m perfectly willing to give you what action you've
got coming to you. You've got two thousand pounds of action yet."

"Well, we'll play it," Deacon took him up. "You cut."

The game was played in silence, save for irritable remarks and curses
from Deacon. Silently the onlookers filled and sipped their long
Scotch glasses. Grief took no notice of his opponent's outbursts, but
concentrated on the game. He was really playing cards, and there were
fifty-two in the deck to be kept track of, and of which he did keep
track. Two thirds of the way through the last deal he threw down his
hand.

"Cards put me out," he said. "I have twenty-seven."

"If you've made a mistake," Deacon threatened, his face white and drawn.

"Then I shall have lost. Count them."

Grief passed over his stack of takings, and Deacon, with trembling
fingers, verified the count. He half shoved his chair back from the
table and emptied his glass. He looked about him at unsympathetic faces.

"I fancy I'll be catching the next steamer for Sydney," he said, and for
the first time his speech was quiet and without bluster.

As Grief told them afterward: "Had he whined or raised a roar I wouldn't
have given him that last chance. As it was, he took his medicine like a
man, and I had to do it."

Deacon glanced at his watch, simulated a weary yawn, and started to
rise.

"Wait," Grief said. "Do you want further action?"

The other sank down in his chair, strove to speak, but could not, licked
his dry lips, and nodded his head.

"Captain Donovan here sails at daylight in the _Gunga_ for Karo-Karo,"
Grief began with seeming irrelevance. "Karo-Karo is a ring of sand in
the sea, with a few thousand cocoa-nut trees. Pandanus grows there, but
they can't grow sweet potatoes nor taro. There aremabout eight hundred
natives, a king and two prime ministers, and the last three named are
the only ones who wear any clothes. It's a sort of God-forsaken little
hole, and once a year I send a schooner up from Goboto. The drinking
water is brackish, but old Tom Butler has survived on it for a dozen
years. He's the only white man there, and he has a boat's crew of five
Santa Cruz boys who would run away or kill him if they could. That is
why they were sent there. They can't run away. He is always supplied
with the hard cases from the plantations. There are no missionaries.
Two native Samoan teachers were clubbed to death on the beach when they
landed several years ago.

"