A Son of the Sun. Jack London

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СКАЧАТЬ all his money, coming around like a rent collector,” he chanted his outrage, almost in an ecstasy of anger. “He's loaded with money, he's stuffed with money, he's busting with money. I know for a fact he sold his Yringa plantations for three hundred thousand pounds. Bell told me so himself last time we were drunk at Guvutu. Worth millions and millions, and Shylocking me for what he wouldn't light his pipe with.” He whirled on the mate. “Of course you told me so. Go on and say it, and keep on saying it. Now just what was it you did tell me so?”

      “I told you you didn't know him, if you thought you could clear the Solomons without paying him. That man Grief is a devil, but he's straight. I know. I told you he'd throw a thousand quid away for the fun of it, and for sixpence fight like a shark for a rusty tin, I tell you I know. Didn't he give his Balakula to the Queensland Mission when they lost their Evening Star on San Cristobal?—and the Balakula worth three thousand pounds if she was worth a penny? And didn't he beat up Strothers till he lay abed a fortnight, all because of a difference of two pound ten in the account, and because Strothers got fresh and tried to make the gouge go through?”

      “God strike me blind!” Griffiths cried in im-potency of rage.

      The mate went on with his exposition.

      “I tell you only a straight man can buck a straight man like him, and the man's never hit the Solomons that could do it. Men like you and me can't buck him. We're too rotten, too rotten all the way through. You've got plenty more than twelve hundred quid below. Pay him, and get it over with.”

      But Griffiths gritted his teeth and drew his thin lips tightly across them.

      “I'll buck him,” he muttered—more to himself and the brazen ball of sun than to the mate. He turned and half started to go below, then turned back again. “Look here, Jacob-sen. He won't be here for quarter of an hour. Are you with me? Will you stand by me?”

      “Of course I'll stand by you. I've drunk all your whiskey, haven't I? What are you going to do?”

      “I'm not going to kill him if I can help it. But I'm not going to pay. Take that flat.”

      Jacobsen shrugged his shoulders in calm acquiescence to fate, and Griffiths stepped to the companionway and went below.

II

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      Jacobsen watched the canoe across the low reef as it came abreast and passed on to the entrance of the passage. Griffiths, with ink-marks on right thumb and forefinger, returned on deck Fifteen minutes later the canoe came alongside. The man with the sombrero stood up.

      “Hello, Griffiths!” he said. “Hello, Jacobsen!” With his hand on the rail he turned to his dusky crew. “You fella boy stop along canoe altogether.”

      As he swung over the rail and stepped on deck a hint of catlike litheness showed in the apparently heavy body. Like the other two, he was scantily clad. The cheap undershirt and white loin-cloth did not serve to hide the well put up body. Heavy muscled he was, but he was not lumped and hummocked by muscles. They were softly rounded, and, when they did move, slid softly and silkily under the smooth, tanned skin. Ardent suns had likewise tanned his face till it was swarthy as a Spaniard's. The yellow mustache appeared incongruous in the midst of such swarthiness, while the clear blue of the eyes produced a feeling of shock on the beholder. It was difficult to realize that the skin of this man had once been fair.

      “Where did you blow in from?” Griffiths asked, as they shook hands. “I thought you were over in the Santa Cruz.”

      “I was,” the newcomer answered. “But we made a quick passage. The Wonder's just around in the bight at Gooma, waiting for wind. Some of the bushmen reported a ketch here, and I just dropped around to see. Well, how goes it?”

      “Nothing much. Copra sheds mostly empty, and not half a dozen tons of ivory nuts. The women all got rotten with fever and quit, and the men can't chase them back into the swamps. They're a sick crowd. I'd ask you to have a drink, but the mate finished off my last bottle. I wisht to God for a breeze of wind.”

      Grief, glancing with keen carelessness from one to the other, laughed.

      “I'm glad the calm held,” he said. “It enabled me to get around to see you. My supercargo dug up that little note of yours, and I brought it along.”

      The mate edged politely away, leaving his skipper to face his trouble.

      “I'm sorry, Grief, damned sorry,” Griffiths said, “but I ain't got it. You'll have to give me a little more time.”

      Grief leaned up against the companionway, surprise and pain depicted on his face.

      “It does beat hell,” he communed, “how men learn to lie in the Solomons. The truth's not in them. Now take Captain Jensen. I'd sworn by his truthfulness. Why, he told me only five days ago—do you want to know what he told me?”

      Griffiths licked his lips.

      “Go on.”

      “Why, he told me that you'd sold out—sold out everything, cleaned up, and was pulling out for the New Hebrides.”

      “He's a damned liar!” Griffiths cried hotly.

      Grief nodded.

      “I should say so. He even had the nerve to tell me that he'd bought two of your stations from you—Mauri and Kahula. Said he paid you seventeen hundred gold sovereigns, lock, stock and barrel, good will, trade-goods, credit, and copra.”

      Griffiths's eyes narrowed and glinted. The action was involuntary, and Grief noted it with a lazy sweep of his eyes.

      “And Parsons, your trader at Hickimavi, told me that the Fulcrum Company had bought that station from you. Now what did he want to lie for?”

      Griffiths, overwrought by sun and sickness, exploded. All his bitterness of spirit rose up in his face and twisted his mouth into a snarl.

      “Look here, Grief, what's the good of playing with me that way? You know, and I know you know. Let it go at that. I have sold out, and I am getting away. And what are you going to do about it?”

      Grief shrugged his shoulders, and no hint of resolve shadowed itself in his own face. His expression was as of one in a quandary.

      “There's no law here,” Griffiths pressed home his advantage. “Tulagi is a hundred and fifty miles away. I've got my clearance papers, and I'm on my own boat. There's nothing to stop me from sailing. You've got no right to stop me just because I owe you a little money. And by God! you can't stop me. Put that in your pipe.”

      The look of pained surprise on Grief's face deepened.

      “You mean you're going to cheat me out of that twelve hundred, Griffiths?”

      “That's just about the size of it, old man. And calling hard names won't help any. There's the wind coming. You'd better get overside before I pull out, or I'll tow your canoe under.”

      “Really, Griffiths, you sound almost СКАЧАТЬ