gata
is dislocated. I've been through earthquake and pestilence, and the
heavens have rained pigs." He paused with a sigh that ended in a groan.
"'Tis a vision of terrible death. One that the poets never dreamed. To
be eaten by rats, or boiled in oil, or pulled apart by wild horses--that
would be unpleasant. But to be beaten to death with a dead pig!"
He shuddered at the awfulness of it. "Sure it transcends the human
imagination."

Captain Boig sniffed audibly, moved his canvas chair farther to
windward, and sat down again.

"I hear you're runnin' over to Yap, Mr. Grief," Cornelius went on. "An'
two things I'm wantin' to beg of you: a passage an' the nip of the old
smoky I refused the night you landed."

Grief clapped his hands for the black steward and ordered soap and
towels.

"Go for'ard, Cornelius, and take a scrub first," he said. "The boy will
bring you a pair of dungarees and a shirt. And by the way, before you
go, how was it we found more coin in the treasury than paper you had
issued?"

"'Twas the stake of my own I'd brought with me for the adventure."

"We've decided to charge the demurrage and other expenses and loss to
Tui Tulifau," Grief said. "So the balance we found will be turned over
to you. But ten shillings must be deducted."

"For what?"

"Do you think dead pigs grow on trees? The sum of ten shillings for that
pig is entered in the accounts."

Cornelius bowed his assent with a shudder.

"Sure it's grateful I am it wasn't a fifteen-shilling pig or a
twenty-shilling one."

Chapter Eight--THE PEARLS OF PARLAY

I

The Kanaka helmsman put the wheel down, and the _Malahini_ slipped into
the eye of the wind and righted to an even keel. Her head-sails emptied,
there was a rat-tat of reef-points and quick shifting of boom-tackles,
and she was heeled over and filled away on the other tack. Though it was
early morning and the wind brisk, the five white men who lounged on
the poop-deck were scantily clad. David Grief, and his guest, Gregory
Mulhall, an Englishman, were still in pajamas, their naked feet thrust
into Chinese slippers. The captain and mate were in thin undershirts and
unstarched duck pants, while the supercargo still held in his hands
the undershirt he was reluctant to put on. The sweat stood out on his
forehead, and he seemed to thrust his bare chest thirstily into the wind
that did not cool.

"Pretty muggy, for a breeze like this," he complained.

"And what's i