“Da Gertrude, she is coming first,” contributed the Greek, watching. “There is a nigger on da Gertrude, he owe me three pound nineteen shillin’. I hope he is not dead.”
“A Malay?” I asked.
“A New Guinea—Mo. He is bad man, dat Mo. He promise, he no pay. I go down to da jet’, and look. If he is dead, I make da owner pay me.”
We tramped down together through the burning sun to the wooden jetty that stretched its stilty legs out into water of such a wonderful green that nobody could hope to describe it or compare it to anything save itself. We waited there for near half an hour, before the fleet came up—a dozen or so of poor-looking luggers, dirty and ill-mannered. The Gertrude came in first, and George the Greek was into a dingey and over her gunwale before she had time to drop anchor. In a minute he reappeared, with a face of demoniac fury; spat violently over the counter, cursed the ship and all in her in at least four different languages, and jumped into his boat again.
“Lost your money?” I asked, as the dingey shot up to the steps.
George the Greek did not reply, otherwise than by stating, in gross and in detail, the things he would do to the owner of the Gertrude—should fortune favor him with a chance. The owner of the Gertrude, meantime, a fair, flushed, bloated man, who seemed to have been drinking, and to have arrived at the pathetic stage, leaned over the counter and called out to George to “let the poor blighter rest in ’is blooming grave, and don’t go bringin’ bad luck on yourself by cursin’ the dead.”
“He got no grave!” shouted George, with much bad language. (He seemed to think it a very mean circumstance that Mo should have no grave.) “He lie dere at bottom of da sea, like one damned lobsta.”
“Don’t you make no mistake,” rejoined the captain with drunken gravity. “He’s here in the cabin, wrapped in his dress, as we took the poor blighter up, and he’ll be buried proper, just as he is. No one can say I don’t treat my niggers decent, dead or alive. Good Joe Gilbert: that’s what I’m known as, and that’s what I am.” He took a bottle out of his pocket and inverted it on his nose.
“Marky,” I said quietly, “I’d be much obliged if you would go off and wait for me somewhere; I’ll join you by and by. I want to see if Mo left any baggage that we could get hold of, and the fewer of us there are in it, the better. We don’t want to attract notice.”
“I go,” said the Marquis, departing. “I wait near the shop of the Greek. He interest me, somehow, that beggar.”