Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas

by Lloyd Osbourne

Money? Of course it was money! And he was stacking it in a leather dress-suit case laid on the floor next his bed.

You could see he was nervous by the way he kept looking behind him; and once, when a rat ran across the attic, he jumped awful and the whole floor shook. It was a queer sensation to look right into a man's eyes and him not see you, which I did with Old Dibs again and again as he'd stop and listen. I ought to have said that one of the trunks was clothes all right, but even here there was three or four bags of coin, which he got out and added to the others.

Then he counted the bags and tried to turn the top of the suit case on them, but couldn't manage it. He arranged them first this way and then that way, but there was always about a dozen outstanding. The canvas itself was very coarse, and there was lots to spare, the slack being turned over and over, and tied with heavy twine extra. Then he took them all out, and slitting them open, just let the stuff rip naked.

Lord! but it was a dandy sight, a dazzle of double eagles cascading like a river, and so swift that you couldn't pretend to count them! He seemed satisfied to go on like that, cutting one open after the other, till the suit case brimmed up solid. There was fifty-eight bags in all, and the Lord only knows how much in each; but, as I said, it took both his hands to lift a single one. I reckon I didn't know there was so much money in all the world, and it came over me afresh how fond I was of Old Dibs, and how good I was going to be to him.

When the last bag was emptied he thought he'd put back the suit case into one of the trunks, never recollecting that he might as well have tried to lift a locomotive. Then he laid hands on just the handle at one end, and he couldn't even shift it. You disremember how heavy gold is, seeing so little of it, and counting a hundred dollars a fortune. But he had there, considering the trunks weighed the usual amount, say about a hundred and fifty pounds each, and gold at nearly twenty dollars an ounce—well, the next day Tom worked it out to about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

Think of it! With nothing between it and me but some chicken wire and an old gentleman in a dressing gown! It would have seemed a snap to some people, but I never made a dishonest dollar in my life—except in the way of trade, and then it was to natives (who water copra on you and square the difference); and he was in no more danger of harm than if it had been Lima beans.

Then—to get along with my yarn—he took the comforter off the bed, and setting it down flat on the floor, begun to cover it with double handfuls ranged in rows, till he had worked down the suit case to where he could lift it. He carried it over to the nearest trunk, placed it snug in the bottom, and started to load it up again from the stacks on the quilt. I don't know how long he took to do it, but it was quite a time, and he looked pretty well tired out when it was over, and he sat back in the rocker and rocked—me still glued at the winder—and he reached out for his flute and put it to his lips (though he didn't blow into it), and worked his fingers like he was playing a piece. After a time he laid it down, and drawing his dressing gown closer around him, took another go at filling up the trunks again with the paper packing.

This seemed a good time for me to skip, which I did more cautious than ever, my heart beating that loud I wonder he didn't hear me. I felt for my pipe in the dark, and went out under the stars to the edge of the lagoon, to think it all over. You might wonder what I had to do with it unless it was to make away with him and scoop the pool for me and Tom; but, as I said before, I wasn't that kind of a man, and millions wouldn't have made no difference. But I was in a sort of tremble for the old fellow himself, for what was he doing alone with it in the far Pacific, unless there were others after him, hotfoot?

Wherever there's a carcass there's sharks to eat it, though you may have sailed a week and not seen a fin; and human sharks have the longest scent of any, especially when they have the law on their side and courts of justice behind them. I wanted to keep the money in the family, so to speak, and I was not only unwilling to harm Old Dibs myself, but I didn't want no others to harm him neither.

I talked it over with Tom next morning, till the eyes nearly bulged out of his head. Tom was less of a pirate even than me, but he had to have his fling in fancy, being, as I said, one of them natural-born yarners, and he never got back to earth till we had poisoned Old Dibs (wavering between Rough on Rats and powdered glass), covered up all traces of the crime, divided the money equal, and sailed away West in his five-ton cutter, to bring up at last in one of the Line islands. After arranging it all to the last dot, even to the name of our ninety-ton schooner, and the very bank in Sydney where we'd lay the stuff in our joint names, he said there was only one thing to do, and that was to warn Old Dibs, and arrange some kind of a scheme to protect him.