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All were sweating profusely and breathing hard. There was no ice in the drink that was served, and whiskey and absinthe went down lukewarm. "Yes, yes," Parlay was cackling. "Many dead men lie on the table there. I know those pearls, all of them. You see those three! Perfectly matched, aren't they? A diver from Easter Island got them for me inside a week.
"Love 'em!" Agin he sez. And agin follerd a expletive that wuz still more forcible, and still more sinful. And I felt obliged to check him which I did. And after a long parlay, in which I used my best endeavors of argument and reason to convince him that I wuz in the right on't, I see he wuzn't convinced.
"Not this way," said Andrews. "Say, one of the guys said you could parlay French real well. I want you to teach me. A guy's got to know languages to get along in this country." "But you must know some." "Bedroom French," said the Kid, laughing. "Well?" "But if I want to write a movie scenario for an Eytalian firm, I can't just write 'voulay-vous couchezavecmoa' over and over again."
And it wuz Josiah's wish too, for the pay wuz good, and the work light for him. And so I consented after a parlay. But I didn't regret it. She is a good little creeter and no more like her mother than a feather bed is like a darnin' needle. I like Ardelia: so does Josiah. We have been havin' a pound party here in Jonesville.
He was looking across the lagoon to where the Nuhiva's sails showed through the sparse cocoa-nuts. The house of Parlay was a big two-story frame affair, built of California lumber, with a galvanized iron roof. So disproportionate was it to the slender ring of the atoll that it showed out upon the sand-strip and above it like some monstrous excrescence.
"Old Parlay arrived after that with his pearls. There was one single one of them, they say, worth sixty thousand francs. Peter Gee saw it, and has told me he offered that much for it. The old man went clean off for a while. They had him strait-jacketed in the Colonial Club two days " "His wife's uncle, an old Paumotan, cut him out of the jacket and turned him loose," the supercargo corroborated.
Josiah proposed to get him a acordeun, but I talked him out of that; and then he wanted to get him a bright blue necktie. But I perswaided him to give him a handsome china coffee cup and saucer, with "To My Son" painted on it; and I urged him to give him that, with ten new silver dollars in it. Says I, "He is all the son you have got, and a good son." And Josiah consented after a parlay.
"Narii... damn robber... He want steal... pearls... Kill Parlay... One man kill Parlay... No man know what man... Three Kanakas, Narii, me... Five beans... hat... Narii say one bean black... Nobody know... Kill Parlay... Narii damn liar... All beans black... Five black... Copra-shed dark... Every man get black bean... Big wind come... No chance... Everybody get up tree... No good luck them pearls... I tell you before... No good luck."
His white teeth showed in an amused and sneering smile, and he stood up, a magnificent figure of a man. "It's murder!" Mulhall yelled to Grief. "He'd have murdered Old Parlay!" Grief yelled back. For the moment the poop was clear of water and the Malahini on an even keel. Narii made a bravado attempt to walk to the rail, but was flung down by the wind.
And through the curious company moved Parlay himself, cackling and sneering, the withered wreck of what had once been a tall and powerful man. His eyes were deep sunken and feverish, his cheeks fallen in and cavernous. The hair of his head seemed to have come out in patches, and his mustache and imperial had shed in the same lopsided way. "Jove!" Mulhall muttered under his breath.
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