Читать книгу Ocean Tramps онлайн

43 страница из 81

Then Harman and Davis found themselves alone, all alone, masters of a treasure that would have turned the head of Tiffany, and of a hundred and fifty Kanakas, men, women, and children, a tribe captained and led by one Hoka, a frizzy-headed buck whose only dress and adornment was a gee string and the handle of a china utensil slung round his neck as a pendant.

The rotted oysters on the coral were useless, they had been worked over by Clayton. That was the first surprise, the next was the price of labour. Two sticks of tobacco a day was the price of native labour, not half a stick as reported by Clayton.

Trade tobacco just then worked out at two cents a stick, so the pay was not exorbitant; it was the smallness of the stock in hand that bothered our syndicate. But Hoka was adamant. He did not know ten words of English, but he knew enough to enforce his claims, and the syndicate had to give in.

“I knew there’d be flies in the ’intment somewhere,” said Harman, “but this is a bluebottle. We haven’t tobacco enough to work this lagoon a month, and what’s to happen then?”