I waited until George had gone off, cursing, and then got aboard the lugger. The captain, on hearing that I was collecting curios for the Marquis, let me see all the stuff that Mo had left behind. His sorcerer’s bag, full of the odds and ends we had already seen, lay in a corner of the little forecastle. I scarcely expected to find what I was looking for there, and I did not. After purchasing one or two bits of carving at a price that put the captain in a good temper, I asked him if that was all the Papuan had had.
“All that I know of,” he said, “unless it was the rubbish he used to put round his neck before he’d get into the diving-dress.”
My heart beat a little faster. “What was that?” I asked.
“Couldn’t tell you; some of their sorcerer’s charms. Most like, a bone or a queer bit of coral. His brother would tie it on for him; most times he went down he’d have something of the sort, and he’d be praying to his devils before he started, to keep away the sharks. Seems to me he got the wrong sort of prayer under way: his devils kept away the sharks all right, but they didn’t take no care about divers’ paralysis, and that’s what got Mo. He was dead Lord knows how long when we pulled him up, and he must have lost his air, as he’s all jammed into the helmet and corselet, and we can’t get it off.”
“Thanks,” I said, picking up my purchases. “I’ll go and take these to the Marquis.”
I found him waiting near the Greek’s, looking at the things displayed in the window. Among them was a diving-dress complete: great copper and gun-metal helmet joined to a wide breast-plate or “corselet;” leaden-soled boots; rubber-cloth body.
“Did you see that dress?” I asked, as we walked on. “Mo’s inside of one just like it, jammed in tight. I didn’t see him, but I have seen that sort of thing before. The face is all flattened out against the glasses of the helmet....”
“Enough, enough!” cried the Marquis.
“It isn’t enough,” I said. “I’ve got to explain, for a reason. Well, being like that, there’s no getting them out of the dress without cutting them to pieces, so it’s the custom of the diving trade to bury them as they are. Mo will be buried this afternoon over at the cemetery island. And—and—anything he may have had on his person when he died will be buried with him. And, Marky, the captain told me he usually went down with some sort of a charm hung round his neck. And the diamond’s not among his gear that he left behind.”
“It is too horrible!” said the Marquis, his pink face paling.