"Kindly keep her out of this," Duncan warned. "What do you want?"

"I want to know what you are going to do!"

"Discharge you, after this, at Attu-Attu."

"You intended to, all along."

"On the contrary. It is your present conduct that compels me."

"You can't give me that sort of talk."

"I can't retain a captain who calls me a liar."

Captain Dettmar for the moment was taken aback. His face and lips
worked, but he could say nothing. Duncan coolly pulled at his cigar and
glanced aft at the rising cloud of squall.

"Lee Goom brought the mail aboard at Tahiti," Captain Dettmar began.

"We were hove short then and leaving. You didn't look at your letters
until we were outside, and then it was too late. That's why you didn't
discharge me at Tahiti. Oh, I know. I saw the long envelope when Lee
Goom came over the side. It was from the Governor of California, printed
on the corner for any one to see. You'd been working behind my back.
Some beachcomber in Honolulu had whispered to you, and you'd written to
the Governor to find out. And that was his answer Lee Goom carried
out to you. Why didn't you come to me like a man! No, you must play
underhand with me, knowing that this billet was the one chance for me to
get on my feet again. And as soon as you read the Governor's letter your
mind was made up to get rid of me. I've seen it on your face ever since
for all these months.. I've seen the two of you, polite as hell to me
all the time, and getting away in corners and talking about me and that
affair in 'Frisco."

"Are you done?" Duncan asked, his voice low, and tense. "Quite done?"

Captain Dettmar made no answer.

"Then I'll tell you a few things. It was precisely because of that
affair in 'Frisco that I did not discharge you in Tahiti. God knows you
gave me sufficient provocation. I thought that if ever a man needed a
chance to rehabilitate himself, you were that man. Had there been no
black mark against you, I would have discharged you when I learned how
you were robbing me."

Captain Dettmar showed surprise, started to interrupt, then changed his
mind.

"There was that matter of the deck-calking, the bronze rudder-irons, the
overhauling of the engine, the new spinnaker boom, the new davits, and
the repairs to the whale-boat. You OKd the shipyard bill. It was four
thousand one hundred and twenty-two francs. By the regular shipyard
charges it ought not to have been a centime over twenty-five hundred
franc