Part 2

Sometimes he stopped rowing and, getting to the stern, hauled the tow closer to see how the rope held. After one of these examinations and with infinite difficulty he shifted the rope from the neck-shaped depression to below the bulge of the shoulders and did it so well that the pull of the rope was still fore and aft with the thing; had it been otherwise the mass would have been towed sidewise and would have made progress impossible.

But all this took time, and as he stood up from the job and looked toward Levua his heart half sank. He had made very little way. Fortunately the wind had died with noon and slack tide was due, but one could never tell in these seas what was coming from moment to moment, and if a squall were to rise or even if the wind were to wake up and blow from the north--well, good-by to Fortune. He took up the sculls again.

A burgomaster gull passed him with a cry that cut his nerves like a steel whip, and now from the sea to starboard _pop-pop-pop_, breaking from the water in one particular spot as if fired from a machine gun, came silver arrowheads, flying fish with black, staring, sightless eyes, flittering into the water to starboard and right athwart the course of the boat. If some great fish were following them close to the surface and were to foul the ambergris----

He drove the thought away and pulled.

Yes, he was making way; the change from slack had occurred and the tide was now running into the lagoon of Levua.

An hour later he was inside the reefs. The fellows on board the _Golden Hope_ were getting the last of the trade stuff and provisions over into the boat alongside, and Bartells, superintending the business, came to the rail as Flexner drew alongside.

“Hello!” cried Bartells. “What are you towin’?”

“Shy us a rope,” said Flexner.

He brought the boat alongside just aft of the provision boat, which was loading from the fore hatch.

Bartells, leaning on the rail, looked over down at the stuff that was now lifting to the swell of the incoming tide and duddering against the boat side.

“Ambergris,” said Flexner.

“Gosh Almighty!” said Bartells. He had been in the whaling business and could measure the full size of the business at a glance.

Bartells was a friend of Flexner’s, liked him, and regretted his having been fired. Bartells had his own opinion of old Lombard, who, according to Bartells, would skin the devil and sell the hoofs for glue--if he could get the chance.

“A moment,” said Bartells. “You ain’t in the company’s employ no longer. Was your discharge dating from when?”

“From yesterday, when Mr. Arrow took over,” replied Flexner, vaguely wondering but somehow guessing what the other was driving at.

“But it’s on the contract you are to get a free passage home if so be you want it?”

“Yes.”

“You found that stuff outside the three-mile limit,” went on the captain, “for I was watching you. Consequentially it’s yours.”

“Yes.”

“Well, we’re open to take cargo for private owners; that’s my instructions. You, being no longer in the company’s employ, come to me asking me to take your stuff to Frisco at ordinary freight rates--is that your meaning?”

“Yes,” said Flexner.

Here was a man thinking of his interests and safeguarding him from the rapacity of the company, so that there would be no bother at all about landing and disposing of his treasure. It is good to have a friend like that. He wanted to speak, but words failed him and indeed Bartells gave him no time.

The captain, with a pull of his whiskers and another glance at the floating gray mass, turned to Jarvis, the mate.

“Rig a tackle and get that stuff on board for Mr. Flexner,” he said.

An hour later in the cabin, he said, “I’m a judge of weights, and that stuff weighs all two hundred pounds and a bit more, and amber-grease is worth twenty-five dollars an ounce in the market. That’s five pounds of your money. You can add it up; it’s a tidy fortune. Well, here’s luck and chin-chin.”

* * * * *

That night on the veranda of the old trader’s house Flexner and Arrow sat smoking and talking. Flexner would sleep ashore that night, as the _Golden Hope_ was not due to start till noon.

In the few tremendous hours since morning Flexner had been changed from a man without prospects to a man of substance, and he had risen to the business and the enjoyment of it. The whisky in the bottle on the cane table was several inches lower. Not that either man had exceeded; they were quite sober--and because of this, perhaps, it was that a reaction came in Flexner’s mood.

He fell suddenly silent and sad. He seemed contemplating something at a long distance from the old trader’s house, then he made a noise in his throat that meant recognition of a fact and disapproval of it.

“What’s wrong with you now?” asked Arrow, pausing in the act of pouring himself out some more whisky.

“Nothing,” said Flexner, “only I was thinking that all the ambergris in the world wouldn’t get me home for Christmas Day.”

He spoke with an edge to his voice--an edge that indicated a distinct grouch.

“My God!” said Arrow to himself, putting down the bottle. “Old Lombard was right.”

He went into the house to fetch his tobacco pouch. A cane chair got in his way and he kicked it viciously.

He felt like that.

[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the Second January Number, 1929 issue of _The Popular Magazine_.]