half-veiled. And as he sipped his grenadine syrup and soda water, he
admired his three-inch thumbnail, the token of his rise from the estate
of a half-naked coolie in Quan-tung to equality with these Taipans,
the whites of Tahiti. He may or may not have known what rumors there
were, but wanting the good-will of all influential residents in his
widening scheme for money-making, he tried to soften the asperities
of the interchange:

"Wa'ss mallah, Mis' Le'llyn?" he asked. "Ev'ybody fliend fo'
you. Nobody makee tlouble fo' you 'bout Davie. My think 'm dlinkee
too muchee, too muchee vahine, maybe play cart, losee too muchee
flanc. He thlinkee mo' bettah finish."

The words of Fung Wah were poison in the ears of Llewellyn. He leaned
forward and, raising his forefinger, pointed it at the Chinese.

"Aue! You hold your damned yellow mouth!" he said huskily. "I'll
get out of the islands if you people keep up this any longer. I'm
sick of it all. That old liar Morton has made my good name black in
Tahiti. Everybody knows the Llewellyns. God damn him! I ought to have
killed him when he threatened me in the Tiare!"

He took my untouched glass of Dr. Funk, and gulped the mixture,
nervously. Then he stood up unsteadily.

"I don't get any sleep," he said, as if to himself, wearily. "I'm
going to my shop and lie down."

He moved heavily down the stairs, and we breathed relief.

"Too muchee Pernoud!" Fung Wah commented.

"No, Fung Wah, you've sized 'im wrong," answered Lying Bill. "'E's
seein' things. 'E's put enough absint' down his throat, but 'he's
proper used to that. Let's take the matter up, an' consider it like ol'
Raoul, the lawyer, did when Murray killed the gendarme at Areu. David's
a young kid, an' wild, an' without any good home like you an 'me 've
got, an' runnin' round the Barbary Coast in Frisco, with those bloody
vampires there. 'Is uncle, Morton, is afraid 'e'll get the 'abit,
and wants to sen' 'im pretty far. Well, 'e remembers 'e was in Tahiti
forty years before, an' 'e been dealin' in a way in vanilla with ol'
Llewellyn's 'ouse 'ere. So 'e makes arrangements to put ten thousan'
dollars in with our friend that 's jus' gone out, and buy the kid
a interest in the business. Down comes David, and Llewellyn takes a
shine to 'im, an' soon they're thick as thieves. I see it all between
voyages. It's the cinema, the prize-fight, the upaupa, the women, an'
the bloody booze, day an' night. The vanilla business goes to