United States or Cambodia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
And near her, just come in from the sea on the wings of the squall, he saw another schooner hove to and dropping a boat into the water. He knew her. It was the OROHENA, owned by Toriki, the half-caste trader, who served as his own supercargo and who doubtlessly was even then in the stern sheets of the boat. Huru-Huru chuckled.
"Mapuhi is a fool!" was the answering yell, and the next moment they were lost to each other in the descending water. Half an hour later, Huru-Huru, watching from the seaward side of the atoll, saw the two boats hoisted in and the Aorai pointing her nose out to sea.
"If you had done as I said," charged Tefara, for the thousandth time, "and hidden the pearl and told no one, you would have it now." "But Huru-Huru was with me when I opened the shell have I not told you so times and times and times without end?" "And now we shall have no house. Raoul told me today that if you had not sold the pearl to Toriki " "I did not sell it. Toriki robbed me."
He knew that Mapuhi owed Toriki for trade goods advanced the year before. The squall had passed. The hot sun was blazing down, and the lagoon was once more a mirror. But the air was sticky like mucilage, and the weight of it seemed to burden the lungs and make breathing difficult. "Have you heard the news, Toriki?" Huru-Huru asked. "Mapuhi has found a pearl.
The tropic rain sheeted about them so that they could see only the beach under their feet and the spiteful little waves from the lagoon that snapped and bit at the sand. A figure appeared through the deluge. It was Huru-Huru, the man with the one arm. "Did you get the pearl?" he yelled in Raoul's ear.
Have you any tobacco?" "Where is Toriki?" "In the house of Captain Lynch, drinking absinthe. He has been there an hour." And while Levy and Toriki drank absinthe and chaffered over the pearl, Huru-Huru listened and heard the stupendous price of twenty-five thousand francs agreed upon.
And Levy will sell it in France for a hundred thousand francs. Have you any tobacco?" Raoul felt relieved. His troubles about the pearl were over. He need not worry any more, even if he had not got the pearl. But he did not believe Huru-Huru.
Unable to shake the vision of the pearl from his mind, he was returning to accept Mapuhi's price of a house. He landed on the beach in the midst of a driving thunder squall that was so dense that he collided with Huru-Huru before he saw him. "Too late," yelled Huru-Huru. "Mapuhi sold it to Toriki for fourteen hundred Chili, and Toriki sold it to Levy for twenty-five thousand francs.
Huru-Huru asked, as Levy, a fat man with massive asymmetrical features, stepped out upon the beach. "Mapuhi has found a pearl. There was never a pearl like it in Hikueru, in all the Paumotus, in all the world. Mapuhi is a fool. He has sold it to Toriki for fourteen hundred Chili I listened outside and heard. Toriki is likewise a fool. You can buy it from him cheap. Remember that I told you first.
Huru-Huru, watching on the beach, saw a third schooner that he knew heave to outside the entrance and drop a boat. It was the Hira, well named, for she was owned by Levy, the German Jew, the greatest pearl buyer of them all, and, as was well known, Hira was the Tahitian god of fishermen and thieves. "Have you heard the news?"
Word Of The Day