“What did I tell you?” said the mate, with a grin. “We’ll get a great reception, all right.”
“They don’t happen to be cannibals, do they?” inquired Captain Lawless timidly, his habitual caution asserting itself.
The mate laughed.
“What a one you are to get scared, Lawless!” he said. “Your name don’t fit you a bit. Cannibals, is it? I should say not. Those chaps are mission natives—some of them—and as smart a bunch as you’d want to see.”
As there was no time to be lost, if they wished to carry out their audacious plan, the captain ordered a boat lowered and he and his mate went ashore immediately. The chief was soon found. In fact, he was down on the beach. He recognized Durkee, who seemed to have some sort of a hold over him, and negotiations for the sale of the schooner were at once begun. Like most dealings with savage folk, it required a lot of diplomacy to accomplish the desired end. The trading was carried on under a palm-thatched roof, while natives with torches stood all about.
If the two white men had not been so engrossed with their own affairs, they might have been inclined to admire the savage picturesqueness of the scene. But, as it was, they devoted their attention strictly to business.
The chief, who rejoiced in the name of Billy Bowlegs—an appellation of which he seemed quite proud—proved an adroit old bargainer. He spoke English well, and was to the full as shrewd as any Caucasian trader.
But at last they managed to “make a deal,” as the saying is. Billy Bowlegs was in need of a good schooner, and had long coveted the Tropic Bird, which was well known in those waters before Captain Lawless acquired her. The chief was willing to give three hundred dollars in cash and two valuable pearls, worth fully the same amount each, for the craft.
As this was the best they could do, the two rascally white men agreed on this figure, and Billy Bowlegs agreed to give them transportation in a war canoe as far as the path of the Dutch liners, which passed to seaward of the island by fifty miles or so.
The crew, carousing and enjoying themselves in their own rough fashion, knew nothing of the departure of their captain and mate that morning, nor did those two worthies wish that they should. By the time the abandoned men awoke to the true state of affairs, Lawless and Durkee were on board the Dutch steamer Prinz Joachim of the Imperial Peru and Manila Line, bound for Callao. They were regarded with much interest on board the craft as two luckless mariners—rough but honest—who had lost their vessel in the great magnetic storm.