He laid down his flute.
"I'd never feel in any danger with that good wife of yours about," he said. It didn't seem quite the right remark under the circumstance, but there was a power of truth back of it. That girl of mine was regularly struck on Old Dibs, and, being a Tongan, was full of the Old Nick, and would have bit my ear off if I had lifted my hand to him. The two of them had patched up an adoption arrangement, him being her father, and she used to play suipi with him, and taught him to repeat Psalms in native. It's only another proof how women are the same everywhere, and how far it goes with them to be treated with a little respeck and consideration.
"You have a plan?" he says. "Well, Bill, what is it?"
"It's a plan to get a plan," I said. "What chance would you have as things are now?"
"Chance?" he inquires.
"You'd be in irons and aboard, before you'd know what had happened to you," I said.
He looked at me a long time and then heaved a sigh.
"I'd do for myself first," he said. "They'll never put me in the dock so long as I have a pistol and the will to use it on myself."
"I think me and Tom could improve on that," said I.
"This island's too small to hide in," he said. "No background," he said. "I was looking for a place where there was mountains and inland country—and maybe caves."