Part 7

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.

VI—PEARLS OF GREAT PRICE!

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.