Part 16

Did you ever hear of such a tomfool arrangement? For she could just as well have waited till he got to ’Frisco, and then she’d have had time to change her mind; that’s what Buck told her as we put out with Levenstein waving to us from the shore.

Buck rubbed it into her proper, he being a relative and all that, but I doubt if he wasn’t as glad as myself to think of the face Pat would pull when he found his daughter had married herself to a small island trader and a German at that. She took his lip without saying a word, and a day or two after she made inquiries as to when we should reach Palm Island.

“Oh, in a day or two,” says Buck.

Now we weren’t due to touch at that place for fourteen days if the wind held good, and when I got him alone a few minutes later I asked him why he had told her that lie.

“And what would you have had me say?” he asked.

“Why, that we wouldn’t be there for a fortnight,” I answered.

“Well,” said he, “that would have been as big a lie, for we aren’t going to touch there at all. I’ve got extra water casks from that cooper chap at Levua and an extra supply of bananas.”

“What’s your reason?” I asks.

“I’ll tell you when this deal is through,” he answers, and knowing it was useless to ask any more, I didn’t.

A few days later. Buck told us that we’d passed the location of the island and that it wasn’t there; must have sunk in the sea, he said, same as these small islands sometimes do.

When he sprung this on us you might have thought by the way Sadie went on she’d lost a relative; said that she wanted to see it more than the New Jerusalem, owing to Buck’s description of it, and asked couldn’t we poke round and make sure it was gone and that we weren’t being deceived owing to some error of the compass.

Buck says: “All right,” and we spent the better part of two days fooling about pretending to look for that damn island and then we lit for ’Frisco.

No sooner had we got there and landed the cargo, Sadie included, than Buck says to me one morning: “Clutch on here,” he says, “whilst I’m away. I’m going to London.”

“London, Ontario?” I asks.

“No, London, England,” he says.

“And what are you going there for?” I questions.

“To see the Tower,” says he.

Off he goes and in two months he returns.

V

I was sitting at breakfast when he comes in, having arrived by the early morning train.

Down he sits and has a cup of coffee.

“How’s Pat?” says he.

“You’re even with Pat,” I says. “Levenstein got here a week ago and Pat don’t like his new son-in-law. There’s been the devil to pay.”

“I’m better even with him than that,” says Buck. “Brent, we’re millionaires.”

“Spit yer meaning out,” I says.

“Do you remember,” says he, “my saying to you last time we touched at Palm Island that the place seemed built of a sort of rock I’d never seen before, and my bringing a chunk of it away in my pocket? Well, what do you think that rock is but phosphate of lime.”

“What’s that?” I queries.

“Seagull guano mixed with the lime of coral,” he says, “the finest fertiliser in the world and worth thirteen to fourteen dollars a ton. How many tons would Palm Island weigh, do you think, and it’s most all phosphate of lime?”

I begins to sweat in the palms of my hands, but I says nothing and he goes on:

“Palm Island being a British possession, since an Irishman has discovered it and it lies to eastward of the German British line, I went to London, and I’ve got not only the fishing rights but the mining rights for ninety-nine years. I didn’t say nothing about the mining rights, said I wanted to start a cannery there since the fishing was so good, and an old cockatoo in white whiskers did the rest and dropped the mining rights in gratis like an extra strawberry. Then, coming through N’ York I got a syndicate together that’ll buy the proposition when they’ve inspected it. I’ll take a million or nothing,” says he.

“But, look here,” I says, “how in the nation did it all happen; how did you know?”

“Well,” says he, “it was this way. That chunk of rock I was telling you of, I stuck in my sea chest, and unpacking when I got back I gave it to little Micky Murphy who was in the room pretending to help me. He used it for a play toy.

“Now do you remember Pat O’Brien that morning he left us, talking to Micky outside and taking him off to buy candy? Well, next day Mrs. Murphy said to me that the old gentleman was very free with his money, but she didn’t think he was quite right as he’d offered Micky a dollar for the stone he was playing with. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but later on, you remember that night on board ship, the thing hit me like a belt on the head.

“Micky had told the old chap I’d given him the stone when I came back from that trip and Pat had recognised it for what it was. The only question that bothered him was where I’d picked it up. He knew I traded regular with Levua, and when he found we stopped nowhere but Levua and Palm Island he knew it was at one of those two places. Phosphate of lime was to be found, enough maybe to double his fortune. He sent the girl to prospect, and she’d have done me in only that night I suddenly remembered a chap telling me about the phosphate business and saying the stuff was like rock, striped in places; I’d never thought of it till then, and what made me think of it was that I’d been worrying a lot since I’d left ’Frisco over Pat and all his doings. Seems to me the mind does a lot of thinking we don’t know of.”

“Well,” I says, “when he sent the girl to prospect he didn’t bargain she was going to prospect Levenstein.”

“No,” says Buck, “seems to me we’ve got the double bulge on him.”

But we hadn’t.

Buck got a million for his phosphate rights and gave me a share, and, as much will have more, we flew high and lost every buck in the Eagle Consolidated Gold and Silver Mining Corporation, Inc.

Pat met us the day after the burst and we asked him how the Levensteins were doing.

“Fine,” says he. “He asked me how to become a millionaire last night and I told him it was quite easy, you only had to pick up a million and stick to it, but mind you,” I said, “it’s not the picking it up’s the bother, but the sticking to it. Now look at that Eagle Consolidated business,” I says, “many’s the fine boy has put his money in tripe stock like that, tumbling balmy after working for years like a sensible man. You know the stock I mean,” he finishes. “The Eagle Consolidated Gold and Silver Mining Corporation, Inc.”

“Yes, I know,” says Buck.

We didn’t want to have no last words or let the old boy rub it in any more; we hiked off, Buck and me, resuming our way to the wharf and the same old life we’d always been living but for the three months we’d been million dollar men.

“Pat seemed to have the joke on us,” said Brent, “but looking back on those three months and the worries and dyspepsias and late hours that make a millionaire’s life, I’m not so sure we hadn’t the bulge on him over the whole transaction, specially considering that Levenstein went bust, forged cheques and let him in for forty thousand or so to save the name of the family.

“That’s the last transaction we ever had with Pat,” finished Brent. “He dropped calling on us to tell us how to become millionaires, seeing we’d given instructions to Mrs. Murphy always to tell him we were out.”

XIII—KILIWAKEE

I

The longest answer to a short question I ever heard given was delivered by Captain Tom Bowlby, master mariner, in the back parlour of Jack Rounds’ saloon away back in 1903.

Bowlby still lingers as a memory in Island bars; a large mahogany-coloured man, Bristol born and owned by the Pacific; he had seen sandalwood wane and copra wax, had known Bully Hayes and the ruffian Pease and Colonel Steinberger; and as to the ocean of his fancy, there was scarcely a sounding from the Kermadecs to French Frigate Island he could not have given you.

An illiterate man, maybe, as far as book reading goes, but a full man by reason of experience and knowledge of Life—which is Literature in the raw.

“And so, usin’ a figure of speech, she’d stuck the blister on the wrong chap,” said the Captain finishing a statement.

“I beg your pardon, Cap’,” came a voice through the blue haze of tobacco smoke, “but what was you meanin’ by a figure of speech?”

The Cap’, re-loading his pipe, allowed his eyes to travel from the window and its view of the blue bay and the Chinese shrimp boats to the island headdresses and paddles on the wall and from thence to the speaker.

“What was I meanin’ by a figure of speech?—why, where was you born?” He snorted, lit up, and accepted another drink and seemed to pass the question by, but I saw his trouble. He couldn’t explain, couldn’t give a clear definition off-hand of the term whose meaning he knew quite well. Can you?

“Well, I was just asking to know,” said the voice.

Then, like a strong man armed, his vast experience of men and matters came to the aid of Captain Tom:

“And know you shall,” said he, “if it’s in my power to put you wise. When you gets travelling about in Languige you bumps across big facts. You wouldn’t think words was any use except to talk them, would you? You wouldn’t think you could belt a chap over the head with a couple of words strung together same as with a slung shot, would you? Well, you can. You was askin’ me what a figure of speech is—well, it’s a thing that can kill a man sure as a shot gun, and Jack Bone, a friend of mine, seen it done.

“Ever heard of Logan? He’d be before your time, but he’s well remembered yet down Rapa way, a tall, soft-spoken chap, never drank, blue-eyed chap as gentle as a woman and your own brother till he’d skinned you and tanned your hide and sold it for sixpence. He had offices in Sydney to start with and three or four schooners in the trade, _bêche de mer_, turtle shell and copra, with side interests in drinkin’ bars and such, till all of a sudden he went bust and had to skip, leaving his partner to blow his brains out, and a wife he wasn’t married to with six children to fend for. What bust him? Lord only knows; it wasn’t his love of straight dealin’ anyhow. Then he came right down on the beach, with his toes through his boots, till he managed to pick a living somehow at Vavao and chummed in with a trader by name of Cartwright, who’d chucked everything owing to a woman and taken to the Islands and a native wife—one of them soft-shelled chaps that can’t stand Luck, nohow, unless it’s with them. Logan got to be sort of partner with Cartwright, who died six months after, and they said Logan had poisoned him to scoop the business. Some said it was the native wife who did the killing, being in love with Logan, who took her on with the goodwill and fixtures. If she did, she got her gruel, for he sold out to a German after he’d been there less than a year, and skipped again. I reckon that chap must have been born with a skippin’ rope in his fist by the way he went through life. They say wickedness don’t prosper; well, in my experience it prospers well enough up to a point; anyhow Logan after he left Vavao didn’t do bad, by all accounts; he struck here and there, pearling in the Paumotus and what not, and laying by money all the time, got half shares in a schooner and bought the other chap out, took her blackbirding in the Solomons, did a bit of opium smuggling, salved a derelict and brought her right into ’Frisco, turned the coin into real estate at San Lorenz, and sold out for double six months after; then he went partners with a chap called Buck Johnstone in a saloon by the water side close on to Rafferty’s landin’ stage, a regular Shanghai and dope shop with ward politics thrown in, and a place in the wrecking ring, and him going about ’Frisco with a half-dollar Henry Clay in his face and a diamond as big as a decanter stopper for a scarf pin.

“He didn’t drink, as I was saying, and that gave him the bulge on the others. He had a bottle of his own behind the bar with coloured water in it, and when asked to have a drink he’d fill up out of it, leaving the others to poison themselves with whisky.

“Then one night James Appleby blew into the bar.

II

“Appleby was a chap with a fresh red face on him, a Britisher, hailing from Devonshire and just in from the Islands. He’d been supercargo on a schooner trading in the Marshalls or somewhere that’d got piled on a reef by a drunken skipper and sea battered till there wasn’t a stick of her standing and everyone drowned but Appleby and the Kanaka bo’sun. He was keen to tell of his troubles and had a thirst on him, and there he stood lowering the bilge Johnstone passed over to him and trying to interest strangers in his family history and sea doings. Logan was behind the bar with Johnstone, and Logan, listening to the chap clacking with a half-drunk bummer, suddenly pricks his ears. Then he comes round to the front of the bar and listens to his story, and takes him by the arm and walks him out of the place on to the wharf and sits him on a bollard, Appleby clacking away all the time and so full of himself and his story, and so glad to have a chap listening to him, and so mixed up with the whisky that he scarce noticed that he’d left the bar.

“Then, when he’d finished, he seen where he was, and was going back for more drinks, but Logan stopped him.

“‘One moment,’ says Logan, ‘what was that you were saying about pearls to that chap I heard you talking to. Talking about a pearl island, you were, and him sucking it in; don’t you know better than to give shows like that away in bars to promiscuous strangers?’

“‘I didn’t give him the location,’ hiccups the other chap, ‘and I don’t remember mentioning pearls in particular, but they’re there sure enough and gold-tipped shell; say, I’m thirsty, let’s get back for more drinks.’

“Now that chap hadn’t said a word about pearls, but he’d let out in his talk to the bummer that down in the Southern Pacific they’d struck an island not on the charts, and he had the location in his head and wasn’t going to forget it, and more talk like that, till Logan, sober and listening, made sure in his mind that the guy had struck phosphates or pearls, and played his cards according.

“‘One moment,’ says Logan. ‘You’ve landed fresh with that news in your head and you’re in ’Frisco, lettin’ it out in the first bar you drop into—ain’t you got more sense?’

“‘It’s not in my head,’ says the other, ‘it’s in my pocket.’

“‘What are you getting at?’ says Logan.

“‘It’s wrote down,’ says Appleby. ‘Latitude and longitude on my notebook, and the book’s in my pocket. Ain’t you got no understanding? Keeping me here talking till I’m dry as an old boot. Come along back to the bar.’

“Back they went, and Logan calls for two highballs, giving Johnstone the wink, and he takes Appleby into the back parlour and Johnstone served them the highballs with a cough drop in Appleby’s, and two minutes after that guy was blind as Pharaoh on his back on the old couch—doped.

III

“There was a stairs leading down from that parlour to a landing stage, and when they’d stripped the guy of his pocket-book and loose money, they gave him a row off to a whaler that was due out with the morning tide and got ten dollars for the carcase. Jack Bone was the boatman they always used, and it was Jack Bone told most of the story I’m telling you now.

“Then they comes back and closes up the bar, and sits down to investigate the notebook, and there, sure enough, was the indications, the latitude and longitude, with notes such as ‘big bed to west of the break in the reef,’ and so on.

“‘That does it,’ says Johnstone; ‘we’re made men, sure; this beats ward politics by a mile and a half,’ says he. ‘It’s only a question of a schooner and hands to work her and diving dresses; we don’t want no labour; see here what the blighter says, “native labour sufficient.” Lord love me! what a swab, writing all that down; hadn’t he no memory to carry it in?’

“He’d struck the truth. There’s some chaps never easy unless they’re putting things on paper. I’ve seen chaps keeping diaries, sort of logs, and putting down every time they’d scratched their heads or sneezed, blame fools same as Appleby.

“Well, Logan sits thinking things over, and says he: ‘We’re both in this thing, though it’s my find. Still I’m not grumbling. What’s the shares to be?’

“‘Half shares,’ says Johnstone, prompt. Logan does another think:

“‘Right,’ says he, ‘and we each pays our shot in the fitting out of the expedition.’

“‘I’m agreeable,’ says the other, with a grin on his face, which maybe wouldn’t have been there if he’d known what was going on in Logan’s mind.

“Next morning they starts to work to look for a likely schooner; Johnstone keeping the bar and Logan doing the prospecting. It wasn’t an easy job, for they had to keep things secret. They knew enough of the Law to be afraid of it, and though this island of Appleby’s was uncharted, they weren’t going to lay no claims to it with the Britishers popping up, maybe, or the French or the Yanks with priority claims, and every dam liar from Vancouver to Panama swearing he’d done the discovering of it first. No, their plan was to sneak out and grab what they could, working double shifts and skimming the hull lagoon in one big coop that’d take them maybe a year. Then when they’d got their pearls and stored their shell, they reckoned to bring the pearls back to ’Frisco, where Johnstone had the McGaffery syndicate behind him, who’d help him to dispose of them, and after that he reckoned if things went well, to go back and fetch the shell. Pearl shell runs from three hundred to a thousand dollars a ton depending on quality, and gold-tipped being second quality the stuff would be worth carting.

“Well, Logan had luck and he managed to buy Pat Ginnell’s old schooner, the _Heart of Ireland_, for two thousand dollars, Pat having struck it rich in the fruit business and disposing of his sea interests; they paid twelve hundred dollars for diving gear and a thousand for trade goods to pay the workers, stick tobacco and all such; then they had to provision her, reckoning the island would give them all the fish and island truck they’d want, and, to cap the business, they had to get a crew that wouldn’t talk, Kanakas or Chinks—they shipped Chinks. Logan knew enough navigating to take her there, and Johnstone was used to the sea, so they were their own afterguard.

“Then one day, when all was ready, Johnstone sold out his interest in the saloon, and the next day, or maybe the day after, out they put.

IV

“I’d forgot to say they took Bone with them. They’d used the chap so much in the outfitting that they thought it was better to take him along than leave him behind to talk, maybe; and they’d no sooner cleared the Gate and left the Farallones behind them than the weather set up its fist against them, and the old _Heart_ with a beam sea showed them how she could roll; she could beat a barrel any day in the week on that game; it was an old saying on the front that she could beat Ginnell when he was drunk, and Bone said the rolling took it out of them so that it was a sick and quarrelling ship right from the start to the line. All but Logan. He never quarrelled with no one, he wasn’t that sort; always smooth spoken and give and take, he held that show together, smilin’ all the time.

“Then ten degrees south of the line and somewhere between the Paumotus and Bolivia they began to keep their eyes skinned for the island, struck the spot given by Appleby and went right over it.

“There wasn’t no island.

“About noon it was on the day they ought to have hit the place, an’ you can picture that flummoxed lot standin’ on the deck of the old _Heart;_ thousands of dollars gone on a schooner and trade and all, and then left.

“The sails were drawing and they were still heading south, and Johnstone up and spoke:

“‘Appleby’s done us,’ says he, ‘and there’s no use in crying over spilt milk. There’s nothing for it but to go back and sell off at a loss. I’m done worse than you, seein’ I’ve sold the saloon. Tell you what, I’ll give you fifteen hundred dollars for your share in the ship and fixin’s; maybe I’ll lose when I come to realise,’ says he, ‘for there’s no knowing what she and the truck will fetch when it comes to auction.’

“He was one of them lightning calculators, and he reckoned to clear a few hundred dollars on the deal.

“Logan was likewise, and he thinks for a moment, and he says, ‘Make it sixteen hundred and I’ll sell you my share in the dam show right out.’

“Done,” says Johnstone.

“The words were scarce out of his mouth when the Chink stuck in the crosstree cries out ‘Ki, hi.’

“The whole bundle of them was in the rigging next minute lookin’ ahead, and then, right to s’uth’ard, there was a white stain on the sky no bigger than a window.

“Logan laughs.

“‘That’s her,’ says he.

“Then they see the pa’m tops like heads of pins, and they came down.

“If that was the island, then Appleby’s position was near fifty miles out, and again, if it was the island, Logan was done, seeing he’d sold his interest in the show to Johnstone. Bone said he didn’t turn a hair, just laughed like the good-natured chap he was, whiles they cracked everything on and raised the place, coming into the lagoon near sundown.

“But Bone had begun to have his suspicions of Logan by the way he took the business, and determined to keep his weather eye lifting.

“It was a big atoll, near a mile broad at its narrowest and running north and south, with the reef break to north just as given in Appleby’s notebook. They ran her to the west a bit when they got in, and dropped anchor near the beach, where there was a Kanaka village with canoe houses and all, and the Kanakas watching them. They didn’t bother about no Kanakas; it was out boat as soon as the killick had took the coral, and hunt for oysters. And there they were, sure enough, a bit more up by the western beach as Appleby had noted in his book, square acres of them, virgin oysters if ever oysters were virgins, and a dead sure fortune.

“The chaps came back and went down below to have a clack, and Johnstone turns generous, which he couldn’t well help, seeing that Logan might turn on him and blow the gaff, and says he: ‘You’ve stood out and sold your share in the venture, but I’m no shyster, and, if you’re willing, you shall have quarter share in the takings and half a share in the shell.’

“‘Right,’ says Logan.

“‘You helping to work the beds,’ said Johnstone.

“‘I’m with you,’ says the other.

“Old Jack Bone, who was listening, cocked his ear at this.

“It seemed to him more than ever that Logan was too much of a Christian angel over the hull of this business. He knew the chap by instinc’ to be a dam thief, or maybe worse, but he said nothing, and then a noise brought them up on deck, and they found the island Kanakas had all put off in canoes with fruit and live chickens and was wanting to trade.

“It was just after sundown, but that didn’t matter to them; they lit up torches and the place was like a regatta round the old _Heart_.

“Two of the chiefs came aboard and brought their goods with them and squatted on their hams, Johnstone doing the bargaining, and, when the bazaar was over, Johnstone turns to Logan, and says he: ‘Lord love me,’ says he, ‘where did these chaps learn their business instinc’s? Chicago I shud think. Where in the nation will we be when it comes to paying them for the diving work? They’ll clear us out of goods before a month is over, and that knocks the bottom out of the proposition. It’s the Labour problem over again,’ says he, ‘and we’re up against it.’

“‘We are,’ says Logan, ‘sure. These chaps aren’t Kanakas; they’re Rockfellers, virgin ones, maybe, but just as hard shelled. I’ll have to do a think.’