Page:Stevenson - The Wrecker (1892).djvu/21

Rh Mr. Loudon Dodd, though he was new to the group of the Marquesas, was already an old, salted trader; he knew the ships and the captains; he had assisted, in other islands, at the first steps of some career of which he now heard the culmination, or (vice versâ) he had brought with him from further south the end of some story which had begun in Tai-o-hae. Among other matter of interest, like other arrivals in the South Seas, he had a wreck to announce. The John T. Richards, it appeared, had met the fate of other island schooners.

"Dickinson piled her up on Palmerston Island," Dodd announced.

"Who were the owners?" inquired one of the club men.

"Oh, the usual parties!" returned Loudon,—"Capsicum & Co."

A smile and a glance of intelligence went round the group; and perhaps Loudon gave voice to the general sentiment by remarking—

"Talk of good business! I know nothing better than a schooner, a competent captain, and a sound, reliable reef."

"Good business! There's no such a thing!" said the Glasgow man. "Nobody makes anything but the missionaries—dash it!"

"I don't know," said another. "There's a good deal in opium."

"It's a good job to strike a tabooed pearl-island—say, about the fourth year," remarked a third; "skim the whole lagoon on the sly, and up stick and away before the French get wind of you."

"A pig nokket of cold is good," observed a German.

"There's something in wrecks, too," said Havens. "Look at that man in Honolulu, and the ship that went ashore on Waikiki Reef; it was blowing a kona, hard; and she began to break up as soon as she touched. Lloyd's agent had her sold inside an hour;