“Show us the line on a map,” says Buck, and Marks gets up and fetches down a map and draws the line with a pencil.
Buck gives a great sigh and thanks him, and then we started off back home with the rising moon to show us our way and a three hours’ tramp before us.
On the way I tried to get out of him what his meaning was in asking those questions, but he wouldn’t tell.
“You thought I was mad when I tried to tell you first,” he said, “and now you’ll have to wait till I’ve landed the business, but I’ll tell you one thing——”
“What?” I asks.
“Never mind,” he says, “shut heads are best where a word might spoil everything.”
IV
Three weeks at Levua got the cargo out and the cargo in, and the morning came when we were due to start. Sadie and Levenstein had been getting thicker and thicker; she was one of those girls that take the bit between the teeth, and it didn’t knock us down with surprise when, coming on board with her trunks, she said she’d been married that morning to Mr. Levenstein by the native parson and that Levenstein was going to follow her on to ’Frisco by the next boat he could catch.
Did you ever hear of such a tomfool arrangement? For she could just as well have waited till he got to ’Frisco, and then she’d have had time to change her mind; that’s what Buck told her as we put out with Levenstein waving to us from the shore.
Buck rubbed it into her proper, he being a relative and all that, but I doubt if he wasn’t as glad as myself to think of the face Pat would pull when he found his daughter had married herself to a small island trader and a German at that. She took his lip without saying a word, and a day or two after she made inquiries as to when we should reach Palm Island.