CHAPTER XXI
MONIZ SQUARES ACCOUNTS
THE arrival of His Majesty's gunboat Petrel in that part of the Sulu Sea was a particularly awkward event for Vasco Moniz. The Portuguese was a freebooter with no pretense of a conscience, a vagabond of the South Seas who had lived in a score of ways by trickery, robbery, extortionate trading and making illicit but highly profitable deals with the natives of various islands. He was a Pacific second-story man, differing from his city counterpart by the fact that he carried his life in his hands always, whether sleeping or waking, and that there was something of romance in his nomadic existence which appealed to his adventurous nature. But it was not only the vengeance or savagery of the black that Moniz had occasion to dread. From Singapore to Manila, from Timur even to Saigon, the centres where white men congregate were practically all barred to him. Moniz was a pariah, with the reputation of a thief—and worse. White men, by common consent, consider it the unforgiveable sin to supply firearms to the blacks in some places. A man sinks low before he sells trade gin
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