“Thank heaven I was taken sick!” he remarked bitterly. “It’s hard, God knows, but it gave me a chance to find out just what sort of a cur you are, Kimball.”
Kimball scowled. He half opened his mouth as if to answer. Then, thinking better of it, he poured himself another drink and resumed his occupation of examining the weapon he had taken from the native. He swayed slightly in his chair under the load of liquor he was carrying, yet his voice was unblurred as, after a minute’s silence, he looked across at the other.
“Can’t you get that out of your head, Hansen?” he remarked. “I’m getting bloody well fed up on it.”
Hansen raised himself on an elbow and angrily shook his fist at the other.
“Oh, you’re ‘getting bloody well fed up on it,’ are you?” he mimicked. “I should think you would be! I suppose I’m hurtin’ your delicate feelings by mentioning it to you, eh? It’s nothing a man should howl about, is it?—having one he thought was his best friend pull off a dirty stunt like that!”
Kimball poured himself another drink. His hand shook slightly as he raised the glass to his lips.
“Oh, forget it and go to sleep!” he growled.
“Yes, ‘forget it,’ you damned crooked, lyin’, double-crosser! I’m apt t’ forget how you wrote to Gladys and told her I’d taken a nigger wife! Wanted her yourself, didn’t you, you low-down, gin-guzzling rat! It was just a piece of luck that I was taken sick and you had t’ look after the plantation instead of goin’ after th’mail last time, or I’d never have got that letter from her telling me why she’d turned me down.”
“I’m telling you now, for th’ last time, that I didn’t write that stuff to her!” Kimball snarled back. “I’m tellin’ you it’s a lie. I showed you the letter I wrote to her, giving her my word of honor that somebody’d been doin’ you dirt.”
“Who else is there here on the Island that knew her back home?” Hansen demanded, dropping back onto the pillows again. “And who else knew that we were engaged?”