“Rotting on the outer beach,” said Clayton. “That’s my meaning and my terms. Gentlemen, if you ain’t plum’ fools, the smell of them oysters will be as a leadin’ light to bring you a fortune as big as my own.”
“Open the can,” said Harman.
“Which I will,” replied the other. “I’m straight’s a gun barrel I am, and I don’t want to beat round no bushes, and it’s just this way, gents. The hull of this lagoon is a virgin oyster patch full of virgin oysters, pearl breedin’ and sound, with no foot-and-mouth disease to them. Oloong-Javal is the Kanaka name of the atoll, and it’s on no charts. No, sir, it’s a sealed lagoon, and I struck it two years ago runnin’ from Sydney to Valparaiso, master of the Sea Hawk, with a Chink crew and a cargo of chow truck, put in here for water, spotted the oyster shop, and kept my head shut. Found orders at Valparaiso to ballast and get on to Callao, but I didn’t go to no Callao. I cut loose, fired the mate as a drunk and incapable, which he was, laid out the ship’s money on diving dresses and a pump, hawked back here, landed the equipment, and started in on the pearling.”
“And the Chinks?” asked Harman.
“Comin’ to them, they curled up and died of eating the lagoon fish in the poisonous season, couldn’t keep them off it—you know what Chinks are—and as for the hooker, why sinkin’ gets rid of a lot of trouble, and I took her outside the reef and drilled her.”
“Well, you are a one,” said Harman, shocked, yet intrigued, and vaguely admiring.
“I don’t say that I’m not,” replied Clayton. “I reckon we’re all in the same boat, and plain speaking is best among gentlemen, but cuttin’ all that, let’s get down to tin-tacks. I’ve been working a year and I haven’t skinned more than a patch of the beds. All the same, I’ve made my pile, and I want to enjoy it, I want to have my fun, and if you’re willing I’ll swap the location and the mining rights for this hooker and her crew. I want to get home, and home’s Kisai Island, up north in the Marshalls—and that’s what’s waitin’ for me and has been waitin’ for me three years.”
He took a photograph from his pocket and handed it to the others. It was the photo of a Kanaka girl under a palm tree on a blazing beach.
“Oh, Lord, a petticut!” said Harman in a doleful voice at this sight of ill omen. “A petticut!”
“There ain’t no petticoat about her,” said Clayton—as indeed there was not—“unless the missionaries have been gettin’ at her with their tomfoolery. Oti is her name, and there she sits waitin’ for me, which if she isn’t and has gone and got spliced, I reckon I’ll bust her husband. Well, gents, which is it to be for you, floatin’ round loose in this cockroach trap or a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of pearls to be took for the working?”