Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/92

 it. There were two more bottles in the locker and having sent them after the first, he closed the port and sat down at the table under the swinging lamp.

Kermadec, cargo, crew and ship’s money were his; the crew knew nothing except that Tahuku had killed Pete’son and the white trader; there was no man to speak except Sru, who dared not speak, and Carlin who knew nothing definite. In time and at a proper season it was possible that these might be rendered dumb and out of count, and this would be the story of the Kermadec.

Without her captain, murdered by the natives of Levua, and navigated by her mate, who knew little or nothing of navigation, she had attempted to make back to Soma; had missed Soma and found a big lagoon island, Karolin, which was not on the charts. There Sru, the bo’sun, and Carolin, a white man, had died of fish poisoning, and there she had lain for a year—doing what...?

“And what were you doing all that time, Mr. Rantan?” The question was being put to him before an imaginary Admiralty court, and the answer “Pearling” could not be given.

It was only now, with everything done and the ship his, that the final moves in the game were asking to be solved; up to this the first moves had claimed all his mental energy.

The Kermadec could be lost on some civilized coast quite easily, everything would be quite easy but the