II

       Table of Contents

      The house of Parlay was a big two-story frame affair, built of California lumber, with a galvanized iron roof. So disproportionate was it to the slender ring of the atoll that it showed out upon the sand-strip and above it like some monstrous excrescence. They of the Malahini paid the courtesy visit ashore immediately after anchoring. Other captains and buyers were in the big room examining the pearls that were to be auctioned next day. Paumotan servants, natives of Hikihoho, and relatives of the owner, moved about dispensing whiskey and absinthe. And through the curious company moved Parlay himself, cackling and sneering, the withered wreck of what had once been a tall and powerful man. His eyes were deep sunken and feverish, his cheeks fallen in and cavernous. The hair of his head seemed to have come out in patches, and his mustache and imperial had shed in the same lopsided way.

      “Jove!” Mulhall muttered under his breath. “A long-legged Napoleon the Third, but burnt out, baked, and fire-crackled. And mangy! No wonder he crooks his head to one side. He’s got to keep the balance.”

      “Goin’ to have a blow,” was the old man’s greeting to Grief. “You must think a lot of pearls to come a day like this.”

      “They’re worth going to inferno for,” Grief laughed genially back, running his eyes over the surface of the table covered by the display.

      “Other men have already made that journey for them,” old Parlay cackled. “See this one!” He pointed to a large, perfect pearl the size of a small walnut that lay apart on a piece of chamois. “They offered me sixty thousand francs for it in Tahiti. They’ll bid as much and more for it to-morrow, if they aren’t blown away. Well, that pearl, it was found by my cousin, my cousin by marriage. He was a native, you see. Also, he was a thief. He hid it. It was mine. His cousin, who was also my cousin—we’re all related here—killed him for it and fled away in a cutter to Noo-Nau. I pursued, but the chief of Noo-Nau had killed him for it before I got there. Oh, yes, there are many dead men represented on the table there. Have a drink, Captain. Your face is not familiar. You are new in the islands?”

      “It’s Captain Robinson of the Roberta,” Grief said, introducing them.

      In the meantime Mulhall had shaken hands with Peter Gee.

      “I never fancied there were so many pearls in the world,” Mulhall said.

      “Nor have I ever seen so many together at one time,” Peter Gee admitted.

      “What ought they to be worth?”

      “Fifty or sixty thousand pounds—and that’s to us buyers. In Paris——” He shrugged his shoulders and lifted his eyebrows at the incommunicableness of the sum.

      Mulhall wiped the sweat from his eyes. All were sweating profusely and breathing hard. There was no ice in the drink that was served, and whiskey and absinthe went down lukewarm.

      “Yes, yes,” Parlay was cackling. “Many dead men lie on the table there. I know those pearls, all of them. You see those three! Perfectly matched, aren’t they? A diver from Easter Island got them for me inside a week. Next week a shark got him; took his arm off and blood poison did the business. And that big baroque there—nothing much—if I’m offered twenty francs for it to-morrow I’ll be in luck; it came out of twenty-two fathoms of water. The man was from Raratonga. He broke all diving records. He got it out of twenty-two fathoms. I saw him. And he burst his lungs at the same time, or got the ‘bends,’ for he died in two hours. He died screaming. They could hear him for miles. He was the most powerful native I ever saw. Half a dozen of my divers have died of the bends. And more men will die, more men will die.”

      “Oh, hush your croaking, Parlay,” chided one of the captains. “It ain’t going to blow.”

      “If I was a strong man, I couldn’t get up hook and get out fast enough,” the old man retorted in the falsetto of age. “Not if I was a strong man with the taste for wine yet in my mouth. But not you. You’ll all stay, I wouldn’t advise you if I thought you’d go, You can’t drive buzzards away from the carrion. Have another drink, my brave sailor-men. Well, well, what men will dare for a few little oyster drops! There they are, the beauties! Auction to-morrow, at ten sharp. Old Parlay’s selling out, and the buzzards are gathering—old Parlay who was a stronger man in his day than any of them and who will see most of them dead yet.”

      “If he isn’t a vile old beast!” the supercargo of the Malahini whispered to Peter Gee.

      “What if she does blow?” said the captain of the Dolly. “Hikihoho’s never been swept.”

      “The more reason she will be, then,” Captain Warfield answered back. “I wouldn’t trust her.”

      “Who’s croaking now?” Grief reproved.

      “I’d hate to lose that new engine before it paid for itself,” Captain Warfield replied gloomily.

      Parlay skipped with astonishing nimbleness across the crowded room to the barometer on the wall.

      “Take a look, my brave sailormen!” he cried exultantly.

      The man nearest read the glass. The sobering effect showed plainly on his face.

      “It’s dropped ten,” was all he said, yet every face went anxious, and there was a look as if every man desired immediately to start for the door.

      “Listen!” Parlay commanded.

      In the silence the outer surf seemed to have become unusually loud. There was a great rumbling roar.

      “A big sea is beginning to set,” some one said; and there was a movement to the windows, where all gathered.

      Through the sparse cocoanuts they gazed seaward. An orderly succession of huge smooth seas was rolling down upon the coral shore. For some minutes they gazed on the strange sight