"W"y, any fool could guess near enough!" cried Sydney, with the superflous violence that was his caste mark. "And you--y" big Dutchman--"in"t you swilled enough beer in your time to judge? Besides, the bally can "olds three gallon--bound to. There"s one sure measure....
I say we got, anyw"y, eleven pounds of this stuff, and I "appen to know that Bendemeer"s fair crazy after it. He"ll pay big. We ought to "ave two thousands dollars Chile to split.... Two thousands silver dibs!"
It was a cue to friendly feeling, that luscious phrase. The two men beamed upon it as Sydney dumped the balance and swung the fiber net.
But it was also a cue of another kind, for it brought Junius Peabody on stage. He arrived by the simple process of sliding on a bundle over the brow of the cliff.
"That"s mine," he announced.
The beachcombers stayed stricken, which was pardonable. Surely there never showed a less heroic figure on a stranger defiance than that of Mr. Peabody, torn, bedraggled, and besmeared. There was nothing muscular or threatening about him. He took no pose. He offered no weapon. He came on at them limping, with quivering lip and empty hands, even with open hands. And yet the incredible fact remained that he did come on at them and continued to come.
"It"s mine," repeated Junius. "All mine, and I"m going to have it--all!"
Amazement held them motionless for as long as it took him to cross the ledge--pleased amazement, as they knew him better. There are few things more congenial to certain gentlemen than a chance to maul an easy victim. And here was the easiest victim that either of these gentlemen had seen in many a day. He was no match for them, could be no possible match. Since he would have it so, they accepted joyously, closed in upon him from either side and started to drag him down as a preliminary to trampling the lights out of him....
But they counted without the absolute simplicity of a man who has found an objective for the first time in his life and has set himself to reach it, regardless. Mr. Peabody did not pause to fight or to wrestle. He let them get a good grip on him and then took the unexpected way by keeping right on--and, pinioning their arms, merely walking them over the edge into s.p.a.ce.
For an instant the three seemed to hang suspended, interlocked amid smashing vines and taut creepers, and then toppled toward the lagoon.
Even before they struck, Sydney"s despairing yell rang out. Their plunge drowned it and gave way to the cries of startled sea birds, knifing the air in flung white crescents and circling about the troubled spot that boiled like blue champagne. But when he came up again the unfortunate larrikin loosed shriek after bubbling shriek and floundered madly for sh.o.r.e, all else forgotten in his dominant terror.
Willems was made of sterner metal. He grappled Peabody as they rose and sought to use his long arms, reaching for the throat. He learned better presently, however, and he learned, too, how much chance he had against a man who had once won a fancy diving t.i.tle at Travers Island. Junius took him down by the feet and held him down until there was no spring and no temper left to him, only a large and limp and very badly frightened Hollander who wanted to get out of the wet. He was quite willing to paddle after the Sydney Duck. Meanwhile Junius gathered up an object in a fiber net that was floating near by and swam on to follow his purpose....
The man Bendemeer was standing behind his little zinc bar when a shadow sifted in through the doorway, and, looking up, he took a backward step that nearly cost him his stock of gla.s.sware. The man Bendemeer was not used to stepping back from anything, but the red and dripping ruin that confronted him was beyond usage of any kind. Junius Peabody looked as if he had been run through a mangle. His dress was fragmentary. Most of the skin had been flayed from the more prominent curves of his anatomy. His left arm hung useless. He crawled in and propped himself to keep from falling, and called for brandy in a voice scarcely recognizable.
"Peabody--is it?" demanded Bendemeer, incredulous.
"Will you keep a customer waiting?" rasped Junius. "You needn"t stare."
He laughed weakly. "You can"t order me off now, Bendemeer. I"m a paying customer again."
"As how?"
Junius lifted a fist and dropped the sopping net on the bar.
"Ambergris--eleven pounds of it. My property."
Bendemeer inspected the brownish lump, and as he understood, his thin lips pleated and his glance quickened. "Oh, ho!" he said. "Was it _this_ they robbed you of?"
Peabody nodded.
"You got it back from them--yourself?"
"There"s the stuff."
"So I see. But I"m asking--did you take it away from those two cutthroats alone, without any help?"
"I did. And now I"ve come to talk business. It"s a good proposition, Bendemeer."
The tall, grim white man studied him with a narrow regard glinting like a probe and equally cool, detached, and impersonal. He had the air of a surgeon who approaches a clinical experiment. "I"m inclined to think it may be," he decided. "Yes--a sporting risk; though I"m certain enough of the result, Peabody, mind that. I believe I might make a bit of a gamble with myself, just to see that I"m right. Come now--what do you want?"
"A thousand silver," said Junius.
"I haven"t so much about me. Suppose we say a standing credit for a thousand drinks instead."
Junius stiffened against the bar.
"It amounts to the same thing, doesn"t it?" continued Bendemeer: "Why should you trouble about dollars--mere tokens? You can"t get away from Fufuti. The _Jane_ out there, she"s due to sail this morning on a round of my plantations. She"s the only ship clearing for a month at least....
By the time you"d drunk yourself to death I"d simply have the money back again."
Peabody stared, and a streak of crimson leaped into his cheek as if a whiplash had been laid across it.
"d.a.m.n you--!" he cried shakily. "Give me that brandy--I"ll pay for it.
Here"s the stuff. It"s mine. I went after it and I got it. I earned it myself, and fairly!"
"To what end?" Bendemeer cut in. "So you can pickle yourself before burial?"
Junius Peabody writhed. "What"s it to you how I spend it afterward? I"m a free agent. I can do as I like."
"That," said Bendemeer with quiet emphasis, "is a lie."
Holding his quivering subject, impaled on his glance as it seemed, he reached a black, square bottle. He shoved a gla.s.s in front of Junius Peabody and poured a generous measure. With one hand he kept the gla.s.s covered and with the other pointed out through the doorway.
"I"ll say you lie, and I"ll demonstrate:
"You see my schooner out there? That"s her boat on the beach. She leaves in half an hour; her captain"s come now for final orders. She goes first from here to an island of mine a hundred miles away. I planted it with coconuts five years ago, and left a population of maybe a dozen Kanakas to tend them--it"s going to be worth money some day. Nukava, they call it, and it"s the edge of the earth, the farthest corner, and the loneliest and the driest. There"s not a drop of anything on the place except water, scant and brackish at that. But a white man could live there, if he were fit to live at all, and wanted to badly enough.
"Now I"ll make you an offer. I"ll buy this lump of stuff from you, and I"ll buy it either of two ways. A half interest in Nukava and you go there at once to take charge as agent.... Or else--here"s your brandy and I"ll keep you perpetually drunk as long as you last."
Junius swayed on his feet. "Agent?" he stammered. "To go away--?"
"Now. And once there you can"t escape. You"re stuck for a year on a coral gridiron, Peabody, to sit and fry."
"What for? You--! What for?"
Bendemeer shrugged.
"Because it amuses me. Because I please. Because--I know what you"ll do.
I"ve been watching men of your sort all my life, and I know what they"re worth--drift on the beaches, sc.r.a.ps, trash, jetsam. Regeneration, eh?
Rot and drivel! You can"t save yourself any more than you could lift yourself by your own boot straps. It suits me to prove it to you this way."
He lifted his hand away from the gla.s.s. Peabody"s stare dropped from that cryptic regard to the waiting brandy before him, the red liquor, odorous and maddening. Peabody"s lips moved, and he wet them with the tip of his tongue and gripped the bar with straining white fingers.
"You"re wrong," he breathed. "You lose, Bendemeer. I can do it--I"ve just learned I can do it. And, by G.o.d," he added, prayerfully, "I will."
Bendemeer took up the netted lump.
"Very well," he said, offhand. "Just a moment, while I chuck this stuff in the storeroom."