“'You mis'rable four-eyed shrimp!' he says. ''Twould serve you right if I 'ove to and made you swim back to 'er. Blow me if I don't believe I will!'
“'Aw, don't, Cap'n; PLEASE don't!' begs the feller. 'I'll be awful grateful to you if you won't. And I'll make it right with you, too. I've got a good thing in that bag of mine. Yes, sir! A beautiful good thing.'
“'Oh, well,' says the skipper, bracing up and smiling sweet as he could for the ache in his back. 'I'll 'elp you out. You trust your Uncle George. Not on account of what you're going to give me, you understand,' says he. 'It would be a pity if THAT was the reason for 'elpin' a feller creat—Sparrow, if you touch that bag I'll break your blooming 'ead. 'Ere! you 'and it to me. I'll take care of it for the gentleman.'
“All the rest of that day the Cap'n couldn't do enough for the passenger. Give him a big dinner that took Teunis two hours to cook, and let him use his own pet pipe with the last of Jule's tobacco in it, and all that. And that evening in the cabin, Rosy told his story. Seems he come from Bombay originally, where he was born an innocent and trained to be a photographer. This was in the days when these hand cameras wa'n't so common as they be now, and Rosy—his full name was Clarence Rosebury, and he looked it—had a fine one. Also he had some plates and photograph paper and a jug of 'developer' and bottles of stuff to make more, wrapped up in an old overcoat and packed away in the carpetbag. He had landed in the Fijis first-off and had drifted over to Hello Island, taking pictures of places and natives and so on, intending to use 'em in a course of lectures he was going to deliver when he got back home. He boarded with the Kanaka lady at Hello till his money give out, and then he married her to save board. He wouldn't talk about his married life—just shivered instead.
“'But w'at about this good thing you was mentioning, Mr. Rosebury?' asks Cap'n George, polite, but staring hard at the bag. Jule and the cook was in the cabin likewise. The skipper would have liked to keep 'em out, but they being two to one, he couldn't.
“'That's it,' answers Rosy, cheerful.
“'W'at's it?'
“'Why, the things in the grip; the photograph things. You see,' says Rosy, getting excited, his innocent, dreamy eyes a-shining behind his specs and the ridge of red hair around his bald spot waving like a hedge of sunflowers; 'you see,' he says, 'my experience has convinced me that there's a fortune right in these islands for a photographer who'll take pictures of the natives. They're all dying to have their photographs took. Why, when I was in Hello Island I could have took dozens, only they didn't have the money to pay for 'em and I couldn't wait till they got some. But you've got a schooner. You could sail around from one island to another, me taking pictures and you getting copra and—and pearls and things from the natives in trade for 'em. And we'd leave a standing order for more plates to be delivered steady from the steamer at Suva or somewheres, and—'
“''Old on!' Cap'n George had been getting redder and redder in the face while Rosy was talking, and now he fairly biled over, like a teakettle. ''Old on!' he roars. 'Do I understand that THIS is the good thing you was going to let me in on? Me to cruise you around from Dan to Beersheby, feeding you, and giving you tobacco to smoke—'
“''Twas my tobacco,' breaks in Julius.