Mambaya is a French island.
Fancy a white French gunboat in a blue, blue bay, surf creaming on a
new moon beach, and a coloured town tufted with flame trees and gum
trees and rocketing palms. Purple mountains in the dazzling azure and
a perfume of red earth and roses mixed with the perfume of the sea.
Paumotuan pearl getters haunt Mambaya, brown-skinned men who have been
diving half a year or have captured in half a day the wherewithal for
a spree, and on the beach when a ship comes in you will find the
Chinese pearl buyers waiting for the pearl men, cigar coloured girls
with liquid brown eyes, the keeper of the roulette table in Mossena
Street and Fouqui, the seller of oranges, pines, bananas and custard
fruit.
But Mambaya does not exist entirely on pearls. The island is rich in
produce and it is a beauty spot. Great white yachts drop in and
anchor, steamers bring tourists, and on this same lovely beach where
they used to boil local missionaries in the old days, you can hear the
band playing at night in the Place Canrobert, where the two hotels are
situated and where at marble-topped tables the tourists are taking
their coffee and liqueurs.
From the island of Laut away down south where the bad men live, came
one day to the beach of Mambaya two men of the sea, ragged and tanned,
with their pockets stuffed with gold and hungering for pleasure—Bud
Davis and Billy Harman, no less.
A big Moonbeam copra boat had given them the lift for the sum of four
pounds each, paid in bright Australian sovereigns, but she could not
supply them with clothes. However, a Jew who came on board as soon as
the anchor was dropped, saved them the indignity of being fired off
the beach by the French authorities, and, landing in spotless white
ducks, they strung for the nearest bar, swallowed two highballs, lit
two cigars and came out wiping their mouths with the backs of their
hands.
“By golly,” said Billy, “ain’t this prime, Bud? Look at the place, why
it’s half as big as ’Frisco, innocent lookin’ as Mary Ann and only
sufferin’ to be scooped or painted red.”
They were in the Place Canrobert where the flame trees grow, where the
Kanaka children play naked in the sun and the shops expose faked
Island headdresses and curios, imitation jewellery from Paris, canned
salmon and Paris hats. The natives of Mambaya are well-to-do and spend
their money freely; they are paid in dollars, not trade goods, and
have a lively fancy and catholic taste.
“If you’re starting on the painting business,” said Bud, “then give me
notice and I’ll take myself off to the woods till you’re done, but
I’ll warn you this is no place for painters and decorators. It’s a
French Island and you’ll end your jag with a month in the cells or
road-making.”
“What you wants is a tub and a prayer book,” said the other, taking
his seat at a table in front of the Café Continental and calling for
lime juice.
“Who was talkin’ of jags, and can’t a chap use a figure of speech
without your jumpin’ down his throat? No, sir, scoopin’ is my idea.
Here we are with our pockets full and our teeth sharp, and if we don’t
pull off a coup in this smilin’ town where the folks are only standin’
about waitin’ to be took in, why we’d better take to knittin’ for a
livin’, that’s my opinion.”
A pretty native girl, all chocolate and foulard, passed, trailing her
eyes over the pair at the table; she wore bangles on her arms and was
carrying a basket of fruit.
“There you are,” said Harman, “if the native ‘Marys’ can dress like
that, what price the top folk? I tell you the place is rotten with
money only waitin’ to be took. Question is, how?”
Davis did not answer for a moment, he was watching an opulent looking
American tourist in white drill who had just left the Island
headdress shop across the way. The tourist opened a white umbrella
with a green inside and passed away towards the sea.
“No-how,” said Davis, “unless you set to work and open a shop or
something, you can’t skin a town like this same as a pearl lagoon. If
you want money here, you’ll have to work blame hard for it buying and
selling against chaps that are bred to the business better than
you—that’s civilisation.”
“Dam civilisation!” said Harman.
“Unless,” continued Davis, “you can fake up some swindle or
another——”
“Nothin’——” said Harman, “I’m agin that sort of game as you ought to
know, seein’ you know me. No, sir, I don’t want no first class ticket
to Noumea. Straight as a gun barrel is what I want to run, but I’ve no
objections to putting a few slugs in the gun. It’s just crawlin’ into
my head that a syndicate is what we want.”
“And what the devil do you want a syndicate for?” asked Davis.
“Well, it’s this way,” said Billy. “A matter of ten years or so ago in
the ’Frisco elections, I was in with Haffernan, Slungshot Haffernan,
the chap that was tried for the killin’ of Duffy Stevens at San
Leandro which he did, but got off owin’ to an alibi. Well, I’m tellin’
you. My job was fillin’ the ’lectors with gin an’ gettin’ them to the
polls before they’d lost the use of their pins and swearin’ false
evidence and such on, which wasn’t what a chap would do only in
’lection times.
“Well, a month or so after, Haffernan he got up a syndicate to run a
guano island he’d got the location of and which wasn’t there, and I
put fifty dollars into it and fifty other mugs did ditto and Haff
pouched the coin and turned it over to his wife and went bankrupt or
somethin’, anyhow he had the coin and we were left blowin’ our
fingers. Now you listen to me. How about that pearl island Mandelbaum
kicked us off? We’ve got the location. How about sellin’ it to a
syndicate?”
“Where’s your syndicate?”
“I don’t know,” said Billy, “but it seems to me it’s to be found for
lookin’ in a place like this where you see chaps like that guy with
the white umbrella. I saw his Siamese twin on the beach when we landed
with a diamond the size of a decanter stopper in his shirt front and
that Jew chap that sold us the clothes told me there’s no end of
Americans come here rotten with money, to say nothing of Britishers.”
“Well,” said Davis, “even supposing you get your syndicate, what about
Mandelbaum? He’s got a lease of the island and would hoof you and your
syndicate into the sea if you showed a nose in the lagoon.”
“He said he had a lease,” replied Harman, “but he never showed a line
of writin’ and I believe he was a liar, but I wasn’t proposin’ to go
there, only to sell the location; if he hoofs the syndicate into the
sea, why, it’s their look-out. If they ain’t fools they’ll hoof him in
first, lease or no lease, and collar the pearls he’s been takin’.”
“What I like about you is your consistency,” said Davis.
“What’s that?” asked Harman.
“The way you stick to your guns. You’re always preaching that it’s
best to run straight and then you turn up an idea like that. Nice
straight sort of business, isn’t it?”
“As straight as a gun barrel,” said Harman enthusiastically. “You
can’t be had no how, not by all the lawyers from here to Oskosh.
Y’see, if chaps are mugs enough to pay coin down for a location you’re
free to take their coin. That’s good United States law. I had it from
Lawyer Burstall when we got stung over the Haffernan business. He’s a
toughs’ lawyer, long thin chap, not enough fat on him to grease the
hinges of a pair of scissors, and cute enough to skin Jim Satan if he
got a fair grip of his tail.”
“Maybe,” said Davis, “anyhow before you start in on any of your games,
we’ve got to get lodgings. I’m not going to fling my coin away on one
of these hotel sharps and we’ve got to get some dunnage to show up
with. That Jew chap told me where we could get rooms cheap, last house
end of town on right-hand side and with a big tree fern in the
garden.”
Living is cheap in Mambaya, where people mostly subsist on coco-nut
milk and fried bananas, where you can get a hundred eggs for half a
dollar and a chicken for a quarter. If you are an æsthete you can
almost live on the scenery alone, on the sun, on the unutterably blue
sky that roofs you between the rains. But Billy and his companion had
little use for scenery, and after a week of lounging on the beach,
wandering about the town and watching the natives surf bathing off
Cape Huane, life began to pall on them.
They were not fools enough to drink, and if they had been, the bar of
the Café Continental, white-painted, cold, correct, served by a
white-coated bar tender who could talk nothing but Bêche-de-mer
French, would have choked them off. There was not the ghost of a sign
of a syndicate to be developed, nor of trade of any sort to be done.
They visited the roulette shop, where the keeper of the table allowed
them to win some forty dollars which they promptly departed with,
never to return.
“We’ve skinned the cream off that,” said Davis next morning as they
lay smoking and kicking their heels on the sand, “and there’s not
another pan of milk about. You see, we’re handicapped not talking
French. Like cats in a larder with muzzles on—that’s about the size
of it.”
Harman assented. He took from his pocket the bag that held his money,
nearly a hundred bright brass-yellow Australian sovereigns. They were
on a secluded part of the beach with no one within eye-shot, and he
amused himself by counting the coins and stacking them in little piles
on the sand.
Then he swept the coins back into the bag and sat up as Davis pointed
seaward to where, rounding Cape Huane, came a white-painted steamer,
the mail boat for Papeete and beyond.
The whoop of her siren lashed the sleepy air and brought echoes from
the woods and a quarter of a minute later a far-off whoop from the
echoes in the hills, then down from the town and groves the beach
began to stream with people. Kanaka children racing for the sea edge
and fruit sellers with their baskets, girls fluttering foulard to the
breeze and Kanaka bucks, naked but for a loin-cloth; then came white
folk, Aaronson, the Jew, and the keeper of the Hôtel Continental,
officials and a stray Chinaman or two.
Neither Bud nor Billy stirred a limb till the rasp of the anchor chain
came over the water, then getting up, they strolled down to the
water’s edge and stood, hands in pockets, watching the shore boats
putting out, boats laden with fruit, and canoes with naked Kanaka
children ready to dive for coppers.
Then the ship’s boat came ashore with mails and passengers.
“Ain’t much sign of a syndicate here, neither,” said Harman, as he
stood criticising the latter, mostly male tourists of the heavy
globe-trotting type and American women with blue veils and guide
books. “It’s the old mail-boat crowd that’s been savin’ up for a
holiday for the last seven year an’s got so in the habit of savin’,
it’s forgot how to spend. I know them. Been on a mail boat once;
haven’t you ever been on a mail boat, Bud? Then you don’t know nothin’
about nothin’. Half the crew is stewards and half the officers is
dancin’ masters to judge by the side of them, and the blessed cargo is
duds like them things landin’ now.”
He turned on his heel and led the way back towards the town.
As they drew along towards it, one of the passengers, a young, smart
and natty individual carrying an imitation crocodile-skin handbag,
overtook them, and Harman, greatly exercised in his mind by the bag,
struck up a conversation.
“Air you goin’ to reside in this town, stranger?” asked Mr. Harman.
“Eight hours,” replied the stranger, “boat starts at eight p.m.
Smart’s my name, and smart’s my nature, and not being Methuselah, I
find time an object in life. What, may I ask, is the population of
this town, air there any opportunities on this island and what’s the
condition, in your experience, of the luxury trades—may I ask?”
“Dunno,” said Harman, “ain’t been here long enough to find out.”
“I got landed to prospect,” went on the other, “I’m trading—trading
in pearls. O.K. pearls. Wiseman and Philips is our house and our
turnover is a million dollars in a year. Yes, sir, one million
dollars. From Athabasca to Mexico City the females of forty-two states
and two territories cough up one million dollars a year for personal
adornment, and Wiseman and Philips does the adorning. I’m travelling
the islands now. Well, here’s a hotel—and good day to you,
gentlemen.”
He dived into the Continental and Harman and Davis walked on.
“Well,” said the intrigued Harman, “it sorter makes one feel alive,
comin’ in touch with chaps like that—notice the bag he was carryin’,
looked as if the hide’d been taken off a cow that’d been skeered to
death. I’ve seen them sort of bags before on passenger ships, and they
always belonged to nobs. That was a sure enough panama he was wearin’,
and did you notice the di’mond ring on his finger?”
“He’s a damn fish-scale jewellery drummer,” said Davis, “out to sell
dud pearls and save five dollars a week out of his travelling
allowance, notice he never offered to stand drinks? The earth’s
crawling with the likes of him, selling servant girls everything from
dud watches to dummy gramophones.”
But Harman was not listening, the million-dollar turnover, the
imitation crocodile skin bag and the sure enough panama hat had seized
on his imagination.
It suddenly seemed to him that he had missed his chance, that here was
the nucleus of the syndicate he wanted, a sharp, sure-enough American
with a big company behind him and lots of money to burn. He said so,
and Davis laughed.
“Now get it into your head you won’t do more than waste your time with
chaps like those,” said he. “Of course, they’ve got the money, but
even if you could get to their offices and deal with them instead of
their two-cent drummer, where’d you be? Do you mean to say you’d have
any chance with these sharps, trying to sell a dud proposition to
them? Why, when they’d took out your back teeth to see if there was
any gold in them and stripped you to your pants, you wouldn’t have
done with them, you’d be stuck for an atlas of the world, or maybe a
piano organ on the instalment plan, givin’ them sixty per cent. on the
takings and a mortgage on the monkey. You get me? Sometimes you’re
sharp enough, but once your wits get loose, it’s away with you. This
chap isn’t any use—forget him.”
But Harman scarcely heard.
If they had turned on their tracks they might have seen Smart, who,
after a drink at the bar of the hotel, had started out to visit the
shops, more especially those likely to push the sale of O.K. pearls
and North Pole diamonds—a side line.
At half-past four that afternoon Harman—Davis having gone
fishing—found himself in the Continental bar. The place was empty,
and Billy was in the act of paying and taking his departure when in
came Smart.
“Hullo,” said Harman. “Have a drink?”
They drank. Highballs first of all, and then, at the suggestion of
Billy, who paid for drinks the whole of that afternoon, hopscotches,
which are compounded of Bourbon, crushed ice, lemon peel, _parfait
amour_ and a crystallised cherry.
At the second hopscotch the tongue of Smart was loosened and his words
began to flow.
“Well, I reckon there’s not much to the town,” said Smart, “but it’s
an oleograph for scenery and pictooresqueness; with a pier for landing
and a bathing beach where all that fishermen’s truck and those canoes
are, it would beat a good many places on the islands that don’t think
five cents of themselves. I’ve been pushing the name of Wiseman and
Philips into the ears of all and sundry that has got ears to hear
with, but all such places as these is only seeds by the way. Chicago
is our main crop an’ Noo York, after that Pittsburg, and we’re feeling
for London, England.
“We’ve agents in Paris and Madrid that aren’t asleep, and Wiseman says
before he dies he’ll put a rope of pearls round Mother Earth, and a
North Pole di’mond tiara on her old head. Yes, sir. (Third hopscotch.)
That’s what Wiseman says in his office and my hearing, and Philips, he
helps run the luxury and fake leather sundry department, he said he’d
fit her out with O de Nile coloured croc leather boots and a vanity
bag of stamped lizard skin if the sales went on jumping as they were
going, which was more like Klondike stuffed with the Arabian nights
than any sales proposition he had ever heard, seen, dreamt or read of.
Sales! (_hic_) as sure as there’s two cherries in this glass I’m
holding, my orders booked in Chicago for pearls ending Christmas Day
last was over one hundred thousand dollars. One hundred thousand
dollars. But you haven’t seen our projuce.”
He bent, picked up his bag, fumbled in it and produced a box and from
the box a gorgeous pearl necklace.
“Feel of those,” said Smart, “weigh them, look at ’em, look at the
grading, look at the style, look at the lustre and brilliancy. Could
Tiffany beat them for twenty thousand dollars? No, sir, he couldn’t;
they leave him way behind.”
The dazzled Harman weighed the rope in his hand and returned it.
“Don’t be showin’ them sort of things in bars,” said he, as the other
closed the box with a hiccup and replaced it in the bag, “but now
you’ve showed me yours, I’ll show you mine.”
“Pull ’em out,” said the other, picking up his hat, which he had
dropped in stooping.
“They ain’t here,” said Harman, “it’s only the knowledge of them I’ve
got. Stranger, ’s sure as I’m lightin’ this cigar, I know a lagoon in
an island down south where you can dredge up pearls same as them by
the fist full.”
“It must be a dam’ funny lagoon,” said the other, with a cynical
laugh.
Harman agreed. It was the funniest place he’d ever struck, he told the
story of it at length and at large, and how Mandelbaum had kicked him
and Davis off the atoll and how it only wanted a few bright chaps to
hire a schooner and go down and do the same to Mandelbaum and take his
pearls. He assured Smart that he—Harman—was his best friend, and
wrote the latitude and longitude of the pearl island down on the back
of a glossy business card of the drummer’s, but it did not much
matter, as he wrote it all wrong.
Then, all of a sudden, he was out of the bar and walking with Smart
among palm trees. Then he was in the native village which lies at the
back of the town, and they were drinking kava at the house of old
Nadub, the kava seller, who was once a cannibal and boasted of the
fact—kava after hopscotches!—and Smart was seated with his arm round
the waist of Maiala, Nadub’s daughter, and they were both smoking the
same cigar alternately and laughing. Nadub was laughing, the whole
world was laughing.
Then Mr. Harman found himself home, trying to explain to Davis that he
had sold the pearl location to Smart, who was going to marry Nadub’s
daughter, also the beauty of true love, and the fact that he could not
unlace his boots.
“A nice object _you_ made of yourself last night,” said Davis next
morning, standing by the mat bed where Harman was stretched, a jar of
water beside him. “You and that two-cent drummer! What were you up to,
anyway?”
Harman took a pull at the jar, put his hand under his pillow and made
sure that his money was safe, and then lay back.
“Up to—where?” asked Harman, feebly.
“Where? Why, back in the native town. You left that chap there, and
the purser of the mail boat had to beat the place for him and get four
roustabouts ashore to frog-march him to the ship.”
“I dunno,” said Harman, “I got along with him in a bar, and we sat
havin’ drinks, them drinks they serve at the Continental—Lord, Bud, I
never want to see another cherry again, nor sniff another drop of
Bourbon. I’m on the water-wagon for good and all. It ain’t worth it;
I’m feelin’ worse than a Methodis’ parson. I’m no boozer, but if I do
strike the jagg by accident, my proper feelin’s pay me out. It’s not a
headache, it’s the feelin’ as if a chapel minister was sittin’ on my
chest, and I’d never get him off. Give’s my pants.”
He rose, dressed, and went out. Down on the beach the sea breeze
refreshed Mr. Harman, and life began to take a rosier colour. He sat
on the sand, and taking the chamois leather bag from his pocket,
counted the coins in it.
The fun of the day before had cost him ten pounds!
Ten pounds—fifty dollars—for what? Three or four drinks, it did not
seem more, and a tongue like an old brown shoe. He moralised on these
matters for a while, and then returning the coins to the bag and the
bag to his pocket, he rose up and strolled back through the town,
buying a drinking nut from the old woman at the corner of the Place
Canrobert and refreshing himself with its contents.
Then he wandered in the groves near the native village, and two hours
later, Davis, seated under the trees of the Place Canrobert and
reading a San Francisco paper, which the purser of the mail boat had
left behind in the bar of the Continental, saw Harman approaching.
Harman had evidently got the chapel minister off his chest, his chin
was up, and his eyes bright. He sat down beside the other, laughed,
slapped himself on the right knee and expectorated.
“What’s up?” said Davis.
“Nothin’,” said Harman. “Nothin’ I can tell you about at the minute.
Say, Bud, ain’t you feelin’ it’s time we took the hook up and pushed?
Ain’t nothin’ more to be done here, seems to me, and I’ve got a plan.”
“What’s your plan?” asked Davis.
“Well, it’s more’n a plan. I’ve been thinkin’ quick and come to the
conclusion that we’ve got to get out of here, pronto, get me? More’n
that, we’ve got to make for Rarotambu, that’s the German island
between here and Papeete.”
“Why the deuce d’you want to go there?” asked Davis.
“There’s money waitin’ for us there,” replied Harman, “and I don’t
want to touch at no French island.”
Davis put his paper behind him and filled a pipe. He knew that when
Harman had one of his mysterious fits on, there was sure to be
something behind it, some rotten scheme or another too precious to be
disclosed till ripe. But he was willing enough to leave Mambaya and
made no objections.
“How are you going to get down to Rarotambu,” he asked, “s’posing we
decide to go?”
“I’ve worked out that,” said Harman. “You know that copra schooner
that’s been filling up in the bay? She’s off to ’Frisco, touching at
Papeete, leavin’ to-night. Wayzegoose, he’s her skipper, I met him ten
minutes ago when I was workin’ out my plans, and he’ll turn aside for
us and drop us at Rarotambu for two hundred dollars, passage money.”
“Not me,” said Davis. “Him and his old cockroach trap, why, I’d get a
passage on the mail boat for a hundred dollars.”
“Maybe,” said Harman, “but I don’t want no mail boats nor no Papeetes,
neither. What are you kickin’ at? I’ll pay.”
“Well, I’ll come along if you’re set on it,” said Bud, “but I’m hanged
if I see your drift. What’s the hurry, anyhow?”
“Never you mind that,” replied Harman, “there’s hurry enough if you
knew. There’s a cable from here to Papeete, ain’t there?”
“Yep.”
“Well never you mind the hurry till we’re clear of this place. Put
your trust in your Uncle Billy, and he’ll pull you through. You’ve
laughed at me before for messin’ deals, said I’d no sort of headpiece
to work a traverse by myself, didn’t you? Well, wait and you’ll see,
and if it’s not ‘God bless you, Billy, and give us a share of the
luck’ when we get to Rarotambu, my name’s not Harman.”
“Maybe,” said Davis, “and maybe not. I’m not likely to forget that
ambergris you fooled me out of with your plans, nor the dozen times
you’ve let me down one way or another, but I tell you this, Billy
Harman, it’s six cuts with a rope’s end over your sternpost I’ll hand
you if you yank me out of this place on any wild goose chase.”
“I’ll take ’em,” chuckled Harman. “Joyful, but there ain’t no geese in
this proposition, nothin’ but good German money, and when you’re down
on your knees thankin’ me, you’ll remember your words.”
“Oh, get on,” said Davis, and taking the newspaper again, he began to
read, Harman making over for the Continental and a gin and bitters.
The _Manahangi_ was a schooner of two hundred tons, built in 1874 for
the sandal wood trade and looking her age. Wayzegoose fitted his ship.
His scarecrow figure appeared at the port rail as the boat containing
Billy and Bud came alongside and he dropped the ladder himself for
them.
They had scarcely touched the deck when the Kanakas clapped on to the
winch, the anchor chain was hove short, the sails set and then, as the
anchor came home, the _Manahangi_, in the gorgeous light of late
afternoon, leant over to the breeze, the blue water widened to the
shore and the old schooner, ageworn but tight as a cobnut, lifted to
the swell of the Pacific.
Harman at the after rail gazed on the island scenery as it fell
astern, heaved a sigh of relief and turned to Davis.
“Well, there ain’t no cables can catch us now,” said he. “We’re out
and clear with money left in our pockets and twenty thousand dollars
to pick up right in front of us like corn before chickens.”
Wayzegoose, having got his ship out, went down below for a drink,
leaving the deck to the Kanaka bo’sun and the fellow at the wheel, and
finding themselves practically alone, Harman lifted up his voice and
chortled.
“I’ll tell you now,” he said, “I’ll tell you, now we’re out—that chap
was robbed by the Kanakas. You remember sayin’ that he was shoutin’ he
was robbed as they was frog-marchin’ him to the ship—he spoke the
truth.”
“Did you rob him, then?” asked Davis suspiciously.
“Now I’ll tell you. Him and me was sittin’ drinkin’ at that bar most
of the afternoon when out he pulls pearls from that bag of his, pearls
maybe worth thirty thousand dollars.”
“Where the blazes did he get them from?” asked Davis.
“Out of that bag, I’m tellin’ you, and right in front of the Kanaka
bar-tender. ‘Put them things away,’ I says, ‘and don’t be showin’ them
in bars,’ but not he, he was too full of Bourbon and buck to listen
and then when I left him after, in the native town, they must have
robbed him. _For_,” said Mr. Harman, “between you and me and the
mizzen mast, them pearls are in my pocket now.
“No, sir, I didn’t pinch them, but that piece Maiala did, as sure as
Moses wasn’t Aaron, for this morning I met her carryin’ stuff for old
Nadub to make his drinks with and there round her neck was the pearls.
Stole.
“I follows her home and with sign langwidge and showin’ the dollars, I
made them hand over them pearls, forty dollars I paid for twenty
thousand dollars worth of stuff and what do you think of that?”
Billy put his hand in his pocket and produced a handkerchief carefully
knotted, and from the handkerchief, a gorgeous pearl necklace.
Davis looked at it, took it in his hands and looked at it again.
“Why you double damned idiot,” cried Davis, “you mean to say you’ve
yanked me off in this swill tub because you’ve give forty dollars for
a dud necklace, and you’re afraid of the police?—Smart—why that
chap’s pearls weren’t worth forty dollars the whole bag full. Ten
dollars a hundred-weight’s what the factories charge—I told you he
was a dud and his stuff junk—and look at you, look at you!”
“You’ll be takin’ off your shirt next,” said Harman, “you’re talkin’
through the hole in your hat. Them pearls is genuine and if they
ain’t, I’ll eat them.”
But Davis, turning over the things, had come upon something that
Harman had overlooked, a teeny-weeny docket near the hasp, on which
could be made out some figures—
$4.50
“Four dollars fifty,” said Davis, and Harman looked.
There was no mistaking the figures on the ticket.
“And what was it you gave for them to that girl, thinking they’d been
stolen?” asked Davis.
“Damn petticuts!” cried the other, taking in everything all at once.
“Six cuts of a rope’s end it was to be,” said Davis, “but a boat
stretcher will do.” He put the trash in his pocket and seized a boat
stretcher that was lying on the deck, and Wayzegoose coming on deck
and wiping his mouth, saw Harman bent double and meekly receiving six
strokes of the birch from Davis without a murmur.
And thinking that what he saw was an optical illusion due to gin, he
held off from the bottle for the rest of that cruise.
So Billy did some good in his life for once in a way, even though he
managed to do it by accident.