Davis produced the knotted handkerchief and counted the contents. There were only ninety unless he had subtracted and hidden some, as seemed probable, for at the rough division when they had split the coins into two supposedly equal shares, Davis’s had seemed the bigger.
Harman, pretty sure of this, felt sore; certain of coming out equal in the deal he had run straight. However, he settled up without a murmur and pocketed the bag in a hurry, hearing Keller’s voice calling for Davis to take the wheel.
Though it was a Spanish ship, to judge by the log, not a single Spanish or French coin was included in the ship’s money, indicating that her trade had been British; papers other than the log there were none; perhaps the skipper had them on his person when the Chinks had killed him and hove him to the sharks—no one could tell, and the Harman syndicate didn’t bother.
They had other things to think of. One morning when all three were on deck, Keller having come up to relieve Harman at the wheel, the latter, who had been turning things over in his mind, gave it as his opinion that the position might be pretty rocky if on striking the Fijis “one of them d——d British brass-bound Port Authority chaps” were to turn rusty on the business. “Suppose we run for Suva,” said he, “and suppose they say we don’t believe your yarn? That’s what’s got into my head. Would anyone believe it? I ask you that, would anyone believe it?”
The others, suddenly struck by this point of view, ruminated for a moment. No. The thing was true enough, but it didn’t sound true. They had lifted the hatch during the calm and found the cargo to be copra. What was a copra schooner doing seized on to a Chinaman, everyone dead and all the rest of it? Stranger happenings had occurred at sea, ships found derelict with not a soul on board, yet in perfect order—but that was no explanation or support for a yarn that seemed too tough for an alligator to swallow.
Then there was the opium—suspicion meant search, and those cans of opium would not help them any; on top of all there was the money in the pockets of Bud and Billy, money that even Keller knew nothing about, but sure to be found on search.
“We ain’t nothing to show,” said Harman. “We should have kept one of them Chinks for evidence.”
“And how’d we have kept him?” said Davis, “put him in your bunk maybe—Why haven’t you more sense?”
“I’ve got it, boys,” said Keller, turning suddenly from the lee rail where he had been leaning. “Suva—nothin’. Opalu’s our port of call, ain’t more than four hundred miles to the north if our reckonin’s right. Big German island where the pearl chaps come for doing business and the Chinks and Malays fr’m as far as Java and beyond there. Rao Laut’s the name the Malays give it. Faked pearls and poached pearls and dope, it’s all the same to them—they’d buy the huffs an’ horns off Satan and sell ’em as goat’s. There’s nothin’ you couldn’t sell them but bibles, and there’s nothin’ you could sell them they can’t pass on through some ring or another. I tell you it’s a place, must have been plum crazy not to have thought of it before.”
“And suppose they ask questions?” said Billy.