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Updated: May 28, 2025
Quick eye that he had for the promise of adventure, prepared always for the unexpected to leap out at him from behind the nearest cocoanut tree, nevertheless David Grief received no warning when he laid eyes on Aloysius Pankburn. It was on the little steamer Berthe. Leaving his schooner to follow, Grief had taken passage for the short run across from Raiatea to Papeete.
And you are to work hard work, sailor's work. You'll stand regular watches and everything, though you eat and sleep aft with us." "It's a go." Pankburn put out his hand to ratify the agreement. "If it doesn't kill me," he added. David Grief poured a generous three-fingers into the tumbler and extended it. "Then here's your last drink. Take it." Pankburn's hand went halfway out.
Get the whole crew aside and lecture them that they are to be interested only in the pennies. Savve? Gold coins must be beneath contempt, and silver coins merely tolerated. Pennies are to be the only desirable things." Pankburn took charge of the trading. For the penny in One-Eye's nose he gave ten sticks of tobacco. Since each stick cost David Grief a cent, the bargain was manifestly unfair.
So did everybody else in the little island capital; for neither the beach nor Lavina's boarding house had been so scandalized in years. In midday, bareheaded, clad only in swimming trunks, Aloysius Pankburn ran down the main street from Lavina's to the water front.
This time it was on deck, and the young man, clinging to the rail and peering into the distance at the dim forms of a man and woman in two steamer chairs drawn closely together, was crying, drunkenly. Grief noted that the man's arm was around the woman's waist. Aloysius Pankburn looked on and cried. "Nothing to weep about," Grief said genially.
Grief nodded. "And that's the curse of it," Aloysius lamented. "I really believe I won't want to. I see the point. But I'm going to go right on and shape myself up just the same." The warm, sunburn glow in Grief's face seemed to grow warmer. His hand went out. "Pankburn, I love you right now for that." Aloysius grasped the hand, and shook his head in sad sincerity.
When he first saw Aloysius Pankburn, that somewhat fuddled gentleman was drinking a lonely cocktail at the tiny bar between decks next to the barber shop. And when Grief left the barber's hands half an hour later Aloysius Pankburn was still hanging over the bar still drinking by himself. Now it is not good for man to drink alone, and Grief threw sharp scrutiny into his pass-ing glance.
He swelled his biceps proudly under the thin sleeve, reached for the two black stewards, and put them above his head like a pair of dumbbells. "Come on! Swing out on that fore-boom-tackle!" Carlsen shouted from aft, where the mainsail was being winged out. Pankburn dropped the stewards and raced for it, beating a Rapa sailor by two jumps to the hauling part.
Pankburn was incredulous, and volunteered to go in alone, to swim it if he couldn't borrow the dingey. "They haven't forgotten the German cruiser," Grief explained. "And I'll wager that bush is alive with men right now. What do you think, Mr. Carlsen?" That veteran adventurer of the islands was emphatic in his agreement.
Beneath, centred about the slubbering noise, was an area of agitated phosphorescence. Leaning over, he locked his hand under the armpit of a man, and, with pull and heave and quick-changing grips, he drew on deck the naked form of Aloysius Pankburn. "I didn't have a sou-markee," he complained. "I had to swim it, and I couldn't find your gangway. It was very miserable. Pardon me.
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