hem and knew their value ranged from one hundred
to a thousand dollars each, while the several selected large ones went
far beyond.

"Oh, the pretties! the pretties!" Mrs. Hall cried, bending forward
suddenly and kissing them.

A few minutes later she arose to say good-night.

"It's good-bye," Grief said, as he took her hand. "We sail at daylight."

"So suddenly!" she cried, while Grief could not help seeing the quick
light of satisfaction in her husband's eyes.

"Yes," Grief continued. "All the repairs are finished. I can't get the
longitude of your island out of your husband, though I'm still in hopes
he'll relent."

Hall laughed and shook his head, and, as his wife left the room,
proposed a last farewell nightcap. They sat over it, smoking and
talking.

"What do you estimate they're worth?" Grief asked, indicating the spread
of pearls on the table. "I mean what the pearl-buyers would give you in
open market?"

"Oh, seventy-five or eighty thousand," Hall said carelessly.

"I'm afraid you're underestimating. I know pearls a bit. Take that
biggest one. It's perfect. Not a cent less than five thousand dollars.
Some multimillionaire will pay double that some day, when the dealers
have taken their whack. And never minding the seed pearls, you've got
quarts of baroques there. And baroques are coming into fashion. They're
picking up and doubling on themselves every year."

Hall gave the trove of pearls a closer and longer scrutiny, estimating
the different parcels and adding the sum aloud.

"You're right," he admitted. "They're worth a hundred thousand right
now."

"And at what do you figure your working expenses?" Grief went on. "Your
time, and your two men's, and the divers'?"

"Five thousand would cover it."

"Then they stand to net you ninety-five thousand?"

"Something like that. But why so curious?"

"Why, I was just trying----" Grief paused and drained his glass. "Just
trying to reach some sort of an equitable arrangement. Suppose I should
give you and your people a passage to Sydney and the five thousand
dollars--or, better, seven thousand five hundred. You've worked hard."

Without commotion or muscular movement the other man became alert and
tense. His round-faced geniality went out like the flame of a snuffed
candle. No laughter clouded the surface of the eyes, and in their
depths showed the hard, dangerous soul of the man. He spoke in a low,
deliberate voice.

"Now just what in hell do you