Motley came in first, hat and fan in hand. He was a fine-looking man, with blue eyes and an unusually fair skin for an island supercargo, with a long, drooping, yellow moustache. Riedermann, the skipper, who followed, was stout, coarse, red-faced, and brutal.
"How are you, gentlemen?" said Motley affably, turning from Taplin and his wife, and advancing towards us. "Captain Riedermann and I saw the spars of your brig showing up over the coconuts yesterday, and therefore knew we should have the pleasure of meeting you."
Warren looked steadily at him for a moment, and then glanced at his outstretched hand.
"The pleasure isn't mutual, blarst you, Mr Motley," he said coldly, and he put his hand in his pocket.
The supercargo took a step nearer to him with a savage glare in his blue eyes. "What do you mean by this, Captain Warren?"
"Mean?" and the imperturbable Warren seated himself on a corner of the table, and gazed stolidly first at the handsome Motley and then at the heavy, vicious features of Riedermann. "Oh, anything you like. Perhaps it's because it's not pleasant to see white men landing at a quiet island like this with revolvers slung to their waists under their pyjamas; looks a bit too much like Bully Hayes' style for me," and then his tone of cool banter suddenly changed to that of studied insolence. "I say, Motley, I was talking about you just now to Taplin AND Nerida. Do you want to know what I was saying? Perhaps I had better tell you. I was talking about Tita Raymond—and yourself."
Motley put his right hand under his pyjama jacket, but Taplin sprang forward, seized his wrist in a grip of iron, and drew him aside.
"The man who draws a pistol in my house, Mr Motley, does a foolish thing," he said, in quiet, contemptuous tones, as he threw the supercargo's revolver into a corner.
With set teeth and clenched hands Motley flung himself into a chair, unable to speak.