He was the only blot on the scenery, also he was fishing, fishing from
a rock washed by water forty feet deep in which the coloured bream
passed like jewels through a world of crystal.
Matadore Island clings to its old Spanish name, though it is French,
lying west of Vavitu in the great French sea territory born of the
League of Nations that stretches now from the Marquesas to Rapa and
from Bellinghausen to Gambier.
It is a tiny island, too small for trade, horned with dangerous reefs,
but beautiful with the green of Jack-fruit tree and coco palm, the
blue of sea and the white of foam and coral.
Gulls make their home on the reefs, laughing gulls and cormorants and
great predatory gulls, sailing to seaward in the dawn and clanging
home at night after a sweep of hundreds of miles to where the swimmer
rocks show white manes, or the Skagways their teeth. The gulls were
jeering now as the fisherman hauled in his line, coiled it on the
coral and stood up, shading his eyes.
Away over the sparkling blue to s’uth’ard stood something that was
either the fin of a sail-fish or the sail of a boat, something sharp
and triangular, clear now to the sight and now half gone as the
sea-dazzle affected the eyes of the gazer.
He was a tall, thin man, bronzed to the colour of a cobnut, tattooed
on the left hand in such a way that he seemed to wear a mitt, and his
face as he stood straining his eyes seaward was the face of Uncle Sam,
goatee beard and all.
As he watched, the jaws of this individual worked slowly and
methodically like the jaws of a cow chewing the cud, then as the
boat’s hull showed close in and making for the clear passage through
the reefs, he flung up his arms, turned, and came scrambling down over
the coral to the salt white beach, towards which the boat was coming
now, the sail furled, and oars out and straight for destruction on a
rock in the fairway. There were only two men in her.
“Sta’board your helm, you —— fools!” yelled Uncle Sam. “Cayn’t you
see the sunk reef before your noses? _Sta_’board—that’s right.” Then
a tone lower: “B——y tailors!”
He rushed out as the boat came barging on to the beach and seized the
starboard gunnel, whilst the bow oar, tumbling over, seized the port,
and the stern oar, taking to the water, clapped on; then, having
dragged her nose well above tide-mark, they turned one to another for
speech.
“Well, I’ve been here three months and maybe more,” said the tall man,
as they sat on the coral by the beach watching the boat and the
strutting gulls and half-a-dozen stray Kanakas who had come down to
take a peep at the strangers. “Wrecked?—nuthin’—did a bunk from a
hooker that shoved in here for water an’ nuts, and here I’ve stuck,
snug as Moses in the bulrushes, nuthin’ to pay for board an’ bunk, no
use for a n’umbrella, place crawlin’ with girls, and every pa’m tree a
pub, if you know how to make pa’m toddy—name’s Keller, and what might
your’n be?”
“Mine’s Harman,” said the bigger and broader of the strangers, “and
this is Bud Davis. Reckon we’ve run more’n three hundred miles in that
boat, steerin’ by our noses and blind as ballyhoos—and as to where
we’ve come from—well, that’s a matter of——”
“Oh, I ain’t askin’ no questions!” cut in the tall man. “It’s nuthin’
to me if you stole your boat or had her give you, or whether you come
from Noumea or the Noo Jerusalem. I’m ‘Plain Sailin’ Jim,’ I am,
straight with them that’s straight with me, hungerin’ for the sight of
a white mug, and fed up with chocolate biscuits. ‘Plain Sailin’ Jim,’
that’s me, and smilin’ I am to welcome gentlemen like yourselves to
this virgin home of palm toddy and polygamy.”
“What sort of truck is that?” asked the ingenuous Harman.
But Keller did not hear him, he had risen to chase some Kanaka
children away from the boat; then, hitching up his trousers, he led
the way through the trees to the grass-thatched village where the
little houses stood bowered with yellow cassi and blue-blazing
convolvulus, and where at the door of the biggest and newest house his
chief wife sat preparing kava in a bowl of stone.
They dined off baked pig, taro, palm salad, and palm toddy in a
twilight through which rays from the thatch pierced like golden
needles, and as they ate they could see through the door space the
village with its tree-ferns and thatched houses, the children playing
in the sun, and the men lazing in the shade.
“Ain’t no use for work and ain’t no use for fightin’,” said Keller,
referring to the men of the village. “Chawin’ bananas and fishin’ is
all they’re good for, bone-lazy lot. I’ll larn them!”
Two or three of his wives served the dinner and prepared the palm
toddy; then, after the dishes had been removed, Keller, the toddy
mounting to his head, beat another wife who had dared to poke a hole
in the wall to peep at the strangers, kicked a dog that got in his
way, raised Cain all down the street with a four-foot length of
bamboo, and fell like a log dead asleep under the shade of a
Jack-fruit tree.
“There ain’t no flies on old man Keller,” said Billy Harman to Bud
Davis, as they walked next morning in the sun on the beach. “I tell
you I like that chap.”
“Meaning Keller?”
“Yep.”
“Jumping Moses!—and what do you like about him?” asked the astonished
Davis.
“Well,” said Harman, “takin’ him by and large, he seems to me a
trustable chap—goin’ by what he says. It’s straight out and have done
with it when he’s talkin’, same as when he’s kickin’ a Kanaka. I likes
him because there ain’t nothin’ hidden about him—look at all them
wives of his and he ownin’ up to them without a wink. ‘“Plain Sailin’
Jim,” that’s my name,’ says he, ‘straight with them that’s straight
and crooked with them that’s crooked.’ You heard him—and that’s his
label or I’m a digger Injin. No, there ain’t no flies on Keller.”
“Yes, I heard him,” said Davis, “and taking him by and large I’d label
him the king of the yeggmen, hot from yeggtown. No, sir, you don’t
take in Bud Davis with artificial flies and that chap may ‘Plain
Sailin’ Jim’ himself to the last holoo of the last trumpet, but he
won’t put the hood on chaps that have eyes in their heads, nor noses
to sniff a rotten character.”
“There you go,” said Harman, “startin’ out after your own ideas and
chasin’ them till they look like a man. Think bad of a chap and he’ll
look bad—that’s my motto, and I’m not goin’ to think bad of Keller.”
But Davis had lost interest in Keller. Something out at sea had caught
his eye, and taking Harman by the arm, he pointed over the dead calm
water.
“Look there,” said he.
Harman, shading his eyes, looked in the direction indicated.
“It ain’t the pa’m toddy, is it?” asked Harman.
“No,” said the other, “it’s a craft of some sort or another; what do
you make of her?”
“Nuthin’, she ain’t nacheral—looks like a cross between Noah’s ark
an’ a floatin’ hayrick rigged with a double set of masts and a——
Why, Lord bless my soul if she ain’t a junk, a junk and a schooner
lashed together, that’s what she is, derelick and driftin’.”
“Sure,” said Davis, his mind jumping at once to the truth. “Call
Keller—run and roust him out. Here he comes. Keller, hi, Keller! Ship
drifting out beyond the reefs. Look sharp!” He had no need to give
directions. Like a vulture scenting a carcass, Keller came swooping,
shaded his eyes and stood.
“It’s a junk and schooner,” said Harman.
“_Bêche-de-mer_ boat or opium smuggler,” said Keller, “and they’re
both abandoned and driftin’. There’s pickin’s here, boys. After me!”
He raced down to the beach, followed by the others, to where the boat
was hauled up, they pushed her out and, Keller steering, made through
the fairway, past the submerged rock towards the open sea.
Not a breath of wind stirred the swell to break the shimmering
reflections of the spars and sails of the locked ships. Stem to stern
they lay, the junk spars locked in the rigging of the schooner, the
two great eyes painted on the Chinaman’s bows staring straight at the
oncoming boat. Round and about the deserted ships fins moved and grey
forms glided in the green—sharks. On the smooth water, the letters on
the counter repainted the name of the schooner, _Haliotis_.
Keller gave the order to lay in the oars, and they came duddering
along the schooner’s side, Harman standing up. He seized one of the
stanchions of the rail and was about to hoist himself on deck when
Keller bade him stop.
“A minit,” said Keller, “who’s to tell it’s not a trap. Claw on and
listen.”
The cry of a far-off gull on the reefs came, and the creak and grind
of the ships’ sides as the swell lifted them. No other sound but the
occasional click of the rudder chain as the rudder of the schooner
shifted with the heave and fall of the hull.
Then, sure of themselves, with the cry of predatory animals, they
tumbled on board, fastened up and scattered, Bud and Billy over the
decks of the schooner, Keller, led by some vulturous instinct, on to
the junk.
“Here’s a stiff,” shouted Harman as Davis followed him forward towards
a bundle lying by the galley. “Lord, _ain’t_ he a stiff? Head split
with a hatchet. Here’s two more.” He pointed to a foot protruding from
the galley, where lay a Chink and a white man, both very stiff indeed.
Then, turning and quite unconcerned, they came racing aft and down
through the companion-way to the little cabin.
Here everything was quiet and trim; on the table under the swinging
lamp lay a soap dish and shaving brush and razor. Someone had been
shaving himself before the little mirror on the after bulkhead when
whatever happened had begun to happen. In the after cabin, presumably
the captain’s, the bunk bedding showed just as the sleeper had left it
when he turned out. Then they set to and rooted round, the instinct
for plunder so strong on them that they forgot Keller, the stiffs, the
tragedy and the very place where they were.
They found a gold watch and chain which Harman put in his pocket, and
a gold ring and fountain pen which Davis promptly annexed, they found
the log, which, being written in Spanish, was useless to them, and the
ship’s money, a big chamois leather chinking bag of Australian
sovereigns. This glorious find recalled Keller.
“Bud,” said Billy, “this h’ain’t nothing to do with _him_; hide them,
swaller them; here, give me your handkerchief and take half, tie them
up tight so’s they won’t chink. I’ll keep my lot in the bag. He won’t
guess nothin’, he’ll think the chows have cleared the place—ain’t
nothin’ more to take, is there? Then come ’long and have a squint at
the lazarette.”
The lazarette was full of food, all sorts of canned things; then,
hearing Keller’s voice above, up they came demure as cats out of a
dairy to find the long man waving his arms like a windmill. His goatee
beard was sticking out like a brush and his eyes flaming.
“Dope!” cried Keller. “Boys, our fortunes is made. Canton opium, blue
label tins and worth two thousand dollars if it’s worth a jitney. Kim
along down and howk them out.” He led the way on to the junk’s deck
and below to the awful interior smelling of opium, joss sticks, stale
fish and shark oil; there on the floor in the dismal twilight lay the
tins arranged by Keller in a heap.
“I reckon,” said Keller, “the schooner either went for the chows or
the chows for the schooner. Maybe they all killed each other, or maybe
the chaps that were left took fright seein’ a cruiser or fancyin’
one—reckon that was the way, for there ain’t no boats left, but the
dinghy. Well, it’s all a durn sea mystery, and I’ve seen queerer—but
there’s the dope, come along and hoist it.”
They brought the tins up and over to the schooner’s deck, got a
tarpaulin and tied them up in it, and then, and not till then, took
stock of their position. The drift of the current had left the island
a good way to the south, but there it lay green, lovely and inviting,
the glassy swell pearling round the coral.
Keller, turning from the opium tins to this picture, gazed for a
moment, his jaws working in contemplation. Then he turned to the
others.
“Boys,” said Keller, “it’s either go back or stick. I’m for sticking,
if there’s water and grub enough on board. You see, if we take this
dope back ashore, we won’t never be able to realise on it; any ship
takin’ us off will say, ‘What’s in that bundle?’ and there won’t be no
use sayin’ it’s bibles. Whereas if we can make a port in this hooker
we can claim salvage, and leavin’ that alone we can ten to one get rid
of the dope.”
“There’s grub enough,” said Davis, “to judge by the lazarette, and
there’s pretty sure to be enough water—two minutes will tell, but
first, let’s get those stiffs overboard. No use putting sinkers to
them, the sharks will finish them before they’ve sunk a fathom.”
Twenty minutes later the decision was come to and the boat got on
board.
They had found water and food enough for months, it only wanted a
breeze to break the ships apart, and Keller reckoned that the three of
them would be able to manage the schooner. Davis was a fair navigator,
the charts and compass had not been damaged or removed, and with
Matadore for a point of departure they ought to be able to reach the
Fijis. So it was settled.
Harman, leaning on the rail when the decision was come to, fancied
that he could hear a whisper from the beach of the far-away island,
the whisper of the swell breaking on the coral where the wives of
Keller were no doubt congregated, abandoned—chucked away for the
prospect of a fistful of dollars.
The drift of the current was so strong that before sunset Matadore had
all but vanished, washed away in the blue that stretched from infinity
to infinity, terrific in its calm.
The Pacific slept, and the slumber of this giant when sleep takes it
in deadly earnest is more trying to the imagination than its fury and
storm, an effect produced perhaps by the heave of the endless swell
flooding up from nowhere passing to nowhere, through space and time.
But the crew of the _Haliotis_ were not imaginative men, and they had
other calls upon their consideration. It was at the first meal on
board that the junk began to whisper of its presence. Harman had
brewed some tea, and they were seated round the table in the saloon
when Davis, looking up from his plate to the open skylight, sniffed
the air.
“That junk whiffs,” said Davis.
It was enough. Harman for a moment turned his head as though he was
straining to listen, and Keller glanced towards the door, then they
went on with their food, but the mischief was done and from that on
the junk was with them.
It was not so much the badness of the smell as the faintness and the
Chinese nature of it that produced the psychological effect—it was a
scent, a perfume of which shark liver oil was the vehicle and the
occupants joss-sticks, opium and the musk of Chinks. It haunted their
sleep that night and was only dispelled when next morning Keller, who
had gone on deck, came shouting down the hatch that the wind was
coming.
They had taken the sails off the junk the night before, finding a
hatchet—it was stained with something that was not red paint—they
hacked off the entangling spar, then, the wind coming, fortunately, on
the junk’s side, the sails of the _Haliotis_ trembled, the main boom
lashed out to port and Davis springing to the wheel turned the spokes.
For a moment the Chinaman seemed to cling to its departing companion,
wallowed, slobbered, groaned, and with a last roll dunched in ten feet
of the starboard rail, then it drew away as the great sail pressure of
the _Haliotis_ heeled the schooner to port.
“We’re free,” shouted Harman.
“Hr—good riddance!” cried Keller, raising his fist as if to strike at
the departing one, now well astern, and spitting into the water as if
to get the taste of her from his mouth.
Then, as Davis steered and the foam fled astern, the wind, taking the
high poop of the junk, slewed her round bow towards them, and showing
the great staring, malignant eyes. It was actually as if she had
turned to watch them.
“Look at her!” cried Billy, “turnin’ her snout to watch us; she’ll
follow us now sure as certain, we won’t have no luck now, we’ll be had
somehow or ’nuther, and maybe over that dope! Bud, where was your
brains you didn’t think of holin’ and sinkin’ her? Why, if it ain’t
anything else we can be had for leavin’ her a-floatin’ derelick and a
danger to navigation.”
“Oh, shut up,” said Davis, “you and your derelicts.”
The _Haliotis_ was a schooner of some hundred and twenty tons, and
three men can work a schooner of a hundred and twenty tons across big
tracts of ocean if they have fine weather, if they have no fear, if
they don’t bother to keep a look-out or attend to the hundred and
twenty little duties of ordinary ship life. Harman, Bud and Keller
filled this bill admirably. The wind changing and blowing from the
sou’-east, they ran before it, ran with no man at the wheel, wheel
lashed, head sheets taut, mainboom guyed to port, and never a mishap.
They ought to have gone to the bottom, you say; they ought, but they
didn’t. The wind changed instead, for the Paumotus, though far to the
eastward, still reached them with their disturbing spell breeding
unaccountable influence on wind and weather.
Harman had counted up the sovereigns in the chamois leather bag—there
were a hundred and twelve. In a private conference with Davis below,
Keller taking the deck and the wheel, he settled up with Davis.
“Better split the money now,” said Harman, “hundred and twelve I’ve
got, what’s your?”
“Ninety,” said Davis promptly.
Harman was shocked. He’d reckoned that Davis’s share was bigger than
his own or he wouldn’t have been so eager to settle up.
“Count ’em,” said he.
Davis produced the knotted handkerchief and counted the contents.
There were only ninety unless he had subtracted and hidden some, as
seemed probable, for at the rough division when they had split the
coins into two supposedly equal shares, Davis’s had seemed the bigger.
Harman, pretty sure of this, felt sore; certain of coming out equal in
the deal he had run straight. However, he settled up without a murmur
and pocketed the bag in a hurry, hearing Keller’s voice calling for
Davis to take the wheel.
Though it was a Spanish ship, to judge by the log, not a single
Spanish or French coin was included in the ship’s money, indicating
that her trade had been British; papers other than the log there were
none; perhaps the skipper had them on his person when the Chinks had
killed him and hove him to the sharks—no one could tell, and the
Harman syndicate didn’t bother.
They had other things to think of. One morning when all three were on
deck, Keller having come up to relieve Harman at the wheel, the
latter, who had been turning things over in his mind, gave it as his
opinion that the position might be pretty rocky if on striking the
Fijis “one of them d——d British brass-bound Port Authority chaps”
were to turn rusty on the business. “Suppose we run for Suva,” said
he, “and suppose they say we don’t believe your yarn? That’s what’s
got into my head. Would anyone believe it? I ask you that, would
anyone believe it?”
The others, suddenly struck by this point of view, ruminated for a
moment. No. The thing was true enough, but it didn’t sound true. They
had lifted the hatch during the calm and found the cargo to be copra.
What was a copra schooner doing seized on to a Chinaman, everyone dead
and all the rest of it? Stranger happenings had occurred at sea, ships
found derelict with not a soul on board, yet in perfect order—but
that was no explanation or support for a yarn that seemed too tough
for an alligator to swallow.
Then there was the opium—suspicion meant search, and those cans of
opium would not help them any; on top of all there was the money in
the pockets of Bud and Billy, money that even Keller knew nothing
about, but sure to be found on search.
“We ain’t nothing to show,” said Harman. “We should have kept one of
them Chinks for evidence.”
“And how’d we have kept him?” said Davis, “put him in your bunk
maybe—Why haven’t you more sense?”
“I’ve got it, boys,” said Keller, turning suddenly from the lee rail
where he had been leaning. “Suva—nothin’. Opalu’s our port of call,
ain’t more than four hundred miles to the north if our reckonin’s
right. Big German island where the pearl chaps come for doing business
and the Chinks and Malays fr’m as far as Java and beyond there. _Rao
Laut’s_ the name the Malays give it. Faked pearls and poached pearls
and dope, it’s all the same to them—they’d buy the huffs an’ horns
off Satan and sell ’em as goat’s. There’s nothin’ you couldn’t sell
them but bibles, and there’s nothin’ you could sell them they can’t
pass on through some ring or another. I tell you it’s a place, must
have been plum crazy not to have thought of it before.”
“And suppose they ask questions?” said Billy.
“They never ask questions at Rao Laut,” said Keller. “If there happens
to be a doctor there, he comes aboard to see you haven’t smallpox. If
there isn’t, he doesn’t.”
Keller was right, the big German island was the spot of spots for
them. They wanted no seaboard ports, no big island ports where English
was talked and questions were sure to be asked. Salving a derelict in
the Pacific means months and maybe years waiting for your salvage
money, especially if she is a foreigner, that is to say anything that
hails from anywhere that is not the British Empire or America. They
did not want to wait months or years, their lives were spent in the
grip of events, and in even a month it was hard to say where any one
of them might be from Hull to Hakodate. No, they did not reckon on
salvage money, and they did not want inquiries. They would have piled
her on the Bishop, that great rock right in their track and south of
Laut, only for the dope. It was impossible to bring those tins into
any port in an open boat.
At Laut it would be easy to get the stuff landed in one of the canoes
or sampans always plying in the bay—the only question was a buyer,
and Keller said he would easily find that.
The first they knew of the island was a perfume of cassi coming
through a dawn that having lazily snuffed out a star or two, simply
leapt on the sea; a crimson and old gold dawn trailed with a smoke
cloud like the fume of joss-sticks, cloud that broke to form flying
flamingoes that were shot to pieces by sunrays from a sun bursting up
into a world of stainless azure.
The island lay right before them, a high island with broken reefs to
east and west and clear water all to the south, where beyond the
anchorage and the beach lay the town wherein the four copra traders of
Laut carried on their trade and the Japanese and Chinese pearl
merchants and the Australian and Californian turtle shell buyers
foregathered at the so-called club kept by Hans Reichtbaum.
In the bay were two schooners, a brigantine and some small craft at
moorings, and somewhere about nine o’clock the _Haliotis_, moving like
a swan across the breeze-ruffled blue, dropped her anchor in twenty
fathoms, a far faint echo from the woods following the rasp of her
chain.
That was all the welcome Rao Laut gave her when Reichtbaum, in
pyjamas, shading his eyes on the club veranda, watched her swing to
her moorings and returned to his breakfast wondering what sort of
customers the newcomers would turn out.
It was their second night at Laut, and Bud and Billy leaning on the
after rail of the _Haliotis_ were contemplating the lights on shore. A
tepid wind from the sea fanned their cheeks and against the wind the
island breathed at them like a bouquet.
In two days they had taken the measure of the place and plumbed its
resources, and the brain of Keller working swiftly and true to form
had rejected all possible avenues for opium trade but one—Reichtbaum.
At the first sight of the German, Keller’s instinct had told him that
here was his man.
Keller had no money to spend on drinks at the club, and it was
Harman’s torture that, with his pocket bulging with gold, he could not
lay out a cent, but Reichtbaum had stood drinks yesterday, scenting
business from a few words dropped by Keller.
This evening at sundown Keller had gone alone, taking a single can of
opium with him and rowing himself ashore in the dinghy. Bud and Billy
were waiting for his return. They saw the lights of the club and the
lights of the village winking and blinking, as the intervening foliage
stirred in the wind, then on the starlit water they saw a streak like
the trail of a water-rat. It was the dinghy.
Keller came on board triumphant and without the tin. Not a word would
he say till they were down below, then, taking his seat at the saloon
table, he let himself go.
“Look at me,” said he, “sober, ain’t I? Fit to thread a needle or say
‘J’rus’lem artichoke,’ don’t you think? And he fired the stuff at me,
rum an’ gum and coloured drinks and fizz at the last, but I wasn’t
havin’ any, bisness is bisness, I says, and I ain’t playin’ a lone
hand, I’ve pardners to think of, ‘Plain Sailin’ Jim’s’ my name, and if
you don’t pay two hundred dollars a tin I’ll plain sail off an’ dump
the stuff out.”
“Two hundred dollars!” said the others in admiration. “You had the
cheek to ask him that?”
“That’s so,” replied Keller, “and I got it.” He produced notes for two
hundred dollars and spread them on the table.
“He opened the stuff and sampled it and planked the money down, and
two hundred dollars he’ll pay for every can, and there’s fourteen of
them left, that’s three thousand dollars for the lot. We’ve only to
take them ashore to get the money. Well now, seems to me since that’s
fixed, we have to think what to do with the schooner. We don’t want to
sit here in this b’nighted hole twiddlin’ our thumbs and waitin’ to be
took off, more especial as I don’t trust Reichtbaum any too much, and
it seems to me our plan is to stick to the hooker and take her right
to a Dutch port and sell the cargo, copra prices are rangin’ high——”
“Steady on,” suddenly cut in Harman. “Why, you said yourself we
couldn’t take her to any port, seein’ we have no papers but what’s
made out in Spanish, and no crew.”
“Just so,” said Keller. “It was the crew that was botherin’ me more
than the papers, but how about a crew of Kanakas now we have the money
to pay for them?”
Davis hit the table with his fist. “By Gosh, there’s something in
that,” said he.
“M’r’over,” said Keller, “I can get six chaps for five dollars ahead
advance. There’s more’n half a dozen schooner Kanakas kickin’ their
heels on the beach waitin’ for a job. I can get them on board
to-morrow, and all the fruit and water we want for ten dollars to the
chaps that bring it on board. Then, you see, a copra schooner comin’
into a Dutch port manned by Kanakas there won’t be no bother. Dutchmen
don’t know Spanish, nor they won’t care, we’re in from the islands,
and we’ve left our Spanish chaps sick at Laut—if there’s any
questions, which there won’t be.”
“When can we be off?” asked Harman.
“To-morrow afternoon, if we’re slick about gettin’ the water and
bananas on board,” said Keller. “Then when we’re all ready for sailin’
we’ll take the dope cans to Reichtbaum and get the money. We won’t do
that till last thing, for fear he’d play us some trick or another. I’m
none too sure of Germans.”
Next morning at six the work began, Davis and Harman going ashore to
hire the Kanakas and see about the water and provisions, Keller
remaining on board to clear up the ship and get the fo’c’sle in order.
Boat-loads of fruit were brought off, the newly hired Kanakas helping,
enough bananas to feed them for a month, taro, bread-fruit and a dozen
fowl in a crate, price three dollars. The water casks were filled, and
by four o’clock, with the promise of a steady wind off shore, the
_Haliotis_, with canvas raised, was ready to sail and the crew on
board.
Keller had brought up the opium tins in their tarpaulin wrapper.
“Be sure and count over the dollars,” said he to Davis, as the cans
were lowered into the dinghy, “and don’t take no drinks from him—if
he gets you on the booze, we’re done.”
“Him and his booze,” said Harman, as they shoved off. “Same as if
we’re childer——. Lay into it, Bud.”
The nose of the dinghy grounded on the soft sand, some native boys
helped to run her up, and getting the cans out, they started up the
beach towards the club.
It was a heavy load, but they managed the journey without stopping;
Reichtbaum was waiting for them on the veranda and, lending a hand,
they brought the treasure through the bar into a private room at the
back, a room furnished with native made chairs and tables, a roll-top
desk and a portrait of the German Emperor on the wall opposite the
window.
“So,” said Reichtbaum, “that is accomplished. And now, gentlemen, what
will you have to drink?”
“Highball for me,” said Harman, “if it’s all the same to you. What’s
yours, Bud?”
“Same as yours,” said Davis, wiping his mouth with the back of his
hand, and then these worthies sat whilst Reichtbaum went into the bar
and returned with a syphon of soda and a whisky bottle and then went
out again and returned with three glasses, and then fishing a
cigar-box from a shelf, handed out cigars.
The syphon whizzed and the fumes of tobacco rose.
Two highballs vanished, and nearly half an hour of precious time sped
with conversation, ranging from the German Emperor to the morals of
the ladies of Laut.
Then Davis turned to reality. “S’pose we get on with this business of
the dope,” said he. “Three thousand dollars it was, Mr. Keller was
saying—and we ought to be going.”
He rose from his chair.
“To be sure,” said Reichtbaum, rising also. “Three thousand dollars
vas agreed. Now for der dope.”
He took a clasp-knife from his pocket, knelt down and cut the rope
binding the tarpaulin, rooted it open, put in his hand and produced a
tin of bully beef. He flung the tarpaulin wide and tins tumbled out on
the floor, canned tomatoes mostly—there was a large stock of them on
the _Haliotis_. Bud and Billy, petrified with amazement as Reichtbaum
himself, stood without a word, till Harman found speech.
“Boys, we’re done,” cried Harman. “Fried and dished by Keller.” He
turned, made for the door and rushed through the bar on to the
veranda.
The _Haliotis_ with swelled sails and steered by “Plain Sailin’ Jim”
and his new Kanaka crew was not only at sea, but far at sea; she had
dropped her anchor chain most likely directly they had vanished into
the club, or maybe even she had taken the anchor in, Keller cynically
sure that falling to drinks, they would hear nothing of the winch.
“Well, it might have been worse,” said Bud that night as they sat
smoking on the beach. “He’s got the dope and the cargo and the ship
and the crew, but we ain’t destitute. We’ve got the sovereigns. But
what gets me is the fact that he’ll net all of ten thousand dollars
when he’s sold off that copra and the opium, to say nothing of the
hull. Maybe twenty thousand. Oh, he’ll do it and strand those poor
devils of Kanakas Lord knows where.”
Harman took out the watch belonging to the captain of the _Haliotis_
from his pocket, and looked at it gloomily. Then as a child comforts
itself with its toys, he took the chamois leather bag of sovereigns
from his pocket and began to count over the coins.
“I’m not botherin’ about that,” said he, “what gets me, is the fac’
that he’s run crooked with us.”
Davis, looking at the coins and remembering the watch and fountain
pen, to say nothing of the coins in his own pocket, smiled darkly. He
was about to remark that if Keller had run crooked with them, they had
run pretty crooked with Keller, but knowing the mentality of his
companion, he saved his breath and lit his pipe.
“That’s what gets me,” said Billy, serious as a deacon and evidently
brooding over the sins of the other and shovelling the sovereigns back
into the bag, “it ain’t the dope he’s diddled us out of, nor the
schooner, which I hopes he’ll bust on a rock, him and his Kanakas,
it’s the fac’ that he’s took me in, in my opinions. I reckoned that
chap was a white man, I’d a trusted that man with my second last
dollar and wouldn’t have wanted to tie no string to it, neither.
Outspoken and free he was with his conversation and hidin’ and holin’
in his ways—’nough to make a chap bank for the rest of his natural on
hearses an’ deaf mutes. That’s how I’m feelin’. No, sir, it ain’t the
dope he’s diddled us out of, nor the——”
“Oh, shut up,” said Davis, and turning on his side and lighting his
pipe, he led the conversation towards the club, the excellence of its
whisky and the morals of the ladies of Laut.