"Well," he said, "if it has to be, there is no use talking. We can't both leave the place, and since you are the best man for the trade end of the affair, I must stop, but it will be a pretty lonely business."
"Oh, you'll find lots to do," said Schumer, laughing. "I only hope you won't find too much. I have drilled these fellows into pretty fair discipline, and it's for you to keep it up. I warn you if you don't you'll have trouble. You mustn't let them come any of the funny business over you, and you must back your authority with your gun if need be. Your only danger is the cache. We give these fellows tobacco and so on, and the question hasn't begun to enter their thick heads as to where all the stores come from, but it may, and if they scent the cache, there will be trouble. You just remember that knives and trade goods are like minted gold to these chaps, and if they suspected a whole Bank of England of them here under the trees, they'd ten to one try to raid it. You mustn't ever let them land here."
"You bet I won't," said Floyd. "How long will you be gone?"
"Three weeks to get there and three to get back, makes six weeks, and allowing for a fortnight there—let's say nine weeks to give it a margin. You may expect me back in the lagoon in nine weeks. If I'm not back by then, you may begin to suspect I'm with the sharks."
"You will take the money with you?"
"Of course; and I'll take the best of the pearls, too, for several reasons. First to show our samples, second because I'm leaving you the lagoon. If I never come back, you'd have the lagoon, and if you bolted with the lagoon, I'd have the pearls.
"I won't take all the pearls, only a selection of the best."
"Oh, I don't mind," said Floyd. "I can trust you; and, even if I couldn't, you would not be such a fool as to leave a pearl lagoon for the sake, of a six weeks' take of pearls. Well, come on to supper; there's Isbel laying out the things; we can talk afterward."
Though the house was now finished, with the door on, and the table in, they always took their meals in the open. Isbel had laid the plates and knives and forks on a cloth before the door, and in the center of the cloth a kava bowl with some flowers in it.
Schumer was always very punctilious as to the service of meals, laying the cloth himself if no one else were there to do it. He had salved all the Tonga linen, and he would doubtless have insisted on napkins had the Tonga carried them; unable to go as far as napkins, he had contented himself with flowers. He believed in keeping up appearances, even if there were no one to observe these appearances but their two selves and Isbel, and he was right. Slackness is one of the rots of the world, and the least bit of ceremonial is the finest tonic in life.