Keller had no money to spend on drinks at the club, and it was Harman’s torture that, with his pocket bulging with gold, he could not lay out a cent, but Reichtbaum had stood drinks yesterday, scenting business from a few words dropped by Keller.
This evening at sundown Keller had gone alone, taking a single can of opium with him and rowing himself ashore in the dinghy. Bud and Billy were waiting for his return. They saw the lights of the club and the lights of the village winking and blinking, as the intervening foliage stirred in the wind, then on the starlit water they saw a streak like the trail of a water-rat. It was the dinghy.
Keller came on board triumphant and without the tin. Not a word would he say till they were down below, then, taking his seat at the saloon table, he let himself go.
“Look at me,” said he, “sober, ain’t I? Fit to thread a needle or say ‘J’rus’lem artichoke,’ don’t you think? And he fired the stuff at me, rum an’ gum and coloured drinks and fizz at the last, but I wasn’t havin’ any, bisness is bisness, I says, and I ain’t playin’ a lone hand, I’ve pardners to think of, ‘Plain Sailin’ Jim’s’ my name, and if you don’t pay two hundred dollars a tin I’ll plain sail off an’ dump the stuff out.”
“Two hundred dollars!” said the others in admiration. “You had the cheek to ask him that?”
“That’s so,” replied Keller, “and I got it.” He produced notes for two hundred dollars and spread them on the table.
“He opened the stuff and sampled it and planked the money down, and two hundred dollars he’ll pay for every can, and there’s fourteen of them left, that’s three thousand dollars for the lot. We’ve only to take them ashore to get the money. Well now, seems to me since that’s fixed, we have to think what to do with the schooner. We don’t want to sit here in this b’nighted hole twiddlin’ our thumbs and waitin’ to be took off, more especial as I don’t trust Reichtbaum any too much, and it seems to me our plan is to stick to the hooker and take her right to a Dutch port and sell the cargo, copra prices are rangin’ high——”
“Steady on,” suddenly cut in Harman. “Why, you said yourself we couldn’t take her to any port, seein’ we have no papers but what’s made out in Spanish, and no crew.”
“Just so,” said Keller. “It was the crew that was botherin’ me more than the papers, but how about a crew of Kanakas now we have the money to pay for them?”
Davis hit the table with his fist. “By Gosh, there’s something in that,” said he.