uttered under his breath. "A long-legged Napoleon the
Third, but burnt out, baked, and fire-crackled. And mangy! No wonder he
crooks his head to one side. He's got to keep the balance."

"Goin' to have a blow," was the old man's greeting to Grief. "You must
think a lot of pearls to come a day like this."

"They're worth going to inferno for," Grief laughed genially back,
running his eyes over the surface of the table covered by the display.

"Other men have already made that journey for them," old Parlay cackled.
"See this one!" He pointed to a large, perfect pearl the size of a small
walnut that lay apart on a piece of chamois. "They offered me sixty
thousand francs for it in Tahiti. They'll bid as much and more for it
to-morrow, if they aren't blown away. Well, that pearl, it was found by
my cousin, my cousin by marriage. He was a native, you see. Also, he
was a thief. He hid it. It was mine. His cousin, who was also my
cousin--we're all related here--killed him for it and fled away in a
cutter to Noo-Nau. I pursued, but the chief of Noo-Nau had killed him
for it before I got there. Oh, yes, there are many dead men represented
on the table there. Have a drink, Captain. Your face is not familiar.
You are new in the islands?"

"It's Captain Robinson of the _Roberta_," Grief said, introducing them.

In the meantime Mulhall had shaken hands with Peter Gee.

"I never fancied there were so many pearls in the world," Mulhall said.

"Nor have I ever seen so many together at one time," Peter Gee admitted.

"What ought they to be worth?"

"Fifty or sixty thousand pounds--and that's to us buyers. In
Paris----" He shrugged his shoulders and lifted his eyebrows at the
incommunicableness of the sum.

Mulhall wiped the sweat from his eyes. All were sweating profusely
and breathing hard. There was no ice in the drink that was served, and
whiskey and absinthe went down lukewarm.

"Yes, yes," Parlay was cackling. "Many dead men lie on the table
there. I know those pearls, all of them. You see those three! Perfectly
matched, aren't they? A diver from Easter Island got them for me inside
a week. Next week a shark got him; took his arm off and blood poison did
the business. And that big baroque there--nothing much--if I'm
offered twenty francs for it to-morrow I'll be in luck; it came out of
twenty-two fathoms of water. The man was from Raratonga. He broke all
diving records. He got it out of twenty-two fathoms. I saw him. And