Auctioneer, will you kindly
proceed with the sale in the customary manner? I've other business to
attend to, and I can't afford to wait all night on men who don't know
their own minds.' And then she smiles at Burnett, as well--you know, one
of those fetching smiles, and damme if Burnett doesn't begin singing out:
'Goin', goin', goin'--last bid--goin', goin' for fifty-five
sovereigns--goin', goin', gone--to you, Miss--er--what name, please?'
"'Joan Lackland,' says she, with a smile to me; and that's how she bought
the _Martha_."
Sheldon experienced a sudden thrill. The _Martha_!--a finer schooner
than the _Malakula_, and, for that matter, the finest in the Solomons.
She was just the thing for recruits, and she was right on the spot. Then
he realized that for such a craft to sell at auction for fifty-five
pounds meant that there was small chance for saving her.
"But how did it happen?" he asked. "Weren't they rather quick in selling
the _Martha_?"
"Had to. You know the reef at Poonga-Poonga. She's not worth tuppence
on it if any kind of a sea kicks up, and it's ripe for a nor'wester any
moment now. The crowd abandoned her completely. Didn't even dream of
auctioning her. Morgan and Raff persuaded them to put her up. They're a
co-operative crowd, you know, an organized business corporation, fore and
aft, all hands and the cook.
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