Page:'Twixt land and sea - tales (IA twixtlandseatale00conr).pdf/94

 saving voice and stood my hard, inquisitive stare sleepily without as much as a wink.

“Then let us trade,” I said, turning my shoulder to him. “I see you are bent on it.”

I did not want an open scandal, but I thought that outward decency may be bought too dearly at times. I included Jacobus, myself, the whole population of the island, in the same contemptuous disgust as though we had been partners in an ignoble transaction. And the remembered vision at sea, diaphanous and blue, of the Pearl of the Ocean at sixty miles off; the unsubstantial, clear marvel of it as 1f evoked by the art of a beautiful and pure magic, turned into a thing of horrors too. Was this the fortune this vaporous and rare apparition had held for me in its hard heart, hidden within the shape as of fair dreams and mist? Was this my luck?

“I think”Jacobus became suddenly audible after what seemed the silence of vile meditationthat you might conveniently take some thirty tons. That would be about the lot, Captain.”

“Would it? The lot! I dare say it would be convenient, but I haven’t got enough money for that.”

I had never seen him so animated.

“No!” he exclaimed with what I took for the accent of grim menace. “That’s a pity.” He paused, then, unrelenting: “How much money have you got, Captain?” he inquired with awful directness.

It was my turn to face him squarely. I did so and mentioned the amount I could dispose of. And I perceived that he was disappointed. He thought it over, his calculating gaze lost in mine, for quite a