“Wa’ss mallah, Mis’ Le’llyn?” he asked.  “Ev’ybody fliend fo’ you.  Nobody makee tlouble fo’ you ’bout Davie.  My think ’m dlinkee too muchee, too muchee vahine, maybe play cart, losee too muchee flanc.  He thlinkee mo’ bettah finish.”

The words of Fung Wah were poison in the ears of Llewellyn.  He leaned forward and, raising his forefinger, pointed it at the Chinese.

“Aue!  You hold your damned yellow mouth!” he said huskily.  “I’ll get out of the islands if you people keep up this any longer.  I’m sick of it all.  That old liar Morton has made my good name black in Tahiti.  Everybody knows the Llewellyns.  God damn him!  I ought to have killed him when he threatened me in the Tiare!”

He took my untouched glass of Dr. Funk, and gulped the mixture, nervously.  Then he stood up unsteadily.

“I don’t get any sleep,” he said, as if to himself, wearily.  “I’m going to my shop and lie down.”

He moved heavily down the stairs, and we breathed relief.

“Too muchee Pernoud!” Fung Wah commented.

“No, Fung Wah, you’ve sized ’im wrong,” answered Lying Bill. “’E’s seein’ things.  ‘E’s put enough absint’ down his throat, but ’he’s proper used to that.  Let’s take the matter up, an’ consider it like ol’ Raoul, the lawyer, did when Murray killed the gendarme at Areu.  David’s a young kid, an’ wild, an’ without any good home like you an ’me ’ve got, an’ runnin’ round the Barbary Coast in Frisco, with those bloody vampires there.  ’Is uncle, Morton, is afraid ’e’ll get the ’abit, and wants to sen’ ’im pretty far.  Well, ’e remembers ’e was in Tahiti forty years before, an’ ‘e been dealin’ in a way in vanilla with ol’ Llewellyn’s ’ouse ’ere.  So ‘e makes arrangements to put ten thousan’ dollars in with our friend that ‘s jus’ gone out, and buy the kid a interest in the business.  Down comes David, and Llewellyn takes a shine to ‘im, an’ soon they’re thick as thieves.  I see it all between voyages.  It’s the cinema, the prize-fight, the upaupa, the women, an’ the bloody booze, day an’ night.  The vanilla business goes to hell or to Fung Wah or some other Chink.  David blows in all ‘is bleedin’ capital, ’e busts in ’is ‘ealth, an’ may be, ‘e’s afraid o’ somepin’ worse.  ‘E gets a bloody funk, an’ goes to Llewellyn’s desk an’ gets the gun.  Then ’e writes a letter to ‘is uncle in Frisco, an’ goin’ out on the step, ’e blows out ’is brains.  I’m on the schooner, so I can’t get any blame.”

Captain Pincher lit his pipe, and the glasses were refilled.

McHenry attempted to pick up the thread of the tragedy, and began: 

“Me, too, I’m with Bill drivin’ the Fetia for Nuka-Hiva when David croaks himself.  I drank as much as he did ashore, and I ’m no slouch with the vahines; but I can hold my booze, I can.”

Lying Bill, with his drink down, and his pipe smoking, resumed, with no attention to McHenry, and a withering glance at Fung Wah, who was bored and walked over to the wall to glance at the barometer.