Beatrice Grimshaw

“ I asked.
“A New Guinea—Mo. He is bad man, dat Mo. He promise, he no pay. I go down to da jet', and look. If he is dead, I make da owner pay me.”
We tramped down together through the burning sun to the wooden jetty that stretched its stilty legs out into water of such a wonderful green that nobody could hope to describe it or compare it to anything save itself. We waited there for near half an hour, before the fleet came up—a dozen or so of poor-looking luggers, dirty and ill-manned. ”

“ I had not adopted a disguise, which the Marquis was very anxious for me to do. I explained to him that one might as well hope to disguise the keeper of an elephant successfully—the elephant would be bound to give him away. And the elephant itself, I added, couldn't be made to look like anything but an elephant.
The conclusion was obvious. We did not disguise.
With two spades and a pick in the bottom of a good, double-outrigged canoe, we set out quietly from the beach in the starlit dusk, not too early and not too late. ”

“ New Guinea has never been much of a pearling center but Thursday and Broome Islands were temporarily exhausted, and a few of the fleet had run over to Samarai to try what they could do about China Strait.
It is a nasty place for pearling: the shell is none too plentiful, the depths are appalling, and the current in the straits is at all times exceedingly dangerous. Still, it is better than nothing when nothing better is to be had. The best class of pearler does not come to New Guinea, as a rule. I expected to see none but the riffraff of Thursday Island when the fleet came in. ”

“ It seems to me that I haven't always been thankful enough for Sunday. Flint, tell me, it is surely unusual that a great sorcerer like Mo should engage himself to work in a pearl fleet?”
“Not so very,” I said. “He bosses the other boys round a lot, as they're all afraid of him, and he generally manages to get the best part of their wages. But I don't think Mo would have come away if he hadn't been scared. He certainly had a very good job where he was.”
“He is wonderful, that man,” said the Marquis, musingly. ”

“ I was determined that we should get it.
We had no lanterns with us: the light of the stars was enough for a good bushman, and I knew the cemetery track by heart. So do most men who have lived long in New Guinea. ”

“ I'll join you by and by. I want to see if Mo left any baggage that we could get hold of, and the fewer of us there are in it, the better. We don't want to attract notice.”
“I go,” said the Marquis, departing. “I wait near the shop of the Greek. He interest me, somehow, that beggar.”
I waited until George had gone off, cursing, and then got aboard the lugger. The captain, on hearing that I was collecting curios for the Marquis, let me see all the stuff that Mo had left behind. His sorcerer's bag, full of the odds and ends we had already seen, lay in a corner of the little forecastle. ”

“ The face is all flattened out against the glassed of the helmet....”
“Enough, enough!” cried the Marquis.
“It isn't enough,” I said. “I've got to explain, for a reason. Well, being like that, there's no getting them out of the dress without cutting them to pieces, so it's the custom of the diving trade to bury them as they are. Mo will be buried this afternoon over at the cemetery island. And—and—anything he may have had on his person when he died will be buried with him. And, Marky, the captain told me he usually joined to a wide breast-plate or “corselet” ”

“ We're playing for a big stake. My word, Marky, it is a big one! All the money for everything we want, all the rest of our lives—and we can't afford to excite suspicion. These pearler folk keep their eyes skinned, I can tell you; they live by that. ”

“ Because you might, without meaning it in the least, get George or some other fellow thinking, and we don't want them to think.”
“I comprehend perfectly. Flint, this is altogether so good that I feel myself exalted. I will dance—”
“No, Marky, don't,” I begged. “Somebody might come. I like your dancing all right, and I think you'd knock spots off Pavlova and Mordkin, and the girl who served up prophet's head—but I don't want you to dance now. Anything that excites remark and draws attention to us two is going to be bad policy at present. ”

“ Helping each other as two strong men can, the Marquis and I shoved somehow through the press—which, we now observed, was composed entirely of divers. This was Sunday, and the fleet, of course, did not work, so a number of white men and a few Papuans, Malays, and Japs, all employed on the luggers as a rule, were left free to spend the Sabbath as they liked. ”

“ I'll finish— And the corselet was the one they buried with Mo, the Papuan who got drowned the other day, and the beast had dug him up and cut him out of it, to make the price of what Mo owed him. So when all the divers heard that” (Will you let me go? they're taking him to the jetty!) , “they came and made a row. Damn!” ”