Chapter 14

Then--to get along with my yarn--he took the comforter off the bed, and setting it down flat on the floor, begun to cover it with double handfuls ranged in rows, till he had worked down the suit case to where he could lift it. He carried it over to the nearest trunk, placed it snug in the bottom, and started to load it up again from the stacks on the quilt. I don't know how long he took to do it, but it was quite a time, and he looked pretty well tired out when it was over, and he sat back in the rocker and rocked--me still glued at the winder--and he reached out for his flute and put it to his lips (though he didn't blow into it), and worked his fingers like he was playing a piece. After a time he laid it down, and drawing his dressing gown closer around him, took another go at filling up the trunks again with the paper packing.

This seemed a good time for me to skip, which I did more cautious than ever, my heart beating that loud I wonder he didn't hear me. I felt for my pipe in the dark, and went out under the stars to the edge of the lagoon, to think it all over. You might wonder what I had to do with it unless it was to make away with him and scoop the pool for me and Tom; but, as I said before, I wasn't that kind of a man, and millions wouldn't have made no difference. But I was in a sort of tremble for the old fellow himself, for what was he doing alone with it in the far Pacific, unless there were others after him, hotfoot?

Wherever there's a carcass there's sharks to eat it, though you may have sailed a week and not seen a fin; and human sharks have the longest scent of any, especially when they have the law on their side and courts of justice behind them. I wanted to keep the money in the family, so to speak, and I was not only unwilling to harm Old Dibs myself, but I didn't want no others to harm him neither.

I talked it over with Tom next morning, till the eyes nearly bulged out of his head. Tom was less of a pirate even than me, but he had to have his fling in fancy, being, as I said, one of them natural-born yarners, and he never got back to earth till we had poisoned Old Dibs (wavering between Rough on Rats and powdered glass), covered up all traces of the crime, divided the money equal, and sailed away West in his five-ton cutter, to bring up at last in one of the Line islands. After arranging it all to the last dot, even to the name of our ninety-ton schooner, and the very bank in Sydney where we'd lay the stuff in our joint names, he said there was only one thing to do, and that was to warn Old Dibs, and arrange some kind of a scheme to protect him.

"They are bound to run him down," said Tom. "A man that skips out with nothing, and a man that skips out with a quarter of a million, are in two different classes; and it wouldn't surprise me the least bit if there was six ships aiming for Manihiki simultaneous."

By the time I started back to find Old Dibs I was worked up to quite a fever, and I'd keep looking over my shoulder expecting every minute to see one of them six ships in the pass. He had finished breakfast and had gone, and so I followed him over to the weather side, where, as usual, he was sitting under his tarpaulin in the graveyard, tootling for all he was worth. He looked up, a little surprised to see me, and I guess ships were running through his head also, for that was his first question.

I sat down on a near-by grave.

"The fack is, Mr. Smith," I said, very meaningly, "you paid me a little visit last night and I paid you one."

"Oh, my God!" he said, turning whiter than paper, and the voice coming out of him like an old man's.

"There's no 'my God' about it," I said. "But me and Tom Riley's been talking it over, and we'd like to bear a hand to help you."

"It's mine," he said, very defiant, and trembling. "It's mine, every penny of it, and honest come by."

"No doubt," I said, "but would I be guessing wrong if there were others who didn't think so?"

"There _are_ others," he said at last, seeing, I suppose, that my face looked friendly, and realizing that me and Tom would hardly take this tack if we meant to massacre him in his sleep.

"Mr. Smith," I said, "you never had two better friends than Bill Hargus or Tom Riley."

He laid down his flute.

"I'd never feel in any danger with that good wife of yours about," he said. It didn't seem quite the right remark under the circumstance, but there was a power of truth back of it. That girl of mine was regularly struck on Old Dibs, and, being a Tongan, was full of the Old Nick, and would have bit my ear off if I had lifted my hand to him. The two of them had patched up an adoption arrangement, him being her father, and she used to play _suipi_ with him, and taught him to repeat Psalms in native. It's only another proof how women are the same everywhere, and how far it goes with them to be treated with a little respeck and consideration.

"You have a plan?" he says. "Well, Bill, what is it?"

"It's a plan to get a plan," I said. "What chance would you have as things are now?"

"Chance?" he inquires.

"You'd be in irons and aboard, before you'd know what had happened to you," I said.

He looked at me a long time and then heaved a sigh.

"I'd do for myself first," he said. "They'll never put me in the dock so long as I have a pistol and the will to use it on myself."

"I think me and Tom could improve on that," said I.

"This island's too small to hide in," he said. "No background," he said. "I was looking for a place where there was mountains and inland country--and maybe caves."

"You never could make a success of it by yourself," I said. "You couldn't in an island made to order, with electric buttons and trapdoors let into the granite. But me and you and Tom might, and if you've the mind to, we will."

He was kind of over his panic by this time, and I guess he saw the sense of it all.

"Bill," he said, "it's a weight off my mind to have you know the truth. Fetch along Tom, and I'll do anything you two say, for I've nearly split my old head trying to find a way out; but what could I do single handed?"

"Tom's a corker," I said. "He's got an imagination like a box factory. If I was in a tight place like yours, I'd sail the world around just to find Tom Riley."

"Let's call him in, then," he says, "for, as things are now, if they should strike this island, I'm a dead man!" And with that he took up his flute again and fluted very thoughtful and low, while I made a line for Tom's station.

Tom was as happy as a lawyer with his first case. He hurried along, with a bottle of beer in each pocket and a memorandum book to write in, and just gloried in the whole business. It was like one of his own yarns come true, and he had to pinch himself to make sure he wasn't dreaming. He took hold right off; and it was pleasant to watch Old Dibs setting back on a grave, with the comfortable air of a man that's being taken charge of by experts. I won't go into all that we arranged and didn't do, it being enough to say what we _did_, Tom beginning a bit wild about putting contact mines in the channel and importing a submarine boat from Sydney, and coming down gradual to what the poet calls human nature's daily food. This was, to rig a platform in a giant _fao_ tree that stood in the middle of the island, about three miles down the coast, and fix it up with food and things, for Old Dibs to camp in.

The idea was to hide him till dark in the attic of my house, and then to put him up the tree for as long as the ship stayed by us. Tom said I could easily stand off my house being searched for a few hours, even if it was a man-of-war that come, telling them they might do it to-morrow. Then Tom said we'd have to take Iosefo, the native pastor, into it part way, making him preach from the pulpit and order the people to deny all knowledge of Old Dibs if they were asked questions about him by strangers. Tom said the important thing was to gain the first day's start; for though it wasn't in reason to expect the whole island, man, woman, and child, to keep the secret, we might be pretty sure it wouldn't leak out under twenty-four hours. Then, last of all, we were to make away with all Old Dibs's trunks, packing what clothes he had, and that into camphor-wood chests, which would occasion no remark, specially if they were covered over on the top with trade dresses and hats, and such like.

Old Dibs liked it all tiptop, and, more than anything, Tom's honest, willing face; but he shied a bit when we walked along to the tree in question, and looked up sixty feet into the sky, where he was to hang out on his little raft.

"Good heavens, Riley!" he says, "do you take me for a bird, or what?"

But Tom talked him round, showing how we'd rig a boatswain's chair on a tackle, and a sort of rustic monkey-rail to keep him from being dizzy, and had an answer ready for every one of old Dibs's criticisms. Tom and me, having been seafaring men, couldn't see no trouble about it, and the only thing to consider serious was how much the platform might show through the trees, and whether or not the upper boughs were strong enough to hold. We went up to make sure, straddling out on them, and bobbing up and down, and choosing a couple of nice forks for where we'd lay the main cross-piece. Tom tied his handkerchief around a likely bough, to mark the place for the block and give us a clean hoist from below, and we both come down very cheerful with the prospect.

Old Dibs seemed less gay about it, and had thought up a lot of fresh objections; but Tom said there was only one thing to worry about, and that was whether the whole concern wouldn't show plain against the sky. We got off a ways to take a look, and very unsatisfying it was, too. A big, leafy tree seems a mighty solid affair, till you stand off and look right through it; and Old Dibs was for giving up the idea and trying the cellar, which was Tom's other notion. But the tree business appealed to Tom more, and he explained how we'd paint the contraption green, and how people, when they were walking, never looked up, but ahead; and how unwholesome a cellar would be, and likely to give Old Dibs the rheumatics; not to speak of pigs rooting him out, and no air to speak of.

"Then think of the view," said Tom, who was as happy as a sand boy and in a bully humor, "and so close to the stars, Mr. Smith, that you can pick them down for lights to your cigar!"

Old Dibs smiled a sickly smile, like he was unbending to a pair of kids.

"Have it your own way, then, Riley," says he, "but you're responsible for the thing being a success, and don't look for me to dance tight ropes or do monkey on a stick."

"I'd engage to put a cow up there," said Tom, not overpolite, though he meant no harm, "or a parlor organ, with the young lady to play it."

"Mr. Smith," said I, "you'll only need shut your eyes and trust to us, and take it all as it comes."

"Boys," said Old Dibs, kind of solemn and helplesslike, "you'll do the square thing by me, won't you? You won't sell an old man for blood money? You won't get me up there and then strike a trade with them that's tracking me down?"

You ought to have seen Tom Riley's face at that! I was afraid there would be a bust-up then and there. But all he did was to walk faster ahead, like he didn't care to talk to us any more, and gave us the broad of his back. Old Dibs ran after him and caught his arm, panting out he was sorry and all that, and how Tom was to put himself in his place, with the whole world banded against him. I felt sorry to see the old fellow eating dirt, and trotting along so fat and wheezy, with Tom almost pushing him off like a beggar, and it was like spring sunshine when Tom turned square around and said:

"Hell! that's all right, Mr. Smith." And I guess it was Old Dibs's face that needed watching, it was beaming and happy, specially when they shook hands on it, and we all three walked along abreast, like a father and his two sons on the way to the bar.

Tom didn't let grass grow under his feet, and he went at it all with a rush, beginning first of all with Iosefo, the Kanaka pastor. Natives are never so helpful and willing as when you're egging them on to do something they shouldn't, and he fell in with the preaching idea, and wanted to start right away. But they finally decided it had better be a monthly affair, so the natives shouldn't lose track of it, and Iosefo commenced the first Sunday. Anybody that gave away Old Dibs was to have his house burned in this world and his soul in the next; and Iosefo laid it on thick about our all loving him, and what a friend he has proved himself to the island; and when he reached the point where he announced that Old Dibs had contributed fifty dollars toward the fund for the new church, you could feel a rustle go through the whole congregation, and a general gasp of satisfaction. Iosefo drew a fancy picture of Judas hanging himself, and brought it up to date with Old Dibs, and what a scaly thing it was to do anyway. He let himself rip in all directions, even to the persecutions in what he called the White Country, which he said Old Dibs had endured for religion's sake, and how he had been thrown to the lions in the Colossium.

Old Dibs sat there as smug as smug, little knowing how the agony was being piled on his bald head; and just when Iosefo was making him cow the lions with a glance, Old Dibs took the specs off his nose and wiped them, while everybody was worked up tremendous to know whether he had been eat or not. Iosefo was no slouch when he once got his hand in, and carried it over to the next number like a story in a magazine, the Kanakas all going out buzzing, wishing it was Sunday week, and eyeing Old Dibs with veneration.

The platform was number two on the list, and me and Tom, with the measurements we had taken in the tree, made a very neat job of it, and painted it green topside and bottom. We laid it together in Tom's shed, and got in Old Dibs to see if it would fit him, which it did beautiful, being six foot six by two and a half. Tom explained we'd put a natty railing around it, likewise painted green, and carry a width of fine netting below, so that pillows or things shouldn't slip overboard. Tom was hurt at Old Dibs not being more enthusiastic, and finally said: "Hell! Mr. Smith, what are you sticking at?"

"It'll never sustain the coin," said Old Dibs, jouncing up and down on it like a dancing hippopotamus.

"You weren't meaning to take that up, too?" cries Tom.

"I thought that was part of the scheme?" said Old Dibs. "Why, you said a whole cow yourself. Didn't he, Bill?"

This was a facer for Tom, but all he asked was how much money there was.

"It weighs hundreds of pounds," said Old Dibs, very sly, and not wanting to name figgers.

We neither of us could very well blame the old gentleman for not wanting to trust us with a quarter of a million dollars while he was up a tree like a canary bird; and so Tom or I didn't say what was in our minds, which was to bury it somewheres. In fact, there was a longish silence, till I suggested using some two-inch iron pipe I had at home, instead of the light boat spars Tom had cut for the purpose.

"And as for the money," said I, "why not have a locker for it at each end, with the weight resting against the forks, and maybe a little room extra for Mr. Smith's toothbrush and toilet tackle?" I minded the size of the suit case I had last seen the stuff in, and showed Tom about what was wanted.

"But that'll cut him off at each end," objected Tom, looking at Old Dibs like he was measuring him for a coffin, "and you know yourself six foot six is the most we can allow."

"Oh, I don't mind shortening up a bit," said Old Dibs, laying down to show how easy it might be done, and eager to be accommodating.

"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 nobody 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 ashore, and then went out again, after giving us the precise date at which the world was coming to an end, and saying what a hell 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, scraping 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 nobody 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 damn 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 glasses 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 brass. 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 glasses 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 glass.

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