Old Dibs

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Title:     Old Dibs
Author: Lloyd Osbourne [More Titles by Osbourne]

His beginnings was a mystery, where he come from a conjecture, and his business in Manihiki Island one of them things that bothered a fellow in his sleep and yapped at his heels when he was awake. Captain Corker had picked him up at Penrhyn, and the trader there said he had been landed from a barkentine, lumber laden, from Portland, and from there back there was a haze on his past thicker than Bobby Carter's. Leastways, with Bobby there was his forty-five different stories to account for the leg-iron scars on his ankles, but with Old Dibs you hadn't even that to chew on. Nothing but five large new trunks and the clothes he stood in. Remarkable clothes, too, they were, for a coral island in the mid Pacific, being invariably a stovepipe hat and a Prince Albert coat, with trousers changing from pearl gray to lead color, with stripes, till you'd think he'd melt!

He was a fine man to look at, about sixty years of age, very portly and pleasant spoken, and everything he said sounded important, even if it was only about the weather or why cocoanut milk always gave him cramps. He said his name was Smith. People who change their names seem always to change it to Smith, till you wonder sometimes they don't choose Jones, or maybe Patterson, or Wilkins. But you'll notice it is Smith every time, though we always called him Old Dibs, because of the money that he had and threw around so regardless.

My first sight of him was on the front porch, mopping his forehead, and asking whether he might have board and lodging by the week. I told him that we hardly carried style enough for a gentleman like him, but all we had he was welcome to--and if not too long--for nothing. He seemed pleased at this, and more pleased still when he looked over our big bedroom and noticed my wife's smiling, comely face. She's only a Kanaka girl, but I wouldn't trade her for a million. And he laid down a shining twenty-dollar gold piece and asked if that would do every Tuesday?

Now I am as fond of money as any man, but I'm not a pirate, and so I said it was too much. But he wouldn't take no denial, and flung it down on the trade-room counter again, saying he counted it settled. Then I turned to with his trunks, told my wife to bundle out into the boatshed, and opened beer.

"Making a long stay, sir?" said I.

"I hardly know, Bill," he said. (I had told him my name was Bill.) "I hardly know, Bill," and with that he heaved a tremendous sigh.

"We don't often have visitors here," I said. "The last was eighteen men of the British bark Wolverine, in boats, from French Frigate Shoals, where they were cast away."

"I'm looking for a quiet place to end my days in," he says.

"Well, I guess you've found it," I says.

"It looks as though I had, Bill," he answers, gazing seaward where the palms was bending in the trade breeze and there was nothing but the speck of Captain Corker's schooner beating out. I could see he was pretty downhearted, and though I set the music box going to cheer him and asked if he fancied a nice mess of gulls' eggs for supper, it wasn't no good, and finally he went into his room and set out the rest of the day on one of the trunks.

I went along the same evening to talk it over with Tom Riley, the other trader in Manihiki, who, in spite of our being in opposition and all that, was more like my own born brother than a rival in business. We never let down the price of shell or copra on each other, and lined up shoulder to shoulder if a third party tried to break in, and so we had enough for both of us and a tidy bit over. Tom was afire to hear all about Old Dibs, and had been getting bulletins the whole afternoon from the Kanakas, down to the twenty dollars and the five trunks, and even the way he sighed.

Tom knew right away he was a defaulter, and said we were in powerful luck to have got him. It was fine of Tom to take it like that, for what luck there was was mine, and he said he'd help out with chickens and fresh fish and some extra superior canned stuff he had, so that Old Dibs would be comfortable and want to stay. Tom was a good deal like that professor who could make a prehistoric animal out of one prehistoric bone, and then, when later on they discovered the whole beast entire, it was head and tail with the one he had drawn on the blackboard. And by the time the square-face had made a second round, Tom's fancy had flown higher than a yellow-back novel, Old Dibs being dead, blessing me with his last breath and making me the heir of all his riches!

Tom walked home with me, still talking, for we had now bought a ninety-ton schooner with my legacy, me captain and him supercargo, and we had taken out French naturalization papers so we might be free of the Paumotu and Tubuai groups. When we said good night, whispering so as not to disturb Old Dibs, who was snoring out serene, it had grown to be a fleet, with headquarters at Papiete, and a steam service to 'Frisco! We were a pair of boys, both of us, and could make squid taste like lamb chops just by telling ourselves it was so!

I reckon Old Dibs was a little suspicious of me and Tom, and small blame to him for that, the Islands being pretty full of tough customers, with never no law nor order nor nobody to appeal to in trouble unless it was your gun. He made me put a stout bolt on his door and chicken wire over the windows, and always slept with the lamp burning in his room; and it was noticeable, too, that he never cared to wander far away from the house. He was given to playing the flute in the stern of an old whaleboat, which was drawn up near the station with a cocoanut shelter over it. He never went anywhere, except to the native pastor's (Iosefo his name was). I suppose he felt a kind of protection in him--Iosefo being the nearest thing to an official in the island--and he made himself very solid in that quarter, giving to the church lavish and going there every Sunday. He always come back from them visits with a ruminating look in his eye, and the first thing he did was to make a bee line for his room, like somebody might have been tampering with his trunks.

Finally one day he took me aside and said: "Bill, that Iosefo is a very agreeable man, and if it would be the same to you, I'd like to have him a little about the house."

"Why, Mr. Smith," I said, "you needn't have troubled to ask me that; any friend of yours is welcome, I am sure, and I never saw no harm in Iosefo, even if he is a missionary."

I thought he meant to have the fellow in to talk with him or play checkers, to while away the time that hung so heavy on his hands. But it wasn't this at all--except for a halfway pretense at the beginning. No; he paid Iosefo ten dollars a week, for what do you think? To sit on one of his trunks (the trunk, I reckon) from seven in the morning till six at night, barring service time Sundays. Yes, sir; nothing else than a squatting sentry, mounting guard over the boodle inside the trunk and protecting it from me! I wonder what the home missionary society would have said to see Brother Iosefo yawning all day on the top of a trunk, or writing his sermon on his knee, Saturdays!

At first I felt pretty hot about it, for it smacked too much of setting a thief to catch a thief, or at least offsetting the pastor and me like the compensating idea of a ship's chronometer; but my wife liked the respectability it give us before the natives; and Tom said my resenting it would be like putting the cap on my head. So I acted like I didn't give a whoop, the one way or the other.

And then it wasn't easy to be anything but fond of Old Dibs, for he was a nice man to live with, never turning up his nose at the poor food we give him, and always so kind and polite to Sarah, my wife, that she fairly idolized him. He was a real gentleman through and through, and if his money (he called it his "papers," his valuable "papers") weighed heavy on his mind, I guess I'd have been no better in his shoes, having to trust to strangers who might cut your throat. He had the whole island to roam over now, instead of being cooped up like a chicken in a coop, and we all noticed what a change in him it made for the better, throwing off flesh, and not panting so heavy between the spells of his flute, and walking with his head in the air like the island belonged to him.

He wasn't much of a fluter, playing mostly from notes, and often picking them out so slow that you'd forget what the tune began like. He despised simple things like "Way Down Upon the Suwanee River," and the difficult things seemed to despise him! But he stuck at it indefatiguable, and blew enough wind through his flute to have sailed a ship. After breakfast in the morning, which he took in his panjammers like me, he would dress himself up nice in his Prince Albert, give his topper a wipe, and start away with the flute and a roll of music in a natty little case, like he was off to the Bank for the day. The only thing that ruffled him any was the children, about eighty of them, who always went along, too, and set in a circle around him when he played. I told him they'd soon tire of tagging after him, which he said he was mighty glad to hear; but if it was flies, they couldn't have been more pertinacious. I spoke to the king about it, and Old Dibs he complained to Iosefo, but it only seemed to whoop it up and add to the procession. The king said if he'd just flute in one place, he would put a taboo around it which neither children nor grown-ups would cross; but Old Dibs said that the looking on, even from a distance, would be quite as disturbing as being sprawled all over; and so the children followed him unabated.

Then I had a happy thought, and suggested the graveyard! This was a walled-in inclosure, perhaps a hundred feet each way, on the weather side of the island, and on a windy day, with the surf thundering in, it was the lonesomest spot where a man could find himself. The natives left it alone at all times, except to bury somebody, and none of them came nearer to it than they could help. The Kanakas have a powerful dread of spirits, and even in the daytime they'd give the place a wide berth. The walls, too, being about seven feet high, prevented the children from peeking in, except at the gateway, which was so narrow that it was easy to get out of view.

Old Dibs perked up at this and cottoned to the idea tremendous; and the graveyard soon become his regular stamping ground, except when there was a funeral. He rigged up a little shelter for himself in the center, with a music stand I made for him out of scantling; and often he took his lunch in his pocket and spent the whole day. Not a child ventured to show himself, and he had it as much to himself as though he owned it; and he could lay his stovepipe down now without any fear of its being greased up or sat on. It led to his asking a raft of questions about the natives and their superstitions, and how none of them ventured to go near the place unless in a big party. He came back to that again and again, and always with the same interest. I ought to have suspected what was running in his head, but I didn't. In fack, we had all settled down now like we had always lived together, and I didn't bother any more about him, or what he said or did, than if he had been my wife's father! It was a good deal like having a rich uncle to stay with you, and after the first excitement you took it all as a matter of course.

Even Iosefo, sitting on the trunk in the bedroom, became one of them things that ran into habit; and in some ways it was a good idea, too, for it brought custom to the store, what with the deacons coming over to talk about church affairs, and the Committee on Ways and Means meeting there regular. Even the gold twenty every week settled down in the same channel of routine, and I didn't bite it any more, as I used to do, nor hold it in my hand wondering where it come from. I just put it away with the rest and thought no more about it. The only concern of me and Sarah was to feed up the old fellow to the best of our ability and try and make him pleased.

We had been running along like this for I don't know how long, when one night, toward the small hours, a singular thing happened. I was sleeping very light, and I woke up all of a sudden and saw Old Dibs standing in the doorway! He had a candle in his hand and bulked up enormous in his red silk dressing gown, and there was a wild look on his unshaved face.

I held my breath and watched him through my half-shut eyes--watched him for quite a spell, till he softly tiptoed away again in his naked feet, and I heard the door close behind him in the house. I waited a long while wondering what to do, and what there could be in the boatshed to bring him out at such an unlikely hour. At first I was for getting my rifle and sitting up the balance of the night; but then, as I waked up more and tried to think it out, it seemed that he had a better right to be afraid of me than me of him. It couldn't be to do me no harm, I reckoned, but probably to assure himself that I was asleep.

He was plainly up to something, and it was equally plain he didn't want me to know it. So I got out of bed--if you can call a stack of mats and a schooner's topsail a bed--and lit out to see what was doing. It was no good trying to get into the house, for Old Dibs had nailed the keys and handed them out every morning through the winder when I went to take him his shaving water. But the curtains of the bedroom weren't extra close, and if I could get up on the veranda without too much of a creaking I knew I could see in all right. There's a lot of cat in a sailor, even to the nine lives and the dislike of getting wet, and I was soon on my knees at the sill, taking in the performance.

The room was lit up as usual, and all the big five trunks were open, with Old Dibs diving into them like he was packing for the morning train. Leastways, that was my first thought; the second was, that something stranger than that was up, and that people didn't usually go traveling with an outfit of pinkish paper cut into shavings. You've seen them, haven't you?--the kind of packing they put into music boxes, fine toys, and the like, flummoxy twisted paper ravelings that protect the varnish and have no weight to speak of. Well, that was what was in them trunks, and Old Dibs was pawing it out till it stuck up in the room, yards high, like a mountain. Occasionally he seemed to strike something harder than paper--something that would take both his hands to lift--and it was only a little clinking canvas bag that big.

Money? Of course it was money! And he was stacking it in a leather dress-suit case laid on the floor next his bed.

You could see he was nervous by the way he kept looking behind him; and once, when a rat ran across the attic, he jumped awful and the whole floor shook. It was a queer sensation to look right into a man's eyes and him not see you, which I did with Old Dibs again and again as he'd stop and listen. I ought to have said that one of the trunks was clothes all right, but even here there was three or four bags of coin, which he got out and added to the others.

Then he counted the bags and tried to turn the top of the suit case on them, but couldn't manage it. He arranged them first this way and then that way, but there was always about a dozen outstanding. The canvas itself was very coarse, and there was lots to spare, the slack being turned over and over, and tied with heavy twine extra. Then he took them all out, and slitting them open, just let the stuff rip naked.

Lord! but it was a dandy sight, a dazzle of double eagles cascading like a river, and so swift that you couldn't pretend to count them! He seemed satisfied to go on like that, cutting one open after the other, till the suit case brimmed up solid. There was fifty-eight bags in all, and the Lord only knows how much in each; but, as I said, it took both his hands to lift a single one. I reckon I didn't know there was so much money in all the world, and it came over me afresh how fond I was of Old Dibs, and how good I was going to be to him.

When the last bag was emptied he thought he'd put back the suit case into one of the trunks, never recollecting that he might as well have tried to lift a locomotive. Then he laid hands on just the handle at one end, and he couldn't even shift it. You disremember how heavy gold is, seeing so little of it, and counting a hundred dollars a fortune. But he had there, considering the trunks weighed the usual amount, say about a hundred and fifty pounds each, and gold at nearly twenty dollars an ounce--well, the next day Tom worked it out to about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

Think of it! With nothing between it and me but some chicken wire and an old gentleman in a dressing gown! It would have seemed a snap to some people, but I never made a dishonest dollar in my life--except in the way of trade, and then it was to natives (who water copra on you and square the difference); and he was in no more danger of harm than if it had been Lima beans.

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."

"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 pass 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 hell for it when we went ashore, 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 God, 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 reassuring. "Tom will be due here at midnight, and then we'll run you up your tree."

But that didn't seem to soothe him any, and he quavered out he would be better where he was. But I said they'd rummage the whole island upside down before they were done, and all he had to do was to lay low, not worry, and let me and Tom handle the thing for him.

He reached down his hand through the trap, and I shook it, he saying, "God bless you, Bill--God bless you!" And then it went shut, and I heard him blow out the lamp.

The next step was to take my old girl into the secret, she being a Tongan, as I've already said, and as true as steel. She didn't say much, but I guess it would have done Old Dibs good to have seen her eyes flash, and the way her teeth grit, and how quick she was to understand her part--which was, to pack his clothes in camphor-wood chests under a top dressing of trade. Old Dibs made no bones about giving her the keys, while I took it on myself to tell Iosefo the enemy had arrived, and he'd better move about the village warning everybody of the fack. It was well I did so, for Phelps and Nettleship and the rest come ashore soon afterwards with their pockets full of trifles for the children and the girls, and they strolled about the settlement, stopping to rest and drink cocoanuts in the different houses. Phelps had brought the photograph along and showed it right and left, asking if they had ever seen anybody like that. I guess some of them would have cried out if it hadn't been for the pastor joining the party, like he wanted to do the honors of the island, telling the natives beforehand about the photograph, and shooing off the children when they come too close to it. The whites probably thought he was talking what nice folks they were, for he had a kind of bland missionary way of talking, though he was really calling them the sons of Belial, and saying how the person who gave Old Dibs away would have his house burned and go to hell.

The pastor did yeoman's service that day, and at sundown they all went back to their ship, very grumpy and dissatisfied, returning no wiser than when they'd come. Iosefo held a service afterwards to rub it in, and the king spoke at it, and likewise the chiefs, and so in our different ways we all pulled together for the common good. They had quite a jollification that night on the schooner, singing songs and playing some kind of a hurdy-gurdy on deck, and the sound of it come over the water very pleasant to hear. I sneaked off in a canoe toward ten o'clock, to make sure it wasn't a blind, but there was no misdoubting what they were up to. They were all drunk, and getting drunker, and I couldn't but think what a poor, tipsifying set of sleuths they were, and how different from Sherlock Holmes in the book. I lay for nearly an hour under their quarter, to hear what I could hear, and all I got was the odds and ends of some smutty stories, and once being very near spit on the head.

When I got back to the station there was Tom to meet me, it being eleven now, and the village fast asleep. We overhauled the gear to make sure it was all in order, Sarah making up a basket of provisions for the old man, together with his toothbrush, comb, panjammers, blanket, a demijohn of water, and a bottle of gin. She said he had eaten no dinner, groaning and carrying on awful, wanting her to shoot him with his pistol and end it all. But he seemed to have pulled himself together by the time we were ready, for he let himself down from the attic quite spry, and made us all laugh by the remarks he passed. But one could see he just forced himself to do it, and his face looked powerful haggard and flabby in the lantern light, and he moved queer on his legs, like a push would have sent him over.

I had a little two-wheeled truck that I used about the store to run bags of shell about in, and copra, and on this we put the treasure, eight bags of it, each one as heavy as could be lifted comfortably. Old Dibs insisted on cutting one open and serving us out a double handful each, not forgetting a share for Tom's wife as well as mine, and saying, "Take it, and God bless you, my dear, kind friends!" We dropped it into my tool chest, and threw the key on the floor of the bedroom, meaning to divide up equal later on.

We rigged a sort of rope harness to the truck, giving Tom the handles to steer by, while Old Dibs, Sarah, and me did tandem in front. The boatswain's chair and the coil of Manila rope were lashed down on the load, as well as the basket of provisions, Sarah carrying the demijohn in her hand, Old Dibs the gin and "Under Two Flags," while I led the way with the lantern.

My, but we must have made a queer sight as we plowed through the darkness, Tom bearing down on the handles and fighting to keep the truck on an even keel, Old Dibs grampussing along as wheeler, and Sarah and me tugging like battery mules! Of course everybody knows that gold is heavy, but when you run into the hundred thousands it becomes pig-iron heavy, cannon heavy, house-and-lot-and-barn heavy! It nearly pulled the hearts out of us to keep that truck moving, specially in the sand before we struck a harder going.

I thought time and again it was going to prove the death of Old Dibs. He was always laying down in his harness like a done-up Eskimo dog in the pictures, and having to be fanned alive again. But when we'd propose to cut him out, he'd say No, and stagger to his feet, showing a splendid spirit and cart-horsing ahead till his poor old breath came in roars.

It was a thankful moment when we got to the tree, where me and Tom, after a spell of rest, jumped in together with a will. It was no slouch of a job to get that tackle in position, the block being iron shod and heavy, the rope inch Manila, and the night as black as the pit of Tophet. Tom went aloft first, with a coil of light line, having to feel his way for the place we had marked with the handkerchief, and threatening more than once to come down quicker than he had gone up. The handkerchief had rotted off, or blown away long since, and it bothered Tom not a little to find where it had been. But at last he did so, dropping his line for the lantern, according to the plan we had arranged beforehand, so as to avoid all shouting and noise. When he had placed the lantern to his satisfaction, the line came straggling down again for the block and the gear to make it fast with, and when this was done the inch Manila went up, and everything was ready.

It showed how well Tom and I had thought it out, that there wasn't a single hitch, except for the lantern blowing out and Tom having no matches, I going up to see what was delaying him, and having none neither. Then we changed places, Tom being a heavier man to pull, and I remaining aloft to handle the freight as it came along. They made the boatswain's chair fast below, and sent her up with the first load--two bags of coin--getting it on a level with the platform by the lantern marking the place. I stood on the platform and had no trouble in yanking the stuff in; and this went right along like a mail steamer, till it was all up, and it came old Dibs's turn.

But he just took one look at the boatswain's chair, and said "Nit," laying down on the ground when they tried to persuade him into it, and rolling over and over in desperation. We argufied over him for an hour, and it seemed all to no purpose, he refusing to budge an inch, saying he weighed two hundred and twenty pounds, and was better off in the attic.

Time was running away on us, and me and Tom got tired of saying the same things over and over, and always getting the same answers, and finally we lost our tempers, and said we'd go home. Then he said he'd come home, too, and we said No, we had washed our hands of him. Then he said he was only a poor old man and would blow his brains out, and we said he might, if he wanted to. Then, when we had gone about twenty paces, he come lumbering after us, saying, "For God's sake, stop!" and swearing he would go up peaceful, and make no more trouble.

We tied him in like a baby in a high chair, I going up to receive him, while my wife and Tom laid on to the rope with a yeo-heave-yeo under their breaths. All the fight had clean gone out of him, and the only thing he did was to squeal a little when he bumped against the trunk, and tried to fill up with air to make himself lighter. But he reached the top all right, and I landed him very careful, he squatting down on the floor and saying, "Oh, my God!" I was too busy clearing away, and letting the block down to Tom, for me to hear much else he said, but when I was through and went to take a last look at him, he seemed quite snug and contented, and glad he had come. He shook hands very grateful, looking for me to come back the following night and report, I to make an owl signal like we had agreed on previously.

I wished him happy dreams, and come down, all three of us setting out for home with the truck and the gear, my wife in a tantrum at our having threatened to desert Old Dibs when he acted so cowardly. Tom made it worse by saying the Kanakas were losing all respeck for whites, and if he was married to a Tongan, and was spoken to like that, he'd quit--by gum, that's what he'd do! Then she said it would serve me right if she went away in the schooner with the white men, and I would never see her again. And I said, "Oh, dear, but I'd feel sorry for the white man that got you!" Then she said she'd give all the gold Old Dibs had made her a present of to be back home in Tonga; and then I said I'd gladly add mine to hers. And when Tom added his, I thought we were in for a race war.

We all got back pretty cross and tired, but a little beer put heart in us; and I pulled her down on my knee and said she was the only girl in the world, and that I wouldn't trade her for a ten-ton cutter; while Tom counted out the money Old Dibs had given us previous, and said we were all a pack of fools, and that he was as fond of Sarah as anybody. So peace descended like a beautiful vision, and there was four hundred and forty dollars for each of us, with a twenty over that we tossed for, and engineered to let Sarah win. Tom said we might shake hands on a good night's work, and went home in high spirits, jingling his money in a bandanner.

It wasn't long after breakfast the next morning when I heard a great stamping and tramping out in front, and there, if you please, was the whole schooner party, Phelps, Nettleship, the bookkeeper, and the captain. They had thrown off the mask now, and Phelps had a warrant a yard long for the apprehension of Runyon Rufe, which he read aloud to me, while the others listened with their hats off like it was church.

"I thought you gentlemen were in the guano business," says I, when he had finished.

"We're in the Runyon Rufe catching business," says Mr. Phelps, very genial, "and we trust you will not oppose the officers of the law in the exercise of their functions."

"I don't want to oppose anybody when it's four to one," says I, equally genial, "though may I make so bold as to inquire who is Runyon Rufe and what's he done?"

"Never heard of Runyon Rufe!" says Nettleship, like it was George Washington or Alfred the Great.

"Here it is, better than I can tell it," said Mr. Phelps, handing me a printed proclamation:

TEN THOUSAND POUNDS REWARD.

RUNYON RUFE, Banker and Company Promoter, wanted for gigantic frauds in connection with the Invincible Building Society, the Greater London Finance Syndicate, Suburbs Limited, and other undertakings. Fled to the United States, where he had previously put by sums aggregating two hundred thousand pounds; resisted extradition; forfeited his bail; was traced to Portland, Oregon, and thence to Penrhyn Island, South Pacific, where all clews as to his whereabouts were lost.

Aged sixty-three; height, five feet nine inches; imposing appearance; weight, fifteen stone and over; fair complexion; brown eyes, with bushy, gray eyebrows; scanty gray hair; of a plethoric habit, and with a noticeable hesitancy of speech. When last seen was well supplied with money, and was heard declaring his intention of making his way toward the lesser-traveled islands of the Pacific Ocean.

The above reward, in whole or in part, will be paid by Houghton & Cust, No. 318 George Street, Sydney, New South Wales, on receiving information that will lead to the arrest of the said Runyon Rufe.

Traders and others are cautioned against harboring the fugitive, or aiding and abetting his escape from the officers of justice.

I read it three times and then handed it back.

"Show me where to sign," says I.

"We have to go through the disagreeable formality of searching these premises," said Mr. Phelps, disregarding my joke, "and if you have no objections we shall begin now!"

"And suppose I did have an objection?" I asked.

"We'd search them just the same," said Mr. Phelps, grinning.

I was in two minds what to do; but I noticed the bookkeeper's lip was cut, and there was dried blood on Mr. Nettleship's knuckles, and it didn't seem good enough. I saw they had begun on Tom first, and that decided me to take water with my formality.

"Walk in," says I.

They didn't wait for a second asking, and a minute later were poking and rummaging all through the place. They thought I might have hid him somewheres, and turned over everything to that end, not opening as much as a chest or pulling out a single drawer. It wasn't much pleasure to look on and see them doing it, but I had to take my medicine, and it was common sense to appear cheerful about it. They crawled into all kinds of places, and backed out of all kinds of others, and tapped the walls to see if any was hollow, and turned over sacks of pearl shell and copra, and sneezed and swore and burrowed and choked, till at last Mr. Phelps really found something, and that was a centipede that bit him. This brought them all out on the front veranda again, where I had to pretend I was sorry, which I was--for the centipede.

I asked what they were going to do next, and they said, "Get aboard and bathe it with ammoniar"; and I said, "No, I meant about Runyon Rufe"; and Mr. Phelps he give me a wicked look, and said that they'd lay him by the legs before long, together with a few white trading gentlemen, maybe, to keep him company; and I said, "Oh, dear, I hope that isn't any insinuation against present company!" and he said, "the present company might put the cap on if it fitted them"; and I said "if he couldn't keep a civil tongue in his head he had better get off my front stoop"; and he said "he wouldn't demean himself by bandying words with a beach-comber," and went off sucking his hand, with the others crowding around him, and asking him how it felt now.

I suspicioned there had been a leak somewheres, and was surer than ever when Tom came around with his eye bunged up where Nettleship had hit him. And it certainly looked black that they made no appearance of moving, raising an awning over the quarter-deck, and bringing up tables and swinging hammocks like it was for a week. The pastor had told Tom that one of the children had reckonized Old Dibs's photograph, and clapped his hands before he could be stopped, crying out, "Ona! Ona!" the name Old Dibs went by among the Kanakas.

We put in a pretty anxious day, for they began a systematic prowl all over the island, obviously dividing out the territory and doing it simultaneous. That night they set a watch on my house and Tom's, the news coming in from Iosefo, who had spies out watching them. It was regular wheels within wheels, and I couldn't but wonder how poor Old Dibs was faring up his tree, waiting and waiting for us to come!

The next day they prowled harder than ever, this time the crew joining in, mate, cook, cabin boy, and four hands. Like was natural, they made me and Tom's first--the crew, I mean--and we both had the same happy thought, square-face. The mate went off with only three drinks in him, taking the cabin boy with two, but the rest of them sucked it in by the bucket, and the fartherest any of them got away was a hundred yards, and him with a bottle in his hand. They were a pretty ugly crowd by nightfall, refusing to go back to the ship when ordered, and roaring and yelling about the settlement to all hours. The afterguard still kept tab on me and Tom, however, and so yet another night passed without our daring to make our date with Old Dibs. But in the morning they lost all patience, rounding up the crew with handspikes, and all going off to the schooner with half of them in irons. Phelps and Nettleship helped to get up anchor themselves, and toward nine o'clock we had the blessed sight of their heels, beating out of the lagoon against a stiff trade.

It was hard to have to wait the balance of the day doing nothing, for we might need the tree idea again, and it would have been a mug's game to have given away the secret to the Kanakas. Tom and me both felt considerable rocky, besides, from having drunk so much gin with the schooner's people; for though we had held back all we could, and had tipped our glasses on the sly, we couldn't seem too behindhand in whooping it up with them. But we were dead dogs now all right, and the main part of breakfast and dinner was the buckets of water we poured over each other's heads. It was what you might call a very long day, and it seemed like the sun would never set, for we were both of us in a sweat about Old Dibs, and more than anxious how he had made out.

Then sundown came, and dusk, and night itself, and still another long spell for the Kanakas to go to sleep, which it seemed as though they never would. Yes, a long day, and a long, long evening, and it was like a whole week had passed before we stood under the tree and owly-owled to Old Dibs.

It was a mighty faint answer he gave back, and when me and Tom had rigged up the chair again we found we had a sick man on our hands. The exposure had nearly done for him; that, and the fear of being caught, and all the water having leaked out of the demijohn, which he had stood on its side the better to hide it. He was that weak he could hardly sit up, and was partly off his nut, besides, wanting to telephone at once to Longhurst, and mixing up Tom with the Public Prosecutor.

He would put his poor old trembling hand across his forehead like he was trying to wipe all this away, saying, "Is that you, Tom Riley?" and, "Bill, Bill," like that. It was no easy matter to get him down, for he almost needed to be lifted into the boatswain's chair, and couldn't as much as raise a little finger to help himself or hold on, and once we nearly spilled him out altogether. Fortunately, my old girl had brought some hot coffee in a beer bottle, and this was just like pouring new life down his throat. Our first business was to get him home and tuck him in, returning and making a second trip of the treasure, and winding up all serene about two in the morning, with Old Dibs sitting up in bed and eating fried eggs.

When Iosefo reported next morning, Old Dibs paid him a hundred dollars and dispensed with his services, saying that though he'd always be glad to see him around as a friend, he had no more call to keep him sitting on the chest. This made Tom and me feel good, for it showed he trusted us now, which he had never quite done before. In a day or two he was almost as lively as ever, out in the graveyard playing on his flute, and attending to church work on committee nights the same as before.

But there was a big change in him for all that, and me and Tom got it into our heads that he wasn't going to live very long, for he had that distressed look on his face that showed something wrong inside. He used to run on talking to himself half the night, and once he burst in to where I was asleep, saying he had seen me at the treasure chest, prizing off the lid, and what did I mean by it? After having lived together so long and comfortable, it wasn't very pleasant to see him going crazy on us--and going crazy that way--being suspicious we meant to rob and kill him, and all of us being in a conspiracy. He told the pastor he was afraid of his life of Tom and me, and if it wasn't for Iosefo he would be fearful to stay in my house a minute; and he told Tom he was the only friend he had; and then said the same to me, warning me against Tom and Iosefo, saying they were at the winder every night trying to break in. And all this, maybe, on the very self-same day, the three of us comparing notes and wondering where it was all going to end.

It ended sooner than any of us expected; for one morning, when Sarah went to take him his coffee, his door was locked, and for all our hammering we couldn't raise a sound. I broke it in at last, expecting that he'd rise up and shoot me, and dodging when it went inward with a crash. But there was nobody to shoot, the room being stark empty, and the only thing of Old Dibs his clothes on a chair. We were at a loss what to do, and waited for half an hour, thinking he might turn up. Then, real uneasy in our minds, we went out to look for him. He wasn't anywhere near the house or the beach, and as a last resort we went across the island to the graveyard, thinking perhaps he had taken it into his head to have a before-breakfast tootle on the flute. We found him, sure enough, in the middle of the graveyard, but laying forward in his old crimson dressing gown, dead.

Yes, sir, cold to the touch like it had been for hours, and holding a blackened lantern in his poor old fist--dead as dead--face down in the coral sand. We rolled him over to do what we could for him, but he had passed to a place beyond help or hurt. I went back for Tom in a protuberation, saying, "My God! Tom, what do you think's happened?--Old Dibs's dead in the graveyard!" I guess the old man had never been so close to Tom as he had been to me, boarding in my house and almost a father to me and the wife, for Tom took it awful cool, and asked almost the first thing about the money.

"You and me will divide on that," he says.

"Sure," I says, "but that can stand over till afterwards, Tom."

"Stand over, nothing!" he says, very sharp; and with that we both set off running for my house.

It was a jumpy thing to enter that darkened room, with the feeling you couldn't shake off that Old Dibs was peering in at us, and that every minute we'd hear his footstep, everything laid out just as he had last touched them, and almost warm, even to his slippers and his collar and the old hat against the wall. But it made no more difference to Tom than if it had been his own hat, and he tramped in like a policeman, saying, "Where is it, Bill?"

"In one of them two camphor-wood chests," says I.

He lifted up one of them by the end and let it fall ker-bang!

"Not here," says he.

"Try the other," says I, with a sudden sinking.

He let that crash, too, and turning around, looked me in the face.

"Good God, Tom!" said I.

"Just what I suspected all along," said Tom, as savage as a tiger. "He's made way with it!"

We didn't stop to speak another word, but rummaged the whole room upside down.

"He's buried it," says Tom, savager than ever, "and what kind of a bastard was you to let him?"

"It was none of my business," says I.

"None of your business!" he repeated, screaming out at me like a woman--"to have a quarter of a million by the tail and let it go? You might have been slack about your own half, but it was a swine's trick not to keep track of mine!"

"He can't have taken it very far," I said.

"Not far!" yelled Tom, making an insult of every word I said. "Why, what was to prevent him lugging away a little this day and that, till the whole caboodle was sunk in a solid block? What do you suppose he was doing with the lantern, you tom-fool? Planting it, of course--planting every dollar of it, night after night, while you were snoozing in your silly bed."

"If it's anywhere it's in the Kanaka graveyard," says I. "I'll go bail it's within ten feet of where we found his dead body."

"Did you stake the place?" says Tom.

I was ashamed to tell him I hadn't even thought of the money, being struck all of a heap, and always powerful fond of Old Dibs.

"It would serve you right if I made you dig up the whole graveyard, single-handed," said Tom; "and if you had a spark of proper feeling, Bill Hargus, you'd fall on your knees and beg my parding for having acted like such a damned ninny!"

I would have answered him back in his own coin if I hadn't felt so bad about it all, and rattled, besides. I had punched Tom's head often and often, and he had punched mine; but I was staggered by the money being missing, and the loss of it just seemed to swallow up everything else. Somehow, it had never seemed my money till then, and the more I felt it mine the more galling it was to give it up. Tom relented when he saw how cut up I was, withdrawing all the hard things he had said, and going on the other tack to cheer me up. He said he was just as big an ass as I was, and came out handsome about its being both our fault, and how it didn't matter a hill of beans anyway, for we'd soon get our spades on to it. It stood to reason it couldn't be far away or buried very deep, and a little fossicking with an iron ramrod would feel it out in no time.

Well, we gave Old Dibs a good send off, Tom and me making the coffin, and we buried him in a likely place to windward of the Kanaka graveyard. Tom wouldn't have him inside, for fear the natives might chance on the treasure themselves, and we put a neat fence around the place, with a priming and two coats of white paint, and a natty gate to go in by with brass hinges. The whole settlement turned out, Iosefo outdoing himself, and the king butting in with an address, and everything shipshape and Bristol fashion, as sailors say. We didn't have no flowers, and the whole business was sort of home-made and amateur, but Sarah made up for the lack of them by pegging out the grave with little poles, and streamers which gave quite a gay look to it, and fluttered in the wind, very pretty to see.

Then Tom and me started in our digging operations on a checkerboard plan, very systematic, with stakes where we left off, working by night so as not to rouse the natives' ill will. Or, I ought to have said, two nights, for I guess we didn't cover up our tracks sufficient, and they got on to it. We discovered this in the form of a depitation of chiefs and elders, who give us warning it had to stop ker-plunk! They said they wouldn't allow their graveyard torn up, and altogether acted very ugly and insulting. Tom and I had to sing small and put in a holiday neither of us wanted, for the Kanakas had the whip hand of us, and I never saw them so roused. Tom at first tried to carry it off with a high hand, informing them that he was a British subjeck, by God! and was they meaning to interfere with a British subjeck? But I couldn't see how that gave him any right to dig up Kanaka graveyards for money that didn't belong to him, and so I smoothed them down and out-talked Tom, saying it shouldn't happen again, and I was glad they had mentioned it!

We waited a few weeks for the storm to blow over, and then begun again, this time more cautious than before by a darned sight. We thought we were managing beautifully, till the next day, when we went out fishing in Tom's boat and come back to find both our stations burned to the ground, and all our stuff stacked outside the smoking ruins, higgledy-piggledy!

This was getting it in the neck, and we saw we were beat. We ran up a couple of little shacks and settled down to ordinary trading again, with what good spirits you can imagine. We didn't even dare walk on the weather side of the island, lest they'd carry out their next threat, which was to shoot us; and the only revenge we had was raising prices on them and monkeying with the scales, winning out in both ways. But it was a poor set off to a quarter of a million of cold coin where almost we could lay our hands on it, and if there was in the whole world a human being more blue and miserable than me, it was Tom Riley. Then, to make matters worse, the whole thing was common property now, the Kanakas knowing as much as we did, and more, and the news was passed along to every ship that came--all about Old Dibs and the money in the graveyard. You might be surprised the natives didn't take a leaf out of our book and dig it up for themselves; but you'll never really civilize a Kanaka if you try a thousand years, and they wouldn't have turned up their dead grandmothers and fathers and aunts for all the gold in the Bank of England--being sunk in superstition and slavishly afraid of spirits and the like.

We had to sit with folded hands and pretend to be pleased, while every ship that called had to take its whack at the graveyard. First it was the Lorelei, getting off scot-free with only a taboo; then it was the Tasmanian, with a bullet through the captain's leg; then the cutter Sprite, with concussion of the brain. I never saw the Kanakas drove so wild, till at last, when there was a ship off the settlement, they'd set an anchor watch on the graveyard and do sentry go with loaded guns.

Then one fine day a French schooner from Tahiti ran in, unloaded sixteen men armed with rifles and carrying pickaxes and spades, who marched across the island singing the "Marseillaise," and proceeded to take up the whole place. The natives rallied with everything they could lay their hands on, from Winchesters to fish spears, and my, if they didn't chase out them Frenchmen at the double! They got away, leaving one dead and carrying three, making a bee line for the beach, the schooner covering their retreat with a blazing Nordenfeldt. They were in such a hurry to be gone that they cut away their moorings with an ax, and I had the privilege, later on, of buying their anchor, second hand, for ten dollars in trade.

The natives got wilder than ever after this, and were almost afraid to die, lest they'd be dug up again and their bones cast to the winds. From being the most orderly island in the Pacific, Manihiki slumped to be the worst; and it got such a name that ships were scared of coming near it; and once, when Tom and me went out in a whaleboat toward a becalmed German bark, hoping to raise a newspaper or a sack of potatoes, they opened fire on us and lowered two boats to tow away the ship. Tom and me got mixed up in the general opinion of the place, which was stinking bad and what they called a pirates' nest, and an English man-of-war came down special to deport Tom. I never was so glad in my life to be an American, for, though the captain gave Tom what he called the benefit of the doubt, they fined him two hundred and fifty dollars and slanged him like a nigger.

The last straw was the visit of a French man-of-war, that opened broadsides on us without warning, and then landed and burned the settlement, including everything me and Tom owned in the world, except the clothes we stood in and the cash we snatched on the run. This was on account of the "outrage" on the Tahiti schooner.

Tom said the island was becoming a regular human pigeon-shoot, and wondered where the lightning would strike next; and we both grew clean sick of it and in a fever to get away. There was not even the temptation of Old Dibs's treasure to keep us now, for the natives all got together and heaped up the graveyard solid with rock to the level of the outside walls, and floored the top with cement six inches deep, putting in a matter of a thousand tons. It was as solid as a fortification, and pounded down, besides, with pounders, like a city street; and if ever there was money in a safe place and likely to stay there undisturbed, I guess it was Old Dibs's.

It was a happy day for Tom and me when the Flink dropped anchor off the settlement, and we patched it up with the captain to give us a passage to the Kingsmills, to begin the world again. It had always lain sort of heavy on my wife that we hadn't put up a name over old Dibs's grave, and now that we were going away with that undone she reproached me awful. You see, I had promised her something nice in the marble line from Sydney, and kept putting her off and off in the hope she'd forget it. She had been remarkably fond of the old fellow, as, indeed, so was I, and she said it was a shame to go away forever with this unattended to. I didn't have no time for anything fancy, nor the ability neither, but as the ship lay over for a couple of days I made shift to please her with a wooden slab. We went over and set it up about an hour before we sailed, and for all I know it may be there yet. Some folks might kick at the inscription, but he had always been mighty good and kind and free-handed to us, and you must take a man as you find him. This was how it run:

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF RUNYON RUFE BANKER AND
PHILANTHROPIST ERECTED BY HIS SORROWING FRIENDS

[The end]
Lloyd Osbourne's short story: Old Dibs

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