The Greatest Adventures Boxed Set: Jack London Edition. Jack London
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Snow shook his head.
“That man ashore there never bought the books on the shelves,” Grief declared with conviction. “Nor did he ever go in for concealed lighting. He’s got a surface flow of suavity, but he’s rough as a hoof-rasp underneath. He’s an oily bluff. And the bunch he’s got with him—Watson and Gorman their names are; they came in after you left—real sea-dogs, middle-aged, marred and battered, tough as rusty wrought-iron nails and twice as dangerous; real ugly customers, with guns in their belts, who don’t strike me as just the right sort to be on such comradely terms with Swithin Hall. And the woman! She’s a lady. I mean it. She knows a whole lot of South America, and of China, too. I’m sure she’s Spanish, though her English is natural. She’s travelled. We talked bull-fights. She’s seen them in Guayaquil, in Mexico, in Seville. She knows a lot about sealskins.
“Now here’s what bothers me. She knows music. I asked her if she played. And he’s fixed that place up like a palace. That being so, why hasn’t he a piano for her? Another thing: she’s quick and lively and he watches her whenever she talks. He’s on pins and needles, and continually breaking in and leading the conversation. Say, did you ever hear that Swithin Hall was married?”
“Bless me, I don’t know,” the mate replied. “Never entered my head to think about it.”
“He introduced her as Mrs. Hall. And Watson and Gorman call him Hall. They’re a precious pair, those two men. I don’t understand it at all.”
“What are you going to do about it?” Snow asked.
“Oh, hang around a while. There are some books ashore there I want to read. Suppose you send that topmast down in the morning and generally overhaul. We’ve been through a hurricane, you know. Set up the rigging while you’re about it. Get things pretty well adrift, and take your time.”
VI
The next day Grief’s suspicions found further food. Ashore early, he strolled across the little island to the barracks occupied by the divers.
They were just boarding the boats when he arrived, and it struck him that for Kanakas they behaved more like chain-gang prisoners. The three white men were there, and Grief noted that each carried a rifle. Hall greeted him jovially enough, but Gorman and Watson scowled as they grunted curt good mornings.
A moment afterward one of the Kanakas, as he bent to place his oar, favoured Grief with a slow, deliberate wink. The man’s face was familiar, one of the thousands of native sailors and divers he had encountered drifting about in the island trade.
“Don’t tell them who I am,” Grief said, in Tahitian. “Did you ever sail for me?”
The man’s head nodded and his mouth opened, but before he could speak he was suppressed by a savage “Shut up!” from Watson, who was already in the sternsheets.
“I beg pardon,” Grief said. “I ought to have known better.”
“That’s all right,” Hall interposed. “The trouble is they’re too much talk and not enough work. Have to be severe with them, or they wouldn’t get enough shell to pay their grub.”
Grief nodded sympathetically. “I know them. Got a crew of them myself—the lazy swine. Got to drive them like niggers to get a half-day’s work out of them.”
“What was you sayin’ to him?” Gorman blurted in bluntly.
“I was asking how the shell was, and how deep they were diving.”
“Thick,” Hall took over the answering. “We’re working now in about ten fathom. It’s right out there, not a hundred yards off. Want to come along?”
Half the day Grief spent with the boats, and had lunch in the bungalow. In the afternoon he loafed, taking a siesta in the big living-room, reading some, and talking for half an hour with Mrs. Hall. After dinner, he played billiards with her husband. It chanced that Grief had never before encountered Swithin Hall, yet the latter’s fame as an expert at billiards was the talk of the beaches from Levuka to Honolulu. But the man Grief played with this night proved most indifferent at the game. His wife showed herself far cleverer with the cue.
When he went on board the Uncle Toby Grief routed Jackie-Jackie out of bed. He described the location of the barracks, and told the Tongan to swim softly around and have talk with the Kanakas. In two hours Jackie-Jackie was back. He shook his head as he stood dripping before Grief.
“Very funny t’ing,” he reported. “One white man stop all the time. He has big rifle. He lay in water and watch. Maybe twelve o’clock, other white man come and take rifle. First white man go to bed. Other man stop now with rifle. No good. Me cannot talk with Kanakas. Me come back.”
“By George!” Grief said to Snow, after the Tongan had gone back to his bunk. “I smell something more than shell. Those three men are standing watches over their Kanakas. That man’s no more Swithin Hall than I am.”
Snow whistled from the impact of a new idea.
“I’ve got it!” he cried.
“And I’ll name it,” Grief retorted, “It’s in your mind that the Emily L. was their schooner?”
“Just that. They’re raising and rotting the shell, while she’s gone for more divers, or provisions, or both.”
“And I agree with you.” Grief glanced at the cabin clock and evinced signs of bed-going. “He’s a sailor. The three of them are. But they’re not island men. They’re new in these waters.”
Again Snow whistled.
“And the Emily L. is lost with all hands,” he said. “We know that. They’re marooned here till Swithin Hall comes. Then he’ll catch them with all the shell.”
“Or they’ll take possession of his schooner.”
“Hope they do!” Snow muttered vindictively. “Somebody ought to rob him. Wish I was in their boots. I’d balance off that sixty thousand.”
VII
A week passed, during which time the Uncle Toby was ready for sea, while Grief managed to allay any suspicion of him by the shore crowd.
Even Gorman and Watson accepted him at his self-description. Throughout the week Grief begged and badgered them for the longitude of the island.
“You wouldn’t have me leave here lost,” he finally urged. “I can’t get a line on my chronometer without your longitude.”
Hall laughingly refused.
“You’re too good a navigator, Mr. Anstey, not to fetch New Guinea or some other high land.”
“And you’re too good a navigator, Mr. Hall,” Grief replied, “not to know that I can fetch your island any time by running down its latitude.”
On the last evening, ashore, as usual, to dinner, Grief got his first view of the pearls they had collected. Mrs. Hall, waxing enthusiastic, had asked her husband to bring forth the “pretties,” and had spent half an hour showing them to Grief. His delight in them was genuine, as well as was his surprise that they had made so rich a haul.
“The lagoon is virgin,” Hall explained. “You saw yourself that most of the shell is large and old. But it’s funny that we got most of the valuable pearls in one small patch in the course of a week. It was a little treasure house. Every oyster seemed filled—seed pearls by the quart, of course, but the perfect ones, most of that bunch there, came out of the small patch.”