“I was,” the newcomer answered. “But we made a quick passage. The _Wonder's_ just around in the bight at Gooma, waiting for wind. Some of the bushmen reported a ketch here, and I just dropped around to see. Well, how goes it?”
“Nothing much. Copra sheds mostly empty, and not half a dozen tons of ivory nuts. The women all got rotten with fever and quit, and the men can't chase them back into the swamps. They're a sick crowd. I'd ask you to have a drink, but the mate finished off my last bottle. I wisht to God for a breeze of wind.”
Grief, glancing with keen carelessness from one to the other, laughed.
“I'm glad the calm held,” he said. “It enabled me to get around to see you. My supercargo dug up that little note of yours, and I brought it along.”
The mate edged politely away, leaving his skipper to face his trouble.
“I'm sorry, Grief, damned sorry,” Griffiths said, “but I ain't got it. You'll have to give me a little more time.”
Grief leaned up against the companionway, surprise and pain depicted on his face.
“It does beat hell,” he communed, “how men learn to lie in the Solomons. The truth's not in them. Now take Captain Jensen. I'd sworn by his truthfulness. Why, he told me only five days ago--do you want to know what he told me?”
“Why, he told me that you'd sold out--sold out everything, cleaned up, and was pulling out for the New Hebrides.”
“He's a damned liar!” Griffiths cried hotly.
“I should say so. He even had the nerve to tell me that he'd bought two of your stations from you--Mauri and Kahula. Said he paid you seventeen hundred gold sovereigns, lock, stock and barrel, good will, trade-goods, credit, and copra.”
Griffiths's eyes narrowed and glinted. The action was involuntary, and Grief noted it with a lazy sweep of his eyes.
“And Parsons, your trader at Hickimavi, told me that the Fulcrum Company had bought that station from you. Now what did he want to lie for?”
Griffiths, overwrought by sun and sickness, exploded. All his bitterness of spirit rose up in his face and twisted his mouth into a snarl.
“Look here, Grief, what's the good of playing with me that way? You know, and I know you know. Let it go at that. I _have_ sold out, and I _am_ getting away. And what are you going to do about it?”