“Pat seemed to have the joke on us,” said Brent, “but looking back on those three months and the worries and dyspepsias and late hours that make a millionaire’s life, I’m not so sure we hadn’t the bulge on him over the whole transaction, specially considering that Levenstein went bust, forged cheques and let him in for forty thousand or so to save the name of the family.
“That’s the last transaction we ever had with Pat,” finished Brent. “He dropped calling on us to tell us how to become millionaires, seeing we’d given instructions to Mrs. Murphy always to tell him we were out.”
CHAPTER XIII.
KILIWAKEE
I
The longest answer to a short question I ever heard given was delivered by Captain Tom Bowlby, master mariner, in the back parlour of Jack Rounds’ saloon away back in 1903.
Bowlby still lingers as a memory in Island bars; a large mahogany-coloured man, Bristol born and owned by the Pacific; he had seen sandalwood wane and copra wax, had known Bully Hayes and the ruffian Pease and Colonel Steinberger; and as to the ocean of his fancy, there was scarcely a sounding from the Kermadecs to French Frigate Island he could not have given you.
An illiterate man, maybe, as far as book reading goes, but a full man by reason of experience and knowledge of Life—which is Literature in the raw.
“And so, usin’ a figure of speech, she’d stuck the blister on the wrong chap,” said the Captain finishing a statement.
“I beg your pardon, Cap’,” came a voice through the blue haze of tobacco smoke, “but what was you meanin’ by a figure of speech?”
The Cap’, re-loading his pipe, allowed his eyes to travel from the window and its view of the blue bay and the Chinese shrimp boats to the island headdresses and paddles on the wall and from thence to the speaker.