The house of Parlay was a big two-story frame affair, built of
California lumber, with a galvanized iron roof. So disproportionate
was it to the slender ring of the atoll that it showed out upon the
sand-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 that
were 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 and
sneering, the withered wreck of what had once been a tall and powerful
man. His eyes were deep sunken and feverish, his cheeks fallen in and
cavernous. The hair of his head seemed to have come out in patches, and
his mustache and imperial had shed in the same lopsided way.
“Jove!” Mulhall muttered under his breath. “A long-legged Napoleon the
Third, but burnt out, baked, and fire-crackled. And mangy! No wonder he
crooks 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 must
think 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 small
walnut that lay apart on a piece of chamois. “They offered me sixty
thousand francs for it in Tahiti. They'll bid as much and more for it
to-morrow, if they aren't blown away. Well, that pearl, it was found by
my cousin, my cousin by marriage. He was a native, you see. Also, he
was a thief. He hid it. It was mine. His cousin, who was also my
cousin--we're all related here--killed him for it and fled away in a
cutter to Noo-Nau. I pursued, but the chief of Noo-Nau had killed him
for it before I got there. Oh, yes, there are many dead men represented
on 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. In
Paris----” He shrugged his shoulders and lifted his eyebrows at the
incommunicableness of the sum.
Mulhall wiped the sweat from his eyes. All were sweating profusely
and breathing hard. There was no ice in the drink that was served, and
whiskey and absinthe went down lukewarm.
“Yes, yes,” Parlay was cackling. “Many dead men lie on the table
there. I know those pearls, all of them. You see those three! Perfectly
matched, aren't they? A diver from Easter Island got them for me inside
a week. Next week a shark got him; took his arm off and blood poison did
the business. And that big baroque there--nothing much--if I'm
offered twenty francs for it to-morrow I'll be in luck; it came out of
twenty-two fathoms of water. The man was from Raratonga. He broke all
diving records. He got it out of twenty-two fathoms. I saw him. And he
burst his lungs at the same time, or got the 'bends,' for he died in two
hours. He died screaming. They could hear him for miles. He was the most
powerful native I ever saw. Half a dozen of my divers have died of the
bends. And more men will die, more men will die.”
“Oh, hush your croaking, Parlay,” chided one of the captains. “It ain't
going 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 man
with the taste for wine yet in my mouth. But not you. You'll all stay, I
wouldn't advise you if I thought you'd go, You can't drive buzzards away
from the carrion. Have another drink, my brave sailor-men. Well, well,
what men will dare for a few little oyster drops! There they are, the
beauties! Auction to-morrow, at ten sharp. Old Parlay's selling out, and
the buzzards are gathering--old Parlay who was a stronger man in his day
than 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's
never been swept.”
“The more reason she will be, then,” Captain Warfield answered back. “I
wouldn't trust her.”
“Who's croaking now?” Grief reproved.
“I'd hate to lose that new engine before it paid for itself,” Captain
Warfield replied gloomily.
Parlay skipped with astonishing nimbleness across the crowded room to
the barometer on the wall.
“Take a look, my brave sailormen!” he cried exultantly.
The man nearest read the glass. The sobering effect showed plainly on
his face.
“It's dropped ten,” was all he said, yet every face went anxious, and
there was a look as if every man desired immediately to start for the
door.
“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 movement
to the windows, where all gathered.
Through the sparse cocoanuts they gazed seaward. An orderly succession
of huge smooth seas was rolling down upon the coral shore. For some
minutes they gazed on the strange sight and talked in low voices, and in
those few minutes it was manifest to all that the waves were increasing
in size. It was uncanny, this rising sea in a dead calm, and their
voices unconsciously sank lower. Old Parlay shocked them with his abrupt
cackle.
“There is yet time to get away to sea, brave gentlemen. You can tow
across the lagoon with your whaleboats.”
“It's all right, old man,” said Darling, the mate of the _Cactus_, a
stalwart youngster of twenty-five. “The blow's to the southward and
passing on. We'll not get a whiff of it.”
An air of relief went through the room. Conversations were started, and
the voices became louder. Several of the buyers even went back to the
table 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'd
go 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 turned
fiercely on Darling.
“Since when have children like you come to the knowledge of storms? And
who 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 oldest
of you drew breath. I know. To the eastward the paths of the hurricanes
are on so wide a circle they make a straight line. To the westward here
they make a sharp curve. Remember your chart. How did it happen the
hurricane of '91 swept Auri and Hiolau? The curve, my brave boy, the
curve! In an hour, or two or three at most, will come the wind. Listen
to that!”
A vast rumbling crash shook the coral foundations of the atoll. The
house quivered to it. The native servants, with bottles of whiskey and
absinthe in their hands, shrank together as if for protection and stared
with fear through the windows at the mighty wash of the wave lapping far
up the beach to the corner of a copra-shed.
Parlay looked at the barometer, giggled, and leered around at his
guests. Captain War-field strode across to see.
“29:75,” he read. “She's gone down five more. By God! the old devil's
right. 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 lights
for the tragedy. Where's the slow music!”
In answer, another rumbling crash shook the atoll and the house. Almost
in a panic the company started for the door. In the dim light their
sweaty faces appeared ghastly. Isaacs panted asthmatically in the
suffocating 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 the
shell-bordered path to the beach he stuck his head out the door and
called, “Don't forget, gentlemen, at ten to-morrow old Parlay sells his
pearls.”