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But he is talking continuously." "I believe you, Mynheer." "But at last I will say: 'My dear sir, suppose that you should have the most brilliant idea; that "hunch" of yours. "Sure-fire." What advantage will it do you here in the island of Taai? You are not here on Broadway. You are too many thousand miles. You cannot come here. You are too tired. It takes money.
Discharging cargo in the furnace of Coco Inlet, if my thoughts went back to Taai, it was almost with the deprecating amusement a man will feel who has been had by a hoax. I give you my word, when at noon of the thirteenth day the mountain of Taai stood up once more beyond the bows, I was weary of the fantasy.
When I went ashore in mid afternoon, wondering a little why no naked biscuit-beggars or gin swallowers had swum out to bother me that day, I found the trader of Taai sitting on his veranda, blowing puffs of smoke from those fine Manila Club perfectos out into the sunshine.
Had the fool, then, not got beyond that? Yet? Here he was, lord of the daughter of a queen, proprietor of a "gold mine." For Signet was not to be hoodwinked about the commercial value of Taai.
And in exchange he would ask only cabin passage for two from Taai beach to the Golden Gate. Only deck passage! Only anything! "Set us down there, me and her, that's all. I'll give you a bill of sale. Why, from where you look at it, it's a find! It's a lead-pipe cinch! It's taking candy away from a baby, man!" "Why don't you keep it, then?" The soul of his city showed through.
Signet, in the course of the afternoon, brought forth gravely a bill of sale, making over in an orderly fashion to B.R. Signet, New York, U.S.A., the real and personal property of the trading station at Taai, and "signed" in the identical, upright, Fourteenth Street grammar-school script, by "the Dutchman." I understood Signet. Signet understood me. The thing was not even an attempt at forgery.
Let a man not work away his strength and his youth. Let him breathe a new melody, let him draw out of imagination a novel step, a more fantastic tilt of the pelvis, a wilder gesticulation of the deltoid. Let him put out his hand to the Touch of Gold. It is a tale of this New York. That it didn't chance to happen in New York is beside the point. Where? It wouldn't help you much if I told you. Taai.
After coffee the trader said: "One gallon of the Hollands which you sent me ashore has disappeared. The kitchen boys are 'careless. Also I wink one eye when a schooner arrives. Of course they will dance tonight, however. You would care to go up, my dear sir?" Of course we went. There's no other amusement in an islet like Taai but the interminable native dance.
One had taken over a drum from a local musician. The other two had instruments fashioned of dried gourds with fingering pieces of bamboo and strings of gut barbaric cousins to the mandolin. So, on this one night in history, the music of another tribe had come to Taai. It just escaped being an authentic "tune." How it escaped was indefinable.
For the trader of Taai, the blatantly obvious proprietor of the island's industry and overlord of its destinies sitting there before me now with a pump gun touching his elbow was this fellow Signet. Till now I don't know precisely what had happened; that is to say, none of the details of the act, horrid or heroic as they may have been.
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