“What are you going to do about it?” Snow asked.
“Oh, hang around a while. There are some books ashore there I want to read. Suppose you send that topmast down in the morning and generally overhaul. We've been through a hurricane, you know. Set up the rigging while you're about it. Get things pretty well adrift, and take your time.”
VI
The next day Grief's suspicions found further food. Ashore early, he strolled across the little island to the barracks occupied by the divers.
They were just boarding the boats when he arrived, and it struck him that for Kanakas they behaved more like chain-gang prisoners. The three white men were there, and Grief noted that each carried a rifle. Hall greeted him jovially enough, but Gorman and Watson scowled as they grunted curt good mornings.
A moment afterward one of the Kanakas, as he bent to place his oar, favoured Grief with a slow, deliberate wink. The man's face was familiar, one of the thousands of native sailors and divers he had encountered drifting about in the island trade.
“Don't tell them who I am,” Grief said, in Tahitian. “Did you ever sail for me?”
The man's head nodded and his mouth opened, but before he could speak he was suppressed by a savage “Shut up!” from Watson, who was already in the sternsheets.
“I beg pardon,” Grief said. “I ought to have known better.”