But you see, that isn't
the point. The point is, here's where we make a hit. It's
professional with me. It's reputation. It's the chance of a lifetime."
I say: "But where's the chance?"
"We'll see. But J. R.'s been the one white man so far. Now we're
three to one. If he can usurp a crown, I don't see but what we can
get up an insurrection."
The village was a long row of huts built of bamboo and big brown
leaves, and stretched up and down the valley. There was a large hut
with two doors opposite us, and sitting on mats in front was a fat
man with little bones stuck at angles in his grizzled hair. He wore a
pink shirt with studs and a pair of carpet slippers, and around his
neck a lot of glass pendants from a chandelier, and he looked surly
and sleepy. I says:
"You can leave me out. I think you ought to take the offer. If you
slip up, the king'll hang you for treason. If he's the government
here, he's got a right to say what the law is. I'm going back to the
ship. You needn't ask me for backing, for you won't get it."
We stopped beside the fat man, and I asked him if he hadn't been one
of the rival candidates, thinking it might be the old one with the
chicken bones that spoke English; and he set to work swearing, so I
knew it was; and I judged from the style he swore in he'd been
intimate one time with seamen, and I judged; too, he felt
dissatisfied.
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