FRENCHY’S LAST JOB
MY health at college having shown signs of giving way, Uncle George had been kind enough to advance the means for my passage to Brisbane, Australia, and back, in order to carry out the doctor’s recommendation for a long sea-voyage. I scarcely think the good man intended me to go steerage in a cargo-boat, which I did to make my money last; and I imagine he would have been anything but pleased if he could have seen me on the eve of starting from Brisbane itself for the South Sea Islands with twelve tons of assorted merchandise. Indeed, I was not a little surprised at myself, and at times in the long night watches I blubbered like a baby at my own venturesomeness. But with me, though my people at home did not know it, college had been a failure. I sometimes wondered whether I was unusually dull, or my companions at that inhospitable northern university were above the normal intelligence; but whatever the cause, I know only that I was unable to keep the pace that was set me to follow.
And here I was, with my heart in my mouth, starting on a career of my own choosing, the lessee of a trading station on an island called Tapatuea! More I knew not, beyond the fact that I was to receive a moiety of any profits I might earn, and had bound myself to stay where I was put for the space of three years. Considering my age and inexperience, this was a most liberal arrangement, and I have never ceased wondering since how my employers, Messrs. John Cæsar Bibo & Co., were ever dragooned into adding me to their forces. I say “dragooned” advisedly, for it was due entirely to my good friend Henry Mears, the shipping broker of Lonsdale Place, that I happened to be engaged, in spite of the firm’s most strenuous protest. Mears had taken to me from the day I first wandered into his office by an accident; and from that time down to the sailing hour of the Belle Mahone there was nothing he would not do to serve me. I am not sure that he was financially interested in the firm of John Cæsar Bibo & Co., but he always acted as though his was the controlling voice in its affairs, and he was the only man I ever knew who dared stand up to Old Bee, as we called him. This last-named, the directing spirit of a business that spread its net over half the islands of the Pacific, was a grim, taciturn individual of an indeterminable age,—it was variously reckoned from seventy to a hundred and ten,—who made periodical descents into Mears’s office, and sat closeted there for hours. His presence always inspired constraint, and the sight of his ancient, sallow cheek was enough to thin the ranks of the broker’s clients—shipmasters and supercargoes for the most part, not all of them sober, and none, apparently, able to look Old Bee in the eye.
I shall never forget my introduction to the great man.
“This is a nice boy, Mr. Bibo, sir,” said Mears, indicating me with a cast of his eye.
“Oh!” said Old Bee.
“I want him to have that Tapatuea store,” said Mears.
“You mean the easterly one, where Bob killed the Chinaman?” he asked.