a drink with.”
This woful possibility brought a fresh wash of tears. Grief was interested. Of all unique situations he could never have imagined such a one as this.
“They were engaged to take care of me,” Pankburn was blubbering, “to keep me away from the drink. And that’s the way they do it, lollygagging all about the ship and letting me drink myself to death. It isn’t right, I tell you. It isn’t right. They were sent along with me for the express purpose of not letting me drink, and they let me drink to swinishness as long as I leave them alone. If I complain they threaten not to let me have another drop. What can a poor devil do? My death will be on their heads, that’s all. Come on down and join me.”
He released his clutch on the rail, and would have fallen had Grief not caught his arm. He seemed to undergo a transformation, to stiffen physically, to thrust his chin forward aggressively, and to glint harshly in his eyes.
“I won’t let them kill me. And they’ll be sorry. I’ve offered them fifty thousand – later on, of course. They laughed. They don’t know. But I know.” He fumbled in his coat pocket and drew forth an object that flashed in the faint light. “They don’t know the meaning of that. But I do.” He looked at Grief with abrupt suspicion. “What do you make out of it, eh? What do you make out of it?”
David Grief caught a swift vision of an alcoholic degenerate putting a very loving young couple to death with a copper spike, for a copper spike was what he held in his hand, an evident old-fashioned ship-fastening.
“My mother thinks I’m up here to get cured of the booze habit. She doesn’t know. I bribed the doctor to prescribe a voyage. When we get to Papeete my manager is going to charter a schooner and away we’ll sail. But they don’t dream. They think it’s the booze. I know. I only know. Good night, sir. I’m going to bed – unless – er – you’ll join me in a night cap. One last drink, you know.”
In the week that followed at Papeete Grief caught numerous and bizarre glimpses of Aloysius Pankburn. So did everybody else in the little island capital; for neither the beach nor Lavina’s boarding house had been so scandalized in years. In midday, bareheaded, clad only in swimming trunks, Aloysius Pankburn ran down the main street from Lavina’s to the water front. He put on the gloves with a fireman from the Berthe in a scheduled four-round bout at the Folies Bergères, and was knocked out in the second round. He tried insanely to drown himself in a two-foot pool of water, dived drunkenly and splendidly from fifty feet up in the rigging of the Mariposa lying at the wharf, and chartered the cutter Toerau at more than her purchase price and was only saved by his manager’s refusal financially to ratify the agreement. He bought out the old blind leper at the market, and sold breadfruit, plantains, and sweet potatoes at such cut-rates that the gendarmes were called out to break the rush of bargain-hunting natives. For that matter, three times the gendarmes arrested him for riotous behaviour, and three times his manager ceased from love-making long enough to pay the fines imposed by a needy colonial administration.
Then the Mariposa sailed for San Francisco, and in the bridal suite were the manager and the trained nurse, fresh-married. Before departing, the manager had thoughtfully bestowed eight five-pound banknotes on Aloysius, with the foreseen result that Aloysius awoke several days later to find himself broke and perilously near to delirium tremens. Lavina, famed for her good heart even among the driftage of South Pacific rogues and scamps, nursed him around and never let it filter into his returning intelligence that there was neither manager nor money to pay his board.
It was several evenings after this that David Grief, lounging under the after deck awning of the Kittiwake and idly scanning the meagre columns of the Papeete Avant-Coureur, sat suddenly up and almost rubbed his eyes. It was unbelievable, but there it was. The old South Seas Romance was not dead. He read:
WANTED – To exchange a half interest in buried treasure,
worth five million francs, for transportation for one to an
unknown island in the Pacific and facilities for carrying
away the loot. Ask for FOLLY, at Lavina’s.
Grief looked at his watch. It was early yet, only eight o’clock.
“Mr. Carlsen,” he called in the direction of a glowing pipe. “Get the crew for the whale-boat. I’m going ashore.”
The husky voice of the Norwegian mate was raised for’ard, and half a dozen strapping Rapa Islanders ceased their singing and manned the boat.
“I came to see Folly, Mr. Folly, I imagine,” David Grief told Lavina.
He noted the quick interest in her eyes as she turned her head and flung a command in native across two open rooms to the outstanding kitchen. A few minutes later a barefooted native girl padded in and shook her head.
Lavina’s disappointment was evident.
“You’re stopping aboard the Kittiwake, aren’t you?” she said. “I’ll tell him you called.”
“Then it is a he?” Grief queried.
Lavina nodded.
“I hope you can do something for him, Captain Grief. I’m only a good-natured woman. I don’t know. But he’s a likable man, and he may be telling the truth; I don’t know. You’ll know. You’re not a soft-hearted fool like me. Can’t I mix you a cocktail?”
Back on board his schooner and dozing in a deck chair under a three-months-old magazine, David Grief was aroused by a sobbing, slubbering noise from overside. He opened his eyes. From the Chilian cruiser, a quarter of a mile away, came the stroke of eight bells. It was midnight. From overside came a splash and another slubbering noise. To him it seemed half amphibian, half the sounds of a man crying to himself and querulously chanting his sorrows to the general universe.
A jump took David Grief to the low rail. Beneath, centred about the slubbering noise, was an area of agitated phosphorescence. Leaning over, he locked his hand under the armpit of a man, and, with pull and heave and quick-changing grips, he drew on deck the naked form of Aloysius Pankburn.
“I didn’t have a sou-markee,” he complained. “I had to swim it, and I couldn’t find your gangway. It was very miserable. Pardon me. If you have a towel to put about my middle, and a good stiff drink, I’ll be more myself. I’m Mr. Folly, and you’re the Captain Grief, I presume, who called on me when I was out. No, I’m not drunk. Nor am I cold. This isn’t shivering. Lavina allowed me only two drinks to-day. I’m on the edge of the horrors, that’s all, and I was beginning to see things when I couldn’t find the gangway. If you’ll take me below I’ll be very grateful. You are the only one that answered my advertisement.”
He was shaking pitiably in the warm night, and down in the cabin, before he got his towel, Grief saw to it that a half-tumbler of whiskey was in his hand.
“Now fire ahead,” Grief said, when he had got his guest into a shirt and a pair of duck trousers. “What’s this advertisement of yours? I’m listening.”
Pankburn looked at the whiskey bottle, but Grief shook his head.
“All right, Captain, though I tell you on whatever is left of my honour that I am not drunk – not in the least. Also, what I shall tell you is true, and I shall tell it briefly, for it is clear to me that you are a man of affairs and action. Likewise, your chemistry is good. To you alcohol has never been a million maggots gnawing at every cell of you. You’ve never been to hell. I am there now. I am scorching. Now listen.
“My mother is alive. She is English. I was born in Australia. I was educated at York and Yale. I am a master of arts, a doctor of philosophy, and I am no good. Furthermore, I am an alcoholic. I have been an athlete. I used to swan-dive a hundred and ten feet in the clear. I hold several amateur records. I am a fish. I learned the crawl-stroke from the first of the Cavilles. I have done thirty miles in a rough sea. I have another record. I have punished more whiskey than any man of my years. I will steal sixpence from you for the price of a drink. Finally, I will tell you the truth.
“My father was an American – an Annapolis man.