasant. But to be beaten to death with a dead pig!”
He shuddered at the awfulness of it. “Sure it transcends the human
imagination.”
Captain Boig sniffed audibly, moved his canvas chair farther to
windward, 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 old
smoky I refused the night you landed.”
Grief clapped his hands for the black steward and ordered soap and
towels.
“Go for'ard, Cornelius, and take a scrub first,” he said. “The boy will
bring you a pair of dungarees and a shirt. And by the way, before you
go, how was it we found more coin in the treasury than paper you had
issued?”
“'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 to
Tui Tulifau,” Grief said. “So the balance we found will be turned over
to you. But ten shillings must be deducted.”
“For what?”
“Do you think dead pigs grow on trees? The sum of ten shillings for that
pig 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 a
twenty-shilling one.”