One or two negro laborers had drifted down toward the dock, as the boat warped in at the float. Now, from the corrugated iron hut appeared a white man, who, at sight of the boat, broke into a limping run and was in time to catch the line which Milo flung at him.
The man was sparsely and sketchily clad. At first, his tanned face seemed to be of several different colors and to have been modeled by some bungling caricaturist. Yet, despite this eccentricity of aspect, something about the obsequiously hurrying man struck Brice as familiar. And, all at once, he recognized him.
This was the big beach comber with whom Gavin had fought barely twenty-four hours earlier. The man bore bruises and swellings a-plenty on his rugged features, where Brice's whalebone blows had crashed. And they had distorted his face almost past recognition. He moved, too, with manifest discomfort, as if all his huge body were as sore as his visage.
"Hello, Roke!!" hailed Milo genially, then in amaze, "what in thunder have you been doing to yourself? Been trying to stop the East Coast Flyer? Or did you just get into an argument with one of the channel dredges?"
"Fell," said Roke, succinctly, jerking his thumb back toward the corrugated iron hut. "Climbed my roof to mend a leak. Fell. My face hit every bump. Then I landed on a pile of coconuts. I'm sore all over. I—"
He gurgled, mouthingly, as his swollen eyes chanced to light on Gavin Brice, who was just following Milo from the launch to the float. And his discolored and unshaven jaw went slack.
"Oh, Brice," said Standish carelessly. "This is my foreman here, Perry Roke. As a rule he looks like other people, except that he's bigger, just now his cravings for falling off corrugated roofs have done things to his face. Shake hands with him. If you like the job I'm going to offer you he and you will be side-partners over here."
Gavin faced his recent adversary, grinning pleasantly up at the battered and scowling face, and noting that the knife sheath at Roke's hip was still empty.
"Hello!" he said civilly, offering his hand.
Roke gulped again, went purple, and, with sudden furious vehemence, grabbed at the proffered hand, enfolding it in his own monstrous grip in an industrious attempt to smash its every bone.