BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES
ARRANGEMENTS quite extensive had been made for the celebration ofChristmas on the yacht Samoset. Not having been in any civilized portfor months, the stock of provisions boasted few delicacies; yet MinnieDuncan had managed to devise real feasts for cabin and forecastle.
"Listen, Boyd," she told her husband. "Here are the menus. For the cabin,raw bonita native style, turtle soup, omelette a la Samoset--"
"What the dickens?" Boyd Duncan interrupted.
"Well, if you must know, I found a tin of mushrooms and a package ofegg-powder which had fallen down behind the locker, and there are otherthings as well that will go into it. But don't interrupt. Boiled yam,fried taro, alligator pear salad--there, you've got me all mixed, ThenI found a last delectable half-pound of dried squid. There will be bakedbeans Mexican, if I can hammer it into Toyama's head; also, baked papaiawith Marquesan honey, and, lastly, a wonderful pie the secret of whichToyama refuses to divulge."
"I wonder if it is possible to concoct a punch or a cocktail out oftrade rum?" Duncan muttered gloomily.
"Oh! I forgot! Come with me."
His wife caught his hand and led him through the small connecting doorto her tiny stateroom. Still holding his hand, she fished in the depthsof a hat-locker and brought forth a pint bottle of champagne.
"The dinner is complete!" he cried.
"Wait."
She fished again, and was rewarded with a silver-mounted whisky flask.She held it to the light of a port-hole, and the liquor showed a quarterof the distance from the bottom.
"I've been saving it for weeks," she explained. "And there's enough foryou and Captain Dettmar."
"Two mighty small drinks," Duncan complained.
"There would have been more, but I gave a drink to Lorenzo when he wassick."
Duncan growled, "Might have given him rum," facetiously.
"The nasty stuff! For a sick man? Don't be greedy, Boyd. And I'm gladthere isn't any more, for Captain Dettmar's sake. Drinking always makeshim irritable. And now for the men's dinner. Soda crackers, sweet cakes,candy--"
"Substantial, I must say."
"Do hush. Rice, and curry, yam, taro, bonita, of course, a big cakeToyama is making, young pig--"
"Oh, I say," he protested.
"It is all right, Boyd. We'll be in Attu-Attu in three days. Besides,it's my pig. That old chief what-ever-his-name distinctly presented itto me. You saw him yourself. And then two tins of bullamacow. That'stheir dinner. And now about the presents. Shall we wait until tomorrow,or give them this evening?"
"Christmas Eve, by all means," was the man's judgment. "We'll call allhands at eight bells; I'll give them a tot of rum all around, and thenyou give the presents. Come on up on deck. It's stifling down here. Ihope Lorenzo has better luck with the dynamo; without the fans therewon't be much sleeping to-night if we're driven below."
They passed through the small main-cabin, climbed a steep companionladder, and emerged on deck. The sun was setting, and the promise wasfor a clear tropic night. The Samoset, with fore- and main-sail wingedout on either side, was slipping a lazy four-knots through the smoothsea. Through the engine-room skylight came a sound of hammering. Theystrolled aft to where Captain Dettmar, one foot on the rail, wasoiling the gear of the patent log. At the wheel stood a tall South SeaIslander, clad in white undershirt and scarlet hip-cloth.
Boyd Duncan was an original. At least that was the belief of hisfriends. Of comfortable fortune, with no need to do anything but takehis comfort, he elected to travel about the world in outlandish andmost uncomfortable ways. Incidentally, he had ideas about coral-reefs,disagreed profoundly with Darwin on that subject, had voiced his opinionin several monographs and one book, and was now back at his hobby,cruising the South Seas in a tiny, thirty-ton yacht and studyingreef-formations.
His wife, Minnie Duncan, was also declared an original, inasmuch as shejoyfully shared his vagabond wanderings. Among other things, in the sixexciting years of their marriage she had climbed Chimborazo with him,made a three-thousand-mile winter journey with dogs and sleds in Alaska,ridden a horse from Canada to Mexico, cruised the Mediterranean in aten-ton yawl, and canoed from Germany to the Black Sea across theheart of Europe. They were a royal pair of wanderlusters, he, big andbroad-shouldered, she a small, brunette, and happy woman, whose onehundred and fifteen pounds were all grit and endurance, and withal,pleasing to look upon.
The Samoset had been a trading schooner, when Duncan bought her in SanFrancisco and made alterations. Her interior was wholly rebuilt, so thatthe hold became main-cabin and staterooms, while abaft amidships wereinstalled engines, a dynamo, an ice machine, storage batteries, and,far in the stern, gasoline tanks. Necessarily, she carried a small crew.Boyd, Minnie, and Captain Dettmar were the only whites on board, thoughLorenzo, the small and greasy engineer, laid a part claim to white,being a Portuguese half-caste. A Japanese served as cook, and a Chineseas cabin boy. Four white sailors had constituted the original crewfor'ard, but one by one they had yielded to the charms of palm-wavingSouth Sea isles and been replaced by islanders. Thus, one of the duskysailors hailed from Easter Island, a second from the Carolines, a thirdfrom the Paumotus, while the fourth was a gigantic Samoan. At sea, BoydDuncan, himself a navigator, stood a mate's watch with Captain Dettmar,and both of them took a wheel or lookout occasionally. On a pinch,Minnie herself could take a wheel, and it was on pinches that she provedherself more dependable at steering than did the native sailors.
At eight bells, all hands assembled at the wheel, and Boyd Duncanappeared with a black bottle and a mug. The rum he served out himself,half a mug of it to each man. They gulped the stuff down with manyfacial expressions of delight, followed by loud lip-smackings ofapproval, though the liquor was raw enough and corrosive enough to burntheir mucous membranes. All drank except Lee Goom, the abstemiouscabin boy. This rite accomplished, they waited for the next, thepresent-giving. Generously molded on Polynesian lines, huge-bodied andheavy-muscled, they were nevertheless like so many children, laughingmerrily at little things, their eager black eyes flashing in the lanternlight as their big bodies swayed to the heave and roll of the ship.
Calling each by name, Minnie gave the presents out, accompanying eachpresentation with some happy remark that added to the glee. Therewere trade watches, clasp knives, amazing assortments of fish-hooksin packages, plug tobacco, matches, and gorgeous strips of cotton forloincloths all around. That Boyd Duncan was liked by them was evidencedby the roars of laughter with which they greeted his slightest jokingallusion.
Captain Dettmar, white-faced, smiling only when his employer chanced toglance at him, leaned against the wheel-box, looking on. Twice, he leftthe group and went below, remaining there but a minute each time. Later,in the main cabin, when Lorenzo, Lee Goom and Toyama received theirpresents, he disappeared into his stateroom twice again. For of alltimes, the devil that slumbered in Captain Dettmar's soul chose thisparticular time of good cheer to awaken. Perhaps it was not entirely thedevil's fault, for Captain Dettmar, privily cherishing a quart of whiskyfor many weeks, had selected Christmas Eve for broaching it.
It was still early in the evening--two bells had just gone--when Duncanand his wife stood by the cabin companionway, gazing to windward andcanvassing the possibility of spreading their beds on deck. A small,dark blot of cloud, slowly forming on the horizon, carried the threatof a rain-squall, and it was this they were discussing when CaptainDettmar, coming from aft and about to go below, glanced at them withsudden suspicion. He paused, his face working spasmodically. Then hespoke:
"You are talking about me."
His voice was hoarse, and there was an excited vibration in it. MinnieDuncan started, then glanced at her husband's immobile face, took thecue, and remained silent.
"I say you were talking about me," Captain Dettmar repeated, this timewith almost a snarl.
He did not lurch nor betray the liquor on him in any way save by theconvulsive working of his face.
"Minnie, you
'd better go down," Duncan said gently. "Tell Lee Goom we'llsleep below. It won't be long before that squall is drenching things."
She took the hint and left, delaying just long enough to give oneanxious glance at the dim faces of the two men.
Duncan puffed at his cigar and waited till his wife's voice, in talkwith the cabin-boy, came up through the open skylight.
"Well?" Duncan demanded in a low voice, but sharply.
"I said you were talking about me. I say it again. Oh, I haven't beenblind. Day after day I've seen the two of you talking about me. Whydon't you come out and say it to my face! I know you know. And I knowyour mind's made up to discharge me at Attu-Attu."
"I am sorry you are making such a mess of everything," was Duncan'squiet reply.
But Captain Dettmar's mind was set on trouble.
"You know you are going to discharge me. You think you are too good toassociate with the likes of me--you and your wife."
"Kindly keep her out of this," Duncan warned. "What do you want?"
"I want to know what you are going to do!"
"Discharge you, after this, at Attu-Attu."
"You intended to, all along."
"On the contrary. It is your present conduct that compels me."
"You can't give me that sort of talk."
"I can't retain a captain who calls me a liar."
Captain Dettmar for the moment was taken aback. His face and lipsworked, but he could say nothing. Duncan coolly pulled at his cigar andglanced aft at the rising cloud of squall.
"Lee Goom brought the mail aboard at Tahiti," Captain Dettmar began.
"We were hove short then and leaving. You didn't look at your lettersuntil we were outside, and then it was too late. That's why you didn'tdischarge me at Tahiti. Oh, I know. I saw the long envelope when LeeGoom came over the side. It was from the Governor of California, printedon the corner for any one to see. You'd been working behind my back.Some beachcomber in Honolulu had whispered to you, and you'd written tothe Governor to find out. And that was his answer Lee Goom carriedout to you. Why didn't you come to me like a man! No, you must playunderhand with me, knowing that this billet was the one chance for me toget on my feet again. And as soon as you read the Governor's letter yourmind was made up to get rid of me. I've seen it on your face ever sincefor all these months.. I've seen the two of you, polite as hell to meall the time, and getting away in corners and talking about me and thataffair in 'Frisco."
"Are you done?" Duncan asked, his voice low, and tense. "Quite done?"
Captain Dettmar made no answer.
"Then I'll tell you a few things. It was precisely because of thataffair in 'Frisco that I did not discharge you in Tahiti. God knows yougave me sufficient provocation. I thought that if ever a man needed achance to rehabilitate himself, you were that man. Had there been noblack mark against you, I would have discharged you when I learned howyou were robbing me."
Captain Dettmar showed surprise, started to interrupt, then changed hismind.
"There was that matter of the deck-calking, the bronze rudder-irons, theoverhauling of the engine, the new spinnaker boom, the new davits, andthe repairs to the whale-boat. You OKd the shipyard bill. It was fourthousand one hundred and twenty-two francs. By the regular shipyardcharges it ought not to have been a centime over twenty-five hundredfrancs-"
"If you take the word of those alongshore sharks against mine--' theother began thickly.
"Save yourself the trouble of further lying," Duncan went on coldly."I looked it up. I got Flaubin before the Governor himself, and the oldrascal confessed to sixteen hundred overcharge. Said you'd stuck him upfor it. Twelve hundred went to you, and his share was four hundred andthe job. Don't interrupt. I've got his affidavit below. Then was when Iwould have put you ashore, except for the cloud you were under. You hadto have this one chance or go clean to hell. I gave you the chance. Andwhat have you got to say about it?"
"What did the Governor say?" Captain Dettmar demanded truculently.
"Which governor?"
"Of California. Did he lie to you like all the rest?"
"I'll tell you what he said. He said that you had been convicted oncircumstantial evidence; that was why you had got life imprisonmentinstead of hanging; that you had always stoutly maintained yourinnocence; that you were the black sheep of the Maryland Dettmars; thatthey moved heaven and earth for your pardon; that your prison conductwas most exemplary; that he was prosecuting attorney at the time youwere convicted; that after you had served seven years he yielded to yourfamily's plea and pardoned you; and that in his own mind existed a doubtthat you had killed McSweeny."
There was a pause, during which Duncan went on studying the risingsquall, while Captain Dettmar's face worked terribly.
"Well, the Governor was wrong," he announced, with a short laugh. "I didkill McSweeny. I did get the watchman drunk that night. I beat McSweenyto death in his bunk. I used the iron belaying pin that appeared in theevidence. He never had a chance. I beat him to a jelly. Do you want thedetails?"
Duncan looked at him in the curious way one looks at any monstrosity,but made no reply.
"Oh, I'm not afraid to tell you," Captain Dettmar blustered on. "Thereare no witnesses. Besides, I am a free man now. I am pardoned, and byGod they can never put me back in that hole again. I broke McSweeny'sjaw with the first blow. He was lying on his back asleep. He said, 'MyGod, Jim! My God!' It was funny to see his broken jaw wabble as he saidit. Then I smashed him... I say, do you want the rest of the details?"
"Is that all you have to say?" was the answer.
"Isn't it enough?" Captain Dettmar retorted.
"It is enough."
"What are you going to do about it?"
"Put you ashore at Attu-Attu."
"And in the meantime?"
"In the meantime..." Duncan paused. An increase of weight in the windrippled his hair. The stars overhead vanished, and the Samoset swungfour points off her course in the careless steersman's hands. "In themeantime throw your halyards down on deck and look to your wheel. I'llcall the men."
The next moment the squall burst upon them. Captain Dettmar, springingaft, lifted the coiled mainsail halyards from their pins and threw them,ready to run, on the deck. The three islanders swarmed from the tinyforecastle, two of them leaping to the halyards and holding by a singleturn, while the third fastened down the engineroom, companion andswung the ventilators around. Below, Lee Goom and Toyama were loweringskylight covers and screwing up deadeyes. Duncan pulled shut the coverof the companion scuttle, and held on, waiting, the first drops of rainpelting his face, while the Samoset leaped violently ahead, at the sametime heeling first to starboard then to port as the gusty pressurescaught her winged-out sails.
All waited. But there was no need to lower away on the run. Thepower went out of the wind, and the tropic rain poured a deluge overeverything. Then it was, the danger past, and as the Kanakas began tocoil the halyards back on the pins, that Boyd Duncan went below.
"All right," he called in cheerily to his wife. "Only a puff."
"And Captain Dettmar?" she queried.
"Has been drinking, that is all. I shall get rid of him at Attu-Attu."
But before Duncan climbed into his bunk, he strapped around himself,against the skin and under his pajama coat, a heavy automatic pistol.
He fell asleep almost immediately, for his was the gift of perfectrelaxation. He did things tensely, in the way savages do, but theinstant the need passed he relaxed, mind and body. So it was that heslept, while the rain still poured on deck and the yacht plunged androlled in the brief, sharp sea caused by the squall.
He awoke with a feeling of suffocation and heaviness. The electric fanshad stopped, and the air was thick and stifling. Mentally cursingall Lorenzos and storage batteries, he heard his wife moving in theadjoining stateroom and pass out into the main cabin. Evidently headingfor the fresher air on deck, he thought, and decided it was a goodexample to imitate. Putting on his slippers and tucking a pillow and
ablanket under his arm, he followed her. As he was about to emerge fromthe companionway, the ship's clock in the cabin began to strike and hestopped to listen. Four bells sounded. It was two in the morning. Fromwithout came the creaking of the gaff-jaw against the mast. The Samosetrolled and righted on a sea, and in the light breeze her canvas gaveforth a hollow thrum.
He was just putting his foot out on the damp deck when he heard hiswife scream. It was a startled frightened scream that ended in a splashoverside. He leaped out and ran aft. In the dim starlight he could makeout her head and shoulders disappearing astern in the lazy wake.
"What was it?" Captain Dettmar, who was at the wheel, asked.
"Mrs. Duncan," was Duncan's reply, as he tore the life-buoy from itshook and flung it aft. "Jibe over to starboard and come up on the wind!"he commanded.
And then Boyd Duncan made a mistake. He dived overboard.
When he came up, he glimpsed the blue-light on the buoy, which hadignited automatically when it struck the water. He swam for it, andfound Minnie had reached it first.
"Hello," he said. "Just trying to keep cool?"
"Oh, Boyd!" was her answer, and one wet hand reached out and touchedhis.
The blue light, through deterioration or damage, flickered out. As theylifted on the smooth crest of a wave, Duncan turned to look where theSamoset made a vague blur in the darkness. No lights showed, but therewas noise of confusion. He could hear Captain Dettmar's shouting abovethe cries of the others.
"I must say he's taking his time," Duncan grumbled. "Why doesn't hejibe? There she goes now."
They could hear the rattle of the boom tackle blocks as the sail waseased across.
"That was the mainsail," he muttered. "Jibed to port when I told himstarboard."
Again they lifted on a wave, and again and again, ere they could makeout the distant green of the Samoset's starboard light. But instead ofremaining stationary, in token that the yacht was coming toward them, itbegan moving across their field of vision. Duncan swore.
"What's the lubber holding over there for!" he demanded. "He's got hiscompass. He knows our bearing."
But the green light, which was all they could see, and which they couldsee only when they were on top of a wave, moved steadily away from them,withal it was working up to windward, and grew dim and dimmer. Duncancalled out loudly and repeatedly, and each time, in the intervals, theycould hear, very faintly, the voice of Captain Dettmar shouting orders.
"How can he hear me with such a racket?" Duncan complained.
"He's doing it so the crew won't hear you," was Minnie's answer.
There was something in the quiet way she said it that caught herhusband's attention.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that he is not trying to pick us up," she went on in the samecomposed voice. "He threw me overboard."
"You are not making a mistake?"
"How could I? I was at the main rigging, looking to see if any morerain threatened. He must have left the wheel and crept behind me. I washolding on to a stay with one hand. He gripped my hand free from behindand threw me over. It's too bad you didn't know, or else you would havestaid aboard."
Duncan groaned, but said nothing for several minutes. The green lightchanged the direction of its course.
"She's gone about," he announced. "You are right. He's deliberatelyworking around us and to windward. Up wind they can never hear me. Buthere goes."
He called at minute intervals for a long time. The green lightdisappeared, being replaced by the red, showing that the yacht had goneabout again.
"Minnie," he said finally, "it pains me to tell you, but you married afool. Only a fool would have gone overboard as I did."
"What chance have we of being picked up... by some other vessel, Imean?" she asked.
"About one in ten thousand, or ten thousand million. Not a steamer routenor trade route crosses this stretch of ocean. And there aren't anywhalers knocking about the South Seas. There might be a stray tradingschooner running across from Tutuwanga. But I happen to know that islandis visited only once a year. A chance in a million is ours."
"And we'll play that chance," she rejoined stoutly.
"You ARE a joy!" His hand lifted hers to his lips. "And Aunt Elizabethalways wondered what I saw in you. Of course we'll play that chance. Andwe'll win it, too. To happen otherwise would be unthinkable. Here goes."
He slipped the heavy pistol from his belt and let it sink into the sea.The belt, however, he retained.
"Now you get inside the buoy and get some sleep. Duck under."
She ducked obediently, and came up inside the floating circle. Hefastened the straps for her, then, with the pistol belt, buckled himselfacross one shoulder to the outside of the buoy.
"We're good for all day to-morrow," he said. "Thank God the water'swarm. It won't be a hardship for the first twenty-hour hours, anyway.And if we're not picked up by nightfall, we've just got to hang on foranother day, that's all."
For half an hour they maintained silence, Duncan, his head resting onthe arm that was on the buoy, seemed asleep.
"Boyd?" Minnie said softly.
"Thought you were asleep," he growled.
"Boyd, if we don't come through this--"
"Stow that!" he broke in ungallantly. "Of course we're coming through.There is isn't a doubt of it. Somewhere on this ocean is a ship that'sheading right for us. You wait and see. Just the same I wish my brainwere equipped with wireless. Now I'm going to sleep, if you don't."
But for once, sleep baffled him. An hour later he heard Minnie stir andknew she was awake.
"Say, do you know what I've been thinking!" she asked.
"No; what?"
"That I'll wish you a Merry Christmas."
"By George, I never thought of it. Of course it's Christmas Day. We'llhave many more of them, too. And do you know what I've been thinking?What a confounded shame we're done out of our Christmas dinner. Waittill I lay hands on Dettmar. I'll take it out of him. And it won't bewith an iron belaying pin either, Just two bunches of naked knuckles,that's all."
Despite his facetiousness, Boyd Duncan had little hope. He knew wellenough the meaning of one chance in a million, and was calmly certainthat his wife and he had entered upon their last few living hours--hoursthat were inevitably bound to be black and terrible with tragedy.
The tropic sun rose in a cloudless sky. Nothing was to be seen. TheSamoset was beyond the sea-rim. As the sun rose higher, Duncan rippedhis pajama trousers in halves and fashioned them into two rude turbans.Soaked in sea-water they offset the heat-rays.
"When I think of that dinner, I'm really angry," he complained, as henoted an anxious expression threatening to set on his wife's face. "AndI want you to be with me when I settle with Dettmar. I've always beenopposed to women witnessing scenes of blood, but this is different. Itwill be a beating."
"I hope I don't break my knuckles on him," he added, after a pause.
Midday came and went, and they floated on, the center of a narrowsea-circle. A gentle breath of the dying trade-wind fanned them, andthey rose and fell monotonously on the smooth swells of a perfect summersea. Once, a gunie spied them, and for half an hour circled about themwith majestic sweeps. And, once, a huge rayfish, measuring a score offeet across the tips, passed within a few yards.
By sunset, Minnie began to rave, softly, babblingly, like a child.Duncan's face grew haggard as he watched and listened, while in hismind he revolved plans of how best to end the hours of agony that werecoming. And, so planning, as they rose on a larger swell than usual,he swept the circle of the sea with his eyes, and saw, what made him cryout.
"Minnie!" She did not answer, and he shouted her name again in her ear,with all the voice he could command. Her eyes opened, in them flutteredcommingled consciousness and delirium. He slapped her hands and wriststill the sting of the blows roused her.
"There she is, the chance in a million!" he cried.
"A steamer at that, heading straight for us! By George, it's
a cruiser!I have it!--the Annapolis, returning with those astronomers fromTutuwanga."
*****
United States Consul Lingford was a fussy, elderly gentleman, and inthe two years of his service at Attu-Attu had never encountered sounprecedented a case as that laid before him by Boyd Duncan. Thelatter, with his wife, had been landed there by the Annapolis, which hadpromptly gone on with its cargo of astronomers to Fiji.
"It was cold-blooded, deliberate attempt to murder," said ConsulLingford. "The law shall take its course. I don't know how preciselyto deal with this Captain Dettmar, but if he comes to Attu-Attu, dependupon it he shall be dealt with, he--ah--shall be dealt with. In themeantime, I shall read up the law. And now, won't you and your good ladystop for lunch!"
As Duncan accepted the invitation, Minnie, who had been glancing outof the window at the harbor, suddenly leaned forward and touched herhusband's arm. He followed her gaze, and saw the Samoset, flag at halfmast, rounding up and dropping anchor scarcely a hundred yards away.
"There's my boat now," Duncan said to the Consul. "And there's thelaunch over the side, and Captain Dettmar dropping into it. If I don'tmiss my guess, he's coming to report our deaths to you."
The launch landed on the white beach, and leaving Lorenzo tinkering withthe engine, Captain Dettmar strode across the beach and up the path tothe Consulate.
"Let him make his report," Duncan said. "We'll just step into this nextroom and listen."
And through the partly open door, he and his wife heard Captain Dettmar,with tears in his voice, describe the loss of his owners.
"I jibed over and went back across the very spot," he concluded. "Therewas not a sign of them. I called and called, but there was never ananswer. I tacked back and forth and wore for two solid hours, then hoveto till daybreak, and cruised back and forth all day, two men at themastheads. It is terrible. I am heartbroken. Mr. Duncan was a splendidman, and I shall never..."
But he never completed the sentence, for at that moment his splendidemployer strode out upon him, leaving Minnie standing in the doorway.Captain Dettmar's white face blanched even whiter.
"I did my best to pick you up, sir," he began.
Boyd Duncan's answer was couched in terms of bunched knuckles, twobunches of them, that landed right and left on Captain Dettmar's face.
Captain Dettmar staggered backward, recovered, and rushed with swingingarms at his employer, only to be met with a blow squarely between theeyes. This time the Captain went down, bearing the typewriter under himas he crashed to the floor.
"This is not permissible," Consul Lingford spluttered. "I beg of you, Ibeg of you, to desist."
"I'll pay the damages to office furniture," Duncan answered, and at thesame time landing more bunched knuckles on the eyes and nose of Dettmar.
Consul Lingford bobbed around in the turmoil like a wet hen, while hisoffice furniture went to ruin. Once, he caught Duncan by the arm, butwas flung back, gasping, half-across the room. Another time he appealedto Minnie.
"Mrs. Duncan, won't you, please, please, restrain your husband?"
But she, white-faced and trembling, resolutely shook her head andwatched the fray with all her eyes.
"It is outrageous," Consul Lingford cried, dodging the hurtling bodiesof the two men. "It is an affront to the Government, to the UnitedStates Government. Nor will it be overlooked, I warn you. Oh, do praydesist, Mr. Duncan. You will kill the man. I beg of you. I beg, Ibeg..."
But the crash of a tall vase filled with crimson hibiscus blossoms lefthim speechless.
The time came when Captain Dettmar could no longer get up. He got as faras hands and knees, struggled vainly to rise further, then collapsed.Duncan stirred the groaning wreck with his foot.
"He's all right," he announced. "I've only given him what he has givenmany a sailor and worse."
"Great heavens, sir!" Consul Lingford exploded, staring horror-strickenat the man whom he had invited to lunch.
Duncan giggled involuntarily, then controlled himself.
"I apologize, Mr. Lingford, I most heartily apologize. I fear I wasslightly carried away by my feelings."
Consul Lingford gulped and sawed the air speechlessly with his arms.
"Slightly, sir? Slightly?" he managed to articulate.
"Boyd," Minnie called softly from the doorway.
He turned and looked.
"You ARE a joy," she said.
"And now, Mr. Lingford, I am done with him," Duncan said. "I turn overwhat is left to you and the law."
"That?" Consul Lingford queried, in accent of horror.
"That," Boyd Duncan replied, looking ruefully at his battered knuckles.