Pearls of Great Price

by J. Allan Dunn

PEARLS OF GREAT PRICE

by J. Allan Dunn
Author of "The Marooner," "The Ferret and the Bet," etc.

LOUIS BODIN, "Levuka Louis," and Jim Hurley, "Hawkbill Hurley," were! the two greatest and most successful rogues in the South Seas.

Ostensibly, the business of Bodin centered in his Levuka "Snuggery," a top-chop place of entertainment, bed and board for none below the rank of mate or supercargo. How much Louis owned, no one in Melanesia knew, though many guessed. Hurley possessed two or three copra plantations, two schooners, a barkantine and a launch—and liked to talk about them. Bodin's pudgy, dextrous fingers were in many pies of which he invariably superintended the division. Both had brains but, where Louis preferred finesse, Hurley was apt to bluff.

Commerce was sluggish in Melanesia since the commencement of the Great War. The need of corn had entirely eclipsed the call for copra; tortoise shell—from the hawkbill turtle—was no longer in demand. China was in trouble and the trade in sea-slugs—bêche-de-mer—languished.

Pearls? One can always sell pearls in Tahiti—at a price. Louis had a proprietary interest in certain pearl lagoons but he was giving these varying proportions of the seven years necessary rest between cullings. The value of a gray pearl, or a pink, any color outside of white, doubles when such gems are matched.

According to Bodin's philosophy, any fool can make money when times are good. In days like these, it took brains to gather profit. He relaxed his purely physical functions and concentrated his vitality in his brain-cells. His bright eyes dulled and his eyelids drooped as he lolled in his bamboo chair on the shady veranda, a native boy swaying a feather kahili to keep away the flies.

There is a wireless at Levuka, which is on the island of Oavalu, east of Viti Levu. Louis had a radio station of his own with which he issued his trade mandates and gleaned the passing news of the air. Over on the main island of the Fijis, on Viti Levu, is Suva, capital and head of the resident British Government.

The morning's report was in Louis' hand and in it was the latest from Suva. It was in code but Louis had deciphered it. As an Ally he was in good standing with the Government though sometimes suspected of sailing overdose to the mark, not of loyalty but of legality.

The French possessions in Melanesia, outside of the Loyalties and the penal settlement of New Caledonia, are negligible and, at Levuka, Louis was the king frog in a puddle large enough for his activity. The raiding of German colonies by British and French cruisers was balm to Louis' Alsatian soul and the present item that such settlements were being held jointly by English and Gallic Governments until final distribution, furnished him pleasant food for meditation.

The kahili waved on automatically. The boy watched the rise and fall of the sash that bound Louis' generous stomach, a ribbon of color between the spotless linen of his trousers and the white silk of his shirt. The master's eyes seemed closed but the diaphragmatic respiration was too controlled for slumber. Tomi's soul lusted for a cool, green coconut with a surreptitious slug of gin added thereto, but his soul was in thrall to Bodin and he fanned on.

The languid figure came to action with a smart clap of palms to which a second loin-clad boy responded promptly.

"Hari, you take um canoe, ten men along of you. You go Rewa on Viti Levu—my word, better you walk along plenty fast, go catch Kapitani Wells. You speak him come along here Levuka way, plenty quick, in his schooner."

The kanaka vanished and Louis relaxed again. He would have sent his fast launch but the screw had fouled the top of a floating coco-palm in the darkness and, until another came from Suva, the craft was out of commission. Behind lowered lids he visioned the canoe speeding south and west with the paddles blading briskly to a chant. A slight sweat broke out on his olive features. The sash rose and fell. So did the kahili.

"Tomi, suppose you stop along fan me one lele second, my word, you plenty sorry. Fanchon!"

A sleek-coated bull terrier trotted out from a corner, yawning.

"Fanchon," said Louis, still with closed eyes. "You watch along this boy."

Tomi looked at the bitch who ran out a pink tongue over ivory fangs and grinned back at him, surveying him with eyes that were very like her master's. In the back of his sluggish brain he registered a thought.

"Too much devil-smart this white fellow boss along me," and the kahili resumed its regular, rhythmic sweep.

REWA is on the "eastern coast of Viti Levu at the mouth of Rewa River, fifty miles from Levuka. In its higher reaches the idle fleet of Melanesian traders lay where the fresh water would arrest the bottom growth.

Hurley sat in the cockpit of his launch, fishing for mullet at the turn of the tide. Two fathoms below half a dozen baked and split breadfruit had been spiked to the bottom with sharp stakes, serving as ground-bait to the silvery fish.

Breadfruit baited his hook and he was just hauling in his eighth mullet when he saw the canoe with Bodin's head boy steering, battle up-stream against the ebb; make for the Akua, Wells' schooner, deliver a message that resulted in instant activity aboard and then, their errand completed, he watched the crew paddling ashore to where a covey of kanakas were basking in the mottled shade beneath a clump of pandanus. There they would rest and visit a while before returning.

The Akua was the fastest schooner in the Fijis, bar one. That was Hurley's flagship, the Lehua, a Gloucester-fisherman type. To maintain speed supremacy, Bodin had bought his fast launch,the Fleur-de-Lys. The launch in which Hurley was fishing was but a small one, practically a tender, with eight knots to the Fleur-de-Lys' fifteen. Hurley would have purchased a sixteen or eighteen-knot power-boat had not times been so dull and deliveries so uncertain.

How much Wells was owner of his schooner, how large was Bodin's interest, Hurley only surmised. He knew that Wells had been stranded at Levuka after the wrecking of the trading barkantine of which he was mate and that Bodin had snapped up the smart young Yankee, staked him to the Akua and given him certain shares.

But any ripple of activity in these dull times was worthy of attention. Bodin's movements invariably meant money in sight and in these prospective profits Hurley instantly determined to share. He ordered the kanaka with him in the launch to haul in the anchor, started the engine and puttered over to the Lehua.

"Billi, you take this bottle kini-kini (gin) along those fellows. All same you hide him, you tell them you make um steal, you give um drink, find out from Hari what for he come along see Kapitani Wells. Bimeby you come back here plenty quick."

His crafty boatswain grinned and made his way ashore. Hurley shrilled on a silver whistle 'and soon his own crew assembled, got into their beached whale-boat and boarded the Lehua. Hurley turned to his mate.

"Brady, there's something doing Levuka way. I am going in with Billi in the launch. Soon as the Akua clears, follow her out. Split tacks with her and be off Kokua Head at sunset. Keep inshore so they won't spot you from Levuka."

Within fifteen minutes the Akua's mainsail was hoisted, the cable up, the headsheets taut and she swung to the ebb, dropping down toward the mouth of Rewa River. Hurley watched her foresail mount as she caught and heeled to the trade and reached for Oavalu and Levuka.

Ten minutes later Billi came aboard with what news he could gather and Hurley took him in the launch and started in a bee-line for the Akua's destination, his engine giving him the power of disregarding wind and current. When he made fast at the boat-landing the schooner was inhauling sheets for her final inshore tack. The Lehua was not in sight. Sunset was an hour away.

"Billi," said Hurley, "you go along back of Levuka Louis' place. Kapitani Wells he come along bimeby, talk along with Louis on back lanai, I think. When he come ashore I make plenty talk with him, maybe till dark I keep him. You hide along bush in garden, listen what Louis speak along of him. Then you come back to Foo-Ching's place—tell me everything. Savvy?"

"I savvy plenty that haole (white) dog along Levuka Louis. Suppose he savvy me in bush I think he make kai-kai (eat)."

"You rub your self plenty frangipani flower that dog no can tell. Now you walk along."

Billi went with the air of a martyr, but he went. At sunset the Lehua crept out from the reef behind Kokua Head and sneaked offshore in the dusk. Hurley, drinking gin rickies at Foo-Ching's, awaited the result of Billi's mission, wishing that he himself could have wormed into the garden as quietly as the kanaka, and Billi, his body smeared with the crushed petals of pungent frangipani, crouched in the crotons under the veranda where Louis talked with Wells. Fanchon was there too, drowsily unconscious of any intruder.

"SO," SAID Louis, "you wish to enlist now that America is one of the Allies. It is good. I understand that well. But listen, mon ami. It will be long before you can get back to the States, by that time the war may be over. Suppose it is not, what then? You enlist—in what? You—a first-class sailing master, will you try to make of yourself a private or become a Jackie aboard a cruiser?

"I, too would serve France, old as I am. But brain is better than muscle, mon brave, and it is in my mind that we can help the cause here in the Fijis. I have a plan which should bring much money at the expense of those pigs of Germans. And money always wins. This money, mon ami, we will send to aid our braves at the front. If you will, you shall take it presently and tell them it is a gift from Louis Bodin, once of Alsace, now of the Fijis, a gift from Levuka Louis and yourself.

"It will do you no harm to be such a messenger. It is in my mind that they will need good master-mariners. Perhaps we will build with this money a little, quick ship, with you in command, to go hunting these sharks of U-boats, nom de guerre, that would be better than drill for six months to learn in which end of the gun fits the bayonet, non?"

Wells, curved of nose, lantern of jaw, nodded. Billi yawned in the crotons. This sort of talk was all words and idle.

"Tell me about it," said Wells. "It sounds good to me."

"In Melanesia," said Louis, "Great Britain owns twenty-one thousand square miles of islands, France seven and a half and Germany seventy-eight thousand—or she did. Now she owns nothing. It is spoils of war. By and by France and England will divide. Meanwhile, what happens? The German plantations go back to the bush for lack of men and the pearl lagoons lie untouched."

"Ah," said Wells softly. "Pearls."

In the crotons Billi's ears pricked up like a dog's—like Fanchon's who was beginning to sniff uneasily.

"Northeast of New Mecklenburg in the German Solomons, there is an atoll that is ripe for gathering. It has not been touched for six years and the shell is very rich. I will give you the position later, on paper. Figures talked to the air find wings, and Fanchon is uneasy. What is it, Fanchon?"

Billi was no fool. In the few words last spoken he had gathered the reason of Wells' trip, to get the pearls from the German atoll. He sensed too that, in the hot evening, his own personal odor was mastering that of the fragrant blossoms sufficiently for the dog to detect it. It was time to be moving. He started to crawl away on his belly, silently as a snake.

But, as he sinuously stretched, from the exposed armpit glands the telltale kanaka scent permeated the breeze, to the indignant offense of Fanchon's quivering nostrils. Without waste of growl the dog's lithe body rippled over the railing of the lanai and crashed into the crotons from which the body of Billi shot, spurred by fear of fangs.

Wells arose, half drawing his automatic from its holster, but Louis laughed. "Let Fanchon obtain some exercise, mon ami," he said. "Nom d'un nom, see the kanaka run."

Across the lawn, leaping the shrubbery spread-eagled, Billi fled like a shadow in the dusk, the gray streak of Fanchon at his heels. They vanished in the palms that bordered the wild bush. There was a shriek, a yelp of triumph from Fanchon and presently the bull terrier came trotting back and laid a fragment of cloth at her master's feet. Billi had hurled himself into a mass of jungle too dense for Fanchon to tackle. But she had drawn blood and obtained a trophy and was content to leave Billi struggling in the tangle.

Louis picked up the bit of cloth. It was a strip of yellow muslin, nearly new, bright yellow with purple and red circles intertwined for pattern. He passed it to Wells.

"That came out of Hurley's trade-room," said the latter. "He has passed out two hundred fathoms of the stuff. No one else has it."

"It does not surprise me," said Louis. "He came ashore in his launch half an hour ahead of the Akua."

"And kept me chinning on the beach about the war till it was nearly dark," said Wells. "I left him at Ching-Foo's on the way up."

"One of his boys will steer standing for a while," said Louis. "Let us go inside. It is warmer but more private."

"This is the news I got from Suva," said Louis presently. "The Solomons are in charge of the dual Governments of France and England. The British resident will assume charge from Bougainville. The French gunboat Leopard will proceed from New Caledonia and inform the natives. It is doubtful if she will touch at our atoll. She must not hear your little plan. Also Hurley must not dip his fingers in this bowl of poi. He will try—which makes the game more interesting than solitaire."

Louis chuckled.

"You will provision tonight and go out on the ebb an hour before dawn. Do not wait to rot the pearls. The smell might prove traitor down the wind. Better to lose a few. You will find the best shell at the north end of the lagoon. Come to see me as soon as the tide turns. I shall be awake. I fancy Hurley may pay me a little visit and perhaps he will show some of his cards. He is a little fond of telling what he holds. Here is the position. Eh Men, mon ami, au revoir."

As Wells left him, the dapper little Frenchman, half pirate, half patriot, bent to scratch Fanchon behind the ears.

"So, you did not eat him, dog of my heart? Kanaka kai-kai is not to your liking. But you nipped him, eh? Nipped him in the breech. For that you get a better piece of meat, Fanchon."

AT NINE o'clock a sulky and subdued Billi arrived at Ching-Foo's with a furrowed flank and received first aid in the smart of carbolic acid, followed by peroxide, with an emollient in the shape of a bottle of square-face. Hurley was more than complacent at the news of the pearl atoll and took to the beach with a shirt-pocket full of cigars to work out the problem as he walked.

He and Bodin reasoned much alike. Both tried to look at situations first through the eyes of the other, then their own, playing the game several moves ahead and figuring all contingencies they could conceive.

If Louis' launch was in commission, Hurley was undone. His schooner could not follow. But he could trail the Akua. The joker in the pack was the position of the island. He had a plan for getting that but it meant taking Ching-Foo into part confidence and partnership. At the worst he could warn the French cruiser through the British Government at Suva. That would net him nothing save the discomfiture of Louis and he was playing for stakes—not just for the game. One thing, however, he resolved. If he could not get in on the pearls, Louis should not.

The news that Bodin had pirated from the aerograms had by this time reached Ching-Foo. Hurley gave tribute to Louis for the inspiration of the idea. He himself could not especially share Louis' patriotic fervor in spoiling the Egyptians by using German pearls to fight them with the proceeds of sale. To Hurley, in South Sea ethics of mine and thine, the pearls were legitimate trove for the first finder. His financial horizon was largely bounded by the rim of the dollar.

As the butt of his second cigar hissed into the surf-line he resolved upon his first move. He would go and see Bodin. Louis had been right when he told Wells that Hurley liked to assist his bluffs by hinting at the cards he held. Louis knew that Billi, or one of Hurley's boys, had been listening. Hurley valued rightly the episode of Fanchon and the missing square from Billi's loin-cloth.

Louis would know that Hurley knew the main factor of his scheme. Louis would know that, in the Lehua, with the moon in her third quarter and rising early, Hurley could follow the Akua wherever she went, night or day. With these aces already in his hand he might persuade Louis to split the pot.

A random thought of trying to take the pearls by force from Wells after the latter had harvested them and was on the way home, Hurley dismissed. He had run up against Wells before and the New Englander was not to be bluffed. If it came to a fight for the possession of what the Government would consider illegal treasure, Wells would give as good as he received.

Hurley lit a third cigar and wandered to the Snuggery.

Louis received him affably.

"Here's to better times," pledged Hurley.

"Of a truth," replied Louis. "Present times are dull, eh, mon brave?"

Wells spent no time shuffling the deck. In his walk to the Snuggery he had learned that the Akua was provisioning. His own schooner was fairly well stocked, lacking only water, and that he had ordered supplied. If he had to chase Wells the latter would soon see the hopelessness of trying to get away and Louis might tire of the delay.

He looked into the Frenchman's smiling eyes and read that Louis had also gone over the situation. Between men of their caliber sparring was a waste of time.

"Few good things going now, Louis," said Hurley. "When one breaks we should all be willing to share it."

"Why, mon ami?" returned Louis evenly.

"Square thing to do. Besides, what is the use of blocking one another? Partners don't trump aces unless they are fools."

"Of a truth. Even Fanchon knows that. Eh, my cabbage? The dog sleeps. She has been running and is tired. Have you a proposition to make to me, mon ami?"

Incidentally his hand strayed to where a piece of cloth lay on the table beneath a cigar box. Hurley grinned at the gesture.

"Sure have I, Louis. You're on to a good thing right now. Let me in on it."

"Or you will block my hand?"

"I'd rather be partners, Louis."

"But this enterprise is not my own. The proceeds are not to go to me."

Hurley laughed.

"I suppose not. Going to give them to charity? The Widows and Orphans Fund?"

Bodin regarded him silently for a second or two. His eyes brightened and dimmed.

"The widows and orphans? Mon Dieu, Hurlee, that is not a bad idea. I thank you. I had not thought of that. An excellent idea, truly. But in any event I can not share this with you."

Hurley flicked the ash from his cigar and his eyes got steely.

"You will share it, Louis, or I'll copper it. I'm on to the scheme. Piracy, that's what it practically amounts to. Not that I give a whoop about that——"

"Providing you share the loot, mon ami."

"Exactly. As I say, I'm on to it."

"And you want——"

"Half. I'll do the work. You can dish Wells. You own him. Half—or——"

"Or what, monsieur?"

"Or nothing. Either let me in on it or I'll let myself in. You know me, Bodin, I'm no slack-brained copra-cadger. You're clever but I'm no fool. And there's no time to lose. What do you say?"

"Not one pearl, Hurlee, not one little, tiny baroque."

"You think you've got an ace in the hole because you know the location. But I know what you are after and you'll have a —— of a time shaking me off."

"I know what you are drawing to, mon ami. You say I have an ace in the hole. I may have two. I am playing a good hand, Hurlee."

"There'll be a show-down for the pot."

Hurley rose, choleric but mastering his chagrin at the twinkle in Bodin's eyes.

Fanchon got up and sniffed gingerly at his heels to the door, standing to watch him before she went back to her master.

"That settles it," said Hurley to himself. "Widows and orphans!" he exploded aloud. "Does that Frenchy think I am a fool? Share with him? Not much. Either I rake it all in or he loses."

In the Snuggery Louis sipped at his vermouth. His eyes had dimmed again and he saw the ravaged villages of France, the weeping women and the wondering, frightened children.

"Pour les veuves et les orphelins, Fanchon," he murmured. "Par le bon Dieu, c'est une bonne idée."

AN HOUR before midnight, Hurley, in his launch chugged out to where the Lehua awaited him and the schooner passed over the rim of the horizon and patrolled on long tacks until the dawn showed the Akua leaving Levuka behind her, off for the Solomons.

At noon Wells gave up the attempt to shake off a swifter opponent and the two returned as they had sailed for hours, on the same tack, like evenly matched cup racers—only Wells had known that Hurley was deliberately sailing a point farther off the wind than he had to when they were close-hauled, and had as deliberately slackened his sheets when they reached, with half a knot of superior speed ever ready to be let out upon occasion.

"Never mind, mon brave," said Louis when Wells reported. "We will lead him on the chase of the wild goose for a day or two. My propeller arrives from Suva on the Manu, Thursday. Then we shall see."

"What's the matter with Hurley getting on to that too?" said Wells. "He knows all about the accident and where you are getting the new screw. He'll see it when it comes. He'll play some trick. Tip the thing off to the Government, likely."

"If he does that," said Louis, "we will have to make a race of it with the Leopard. She can not make better than ten knots. You will have to stop at the Hebrides, at Malaita and maybe at Choiseul to get fresh gasoline for her tank and carry extra drums. See always you have plenty of gasoline, Wells, if we use the Fleur-de-Lys. I have no fancy to see her smashed by a shell, or you on New Caledonia. But I do not think Hurlee will inform—not until le dernier resort. We shall see what we shall see. In the meantime, mon ami, let us prepare for emergencies. I have something to show you. Also you can rot out the shell."

When Wells arrived aboard his schooner he wore a broad smile.

"Tim," he said to his supercargo, "Bodin's the father of all the foxes."

Tim Donnelly grinned.

"He's a whole kennel of foxes. 'Tis myself could have told you that," he said. "Levuka Louis was born with a wishbone in his mouth an' he chewed the nipples of his milk bottles to rags with his wisdom teeth whin he was yet a babe in ar-r-ms. Don't be tellin'me anything about Bodin."

Twice more the Akua put to sea and twice more the Lehua trailed her out and back. Then the inter-island steamer Manu came and brought a new propeller for Bodin, to the knowledge of all Levuka. And Hurley took counsel with Ching-Foo.

That evening the Akua went to sea once more, and once again the Lehua trailed her, hanging to her quarter league after league like a wolf on the trail of a wounded caribou. But Wells was not aboard the half-manned Akua nor Hurley on the Lehua. The first was closeted with Bodin in his Snuggery and the second sneaked aboard the Manu from a shore-boat and took passage to Suva.

Twenty-four hours later the launch Fleur-de-Lys passed through the reef entrance with a smother of foam at her sharp bows. Fifty miles offshore Wells saw the topsails of w the two schooners returning to Levuka.

"It looks like clear sailing, Tim," he said.

"There's one thing ye should rimimber," answered Donnelly. "Louis is a fox, but Hurley, bad 'cess to him, is a wolf. Sure, that engine runs like a watch, Skipper. What are we making?"

"A trifle better than seventeen, Tim. Are all the arms aboard?"

"Guns and cartridges—not forgettin' a stick or two of dynnymite for luck."

"The boat's a beauty," said Wells half regretfully. "It's a pity she hasn't got sticks in her. But she makes the time, and time is the essence of this contract."

DAWN rolled up the sky almost as swiftly as a spring blind jumps to the release and floods a room with light. The pearl atoll lay revealed upon the sea, sapphire to the reef and emerald within; clean cut as an etching, the palm-fronds waving in the morning breeze. The Fleur-de-Lys lay at anchor in the outer lagoon. There were two of these in hour-glass shape; the unlovely Teutonic name of the atoll was Pretzel Isle.

A thin thread of smoke wavered in the wind from a fire on the beach where Wells, with Donnelly and a crew of twelve men from the complement of the Akua, were preparing to enjoy a farewell breakfast.

A heap of shells proclaimed their industry. Gems that could not be held in a pint measure attested the richness of the fishing.

They had been there for ten busy days. Already the oyster meat, despoiled of pearls, was beginning to rot and taint the leeward air. And, so far, there had been no hint of disturbance.

The meal was leisurely finished and the crew prepared to gather fresh coconuts for the return trip. Six of them set strips of cloth about their middles and hitched themselves up the slender trunks. Wells lit his pipe and Donnelly busied himself to oversee the lading.

Unseen, unheard, unsuspected, a launch, painted white, with a buff funnel, one gilt letter at the bows, the tricolor of France trailing in the wind of her going, glided round the atoll, hidden by the palms and pandanus scrub until it had fairly entered the mouth of the outer lagoon. A puff of smoke came from a gun in her bows.

Wells jumped to his feet; his hand swung to his hip and fell as he saw the ensign and the jackets of the French marines who charged up the beach, their bayonets gleaming. An officer ran with them, revolver in hand, lanyarded to his wrist. The kanakas slid down the palms and gathered open-mouthed. Donnelly swore.

"That dirty wolf of a Hurley," he said. "The informin' thief of the world."

Wells knocked the ashes from his pipe and grimly faced the officer.

"Parlez vous Français?" demanded the latter.

"I do not," answered Wells shortly.

"Then I will spik English. This island is the property of France an' Great Britain. You have poach pearl. Those pearl I deman'."

"Divvle a pearl did we get," said Donnelly. "Some one was ahead of us—a chap named Hurley."

"Hurlee I know not," said the officer. "But you lie. Regard those shells. Would you open so many for nothing? Bah! Give me those pearl an' I leave you with warning. I have not room for you in my launch, an' I must return to my ship. Refuse—I tow you all an' then—" he shrugged his shoulders—"New Caledonia is not healthy, mon ami."

"If I give you the pearls," said Wells resignedly, "you will leave us here?"

"Those are my ordaire. We know where from you come, messieurs; we shall keep the eye on you. Now we are ver' busy, too busy for prisonnaires. Perhaps you will soon fight for France an' Englan' an' this shall be forgotten."

"I am an American citizen," said Wells. "I am going to enlist."

"Me too," said Donnelly.

"Bien. But now, those pearl."

With a wry grimace Wells took off his belt. It was lined with chamois leather pouches designed for gold but now he emptied from them into the husk of a coconut a pint of shimmering globules, rounded, gleaming with all the tender hues of dawn. The officer poured them into a leather pouch he produced from his uniform and stowed them away.

"I must observe your gasoline," said the Frenchman. "Come to your launch."

Protestingly Wells went with them and watched them half empty the tank.

"This will hardly take me to New Mecklenburg," he grumbled. "And when I start to get more they'll pinch us."

Once more the officer shrugged.

"Ordaire, messieurs. You should have think of that before you play corsair. You have the chance to go where you like. I wish you bon voyage. Au revoir."

The marines reentered the trim boat and the ravished pearl-gatherers watched her vanish around the atoll.

"We should have think of that before," mimicked Donnelly. "You aren't as smart as you think you are, Frenchy Frog-Eater. Hari, you start um boys dig up those drums of gasoline. We'll not put in at Mecklenburg this trip. What's the idea, Skipper?"

"We ought to have made that chap give us a receipt for the pearls, Tim."

"Fat chance. Why?"

"Did you see his eyes? He has handled pearls before. I wouldn't wonder if some of them were missing when he turns them over."

"It won't be makin' any diffirince to us now," said Tim.

"No," said Wells, relighting his pipe. "Get those nuts aboard and we'll clear out."

IT WAS six weeks later when Hurley came to Levuka on the Manu and went up to the Snuggery with the officers of the steamer and the passengers. He was arrayed in linen and silk, and he led the procession.

"The drinks are on me, Louis," he said. "Take the orders. Presently you may buy."

He smiled at his audience who scented a joke. The deft boys served them.

"Here's to success, Louis," said Hurley.

Bodin bowed and raised his glass.

"If you will pardon me, gentlemen, I will drink to La France. And to the widows and orphans," he added, in an aside to Hurley, as the guests rose to the toast.

Hurley glanced at Louis and grinned.

"Are you in the market for pearls, Louis?" he asked.

"Perhaps. Have you any? I will look at them presently," replied Louis.

"Want to do business in private? All right; that suits me. But the drinks are on you, Louis, take my word for it."

The glasses were replenished. Louis rose.

"I give you, messieurs," he said, "the widows and orphans of our united armies."

Once more the toast was taken standing.

"And now, Hurlee," said Louis.

He led the way to his private room and Hurley followed with a shoulder grin at the crowd. As Louis shut the door Hurley reached into the inner pocket of his coat, disclosing the slung holster of an automatic. From a leather pouch he poured on to a black silk 'neckerchief a pint of pearls. Louis bent gravely over them.

"They are very pretty," he said.

Hurley threw back his head and laughed.

"Louis, you are a game sport. I am almost tempted to divvy with you. Almost, not quite. Why don't you ask me where they came from? Or has Wells got back in the Fleur-de-Lys?"

"He has arrived and gone away again," said Louis. "To the States. On the Mariposa. So you need not tell me where these came from, my friend. I have guessed. One thing I do not know. How did you get the position of the atoll?"

"Game, Louis! You're a game loser. I'll let you cheat me on the price for that. The position? Wells' cook is part pa-ké (Chinese). I sicked Ching-Foo on to him. He went through Wells' clothes when he was asleep. Simple enough?"

"Only you have to share with Ching-Foo. That is too bad."

"There is plenty to go around, I reckon. What are they worth, Louis? Or rather, what will you give me for them?"

"I overlooked the cook," said Louis, ignoring the request for the moment. "You took that trick, mon brave."

"I took all of them, Louis. I told you I held the best hand. You should have seen Wells' face when they asked him for the pearls."

"You were there?"

"In the cabin of the launch. We fixed it up for a man-of-war tender. Renault from Suva was the officer. He used to be an actor once. We only just got there on time, Louis. But we should have cut you off on the way back."

"Renault from Suva," said Louis softly. "I shall remember that name. So the marines were not real, eh Hurley? That was very clever of you."

"Fakes, every one of them," said Hurley. "Outside of Renault not one of the bunch knew a word of French. How about the pearls?" A gleam came into Louis' eyes.

"Fakes every one of them, mon ami. They cost me sixty dollars a long time ago. Made in Melbourne, Hurlee. I will give you sixty dollars for them. The real ones were hidden in the Fleur-de-Lys. I bought them myself, on speculation, for twenty thousand dollars. Wells has the money with him, to give to widows and orphans. Never mind the gun, Hurlee. Be a good loser. Au revoir et bon voyage."