Page:Barbour--Joan of the ilsand.djvu/215

Rh of fellows ashore, all dying for a bit of excitement. I'm quite sure they'd do anything in their power to help you, and they'd enjoy doing it. Why not let us round up every nigger on the place and—"

"No, no, forget it. Thanks all the same. The pearls will be hidden by now. It's just the culminating point. Every single thing that could go wrong has gone wrong lately. There's a regular landslide comes in the affairs of all men sooner or later, Mr. Steel. Mine's under way. I shouldn't be in the least surprised to see the blooming roof fall in now. The only satisfaction I have about it all is that it's due to my own folly to a large extent—the landslide, I mean, not this latest phase of it. I ought to be kicked all the way from here to Hong Kong and then kicked back again. There's that about the atmosphere of the Pacific which demoralizes a fellow unless he's careful. There's an insidious something that comes over you without your knowing it."

"True enough," Steel agreed.

"True! Don't I know it? I was going hell-for-leather straight to the bow-wows a few months ago, and letting everything slide. God knows things were sliding fast enough on their own account, without me helping. Then this man Keith came here, and after a few days, when he got the hang of things, he read me a sort of curtain lecture—not too much, you know, but just sufficient to show me