The Greatest Adventures Boxed Set: Jack London Edition. Jack London
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Название: The Greatest Adventures Boxed Set: Jack London Edition
Автор: Jack London
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Книги для детей: прочее
isbn: 9788027221165
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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.”
Grief ran his eye over them and knew their value ranged from one hundred to a thousand dollars each, while the several selected large ones went far beyond.
“Oh, the pretties! the pretties!” Mrs. Hall cried, bending forward suddenly and kissing them.
A few minutes later she arose to say good-night.
“It’s good-bye,” Grief said, as he took her hand. “We sail at daylight.”
“So suddenly!” she cried, while Grief could not help seeing the quick light of satisfaction in her husband’s eyes.
“Yes,” Grief continued. “All the repairs are finished. I can’t get the longitude of your island out of your husband, though I’m still in hopes he’ll relent.”
Hall laughed and shook his head, and, as his wife left the room, proposed a last farewell nightcap. They sat over it, smoking and talking.
“What do you estimate they’re worth?” Grief asked, indicating the spread of pearls on the table. “I mean what the pearl-buyers would give you in open market?”
“Oh, seventy-five or eighty thousand,” Hall said carelessly.
“I’m afraid you’re underestimating. I know pearls a bit. Take that biggest one. It’s perfect. Not a cent less than five thousand dollars. Some multimillionaire will pay double that some day, when the dealers have taken their whack. And never minding the seed pearls, you’ve got quarts of baroques there. And baroques are coming into fashion. They’re picking up and doubling on themselves every year.”
Hall gave the trove of pearls a closer and longer scrutiny, estimating the different parcels and adding the sum aloud.
“You’re right,” he admitted. “They’re worth a hundred thousand right now.”
“And at what do you figure your working expenses?” Grief went on. “Your time, and your two men’s, and the divers’?”
“Five thousand would cover it.”
“Then they stand to net you ninety-five thousand?”
“Something like that. But why so curious?”
“Why, I was just trying——” Grief paused and drained СКАЧАТЬ