board to prevent that booze-soaked fat-head from getting to the shrine. Now you've changed your mind. I'd like to know why."
"The ring on that hand which my poor surgery gave you, Captain McTeague, would enable us to gain entrance to the inner shrine. You may be surprized to know the sea-pirates were led by a man sworn to protect the goddess of N'Yeng Sen with his life. It is possible the hand may cause you embarrassment, but it may on the contrary protect your life. I am sincere in saying that had not my own hands been trained in surgery, which is my lifework, I should have attempted to replace one with that hand, so great and far-reaching is the power of N'Yeng Sen and the jimat on the finger of that hand you wear."
Captain McTeague looked at the ring, crude gold, carved in symbols he did not recognize, set with a carved blue translucent stone.
"Blue jade, Captain McTeague, rarer and more valuable than a first-water diamond of equal size."
Captain McTeague impulsively held out the brown hand which Tai Hoong clasped. Then his face changed.
"The damn thing don't shake hands right!" he exclaimed.
"For many years it has used the secret clasp of N'Yeng Sen," explained Tai Hoong. "Do not attempt to train it otherwise."
"Well . . . about this trip to N'Yeng Sen . . ." And for an hour Captain McTeague pored over his charts assisted by the Chinese, whose knowledge of hidden lagoons and dark places on the New Guinea shore was astounding even to McTeague, who had traded there for years.
Once at sea again, Brigham drank a great deal and held ribald conversation with Klein and Schartz, the two companions he had brought, in whose company he seemed to feel more natural than with McTeague or Tai Hoong. Captain McTeague ignored much. Since the business of taking cured human skins was done, there was little use grousing. But he was hoping that Brigham would unpack his tricks in company of a band of Papuan savages. He said as much.
"The New Guinea warriors have black skins, Brigham, sort of rich, brown-black skins. They'd make nice foot-gear.
"It's this way," stated Brigham, warming to shop-talk, “I’ve been fig- uring the cost of this skin, for in- stance, and how many pairs of slippers it would cut. Even dance slippers, which take very little material, would come high considering what I paid to take this leather. Gad, I could have bought that woman for a wife real cheap, but her skin came high. Seems to me the best way would be to take wives."
"Regular Bluebeard," suggested Schartz laughing. "Fat wives will make the most boots."
"Depends. If they're flabby fat, the skin is soft in places. Say, I need a name for this leather, something snappy and not a give-away. They'd probably get fussy about human skins."
"Something like Birds of Paradise, eh?" asked Klein. "By the way, they get paradise plumes from New Guinea where we're going. Why not get the real thing there?"
"Too delicate and small for profit," said Brigham. "What about this N'Yeng Sen name? We have fur names like Caracid paws and bellies of unborn lamb. Why not 'Breasts of Paradise'?"
Captain McTeague rose and moved away with a glance of black disgust at the ribaldry which came.
The first sight of Papua crouched like a black panther on violet foaming seas seemed less menacing than these white men he carried. The fetid breaths of her dank river mouths was cleaner than his human cargo. And Papua, he remembered,
