"Oh, I don't mind shortening up a bit," said Old Dibs, laying down to show how easy it might be done, and eager to be accommodating.
"And I'd propose chicken wire instead of net," says I to Tom, noticing how the old gentleman bulked outboard. "He's putting a strain on that worse nor a live shark."
Tom said he thought so, too, and him and I put in half a day making the platform over, while Old Dibs crossed over to the graveyard and fluted away the rest of the afternoon. We waited for the full moon before getting it into the tree, for daytime was out of the question, and Tom and I managed it very well, and to both our satisfaction. The tropic moon is a whale of a moon, and you can almost see to read by it, and it wasn't the want of light that bothered us any. The trouble was more to get it level and lash it proper with zinc wire. But we finished it up in style, with a second coat of green paint everywhere except the bottom, and, though I do say it myself, it was as snug a little crow's nest, and as comfortable and strong, as though it had been made by people regularly in the business. We rigged the tackle, too, and tried out the Manila rope with the boatswain's chair, and would have sent up Old Dibs on a trial trip if we hadn't feared he'd never make another. So we let it go at that, he paying us one hundred dollars for our trouble, and expressing himself mighty well pleased.
I reckon perhaps he was, for we fixed up the attic, too, and had everything in train so that there wouldn't be no hitch when the time come. Tom got kind of sore waiting for it, for after having put so much work into the thing he naturally wanted to see it used, and it galled him to wait and wait, with nothing doing. But Old Dibs took it more cheerful, and minded a good deal less about its being wasted; and as the months run on, he seemed to think he was out of the woods, and perked up wonderful.
Not that he wasn't careful, of course, or that Iosefo let down on the preaching; for nobody could be sure what day or what minute the pinch mightn't come. He grew quite familiar with the attic part of it, scooting up there whenever we raised a sail, and remaining for days at a time when a ship was in port. We had a fair number of them, off and on—the missionary bark, the Equator, Captain Reid; the Lorelei, Captain Saxe; the Ransom, Captain Mins; the Belle Brandon, Captain Cole; the brigantine Trenton, in ballast, calling in to set her rigging; the cutter Ulysses, with supplies for Washington Island, and the Seventh-Day Adventist schooner Pitcairn, with her mate dying of some kind of sickness. They buried him ashore, and then went out again, after giving us the precise date at which the world was coming to an end, and saying what a hell of a poor millennium it was going to be for anybody save them! Oh, yes, the usual straggle of vessels that happened our way, with months between; and, once, the smoke of a steamer on the horizon.
Perhaps a matter of eighteen months altogether since Old Dibs first landed, and day followed day, like it might have gone on forever. One wouldn't have remarked any particular change in him, except that his rig was getting shabbier and the shine was coming off the stovepipe—and perhaps some improvement in the flute. This, an extra bulk, and a kind of contented look he hadn't wore before, was what life on the island had done for Old Dibs; and he branched out a bit in the line of household favorite, cutting kindling wood for Sarah, gutting fish, scraping cocoanut for the chickens; and the pair of them would sit and gossip for hours about the neighbors—how Taalolo had driven his wife out of doors, and the true inwardness of the king's quarrel with Ve'a, and why the Toto family was in ambush to cut off Tehea's nose. He could talk better native than I could, and he was made a pet of everywhere around the settlement, and there was seldom a pig killed but what they'd bring him the head out of respeck. Not that he wasn't as regular as ever at the graveyard; but he had kind of shook in, so to speak, and nobody gave a feast but what he sat at the right hand and divided honors with the pastor and the king.
One afternoon, from the bench, I heard them raise a cry of "Pahi, Pahi," and I run out of the copra-shed, where I was weighing, to see a schooner heading in. She was a smart-looking little vessel of fifty or sixty tons, and she come up hand over hand, making a running mooring off the settlement. Tom and I was waiting for her in a canoe, Old Dibs meanwhile climbing into the attic and dropping the trapdoor, with "Under Two Flags" and a lamp to support the tedium. That was getting to be routine now, and his last words were to buy all the books and papers we could lay our hands on, and not forget Sarah's list of stores she was out of. Bless my soul! he was always mindful of them things, and it was always carte blanche in the trade room for anything she fancied.
Well, we climbed aboard, and they told us she was the Sydney pilot boat Minnie, under charter to two gentlemen aboard who had an option on one of Arundel's guano islands. They had struck a leak in their main water tank, and were in for repairs and filling up fresh.
Tom and me got more of a welcome than seemed quite right, captains usually being shortish with traders till the gaskets are on; but in this case it was all so damn friendly that I nudged Tom and Tom nudged me. We all trooped below to have a drink in the cabin, and the two guano gentlemen were introduced to us, and likewise another they called their bookkeeper. All three of them were hulking big men, very breezy and well spoken, with more the manner of recruiting sergeants soft-sawdering you to enlist than the ways of people high up in business. Mr. Phelps, who took the lead, did several things to make me chew on, and he shivered over his "h's" like he had been brought up originally without any. He was so genial, that if you had any money in your pocket you would have held on tight to it, and taken the first opportunity to get out. And his big hearty laugh was altogether too ready and his manners too free, and when he clapped me on the back I felt glad to think Old Dibs was tight in his attic, and his tree in good running order.
"Very little company hereabouts?" he asked, filling up our glasses for the second round.