“Might I ask what you are going to do now?” asked the captain, addressing Hinton in a tone that bordered on ferocity.
“W’y, I was just thinking of st’ying to breakfast, sir,” quavered the little man, “and then toddle ashore to my happy home.”
“Get off my ship!” roared the captain. “Get off my ship, you red-headed beach-comber and pirate. Get off before you are kicked off!”
Hinton bolted like a rabbit for the rail, and almost before we could realise what he was about, we saw him leap feet foremost into the lagoon. Blowing and cursing, he rose to the surface, and informed the captain he should hold him personally responsible for his bag, which, it seems, had been left in one of the cabins below.
“Your bag!” cried the captain, going to the open skylight and thundering out: “Steward, bring up that beach-comber’s bag!”
The boy came running up with the valise I remembered so well; it looked even more dilapidated than before, for the thing was patched with canvas in a dozen places, and was wound round and round with a kind of cocoanut string. The captain lifted it in his brawny arms, and aiming it at the Beautiful Man’s head, let it fly straight at him. It just missed Hinton by an inch, and splashed water all over him as he grasped it to his breast. Turning on his back and dragging the spongy thing along with him, as one might the body of a drowning person, he set off most unconcernedly for the shore. In this fashion we saw him strike the beach, and rise up at last with the bag in his hand, not a dozen paces from where Bo was still encamped. We were, unfortunately, at too great a distance to watch their faces or to observe narrowly the greeting that must have passed between them; but the meeting was to all appearance not unfriendly, and I had the satisfaction of seeing them move off together in the direction of the boat-house, lugging the chest and bag between them, as though they were about to resume housekeeping in the old place.
I spent the rest of the morning writing letters to go by the Ransom, which sailed away at noon, homeward bound. I had no heart to go ashore again that day, for the Bo affair stuck in my throat, and the loss of so much money, not to speak of time, made me feel seriously crippled in the plans I had laid out for my future work. I was undecided, besides, whether to remain at Ruk and wait for another ship to the westward, or to stand by the schooner in her cruise through the Kingsmills, remaining over, perhaps, at Butaritari, or at one of the islands towards the south. On talking over the matter with the captain, I found his feelings so far changed towards me that he was eager now to give me a passage at any price; for, as he told me, he had taken a genuine liking to my company, and was desirous of having another face at his lonely table. Accordingly we patched up the matter to our mutual satisfaction, and arranged to sail the next day when the tide turned at ten.
Shortly before this hour, I remembered some improvised tide-gauges I had set on the weather side of the island, and I snatched an opportunity to see them on the very eve, as it was, of the schooner’s sailing. It seemed, however, that I had been too late in going, for not one of them could I find, though I searched up and down the beach for as long a time as I dared to stay.
I was returning leisurely back across the island, when a turn of the path brought me face to face with the Beautiful Man himself, carrying some kind of fish-trap in his hand. I would have walked silently past him, for the very sight of the creature now turned my stomach, had he not, in what proved an evil moment for himself, detained me as I was passing.
“My word!” he said, “that girl is regularly gone on you, she is! W’y, last night, when I told her of the hundred dollars, she was that put out that I heard the teeth snap in her head like that, and I thought she was going to do for me sure, while I lit out in the dark and looked for a club. She’s put by a little present for you before you go,—one of them pearl-shell bonito-hooks, and a string of the last monkey’s teeth,—and she asked me to say she hoped you wouldn’t forget her.”