“‘Where’s Johnstone?’ says Bone.
“‘How the —— do I know?’ says Logan. He was a most civil spoken chap as a rule, and as soon as he’d let that out of his head, Bone didn’t look round no more for Johnstone.
“He sat down and smoked a pipe, and fell to wondering when his turn would come. He had one thing fixed in his head, and that was the fact that if he let on to be suspicious old smiler would do him in. He’d be wanted to help work the schooner back to ’Frisco, and it was quite on the cards if he pretended to know nothing and suspec’ nothing he might get off with his life, but he was in a stew. My hat! that chap was in a stew. Living with a man-eating tiger at his elbow wouldn’t be worse, and that night, when no Johnstone turned up, he could no more sleep than a runnin’ dynamo driven by a ten thousand horse-power injin stoked by Satan.
“Logan said a wave must have taken Johnstone off the outer beach of the reef, or he’d tumbled in and a shark had took him, and Bone agreed.
“Next day, however, when Bone was taking a walk away to the north of the house, he saw a lot of big seagulls among the mammee apple bushes that grew thick just there, and making his way through the thick stuff and driving off the birds, he found old man Johnstone on his face with his head bashed in and etceteras.
“Bone was a man, notwithstandin’ the fact that he’d helped to Shanghai poor sailor chaps, and when he seen Logan’s work he forgot his fright of Logan, and swore he’d be even with him.
“There wasn’t no law on that island, nor anyone to help him to hang old toothy; so he fixed it in his mind to do him in, get him by himself and bash him on the head same as he’d bashed Johnstone.
“But Logan never gave him a chance, and the work went on till all the trade goods were used up and there was no more to pay for the divers.
“‘That’s the end,’ said Logan to Bone, ‘but it doesn’t matter; we’ve pretty well skinned the lagoon, and we’ll push out day after to-morrow when we get water and fruit aboard.’
“‘Where for?’ says Bone.