“Damn him!” roared Dennison.
“Where are you going?” she cried, seizing him by the sleeve.
“To have it out with him! I can’t stand this any longer!” 176
“And what will become of me—if anything happens to you, or anything happens to him? What about the crew if he isn’t on hand to hold them?”
The muscular tenseness of the arm she held relaxed. But the look he gave his father was on a par with that which Cleigh had so recently spent upon Cunningham. Cleigh could not support it, and turned his head aside.
“All right. But mind you keep in sight! If you will insist upon talking with the scoundrel, at least permit me to be within call. What do you want to talk to him for, anyhow?”
“Neither of you will stoop to ask him questions, so I had to. And I have learned one thing. He is going pearl hunting.”
“What? Off the Catwick? There’s no pearl oyster in that region,” Dennison declared. “Either he is lying or the Catwick is a blind. The only chance he’d have would be somewhere in the Sulu Archipelago; and this time of year the pearl fleets will be as thick as flies in molasses. Of course if he is aware of some deserted atoll, why, there might be something in it.”
“Have you ever hunted pearls?”
“In a second-hand sort of way. But if pearls are his game, why commit piracy when he could have chartered a tramp to carry his crew? There’s 177 more than one old bucket hereabouts ready to his hand for coal and stores. He’ll need a shoe spoon to get inside or by the Sulu fleets, since the oyster has been pretty well neglected these five years, and every official pearler will be hiking down there. But it requires a certain amount of capital and a stack of officially stamped paper, and I don’t fancy Cunningham has either.”