It seemed to Logan that these consisted in making similar presents to the
officers and crew, all of whom were Englishmen. Te-iki-pa displaced his
nose-ring and inserted his pearl in the orifice previously occupied by
that ornament. A little chain of the pearls was hung on the padlock of
the huge packing-case, which was the special care of Te-iki-pa.
'Luckily I had the yacht's painting altered before leaving England,' said
Bude. 'I'll sail her under Spanish colours, and perhaps they won't spot
her. Any way, with the pearls--lucky I bought a lot--we ought to be safe
enough. But if any one of the competitors has gone for specimens of the
Berbalangs, I fear, I sadly fear, the consequences.' His face clouded;
he fell into a reverie.
Logan made no reply, but puffed rings of cigarette smoke into the still
blue air. There was method in Bude's apparent madness, but Logan
suspected that there was madness in his method.
A certain coolness had not ceased to exist between the friends when,
after their long voyage, they sighted the volcanic craters of the lonely
isle of Cagayan Sulu and beheld the Stars and Stripes waving from the
masthead of the _George Washington_ (Captain Noah P. Funkal).
Logan landed, and noted the harmless but well-armed half-Mahometan
natives of the village. He saw the other competitors, whose 'exhibits,'
as Miss McCabe called them, were securely stored in the _George
Washington_--strange spoils of far-off mysterious forests, and unplumbed
waters of the remotest isles. Occasionally a barbaric yap, or a weird
yell or hoot, was wafted on the air at feeding time. Jenkins of All
Souls (whom he knew a little) Logan did not meet on the beach; he, like
Bude, tarried aboard ship. The other adventurers were civil but remote,
and there was a jealous air of suspicion on every face save that of
Professor Potter. He, during the day of waiting on the island, played
golf with Logan over links which he had hastily improvised. Beyond
admitting, as they played, that _his_ treasure was in a tank, 'and as
well as could be expected, poor brute, but awful noisy,' Professor Potter
offered no information.
'Our find is quiet enough,' said Logan.
'Does he give you trouble about food?' asked Mr. Potter.
'Takes nothing,' said Logan, adding, as he holed out, 'that makes me
dormy two.'
From the rest of the competitors not even this amount of information
could be extracted, and as for Captain Noah Funkal, he was taciturn,
authoritative, and, Logan thought, not in a very good temper.
The _George Washington_ and the _Pendragon_ (so Jones Harvey had
christened the yacht which under Bude's colours sailed as _The Sabrina_)
weighed anchor simultaneously. If possible they were not to lose sight
of each other, and they corresponded by signals and through the
megalophone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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