“Could I speak a word with you, Mr. Grief?” he asked sadly and humbly.
“Sit to leeward and farther away,” Grief answered. “A little farther away. That's better.”
Cornelius sat down on the rail and held his head in both his hands.
“'Tis right,” he said. “I'm as fragrant as a recent battlefield. My head aches to burstin'. My neck is fair broken. The teeth are loose in my jaws. There's nests of hornets buzzin' in my ears. My medulla oblongata is dislocated. I've been through earthquake and pestilence, and the heavens have rained pigs.” He paused with a sigh that ended in a groan. “'Tis a vision of terrible death. One that the poets never dreamed. To be eaten by rats, or boiled in oil, or pulled apart by wild horses—that would be unpleasant. But to be beaten to death with a dead pig!” He shuddered at the awfulness of it. “Sure it transcends the human imagination.”
Captain Boig sniffed audibly, moved his canvas chair farther to windward, and sat down again.
“I hear you're runnin' over to Yap, Mr. Grief,” Cornelius went on. “An' two things I'm wantin' to beg of you: a passage an' the nip of the old smoky I refused the night you landed.”
Grief clapped his hands for the black steward and ordered soap and towels.
“Go for'ard, Cornelius, and take a scrub first,” he said. “The boy will bring you a pair of dungarees and a shirt. And by the way, before you go, how was it we found more coin in the treasury than paper you had issued?”
“'Twas the stake of my own I'd brought with me for the adventure.”
“We've decided to charge the demurrage and other expenses and loss to Tui Tulifau,” Grief said. “So the balance we found will be turned over to you. But ten shillings must be deducted.”