Page:Barbour--Joan of the ilsand.djvu/178

166 "You might as well do so now. Here it is. I haven't looked at it, as I wasn't invited to, but I shouldn't wonder if there's a joker."

Chester took the crumpled sheet, and ran through what Moniz had written. "You're right—there was a joker," he said. The only thing he was to share was the crops. See, here, after the word 'plantation,' he has added: … and a half interest in all shell banks off the island, and in such pearls as may already have been found there."

"Then," Chester added, glancing at Keith, "you must have taken this agreement away before I signed it."

"That's the idea," Keith agreed. "It sort of occurred to me you'd probably take a different view this morning."

"Damme, Keith, you're a white man," Chester said. "I might have agreed to Moniz having half of the pearls we haven't found, but hang me if I'd let him share those we have cached. I'm convinced now that the game is no good, and that's why I shouldn't have had any objection to his including the right to pearl fishing, if he'd done it in a straight-forward manner, but he tried another dirty trick on me, and that settles his hash once and for all. God knows what we're going to do, though. We can hang on for another month or two and something may turn up. It's only about five or six