The Narrow Corner Read Online Free Page B

“It’s poison to me. How would you like never to be able to eat a thing or drink a thing, without knowin’ you was goin’ to suffer for it?”
    “Let me see what I can do for you,” said Dr. Saunders.
    He went to his medicine chest and mixed something in a glass. He gave it to the captain and told him to swallow it.
    “Maybe that’ll help you to eat your dinner in comfort.”
    He poured out whisky for himself and Fred Blake and turned on the gramophone. The young man listened to the record and his expression grew more alert; when it was finished he put on another himself and, slightly swaying to the rhythm, stood looking at the instrument. He stole one or two glances at the doctor, but the doctor pretended not to notice him. Captain Nichols, his shifty eyes never still, carried on the conversation. It consisted chiefly of enquiries about this man and that in Fu-chou, Shanghai and Hong-Kong, and descriptions of the drunken parties he had been on in those parts. Ah Kay brought in the dinner and they sat down.
    “I enjoy my food,” said the captain. “Not fallals, mind you. I like it good and I like it simple. Not a big eater. I never been that. A cut off the joint and a couple of veges, with a bit of cheese to finish up with, and I’msatisfied. You couldn’t eat anything simpler than that, could you? And then twenty minutes after—as regular as clockwork—agony. I tell you life ain’t worth livin’ when you suffer like what I do. D’you ever know old George Vaughan? One of the best. He was on one of the Jardine boats, used to go up to Amoy, he ’ad dyspepsia so bad he ’anged himself. I shouldn’t be surprised if I didn’t, too, one of these days.”
    Ah Kay was not a bad cook, and Fred Blake did full justice to the dinner.
    “This is a treat after what we’ve had to eat on the lugger.”
    “Most of it comes out of a tin, but the boy flavours it up. The Chinese are natural born cooks.”
    “It’s the best dinner I’ve had for five weeks.”
    Dr. Saunders remembered that they had said they had come from Thursday Island. With the fine weather they admitted that could not have taken them more than a week.
    “What sort of a place is Thursday Island?” he asked.
    It was the captain who answered.
    “Hell of a place. Nothin’ but goats. The wind blows six months one way and then it blows six months the other. Gets on your nerves.”
    Captain Nichols spoke with a twinkle in his eyes as though he saw what was at the back of the doctor’ssimple question and was amused at the easy way he tackled it.
    “Do you live there?” Dr. Saunders asked the young man, a guileless smile on his lips.
    “No, Brisbane,” he answered abruptly.
    “Fred’s got a bit of capital,” said Captain Nichols, “and ’e thought he’d like to ’ave a look-see on the chance ’e might find somethin’ in these parts ’e’d like to invest it in. My idea, that was. You see, I know all these islands inside out, and what I say is, there’s a rare lot of chances for a young fellow with a bit of capital. That’s what I’d do if I ’ad a bit of capital, buy a plantation in one of these islands.”
    “Do a bit of pearl fishing, too,” said Blake.
    “You can get all the labour you want. Native labour’s the only thing. Then you sit back and let other people work for you. Fine life, too. Grand thing for a young fellow.”
    The skipper’s shifty eyes, for a moment still, were fixed on Dr. Saunders’ bland face, and it was not hard to see that he was watching the effect of what he was saying. The doctor felt that they had concocted the story between them that afternoon. And when the skipper saw that Dr. Saunders did not swallow it, he grinned cheerfully. It was as if he took so much delight in lying that it would have spoilt it for him if you had accepted it as the truth.
    “That’s why we put in ’ere,” he went on. “There’s not much about these islands that old Kim Ching don’t know, and it struck me we might do