Part 8

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.

VII—BEATEN ON THE POST

I

Captain Brent came down to the Karolin as she was lying by Circular Wharf, on some business connected with some gadget or another he was trying to sell on commission. Some patent dodge in connection with a main sheet buffer, I think it was—anyhow, Dolbrush, the owner and master of the _Karolin_, though an old friend, refused to speculate; the thing to his mind “wasn’t no use to him,” and he said so without offence to the salesman.

Brent really carried on this sort of business more for amusement than profit; he had retired from the sea with enough to live on, and it gave him something to do of a morning, pottering round the wharves, boarding ships and boring master mariners, mostly known to him, with plans and specifications of all sorts of labour and life saving devices—he worked for Harvey and Matheson—which they might use or recommend to owners.

He had been, in his time, the finest schooner captain that ever sailed out of Sydney Harbour, a vast man, weather-beaten and indestructible-looking as the Solander Rock, slow of speech but full of knowledge, and, once started on a story, unstoppable unless by an earthquake. He had been partner with Slane, Buck Slane of the Paramatta business; he was Slane’s Boswell, and start him on any subject he was pretty sure to fetch up on Slane. He and Slane had made three or four fortunes between them and lost them.

Putting the main sheet buffer in his pocket, so to speak, he accepted a cigar, and the conversation moved to other matters till it struck Chinks—Chinks and their ways, clean and unclean, and their extraordinary methods of money-making; sham pearls, faked birds——

“There’s nothing the Almighty’s ever made that a Chink won’t make money out of,” said Dolbrush. “Give ’m a worked-out mine or an old tomato tin and he’ll do _something_ with it—and as for gratitude——”

“I’ll tell you something about that,” cut in Brent. “I’ve been to school with them, there’s nothing about them you can tell me right from Chow coffins to imitation chutney. Why me and Slane hit up against them in our first traverse and that was forty years ago. Sixty-one I was yesterday and I was twenty-one when I fell in with Buck. It don’t seem more than yesterday. We’d put in to ’Frisco Bay and were lying at Long Wharf, foot of Third and Fourth Streets. Buck was Irish, as you’ll remember, a fine strapping chap in those days, with blue eyes and black hair, and we’d come from Liverpool round the Horn and we didn’t want to see the ocean again for a fortnight, I tell you. Buck had skipped from Tralee or somewhere or another, and he had forty pounds in his pocket, maybe he’d got it from robbing a bank or something, I never asked, but there it was, and no sooner was the old hooker tied up than he proposed we’d skip, him and me, and try our luck ashore. I hadn’t a magg, but he said he had enough for both, that was Buck all over, and we skipped, never bothering about our dunnage.

“Buck had an uncle in ’Frisco, well to do and a big man in Ward politics. O’Brien was his name if I remember right, and he was reckoned to be worth over a hundred thousand pounds, so Buck said, but he fixed to let him lie, not being a cadger; and we got a room with a widow woman who kept lodgers in Tallis Street and set out to beat up the town and see the sights. There were sights to be seen in ’Frisco, those days, more especial round the dock sides, and the place was all traps, the crimps were getting from fifty to seventy dollars a head for able seamen, and most of the bars and such places were hand in fist with them, but we steered clear of all that, not being given to drink, and got home early and sober with our money safe and our heads straight.