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“Where’s Clayton, dead—but where, where have you planted him, and where have you cached the pearls?”

“Cached the pearls?” suddenly cried Harman, finding his voice and taking in the whole situation. Then he began to laugh. He laughed as though he were watching Charlie Chaplin or something equally funny. He was. The picture of Clayton stood before him. Clayton making off with his partner’s share of the pearls, and handing the island and the fishing rights to him and Davis in return for the ketch, the picture of Davis and himself working like galley slaves, doing four months’ hard labour for the sake of Mandelbaum, for well he knew Mandelbaum would make them stump up to the last baroque.

Then he sat with his chin on his fists, spitting on the ground, while Davis explained and Harman soliloquised sometimes quite out aloud: “No, it ain’t no use; straight’s the only word in the dictionary. No darn use at all, ain’t enough mugs—and a petticut on top of all——”

“Well, what’s the ‘ultermatum’?” asked Harman, a day later, as he stood by a native canoe on the beach.