“I’ve told you there were canoes on the beach when we came in, but after the guns had been brought ashore the canoes had been taken round the bend of the bay, and as we sat there waiting for our money there was no one on that flat beach but our two selves and the Chink who’d helped us to row ashore, the boat was beached close to us and only waiting to be shoved off.
“I says to Buck, ‘Say, Buck,’ I says, ‘suppose old Johnny Sru takes it into his woolly head to stick to the dollars as well as the guns, what are you going to do then?’
“‘Don’t be supposing things,’ says Buck. ‘Sru’s no beauty, maybe, but he’s a gentleman. All savages are gentlemen if you treat them square.’
“‘Where did you get that dope from?’ I asks him.
“‘Oh,’ he says, ‘I don’t know,’ he says, ‘one place or another, but mainly from books.’
“‘Well,’ I says, ‘I’m not much given to book reading, but I hope you’re right, anyway.’
“No sooner were the words out of my mouth than the Chink by the boat gives a yell. I looked up and saw a big rock skipping down hill to meet us. It wasn’t as big as a church, but it seemed to me, looking up, there was many a Methodist chapel smaller; shows you how the eyes magnify things when a chap’s frightened, for it wasn’t more than ten ton all told judging by its size when it hit the target.
“It missed us by six foot and hit the Chink. We couldn’t get him out from under it seeing he was flattened as flat as a sheet of paper and we hadn’t more than got the boat pushed off when down came another and hit the place where we’d been sitting waiting for our money and talking of all savages being gentlemen if you treated them square.
“The chaps above have got the range, but they weren’t wasting ammunition, for as soon as we lit the firing ceased.
“I never did see a chap in a bigger temper than Buck. He went white, and when an Irishman goes white, look out for what’s coming.