At the
end of them he bawled after me:
"But I'll get there! You watch me all the same, all the same, you
damn--"
The reason I didn't up-anchor and get out that night was that, when I
came aboard I discovered not far from my berth the unobtrusive loom of
that Dutch gunboat, arrived for a "look-in" at last.
The only thing for me to do was to sit tight. If, when the state of the
island's affairs had been discovered, there should be want of
explanation or corroboration, it would be altogether best for me to give
it. I wasn't yet through trading in those waters, you understand.
But Signet was no fool. He, too, must have seen the discreet shade of
the visitor. When the morning dawned, neither he nor the royal dancer
from the Marquesas was to be found. Some time in that night, from the
windward beach, ill-manned and desperate, the royal sailing canoe must
have set forth tumultuously upon its pilgrimage again.
I sat in a place in Honolulu. Soft drinks were served, and somewhere
beyond a tidy screen of palm fronds a band of strings was playing. Even
with soft drinks, the old instinct of wanderers and lone men to herd
together had put four of us down at the same table. Two remain vague--a
fattish, holiday-making banker and a consumptive from Barre, Vermont.
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