Argosy, Vol. 111, No. 1 — page 114: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

104 The boy came, apprehensive, eager to shunt his blame. 3 ‘What did you do with that stuff I told you to take away?”’ “ Larakini he speak he like. He give me plenty tabaki all same.” ‘‘ All right. You go topside, Imu.”’ “If it wasn’t that I needed you, Larkin, I’d chuck you overboard and let you try to swim back to your lady-love on Hope Island. As it is, get up on deck!” Larkin groveled while Bligh ordered Imu to take an inch hawser and, with the schooner thrown into the wind, dive and swim with it beneath the keel from port to starboard. The crew of the Wave was twice as large as its navigation called for, and they were a rough crowd, gathered from Malekula, from Malaita in the Solomons, savages all at heart, held in hand only by awe of Bligh. To see a white man disciplined was to them a Circus Maximus, and they assembled in the waist and gibed among themselves at Larkin’s degradation. Bligh was pitiless. The thought that Larkin had carried on, or attempted a /za7- son with his own mistress, the belief that Larkin had deliberately provided her with a gun, hardened him to break Larkin, to cow him absolutely. He still needed him, still intended to use him, no longer as a man, but as an abject slave. When Lar- kin clutched him about the ankles, Bligh thrust his knee so harshly into the super- cargo’s face that his nose bled. Imu came up overside with the rope which was attached to Larkin’s feet at one end, the other fastened securely to his wrists. Then he was borne, jerking, to the port rail, and thrown overboard, while the crew hauled on the line. Once it halted and, at Bligh’s command, they eased it back. At last Larkin’s streaming, sodden, senseless body appeared, and was hoisted over the starboard rail and laid upon the planks. Bligh kept the Wave’s bottom fairly clean, but, in those seas, shell-fish and weeds can cover a hull in a few weeks, and it was three months since the schooner had been hauled out. Larkin’s clothes had been cut to ribbons and were streaked THE ARGOSY. with blood. His face was hardly human, smeared with green sea-moss, raked with shells. Bligh lifted one soggy eyelid and felt the wrist. “Take him for’ard and pump it out of him,” ke said. Then turned and went aft to the companionway. And so down to his cabin. Bligh had formed no distinct idea of what he was to do when he arrived on Motonul. He left much of that up in the air unt‘: he reached the place and saw the circumstances. Knowing nothing of the hiding of the pearls in the demit, he as- sumed that Parks might have hidden them somewhere in some place fairly easy of access. 3 He had heard 6f McKay’s previous trip to a pearl patch that might turn out valu- able, and that had brought him to Hope Island, figuring on horning in on the dis- covery if it was worth while, perhaps set- ting up a fictitious claim and backing it up with his superior crew of bullies. He had done such things before successfully. Now he was after Parks’s hoard. His misadventure with Lenna Parks did not bother him overmuch. He felt sure that McKay would meet with difficulties, and he knew he was not many days behind him. As a matter of fact he was just two days. He believed that his brains would show him some way of using McKay as a catspaw and raking out the pearls for himself. He had once been in a position to do Sam Parks a favor in a matter of salvage, unasked by Parks, and he had done it be- cause Parks was prominent and wealthy in the trade, and Bligh might some day be able to refer to it to his own advantage. He saw to it that Parks knew he had done this thing, keeping himself in the back- ground. ‘Phe value of Parks’s pearls had been often talked about and variously estimated. The testimony of those who had seen the gems appeared to place their market worth at well over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And the market was reviving with the conclusion of the war. He had given a lesson to Larkin that he had long contemplated. In one moment of carelessness and another, due to Lar- GOMIIG OOO SS (CO