Gordon Young

“ Davenant wanted to get away. He was going after pearls—he said. He knew of an atoll where there were pearls, a virgin bed. He could not afford to stand around on his toes waiting for the A. B. A. to scratch off all the fresh paint in order to find O. P. Jones. He wanted to get away, and he had run across Douglas Moore.
Douglas Moore had more than one name. And he had almost everything else that went to make a man hard to catch and harder to hold. He knew all about Davenant's troubles over the Lady Betty and the dispute as to her sex. ”

“ Frequently they escaped, and ranged the bush, more ferocious than the cannibal blacks, the myalls, whom they often joined. Missionaries had begun coming with Bibles and bundles of trousers and petticoats, all for the natives, at about the same time as these convict ships from Christian lands.
For a half-century bold, hard seamen from New Bedford and Salem had been dragging whales out of the South Seas—and all the other seas on the globe—and putting them into casks, that civilized people might have oil for lamps. Mutineers and deserters had left foot-prints on every beach. ”

“ They lay in port waiting for the boat, under the delusion that they could get drunker in Melbourne than at Turkee. It takes experience and some philosophy to convince a man that after a few glasses it makes no difference whether he is under polished tables or rough benches.
A discouraged squatter was dolefully pouring out a tale of drought and myalls to a miner who stood and dozed uneasily against the board counter. Two or three sailors, deserters no doubt, snored on the narrow benches.
A pair of troopers, elbow to elbow, paused in passing and filled the doorway. ”

“ From the days of Wallis and Cook to this very hour, under the guidance of another Cook, white men came and ate of the lotus and drowsed dreamily, head in the lap of a brown girl, remembering indifferently through a soothing stupor that some place in the world there was something rather of a nuisance called Civilization. ”

“ If we stole a ship and went north with this strange Englishman, who evidently had a quest that he was not telling to us—for I thought he lied like a man who knows what he wants—why, then there would be queer things happen, and novelty is pleasure. ”

“ Moore watched him. I said nothing. But I watched Moore.
“Then it is not the atoll, but Dakaru you want!”
Davenant sat up with a jerk. The English aren't a people to jump up and wave their arms. No. When a lean Englishman, one of the lanky, long, thin-nosed type, bats an eyelid twice in three seconds, he is excited.
Davenant did not bat an eyelid at all. He simply stared at Moore for about a half-minute. ”

“ They said nothing, but stared with a certain detached authoritative insolence, as men perhaps have the right to do when they know themselves well hated, feared; yet dare to ride alone, and often do not come back.
They would not have been far in the wrong had they grabbed any man there, and haled him out, though they might have guessed wrong in naming the charge, for crime was very protean in Australia. But judges frowned at troopers who leaned on guesswork; so many a man went impudently free through being tight-lipped.
My lips were never closed, except about the neck of a bottle. ”

“ Many a good citizen of the land had a father with “M” burned in his palm.
The good citizens later rose and burned, properly, the convict records; or such as they could get their torches to. It is hard to tell convict blood without a birth certificate; especially in Australia, whither murderers and those who stole loaves off a London cart-tail, or snared a rabbit under the nose of milord's gamekeeper, or wrote a pamphlet telling some truths about the king's rule were despatched in equally heavy chains. ”

“ The discouraged squatter was still weaving his troubles into an epic of the immigrant's travail for the drowsy miner. The sailors snored unrestfully on their splintery couches. I eyed my virgin bottle: inspiration is always at the bottom of a square-face. ”

“ Davenant had just a trifle hesitancy, naturally. He really had no surety that he would get full service for his money. But he was a man in earnest. Who dices with the devil must fling gold to the table.
At the first meeting Davenant had intimated that he wanted references. Moore told him they were the easiest of things to furnish—that there were plenty of people round about who would write them out, so much per word. ”

“ Said Moore: “That's the only spot within the radius of a thousand miles, or nearly that, where's a real plantation. Grahame's a fierce fellow, and skippers give him a wide berth.”
“But there are—are pearls,” Davenant insisted nervously.
“There is an atoll two points east and sixty miles south, of this reckoning,” Moore said, taking the paper. “There's bound to be good shell. Right temperature. Grahame owns it. But how can you or I sell shell out of the Lady Betty's hold? She'll be seized as soon as she sticks her stern into port. Turn the shell over to a pearler and he'll steal it.” ”

“ And this contract was important to Davenant. He showed it even by his repression. He had about him a manner of well-bred awkwardness. He was dealing with things of which he knew nothing. Maybe the ease with which he had been fleeced by the Yankee skipper showed him how helpless he really was; but he was determined.
Perhaps this black-bearded Englishman wasn't helpless at all, but had to gamble at times, and risk a loss. One someway doesn't expect an Englishman to be black-bearded or to appear as Davenant did. But he was English—born so, anyway.
"Yes,” said Moore. "Settled. ”