"I'd forgotten Samoa," said Harris, in a more cheerful tone, picking up the marlinspike, and going to work again, as if revived by Vaiti's arithmetic.
"A miss is as good as a mile, for all me, specially when it's nine hundred mile," remarked the gloomy boatswain. "Couldn't you manage to talk about something rather less 'arrowing to a man's insides?"
"I'd like to know why she's going skull-huntin' to Friday Island, then," said the mate, casting a cautious glance at Vaiti, who was scarcely out of ear-shot, up on the deck-house.
"Trade I can understand," he went on, "and shell-huntin'—we haven't done too bad all round over that last little job, and the old man's a sight more sober since he's owned the ship again. But skulls—and old skulls at that—filthy natives' bones that's been lyin' in the caves since Heaven knows when! Besides, they ain't our skulls, however you may look at it——"
"Nor I hope they won't be," said the boatswain darkly. "In no way, I mean. The Friday Islanders aren't people to ask out to an afternoon tea-party without you've got your knuckle-duster on underneath your voylet kid gloves. And you know what natives are about their old bones and graves."
"I do. What I don't know is how she thinks she's going to make anything out of a proper nasty job like that."
"Oh, she's on the make, is she!"
"Did you ever know her anything else, bless her?" asked the mate. "She wants sixty pounds, havin' spent all the old man give her out of the shell business in Wellington, takin' boxes at the theaytres and halls, and buyin' women's gear, and staying at the Constantinople, where she wore two new 'ats a day for a week; and other games of a similar kind. Pity you was sick, and not there to see the fun. I tell you, she made the town look silly."
"What's the sixty pound for?" asked the boatswain, chewing fondly on his quid.
Harris giggled explosively, and whispered: