Chapter II (1)

Ambergris, though used in the production of scent, has no smell or only the faintest trace of odour when warmed; it is the ugliest stuff in the world, and as valuable as gold. Harman’s bother was that he did not know the weight of the lump. He reckoned, going by comparison with pigs of small ballast, that it might be half a hundred-weight, but the table of weights and measures barred him. He could not tell the number of ounces in a half hundred-weight.

“Well, it don’t much matter,” said he at last. “If you’re not lyin’ and it’s worth twenty dollars an ounce, then it’s worth twenty times its weight in dollars, and that’s good enough for us. Twenty bags of dollars as heavy as that lump of muck is good enough for Billy Harman. Say, it beats Jonah, don’t it? when you look at that stuff, which isn’t more nor less than good dinners by the hundred and bottles of fizz and girls by the raft-load. And to think of an old whale coughin’ it up; makes a chap b’lieve in the Scriptures, don’t it, seein’ what it is and seein’ where it come from, and seein’ how Providence shoved it right into our hands.”

“We haven’t cashed it yet,” said Davis.

“No, but we will,” replied the other. “I feel it in my bones. I’ve got a hunch the luck ain’t runnin’ streaky this time. Somethin’ else is comin’ along; you wait and see.”

He was right. Next morning, an hour after sunrise, a stain of smoke showed on the south-eastern horizon.

Steamers in those days were fewer in the Pacific even than now, but this was a steamer right enough.

“She’s coming dead for us,” said Davis, as the hull showed clear now of smoke. “Brail up the sail and stand by to signal her—what you make her out to be?”

“Mail boat,” said Harman. “Sydney-bound, I’ll bet a dollar. You’ll be hearin’ the passengers linin’ up and cheerin’ when we’re took aboard, and then it’ll be drinks and cigars and the best of good livin’ till we touch Circular Wharf. But I ain’t goin’ in for hard drinks, not till we cash in this ambergris, and not then, only may be a bottle of fizz to wet the luck. No, sir, seein’ Providence has dealt with us handsome, Billy’s goin’ to do likewise with her. Providence don’t hold with the jag, which ain’t more nor less than buyin’ headaches, and di’mond studs for bar tenders and sich. Providence is dead against the drink, and don’t you forget that.”

“Why, you were talking only last night of buying a saloon in ’Frisco,” said Davis.

“That ain’t buyin’ drink,” countered Mr. Harman. “Nor swallerin’ it, which is what I’m arguin’ against—— Look at her how she’s liftin’.”

They said no more, watching the oncoming boat, now showing her bridge canvas distinct from her hull. Then suddenly Davis spoke.

“That’s no mail boat,” said Davis, “not big enough, stove-pipe funnel, and look at that canvas. She’s not even a B.P. boat—some old tub carrying copra or trade.”

“Not she,” said Harman. “Steam don’t pay in the copra business, bunkers have to be too big, seein’ there’s no coalin’ stations much in the islands.”

“We’ll soon see,” said Davis, and they did.

The stranger came shearing along, showing up now as a five or six hundred ton squat cargo boat, riding high and evidently in ballast, with a rust-red stove-pipe funnel and a general air of neglect that shouted across the sea.

Then the thud of the engines ceased, a yoop of her siren cut the air like a whiplash, and a string of bunting blew out.

Harman waved his shirt, and as the stranger came gliding on to them he got ready to catch the rope that a fellow was preparing to cast from the bow.

As they came alongside, lifting and falling with the swell, a big red-faced man, leaning over the bridge rail, began shouting directions, whilst Davis, seizing the ladder which had been dropped, climbed on deck, leaving Harman to manage the canoe.

The _Oskosh_ was the name of the hooker, and Billy Schumways was the name of her master and owner. He was the big man on the bridge; seven days out from Arafata Lagoon with a crew of Chinks and a Savage Island bo’sun, makin’ down for Fuanatafi in a hurry. All of which he roared at Davis from the bridge and at Harman from over the bridge side.

“Claw on and kim up,” cried Captain Schumways to the hesitating Harman. “Cut that canoe adrift and come on deck, and don’t be wastin’ my time, or I’ll ring the injins on. What’s that you’re sayin’? Ambergris, what’s ambergris? Ain’t got no time to be muckin’ about—there, bring it if you want to.” He paused whilst Harman, having fastened a rope flung by Davis round the precious ambergris, came on deck guiding it up. Then, when they were both over the rail, Schumways, ringing the engines full speed ahead, came down from the bridge.

“Where’d you get that muck?” asked Captain Schumways, after they’d given their names and a yarn about having been drifted off an island when fishing. “Picked it up, did you? Well, you can shove it in the scupper if you’re set on keepin’ it, and now follow me down and I’ll show you your quarters. I’m sufferin’ for extra help in the engine-room and I reckon you’ve got to work your passage.”

He led the way to the saloon hatch and down to the saloon.

The _Oskosh_ had been a Farsite Enfield boat running from ’Frisco to Seattle. Cargo, Klondyke diggers and, lastly, contraband had reduced her from respectability and cleanliness to her present state. The saloon was a wreck and ruin, the panelling split, the fittings gone, bunks filled with raffle and oddments, the table covered with old oil-cloth showing the marks of coffee cups, and over all a dank throat-catching atmosphere of decay, cockroaches and dirty bunk bedding.

Schumways inhabited the cabin aft. He pointed out two bunks to port and starboard.

“Them’s yours,” said he, “and there’s beddin’ and to spare. You’ll mess here, bein’ whites, and you’ll take your orders from me and Sellers; when you’ve cleared out them bunks and got your beddin’ in come along up and I’ll show you your job.”

He left them and went on deck, and Bud Davis sat down on the edge of a bunk.

“Say, Billy,” said Bud, “how about those passengers lining up and cheering? How about those soft drinks you were talking of?—or would you sooner have a highball?—and we’re to take our orders from him and Sellers. What I’m proposing to do is go up right now, catch him by the hoofs, and dump him over side, scrag Sellers, whoever he is, and take the ship. That’s how I’m feeling.”

“Ain’t no use,” said Harman. “Fightin’s a mug’s game. That chap’s a sure enough tough and we haven’t no guns. Lay low is the word, more especial as this packet is contraband and we’ve only to wait to get ’em by the short hairs. Contraband—look at her, guns or opium, with blackbirdin’ maybe thrown in, that’s all there is to her.”

Davis assented. These two old Pacific hands had an eye from which no ship could hide her character for sea-unworthiness or disrespectability; Schumways matched his ship, and Sellers, when he turned up, would be sure to match Schumways; the crew were Chinks, and the case was plain. Not that it bothered Bud or Billy; their one thought as they worked clearing the bunks and settling the bedding was the ambergris.

Schumways knew nothing of ambergris or its value—that fact was quite plain—but it would never do to leave it lying in the scupper, and Harman having poked his head up through the hatch and found a clear deck, they got it down, stowed it in a spare bunk occupied by a filthy rug, a suit of oilskins and a paraffin tin, covering it with the rug.

Then they came on deck, and the captain of the _Oskosh_, coming down from the bridge, introduced them to the engine-room and Sellers, a wire-drawn Yankee, six feet two, who introduced them to the engines and the stokehold.

“Chinks are firin’ her now,” said Sellers, “but you’ll hold yourself ready to take a hand at the shovellin’ if wanted. I’ll larn you how to shoot the stuff; that’s a pressure gauge—you’ll get to know it before you’ve done—and that’s an ile can—you’ll get to know her too.” He led the way down a passage four foot broad to a transverse passage eight foot broad, where, under a swinging oil lamp, Chinks, naked to the waist, were firing up. He opened the door of a long blazing tunnel and seized a shovel, the coal came down a chute right on to the floor, and taking a shovelful he demonstrated.

“Stokin’s not shootin’ coal into a fu’nace, it’s knowin’ where to shoot it. Every fu’nace has hungry places: there’s one, that dull patch up there, and there’s the food for it.” A shovelful of coal went flying into the gehenna right on to the dull patch, and, dropping the shovel, he seized an eight-foot bar of steel. “M’r’over, it’s not all shovellin’, it’s rakin’. Here’s your rake and how to use it. Then you’ve got to tend the ashlift, and when you’ve larnt not to stick your head in the fire when she’s pitchin’ hard you’ll be a stoker; ain’t nothin’ to it but the work an’ the will.”

“But see here, cully,” said Mr. Harman. “We ain’t signed on for stokin’ in this packet; engine-room fiddlin’ is stretchin’ a point with A.B.’s, but stokin’s outside the regulations. Clear, and by Board o’ Trade rules——”

“That’s them on board the _Oskosh_,” said Sellers, producing a revolver, which he exhibited lying flat in the palm of his huge hand as though he were showing a curiosity. “Six rules an’ regulations, soft-nosed—and don’t you forget it, son!”

Through days of blazing azure and nights of phosphorescent seas the _Oskosh_ plugged steadily along on her course. She was square-rigged on the foremast, and used sail-power to assist the engines when the wind held, and always and ever, despite her dirt, her disorder, and the general slovenliness of her handling, she kept a bright eye out for strangers. When Schumways was not on the bridge using the binoculars, they were in the hands of the Savage Island bo’sun—a fact noted by Billy and Bud when those unfortunates had time to note anything in the midst of their multitudinous occupations.

They were not always put to stoking in this horrible ship, where things went anyhow and work was doubled for want of method. They would be oiling in the engine-room under command of Sellers when, maybe, the voice of Schumways would come ordering “them roustabouts” up to handle the sails: sail-handling, greasing, emptying slush tubs, helping in engine-room repairs, “lendin’ a hand in the stoke’old”—it was a mixed meal of work that did not please the appetites of Billy or Bud. Yet they had to swallow it. Kicking was no use. Harman tried it, and was kicked by Sellers, and took the injury and insult without retaliating. Fighting was a mug’s game, but deep in his soul Billy Harman formulated an oath of revenge, swearing that somehow, somewhere, and somewhen he would be even with the _Oskoshites_ to the ultimate limit of their back teeth and the last short hairs of their persons.

He communicated this darkly to his fellow-sufferer, who laughed.

They were seated at breakfast feasting on the leavings of Schumways and Sellers and Davis told him to close up.

“You give me the mullygrubs with your talk,” said Davis. “Whenever you open your fool-mouth something happens wrong way about. This was a passenger packet, wasn’t it, and we were to sit in the saloon bein’ admired by the passengers, weren’t we? And was it Fourth Street or Fifth Street you were goin’ to open that whisky joint? And fighting is a mug’s game, according to you, whereas if we’d wiped the engine-room floor with Sellers first day instead of knuckling down to him we’d have stood on this ship as men, instead of being a hog-driven pair of roustabouts begging for scraps and emptying slush tubs. Too late now; they’ve got the better of us and know our make, which is putty, owing to you. Even with them! Why, I’ll bet twenty dollars to a nickel if you try any of your home-made tricks they’ll be even with us. Talking is all you’re good for—fighting’s a mug’s game!”

“So it is,” replied Mr. Harman. “Fool fightin’s no use; hittin’ out and gettin’ belted’s one thing, but stragety’s another, and that’s what I’m after, and if I don’t get my knife in these chaps’ ribs behind their backs and unknownst to them, you can take me home and bury me—and it won’t be long either!”

He was right.

That very evening they lifted Fuanatafi, their destination, a purple cloud in the sunset glow and a cloud of ebony by night as they lay off and on, listening to the far sound of the breakers till dawn revealed the great island in all its splendour and isolation; for Fuanatafi, like Nauru, has no harbour, just a landing beach to westward where boats can put in, razor-backed reefs keep ships a mile from the shore and make the place pretty useless for trade.

As the light broke full on the island Billy Harman, who had come on deck and was standing with Davis by the lee rail, saw away to southward another island with a peak-like summit, and to westward of that two small islets circled with moving clouds—gulls.

“Why, Lord bless my soul,” said he, “I’ve been here before, six years ago it was, and we took off a raft of turtle-shell for six cases of gin. Christopher Island was the other name they give it, and it’s head centre for all sorts of black doin’s. That island to suthard is Levisca, and it’s been blackbirded till there ain’t scarcely no Kanakas left on it. Now, I wonder what Schumways is landin’ here.”

As if in answer to his question two Chinks came aft carrying a long deal box between them, which they dumped close by the foremast.

The main hatch was open, and they could see more boxes being brought up, six in all, and each one, as it came on deck, was carried forward, the whole being stacked in one pile and covered with a tarpaulin. The engines ceased their dead-slow tramp: then came an order from the bridge and the roar and rasp of the anchor chain filled the morning air, echoing across the water and lifting the reef gulls in clanging spirals.

Schumways dropped down from the bridge and Sellers rose from the engine-room, wiping his hands with a piece of cotton waste; he had put on his coat and wore an old panama on his head ready for shore. Then at an order from Schumways the starboard quarter-boat was lowered, Harman and Davis were ordered into it, and the Captain of the _Oskosh_ and his engineer took their places in the stern sheets.

Nothing could be more lovely than the morning light on the streets of blue water between the reefs or the view of the great island washed by the calm, ponded sea and waiting for the approaching boat, loveliness that left no trace, however, on the minds of Bud and Billy labouring at the oars, or of Schumways and Sellers smoking in the stern.

As they ran the boat’s nose on to the beach, out from the groves to right and left stepped a dozen Kanakas armed with spears. Casting their spears on the sand, they trod on them whilst Sellers and his companion, walking up the beach with hands outstretched, greeted the chief man, bright with palm oil, absolutely naked, and adorned simply with half a willow-pattern soup plate worn as a pendant.

The Kanakas and the two whites seemed old friends, and the whole lot, after a moment’s chatter, disappeared into the groves, leaving Bud and Billy on the beach by the stranded boat.

“They’re off to the village,” said Harman. “Wonder what they’re up to? Bargainin’ most like over them guns.”

“What guns?” asked Davis.

“Them cases we left on deck, them’s guns, or my name’s not Billy Harman. There’s six guns in each of them cases, that’s thirty-six for the lot, and I expect Schumways will be askin’ old Catch-em-alive-o ten pound apiece for them in coin or shell—maybe in bêche-de-mer, for that’s as good as bank notes. That’s three hundred and sixty pounds and the durned things didn’t cost him sixty. I’ll bet——” He turned. Someone came breaking through the trees; it was Sellers.

“Hike off back to the ship and bring them cases,” cried Sellers, “the ones we’ve left on deck. If you can’t bring the whole six, bring four, and you can go back for the other two. Now then, you lazy sweeps, grease yourselves and get goin’.”

“Blast him!” said Davis as they pushed off across the inner lagoon towards the reef break leading to the outer reef channels sparkling blue in the sun.

“No use swearin’,” said Hannan, “it don’t cut no ice—— Bud, I’ve got them.”

“What do you mean?” asked Davis.

“Got ’em all in the fryin’ pan, b’gosh. It’s only jumped into my head this minute. Told you I’d get even with them at last, and now I’ve as good as done it.”

“What’s your plan?” asked Bud.

“You never mind,” replied Billy, “you do as I’m askin’ you and I’ll show you. Lay into your strokes now, and that’s all you have to do at the present minit.”

He seemed delighted with himself as he rowed, chuckling and chortling as though he already had the _Oskoshites_ down and out. Bud, who knew Billy’s mentality from long practice and use, was not so elated. He knew that Harman, amongst his other mental qualities, was likely to go blind of one eye when seeing red or when ambition was at fever heat, and Billy was undoubtedly seeing red. Full of the thirst for revenge at having been made to work, at having been kicked and spoken to with contumely, he was fit for anything just now.

“What is it that’s in your mind, Billy?” asked the other as they drew up to the _Oskosh_.

“You wait and see,” said Harman; “say nuthin’ and follow my lead prompt and we’ve got them on a split stick.”

The Chinks stood by the ladder as Harman went up it, leaving Davis to mind the boat; then on deck he gave the Kanaka bo’sun his orders, and, while the cases were being got into the boat, stepped below.

He came up in a few minutes and helped with the last case, then, dropping into the boat beside Davis, he pushed off and they began rowing towards the shore.

“Go slow,” said Harman, “and don’t pull hard. The breeze is backin’ into the north and I’ll have the mast up in a minute, then we can run for Levisca. We could row there quick enough, but it’s easier to sail. After we’ve taken on grub and water there we can push farther south.”

“What the blue blazes are you talking of?” said Davis. “You mean running away in this boat?”

“Yep,” replied Harman.

“But, you fool, they’ll up steam and be after us before we’ve got half-way there.”

“Not they,” replied the strategist, “you wait an’ see. You keep your eye on the old _Oskosh_ and you’ll see somethin’ funny in a minute.”

He ceased rowing, so did Davis, and the boat rocked on the swell, then, as he got the mast stepped and the sail shaken out, Davis, whose eyes were fixed on the far-off ship, gave an exclamation of surprise.

“Why, she’s lying awfully low in the water.”

“Yes,” said Harman quite simply. “I’ve opened the sea-cocks.”

“You’ve _what_?” cried the other.

“Opened the sea-cocks when I went below. The Chinks haven’t twigged yet that she’s sinkin’, she’s goin’ peaceful as a dyin’ Christian. Look”—a column of steam was rising from the funnel of the sinking ship—“they’ve twigged it now, but they don’t know what’s sinkin’ her, and if they did they haven’t enough sense to know what to do. B’sides, it’s too late. Look, they’re gettin’ out the boats; now help me to dump these durned cases and bring the sheet aft.”

Davis did as he was told, then as the boat lay over, making a long board for Levisca, he suddenly leant forward towards Harman, his face injected with blood.

“You’ve done it, haven’t you?” shouted Davis.

“Yes, b’gosh I have,” said Harman complacently, his eyes fixed on the _Oskosh_ sinking by the head and with her stem high in the air.

“Wouldn’t tell me your plans, would you? So full of hitting Schumways you had no thought of anything else, weren’t you? Well, you sainted fool, what about that ambergris?”

“What ambergris? Oh, Lord! the ambergris,” said the wretched Harman, suddenly remembering. “We’ve left it behind!”

“You’ve left it, you mean. What would it have cost to have taken two Chinks down and fetched it up and stowed it in the boat? Not a nickel—and it was worth twenty thousand dollars.”

Harman said nothing. The _Oskosh_ was making her last plunge and the over-loaded boats were making for shore, then his face slowly brightened as the face of Sellers and the face of Schumways rose before him—the two men who had forcibly introduced him to work. “It was worth it,” said he; “if it was five hundred dollars an ounce, it was worth it.”

“What was worth it?” asked Davis.

“Losin’ that ambergris,” replied Mr. Harman.

V—A DEAL WITH “PLAIN SAILIN’ JIM”

He was the only blot on the scenery, also he was fishing, fishing from a rock washed by water forty feet deep in which the coloured bream passed like jewels through a world of crystal.

Matadore Island clings to its old Spanish name, though it is French, lying west of Vavitu in the great French sea territory born of the League of Nations that stretches now from the Marquesas to Rapa and from Bellinghausen to Gambier.

It is a tiny island, too small for trade, horned with dangerous reefs, but beautiful with the green of Jack-fruit tree and coco palm, the blue of sea and the white of foam and coral.

Gulls make their home on the reefs, laughing gulls and cormorants and great predatory gulls, sailing to seaward in the dawn and clanging home at night after a sweep of hundreds of miles to where the swimmer rocks show white manes, or the Skagways their teeth. The gulls were jeering now as the fisherman hauled in his line, coiled it on the coral and stood up, shading his eyes.

Away over the sparkling blue to s’uth’ard stood something that was either the fin of a sail-fish or the sail of a boat, something sharp and triangular, clear now to the sight and now half gone as the sea-dazzle affected the eyes of the gazer.

He was a tall, thin man, bronzed to the colour of a cobnut, tattooed on the left hand in such a way that he seemed to wear a mitt, and his face as he stood straining his eyes seaward was the face of Uncle Sam, goatee beard and all.

As he watched, the jaws of this individual worked slowly and methodically like the jaws of a cow chewing the cud, then as the boat’s hull showed close in and making for the clear passage through the reefs, he flung up his arms, turned, and came scrambling down over the coral to the salt white beach, towards which the boat was coming now, the sail furled, and oars out and straight for destruction on a rock in the fairway. There were only two men in her.

“Sta’board your helm, you —— fools!” yelled Uncle Sam. “Cayn’t you see the sunk reef before your noses? _Sta_’board—that’s right.” Then a tone lower: “B——y tailors!”

He rushed out as the boat came barging on to the beach and seized the starboard gunnel, whilst the bow oar, tumbling over, seized the port, and the stern oar, taking to the water, clapped on; then, having dragged her nose well above tide-mark, they turned one to another for speech.

“Well, I’ve been here three months and maybe more,” said the tall man, as they sat on the coral by the beach watching the boat and the strutting gulls and half-a-dozen stray Kanakas who had come down to take a peep at the strangers. “Wrecked?—nuthin’—did a bunk from a hooker that shoved in here for water an’ nuts, and here I’ve stuck, snug as Moses in the bulrushes, nuthin’ to pay for board an’ bunk, no use for a n’umbrella, place crawlin’ with girls, and every pa’m tree a pub, if you know how to make pa’m toddy—name’s Keller, and what might your’n be?”

“Mine’s Harman,” said the bigger and broader of the strangers, “and this is Bud Davis. Reckon we’ve run more’n three hundred miles in that boat, steerin’ by our noses and blind as ballyhoos—and as to where we’ve come from—well, that’s a matter of——”

“Oh, I ain’t askin’ no questions!” cut in the tall man. “It’s nuthin’ to me if you stole your boat or had her give you, or whether you come from Noumea or the Noo Jerusalem. I’m ‘Plain Sailin’ Jim,’ I am, straight with them that’s straight with me, hungerin’ for the sight of a white mug, and fed up with chocolate biscuits. ‘Plain Sailin’ Jim,’ that’s me, and smilin’ I am to welcome gentlemen like yourselves to this virgin home of palm toddy and polygamy.”

“What sort of truck is that?” asked the ingenuous Harman.

But Keller did not hear him, he had risen to chase some Kanaka children away from the boat; then, hitching up his trousers, he led the way through the trees to the grass-thatched village where the little houses stood bowered with yellow cassi and blue-blazing convolvulus, and where at the door of the biggest and newest house his chief wife sat preparing kava in a bowl of stone.

They dined off baked pig, taro, palm salad, and palm toddy in a twilight through which rays from the thatch pierced like golden needles, and as they ate they could see through the door space the village with its tree-ferns and thatched houses, the children playing in the sun, and the men lazing in the shade.

“Ain’t no use for work and ain’t no use for fightin’,” said Keller, referring to the men of the village. “Chawin’ bananas and fishin’ is all they’re good for, bone-lazy lot. I’ll larn them!”

Two or three of his wives served the dinner and prepared the palm toddy; then, after the dishes had been removed, Keller, the toddy mounting to his head, beat another wife who had dared to poke a hole in the wall to peep at the strangers, kicked a dog that got in his way, raised Cain all down the street with a four-foot length of bamboo, and fell like a log dead asleep under the shade of a Jack-fruit tree.

“There ain’t no flies on old man Keller,” said Billy Harman to Bud Davis, as they walked next morning in the sun on the beach. “I tell you I like that chap.”

“Meaning Keller?”

“Yep.”

“Jumping Moses!—and what do you like about him?” asked the astonished Davis.

“Well,” said Harman, “takin’ him by and large, he seems to me a trustable chap—goin’ by what he says. It’s straight out and have done with it when he’s talkin’, same as when he’s kickin’ a Kanaka. I likes him because there ain’t nothin’ hidden about him—look at all them wives of his and he ownin’ up to them without a wink. ‘“Plain Sailin’ Jim,” that’s my name,’ says he, ‘straight with them that’s straight and crooked with them that’s crooked.’ You heard him—and that’s his label or I’m a digger Injin. No, there ain’t no flies on Keller.”

“Yes, I heard him,” said Davis, “and taking him by and large I’d label him the king of the yeggmen, hot from yeggtown. No, sir, you don’t take in Bud Davis with artificial flies and that chap may ‘Plain Sailin’ Jim’ himself to the last holoo of the last trumpet, but he won’t put the hood on chaps that have eyes in their heads, nor noses to sniff a rotten character.”

“There you go,” said Harman, “startin’ out after your own ideas and chasin’ them till they look like a man. Think bad of a chap and he’ll look bad—that’s my motto, and I’m not goin’ to think bad of Keller.”

But Davis had lost interest in Keller. Something out at sea had caught his eye, and taking Harman by the arm, he pointed over the dead calm water.

“Look there,” said he.

Harman, shading his eyes, looked in the direction indicated.

“It ain’t the pa’m toddy, is it?” asked Harman.

“No,” said the other, “it’s a craft of some sort or another; what do you make of her?”

“Nuthin’, she ain’t nacheral—looks like a cross between Noah’s ark an’ a floatin’ hayrick rigged with a double set of masts and a—— Why, Lord bless my soul if she ain’t a junk, a junk and a schooner lashed together, that’s what she is, derelick and driftin’.”

“Sure,” said Davis, his mind jumping at once to the truth. “Call Keller—run and roust him out. Here he comes. Keller, hi, Keller! Ship drifting out beyond the reefs. Look sharp!” He had no need to give directions. Like a vulture scenting a carcass, Keller came swooping, shaded his eyes and stood.

“It’s a junk and schooner,” said Harman.

“_Bêche-de-mer_ boat or opium smuggler,” said Keller, “and they’re both abandoned and driftin’. There’s pickin’s here, boys. After me!” He raced down to the beach, followed by the others, to where the boat was hauled up, they pushed her out and, Keller steering, made through the fairway, past the submerged rock towards the open sea.

Not a breath of wind stirred the swell to break the shimmering reflections of the spars and sails of the locked ships. Stem to stern they lay, the junk spars locked in the rigging of the schooner, the two great eyes painted on the Chinaman’s bows staring straight at the oncoming boat. Round and about the deserted ships fins moved and grey forms glided in the green—sharks. On the smooth water, the letters on the counter repainted the name of the schooner, _Haliotis_.

Keller gave the order to lay in the oars, and they came duddering along the schooner’s side, Harman standing up. He seized one of the stanchions of the rail and was about to hoist himself on deck when Keller bade him stop.

“A minit,” said Keller, “who’s to tell it’s not a trap. Claw on and listen.”

The cry of a far-off gull on the reefs came, and the creak and grind of the ships’ sides as the swell lifted them. No other sound but the occasional click of the rudder chain as the rudder of the schooner shifted with the heave and fall of the hull.

Then, sure of themselves, with the cry of predatory animals, they tumbled on board, fastened up and scattered, Bud and Billy over the decks of the schooner, Keller, led by some vulturous instinct, on to the junk.

“Here’s a stiff,” shouted Harman as Davis followed him forward towards a bundle lying by the galley. “Lord, _ain’t_ he a stiff? Head split with a hatchet. Here’s two more.” He pointed to a foot protruding from the galley, where lay a Chink and a white man, both very stiff indeed.

Then, turning and quite unconcerned, they came racing aft and down through the companion-way to the little cabin.

Here everything was quiet and trim; on the table under the swinging lamp lay a soap dish and shaving brush and razor. Someone had been shaving himself before the little mirror on the after bulkhead when whatever happened had begun to happen. In the after cabin, presumably the captain’s, the bunk bedding showed just as the sleeper had left it when he turned out. Then they set to and rooted round, the instinct for plunder so strong on them that they forgot Keller, the stiffs, the tragedy and the very place where they were.

They found a gold watch and chain which Harman put in his pocket, and a gold ring and fountain pen which Davis promptly annexed, they found the log, which, being written in Spanish, was useless to them, and the ship’s money, a big chamois leather chinking bag of Australian sovereigns. This glorious find recalled Keller.

“Bud,” said Billy, “this h’ain’t nothing to do with _him_; hide them, swaller them; here, give me your handkerchief and take half, tie them up tight so’s they won’t chink. I’ll keep my lot in the bag. He won’t guess nothin’, he’ll think the chows have cleared the place—ain’t nothin’ more to take, is there? Then come ’long and have a squint at the lazarette.”

The lazarette was full of food, all sorts of canned things; then, hearing Keller’s voice above, up they came demure as cats out of a dairy to find the long man waving his arms like a windmill. His goatee beard was sticking out like a brush and his eyes flaming.

“Dope!” cried Keller. “Boys, our fortunes is made. Canton opium, blue label tins and worth two thousand dollars if it’s worth a jitney. Kim along down and howk them out.” He led the way on to the junk’s deck and below to the awful interior smelling of opium, joss sticks, stale fish and shark oil; there on the floor in the dismal twilight lay the tins arranged by Keller in a heap.

“I reckon,” said Keller, “the schooner either went for the chows or the chows for the schooner. Maybe they all killed each other, or maybe the chaps that were left took fright seein’ a cruiser or fancyin’ one—reckon that was the way, for there ain’t no boats left, but the dinghy. Well, it’s all a durn sea mystery, and I’ve seen queerer—but there’s the dope, come along and hoist it.”

They brought the tins up and over to the schooner’s deck, got a tarpaulin and tied them up in it, and then, and not till then, took stock of their position. The drift of the current had left the island a good way to the south, but there it lay green, lovely and inviting, the glassy swell pearling round the coral.

Keller, turning from the opium tins to this picture, gazed for a moment, his jaws working in contemplation. Then he turned to the others.

“Boys,” said Keller, “it’s either go back or stick. I’m for sticking, if there’s water and grub enough on board. You see, if we take this dope back ashore, we won’t never be able to realise on it; any ship takin’ us off will say, ‘What’s in that bundle?’ and there won’t be no use sayin’ it’s bibles. Whereas if we can make a port in this hooker we can claim salvage, and leavin’ that alone we can ten to one get rid of the dope.”

“There’s grub enough,” said Davis, “to judge by the lazarette, and there’s pretty sure to be enough water—two minutes will tell, but first, let’s get those stiffs overboard. No use putting sinkers to them, the sharks will finish them before they’ve sunk a fathom.”

Twenty minutes later the decision was come to and the boat got on board.

They had found water and food enough for months, it only wanted a breeze to break the ships apart, and Keller reckoned that the three of them would be able to manage the schooner. Davis was a fair navigator, the charts and compass had not been damaged or removed, and with Matadore for a point of departure they ought to be able to reach the Fijis. So it was settled.

Harman, leaning on the rail when the decision was come to, fancied that he could hear a whisper from the beach of the far-away island, the whisper of the swell breaking on the coral where the wives of Keller were no doubt congregated, abandoned—chucked away for the prospect of a fistful of dollars.

The drift of the current was so strong that before sunset Matadore had all but vanished, washed away in the blue that stretched from infinity to infinity, terrific in its calm.

The Pacific slept, and the slumber of this giant when sleep takes it in deadly earnest is more trying to the imagination than its fury and storm, an effect produced perhaps by the heave of the endless swell flooding up from nowhere passing to nowhere, through space and time.

But the crew of the _Haliotis_ were not imaginative men, and they had other calls upon their consideration. It was at the first meal on board that the junk began to whisper of its presence. Harman had brewed some tea, and they were seated round the table in the saloon when Davis, looking up from his plate to the open skylight, sniffed the air.

“That junk whiffs,” said Davis.

It was enough. Harman for a moment turned his head as though he was straining to listen, and Keller glanced towards the door, then they went on with their food, but the mischief was done and from that on the junk was with them.

It was not so much the badness of the smell as the faintness and the Chinese nature of it that produced the psychological effect—it was a scent, a perfume of which shark liver oil was the vehicle and the occupants joss-sticks, opium and the musk of Chinks. It haunted their sleep that night and was only dispelled when next morning Keller, who had gone on deck, came shouting down the hatch that the wind was coming.

They had taken the sails off the junk the night before, finding a hatchet—it was stained with something that was not red paint—they hacked off the entangling spar, then, the wind coming, fortunately, on the junk’s side, the sails of the _Haliotis_ trembled, the main boom lashed out to port and Davis springing to the wheel turned the spokes.

For a moment the Chinaman seemed to cling to its departing companion, wallowed, slobbered, groaned, and with a last roll dunched in ten feet of the starboard rail, then it drew away as the great sail pressure of the _Haliotis_ heeled the schooner to port.

“We’re free,” shouted Harman.

“Hr—good riddance!” cried Keller, raising his fist as if to strike at the departing one, now well astern, and spitting into the water as if to get the taste of her from his mouth.

Then, as Davis steered and the foam fled astern, the wind, taking the high poop of the junk, slewed her round bow towards them, and showing the great staring, malignant eyes. It was actually as if she had turned to watch them.

“Look at her!” cried Billy, “turnin’ her snout to watch us; she’ll follow us now sure as certain, we won’t have no luck now, we’ll be had somehow or ’nuther, and maybe over that dope! Bud, where was your brains you didn’t think of holin’ and sinkin’ her? Why, if it ain’t anything else we can be had for leavin’ her a-floatin’ derelick and a danger to navigation.”

“Oh, shut up,” said Davis, “you and your derelicts.”

The _Haliotis_ was a schooner of some hundred and twenty tons, and three men can work a schooner of a hundred and twenty tons across big tracts of ocean if they have fine weather, if they have no fear, if they don’t bother to keep a look-out or attend to the hundred and twenty little duties of ordinary ship life. Harman, Bud and Keller filled this bill admirably. The wind changing and blowing from the sou’-east, they ran before it, ran with no man at the wheel, wheel lashed, head sheets taut, mainboom guyed to port, and never a mishap.

They ought to have gone to the bottom, you say; they ought, but they didn’t. The wind changed instead, for the Paumotus, though far to the eastward, still reached them with their disturbing spell breeding unaccountable influence on wind and weather.

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.