His revolver hung on his right hip in plain sight. But in his mind was recollection of the other revolver under the pillow.
“Huh!” Griffiths sneered. “You've got everybody in the Solomons hypnotized, but let me tell you you ain't got me. Now I'm going to throw you off my vessel, along with your admiralty warrant, but first you've got to do something. Lift up that log-book.”
The other glanced curiously at the log-book, but did not move.
“I tell you I'm a sick man, Grief; and I'd as soon shoot you as smash a cockroach. Lift up that log-book, I say.”
Sick he did look, his lean face working nervously with the rage that possessed him. Grief lifted the book and set it aside. Beneath lay a written sheet of tablet paper.
“Read it,” Griffiths commanded. “Read it aloud.”
Grief obeyed; but while he read, the fingers of his left hand began an infinitely slow and patient crawl toward the butt of the weapon under the pillow.
“On board the ketch Willi-Waw, Bombi Bight, Island of Anna, Solomon Islands,” he read. “Know all men by these presents that I do hereby sign off and release in full, for due value received, all debts whatsoever owing to me by Harrison J. Griffiths, who has this day paid to me twelve hundred pounds sterling.”
“With that receipt in my hands,” Griffiths grinned, “your admiralty warrant's not worth the paper it's written on. Sign it.”
“It won't do any good, Griffiths,” Grief said. “A document signed under compulsion won't hold before the law.”