He let that sink in slow.
"My godfreys domino!" he groaned. "My godfreys! He—he told—Why! why, he must be workin' the same game on all hands!"
"Looks like it," says I, and, thinkin' of Jim Henry, poor feller, sick as he could be, and the business he'd left me to look out for, my heart went down into my boots.
Perkins set thinkin' for a jiffy. Then he got up off the settee.
"The son of a gun!" he says. "I'll fix him! I'll put my bill in a lawyer's hands to-night."
"No, you won't," I sung out, grabbin' him by the arm. "You mustn't. He owes the Ostable Store four times what he owes you, and it's likely he owes Cahoon and a lot more. The rest of us can't afford to let you upset the calabash that way. You might get yours, though I'm pretty doubtful, but where would the rest of us come in. You set down, Alpheus. Set down, and let me think. Set down, I tell you!"
When I talk that way—it's an old seafarin' habit—most folks usually obey orders. Alpheus set. He started to talk, but I hushed him up and, havin' filled my pipe and got it to goin', I smoked and thought for much as five minutes.
"Hum!" says I, after the spell was over, "the way I sense it is like this: This ain't any fo'mast hand's job; and it ain't a skipper's job neither. It's a case for all hands and the ship's cat, workin' together and standin' by each other. We've got to find out who's who and what's what, make up our minds and then all read the lesson in concert, like young ones in school. This Frank Windmill critter owes you and he owes me; we're sartin of that. More'n likely he owes Ed Cahoon for chickens and fowls and eggs, and Bill Bangs for milk, and Henry Hall for ice, and land knows how many more. S'pose you skirmish around and find out who he does owe and fetch all the creditors to the store here to-morrer mornin' at eleven o'clock. It'll be church time, I know, but even the parson will excuse us for this once, 'specially as the 'Sign of the Windmill' is supposed to sell liquor and he's down on it."
We had consider'ble more talk, but that was the way it ended, finally. I went to bed that night, but it didn't take; I might as well have set up, so fur's sleep was concerned. All I could think of was poor, sick Jim Henry and the trust he put in me.