"The Wrecker" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stevenson Robert Louis)

"I am sure I don't know how you make this pay," he
said. "To begin with, she is too big for the trade, to
my taste; and then you carry so much style."

"I don't know that she does pay," returned Loudon.

"I never pretend to be a business man. My partner
appears happy; and the money is all his, as I told you;
I only bring the want of business habits."

"You rather like the berth, I suppose?" suggested
Havens.

"Yes," said Loudon; "it seems odd, but I rather do."

While they were yet on board, the sun had dipped; the
sunset gun (a rifle) had cracked from the war-schooner,
and the colours had been handed down. Dusk was
deepening as they came ashore; and the CERCLE
INTERNATIONAL (as the club is officially and
significantly named) began to shine, from under its low
verandahs, with the light of many lamps. The good
hours of the twenty-four drew on; the hateful,
poisonous day-fly of Nukahiva was beginning to desist
from its activity; the land-breeze came in refreshing
draughts; and the club-men gathered together for the
hour of absinthe. To the commandant himself, to the
man whom he was then contending with at billiards--a
trader from the next island, honorary member of the
club, and once carpenter's mate on board a Yankee war-
ship--to the doctor of the port, to the Brigadier of
Gendarmerie, to the opium-farmer, and to all the white
men whom the tide of commerce, or the chances of
shipwreck and desertion, had stranded on the beach of
Tai-o-hae, Mr. Loudon Dodd was formally presented; by
all (since he was a man of pleasing exterior, smooth
ways, and an unexceptionable flow of talk, whether in
French or English) he was excellently well received;
and presently, with one of the last eight bottles of
beer on a table at his elbow, found himself the rather
silent centre-piece of a voluble group on the verandah.

Talk in the South Seas is all upon one pattern; it is a
wide ocean, indeed, but a narrow world: you shall never
talk long and not hear the name of Bully Hayes, a naval
hero whose exploits and deserved extinction left Europe
cold; commerce will be touched on, copra, shell,
perhaps cotton or fungus; but in a far-away, dilettante
fashion, as by men not deeply interested; through all,