Chapter V

“Next morning bright and early he tells Johnstone to get the diving boat out, and he sends Bone ashore in the dinghy with word for the natives to come out and see the fun. Bone could talk their lingo. He’d been potting about forty years in these seas, before he’d taken up the Shanghai job in ’Frisco, and he could talk most all the Island patter. Off he goes, and then the Chinks get the diving boat out, pump and all, and two sets of dresses, and they rowed her off and anchored her convenient to the bed, and they hadn’t more’n got the anchor down when the canoes came out, and Logan, talking to the Kanakas by means of Bone, told them he was going down to walk about on the lagoon floor, dry.

“Then he gets into a dress and has the headpiece screwed on, and down he goes, the Kanakas all hanging their heads over the canoe sides and watching him. They see him walking about and picking up oysters and making a grab at a passing fish’s tail and cutting all sorts of antics, and there he stuck twenty minutes, and they laughing and shouting, till the place sounded more like Coney Island than a lonesome lagoon, God knows where, south of the line.

“Then up he comes, having sent up half a dozen bags full of oysters, and steps out of his diving gear—dry.

“They felt him, to make sure he was dry, and then the row began.

“The chief of the crowd, Maurini by name, wanted to go down and play about, but Logan held off, asked him what he’d give to be let down, and the chap offered half a dozen fowl. Logan closed, and the chap was rigged up and got his instructions from Bone of what he was to do, and how he wasn’t to let the air pipe be tangled, and so on, and how he was to pick up oysters and send them up in the bag nets. Down the chap goes, and gets the hang of the business in two minutes, after he’d done a trip up or two and nearly strangled himself. After that the whole of the other chaps were wild to have a hand in the business, and Logan let them, asking no payment, only the oysters.

“In a week’s time he had all the labour he wanted. Those Kanakas were always ready for the fun, and when any of them tired off there was always green hands to take their places; the work was nothing to them; it was something new, and it never lost colour, not for six months. Then the pumps began to suck and they’d had enough. Wouldn’t go down unless under pay, and didn’t do the work half as well.

“Meanwhile, Logan and Johnstone had built a house ashore and hived half a hat full of pearls, and about this time the feeling came on Bone strong that Logan was going to jump. He didn’t know how, but he was sure in his mind that Logan was going to do Johnstone in for his share, seeing the amount of stuff they’d collected.

“He got Johnstone aside and warned him.

“‘You look out,’ says he, ‘never you be alone with that chap when no one’s looking, for it’s in my mind he’s going to scrag you.’

“Johnstone laughed.

“‘There ain’t no harm in Logan,’ says he, ‘there’s not the kick of a flea in him; you mind your business,’ says he, ‘and I’ll tend to mine. Whach you want putting suspicions in chaps’ heads for?’ says he.

“‘Well, I’ve said what I’ve said,’ says Bone, ‘and I’m not going to say no more.’

“Then he goes off.

“Meanwhile, those island bucks had got to fitting things together in their minds, and they’d got to connecting pearls with sticks of tobacco and trade goods, and they’d got to recognise Johnstone as boss and owner of the pearls and goods. They’d named Johnstone ‘the fat one’ and they’d labelled Logan ‘the one with teeth,’ and the specifications fitted, for Johnstone weighed all two hundred and fifty, and Logan was a dentist’s sign when the grin was on his face, which was frequent.

“And so things goes on, the Kanakas diving and bringing up shell and the trade goods sinking till soon there was scarcely none left to pay the divers, and level with that was the fac’ that they’d collared enough pearls to satisfy reasonable chaps.

“One day Bone comes back from the diving and there wasn’t any Johnstone.