"That fellow Motley (the supercargo) is a damned scoundrel—capable of any villainy where a woman is concerned. Did you ever hear about old Raymond's daughter down at Mangareva?"
I had heard the story very often. By means of a forged letter purporting to have been written by her father—an old English trader in the Gambier Group—Motley had lured the beautiful young half-blood away from a school in San Francisco, and six months afterwards turned her adrift on the streets of Honolulu. Raymond was a lonely man, and passionately attached to his only child; so no one wondered when, reaching California a year after and finding her gone, he shot himself in his room at an hotel.
"I will ask him, anyway," I said; and as we went back into the house the ALIDA shot past our line of vision through the coco-palms, and brought up inside the brig.
"Taplin," I said, "would you care about taking one of our stations to the eastward? Name any island you fancy, and we will land you there with the pick of our 'trade' room."
"Thank you. I would be only too glad, but I cannot. I have promised Nerida to go back to Babelthouap, or somewhere in the Pelews, and Motley has promised to land us at Ponape, in the Carolines. We can get away from there in one of the Dutch firm's vessels."
"I am very sorry, Taplin——" I began, when old Captain Warren burst in with—"Look here, Taplin, we haven't got much time to talk. Here's the ALIDA'S boat coming, with that (blank blank) scoundrel Motley in it. Take my advice. Don't go away in the ALIDA." And then he looked at Nerida, and whispered something.
A red spark shone in Taplin's dark eyes, then he pressed Warren's hand.
"I know," he answered, "he's a most infernal villain—Nerida hates him too. But you see how I am fixed. The ALIDA is our only chance of getting back to the north-west. But he hasn't got old Raymond to deal with in me. Here they are."