Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas Part 17

"And I'd propose chicken wire instead of net," says I to Tom, noticing how the old gentleman bulked outboard. "He's putting a strain on that worse nor a live shark."

Tom said he thought so, too, and him and I put in half a day making the platform over, while Old Dibs crossed over to the graveyard and fluted away the rest of the afternoon. We waited for the full moon before getting it into the tree, for daytime was out of the question, and Tom and I managed it very well, and to both our satisfaction. The tropic moon is a whale of a moon, and you can almost see to read by it, and it wasn't the want of light that bothered us any. The trouble was more to get it level and lash it proper with zinc wire. But we finished it up in style, with a second coat of green paint everywhere except the bottom, and, though I do say it myself, it was as snug a little crow's nest, and as comfortable and strong, as though it had been made by people regularly in the business. We rigged the tackle, too, and tried out the Manila rope with the boatswain's chair, and would have sent up Old Dibs on a trial trip if we hadn't feared he'd never make another. So we let it go at that, he paying us one hundred dollars for our trouble, and expressing himself mighty well pleased.

I reckon perhaps he was, for we fixed up the attic, too, and had everything in train so that there wouldn't be no hitch when the time come. Tom got kind of sore waiting for it, for after having put so much work into the thing he naturally wanted to see it used, and it galled him to wait and wait, with nothing doing. But Old Dibs took it more cheerful, and minded a good deal less about its being wasted; and as the months run on, he seemed to think he was out of the woods, and perked up wonderful.

Not that he wasn't careful, of course, or that Iosefo let down on the preaching; for n.o.body could be sure what day or what minute the pinch mightn't come. He grew quite familiar with the attic part of it, scooting up there whenever we raised a sail, and remaining for days at a time when a ship was in port. We had a fair number of them, off and on--the missionary bark, the _Equator_, Captain Reid; the _Lorelei_, Captain Saxe; the _Ransom_, Captain Mins; the _Belle Brandon_, Captain Cole; the brigantine _Trenton_, in ballast, calling in to set her rigging; the cutter _Ulysses_, with supplies for Washington Island, and the Seventh-Day Adventist schooner _Pitcairn_, with her mate dying of some kind of sickness. They buried him ash.o.r.e, and then went out again, after giving us the precise date at which the world was coming to an end, and saying what a h.e.l.l of a poor millennium it was going to be for anybody save _them_! Oh, yes, the usual straggle of vessels that happened our way, with months between; and, once, the smoke of a steamer on the horizon.

Perhaps a matter of eighteen months altogether since Old Dibs first landed, and day followed day, like it might have gone on forever. One wouldn't have remarked any particular change in him, except that his rig was getting shabbier and the shine was coming off the stovepipe--and perhaps some improvement in the flute. This, an extra bulk, and a kind of contented look he hadn't wore before, was what life on the island had done for Old Dibs; and he branched out a bit in the line of household favorite, cutting kindling wood for Sarah, gutting fish, sc.r.a.ping cocoanut for the chickens; and the pair of them would sit and gossip for hours about the neighbors--how Taalolo had driven his wife out of doors, and the true inwardness of the king's quarrel with Ve'a, and why the Toto family was in ambush to cut off Tehea's nose. He could talk better native than I could, and he was made a pet of everywhere around the settlement, and there was seldom a pig killed but what they'd bring him the head out of respeck. Not that he wasn't as regular as ever at the graveyard; but he had kind of shook in, so to speak, and n.o.body gave a feast but what he sat at the right hand and divided honors with the pastor and the king.

One afternoon, from the bench, I heard them raise a cry of "_Pahi, Pahi_," and I run out of the copra-shed, where I was weighing, to see a schooner heading in. She was a smart-looking little vessel of fifty or sixty tons, and she come up hand over hand, making a running mooring off the settlement. Tom and I was waiting for her in a canoe, Old Dibs meanwhile climbing into the attic and dropping the trapdoor, with "Under Two Flags" and a lamp to support the tedium. That was getting to be routine now, and his last words were to buy all the books and papers we could lay our hands on, and not forget Sarah's list of stores she was out of. Bless my soul! he was always mindful of them things, and it was always _carte blanche_ in the trade room for anything she fancied.

Well, we climbed aboard, and they told us she was the Sydney pilot boat _Minnie_, under charter to two gentlemen aboard who had an option on one of Arundel's guano islands. They had struck a leak in their main water tank, and were in for repairs and filling up fresh.

Tom and me got more of a welcome than seemed quite right, captains usually being shortish with traders till the gaskets are on; but in this case it was all so d.a.m.n friendly that I nudged Tom and Tom nudged me. We all trooped below to have a drink in the cabin, and the two guano gentlemen were introduced to us, and likewise another they called their bookkeeper. All three of them were hulking big men, very breezy and well spoken, with more the manner of recruiting sergeants soft-sawdering you to enlist than the ways of people high up in business. Mr. Phelps, who took the lead, did several things to make me chew on, and he shivered over his "h's" like he had been brought up originally without any. He was so genial, that if you had any money in your pocket you would have held on tight to it, and taken the first opportunity to get out. And his big hearty laugh was altogether too ready and his manners too free, and when he clapped me on the back I felt glad to think Old Dibs was tight in his attic, and his tree in good running order.

"Very little company hereabouts?" he asked, filling up our gla.s.ses for the second round.

"Nothing but us two," says Tom.

"My wife's father is somewhere down this way," volunteered Mr. Phelps.

"You don't say!" says I, nudging Tom again under the cuddy table.

"A fine old gent," went on Mr. Phelps, "but he met misfortunes in the produce commission business, and had to get out very quiet."

"Too bad!" said I.

"It grieves my wife not to know where he is," continued Mr. Phelps, "she being greatly attached to her father, and him disappearing like that; and she told me not to grudge the matter of fifty pounds to find him."

"There's a lot of room in the South Seas to lose a produce commission merchant in," says I.

"Here's a likeness of him," says Mr. Phelps, taking a photograph out of his pocket, while four pairs of eyes settled on Tom and me like gimlets, and there was the kind of pause when pins drop.

"A very fine-appearing old gentleman," says I, starting in spite of myself when I saw it was a picture of Old Dibs.

"Give us a squint, Bill," says Tom, taking it out of my hands as bold as bra.s.s. And then: "I've seen that face somewhere; I know I have. Lord bless me, wherever could it have been?" And he looked at it, puzzled and recollectful, me holding my breath, and the rest of them giving a little jump in their seats.

Tom brought his fist down on the table with a blow that made the gla.s.ses ring.

"It was on the _Belle Brandon_!" he cried out, very excited. "A stout old party, fair complected, who played the flute."

"That's him!" cried Phelps, half-starting from his chair.

"I reckon he must be up Jaluit way," said Tom coolly, "Captain Cole being bound for the Marshalls at the time."

I could feel them shooting glances all around us.

"It's remarkable your friend here doesn't remember him," says the one they called Nettleship, indicating me with the heel of his gla.s.s.

"I didn't happen to get aboard the _Brandon_," says I. "What was I doing, Tom? I disremember."

"That was when you was laid up with boils," says Tom, as ready as lightning.

"So it was," says I.

"You didn't happen to pa.s.s any talk with him?" asks Mr. Phelps of Tom.

"Nothing particular," says Tom.

"Even a little might help us," says Mr. Phelps. "See if you can't remember."

"Oh! he said he was looking for a quiet place to end his days in,"

answers Tom.

"I wonder that this here island wasn't to his taste," says Mr.

Nettleship, with a quick look.

"Oh, it was," says Tom unabashed, "only Captain Cole broke in and said he knew a better."

By this time nearly all our heads were touching over the table, except the one they called the bookkeeper, who had run for a chart.

"Did he call the island by any particular name?" inquires Mr. Phelps.

"I think he said Pleasant Island," says Tom, "because I mind the old gentleman saying it must be a pleasant place with such a name and I said I had been there, but the holding ground was poor."

The bookkeeper laid the chart on the table, and the captain found Pleasant Island with his thumb.

He was about to say it was a ten days' run leeward, when he broke off sudden with "ouch" instead, being kicked hard under the table, and pretending it was the beginning of a cough instead.

"I'm looking for a change of weather at the full of the moon," remarks Tom, "and you'd be wise to take this good spell while it lasts."

I guess Tom overdid it this time, and I gave him h.e.l.l for it when we went ash.o.r.e, for I saw the change on Phelps's face, and that he suddenly suspicioned Tom was playing double.

"Business comes first," he says, rolling up the chart, "and though I would like to find him, just for my poor wife's satisfaction, I can't go wild-goose-chasing all over the Pacific for a woman's whim."

Tom was beginning to feel that he had overdone it, too, and roused more suspicion than he had laid; so he thought to make it up by losing interest in Old Dibs, and what was Fitzsimmons doing now, and was it true that John L. had retired from the ring? But he didn't seem to recover the ground he had lost, and I judged it a bad sign when we went up the companion for Phelps to say, kind of absent-minded, that he'd go two hundred and fifty pounds for his father-in-law, alive or dead--raising it to five hundred as we dropped over the side.

We pulled first to Tom's house, so as to divert suspicion, and from there I went along by myself to tip off the news to Old Dibs. When I had given the knocks agreed on, three sets of four, he drew back the trap, and asked very cheerful how I had made out with the books and papers.

"Good G.o.d, man, they're here!" says I.

"Who's here?" he asks, incredulous.

"A whole schooner of detectives from Sydney," says I. "They say they're buying guano islands, but there's already five hundred pounds out for you, dead or alive."

His great fat hand began to shake on the trap.

"Never you mind, Mr. Smith," I says rea.s.suring. "Tom will be due here at midnight, and then we'll run you up your tree."