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Captain Pincher took a jorum every hour or two and retired to his berth and novels, leaving the navigation of the Morning Star to the under-officers. Ducat, the third officer, a Breton, joined us at meals. He was a decent, clever fellow in his late twenties, ambitious and clear-headed, but youthfully impressed by McHenry's self-proclaimed wickedness.
I never got a franc from the business." There was venom in McHenry's tone, and he looked at me, the newcomer, to see what impression he had made. The others said not a word of comment, and it may have been an often-told tale by him. He had emptied his glass of the potent Martinique rum four or five times. "Was the Chinaman sure dead when you put the leaves over him?"
He did not reappear, but a comely native woman drew back the curtain, and stood a moment to view us. She was large, and did not look browbeaten, as one would have supposed from McHenry's boast that he would not permit her even to walk with him except at a "respectful distance." Of course I knew him as a boaster.
Gedge, however, continued to talk in the language of courts. It was obvious that McHenry's twenty-five years in French possessions had not taught him the white man's language. He demanded brusquely, "What are you oui-oui-ing for?" and occasionally interjected a few words of bastard French in an attempt to be jovial. To this Gedge paid little attention.
These recommendations are substantially identical with those made by Hamilton in a letter to Pickering, and the presumption is strong that McHenry's paper is a product of Hamilton's influence, and that it had the concurrence of Pickering and Wolcott.
Gradually the eye discovered shelves and bins and goods heaped from floor to ceiling; pins and anchors, harpoons and pens, crackers and jewelry, cloth, shoes, medicine and tomahawks, socks and writing paper. Trade business, McHenry's monologue explained, is not what it was. When these petty merchants dared not trust themselves ashore their guns guarded against too eager customers.
This incensed Llewellyn, who was of chiefly Tahitian blood, and who claimed kings of Wales as his ancestors. Although extremely aristocratic in his attitude toward strangers, his native strain made him resent McHenry's rascally arrogance as a reflection upon his mother's race. "Shut up, Mac!" he half shouted. "You talk too much.
I shuddered, but Landers leaned over the table and said to me, sotto voce: "McHenry's tellin' his usual bloody lie. Brown got the vanilla all right, but what he did was to have the bloomin' Chink consign it to him proper', and not give him a receipt.
This feature of McHenry's recommendations could not be curried out Pickering soon informed Hamilton that the old animosities were still so active "in some breasts" that the plan of cooperation was impracticable. Meanwhile the composite mission had accomplished nothing except to make clear the actual character of French policy.
Our question was destined to remain unanswered. Whatever Ducat had said, it was something that hushed McHenry forever. He never mentioned the subject again, nor did any of us. But McHenry's attitude had subtly changed. Ducat's words had destroyed that last secret refuge of the soul in which every man keeps the vestiges of self-justification and self-respect.
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