"To what end?" Bendemeer cut in. "So you can pickle yourself before burial?"
Junius Peabody writhed. "What's it to you how I spend it afterward? I'm a free agent. I can do as I like."
"That," said Bendemeer with quiet emphasis, "is a lie."
Holding his quivering subject, impaled on his glance as it seemed, he reached a black, square bottle. He shoved a glass in front of Junius Peabody and poured a generous measure. With one hand he kept the glass covered and with the other pointed out through the doorway.
"I'll say you lie, and I'll demonstrate:
"You see my schooner out there? That's her boat on the beach. She leaves in half an hour; her captain's come now for final orders. She goes first from here to an island of mine a hundred miles away. I planted it with coconuts five years ago, and left a population of maybe a dozen Kanakas to tend them—it's going to be worth money some day. Nukava, they call it, and it's the edge of the earth, the farthest corner, and the loneliest and the driest. There's not a drop of anything on the place except water, scant and brackish at that. But a white man could live there, if he were fit to live at all, and wanted to badly enough.
"Now I'll make you an offer. I'll buy this lump of stuff from you, and I'll buy it either of two ways. A half interest in Nukava and you go there at once to take charge as agent.... Or else—here's your brandy and I'll keep you perpetually drunk as long as you last."
Junius swayed on his feet. "Agent?" he stammered. "To go away—?"
"Now. And once there you can't escape. You're stuck for a year on a coral gridiron, Peabody, to sit and fry."
"What for? You—! What for?"