"And suppose I did have an objection?" I asked.
"We'd search them just the same," said Mr. Phelps, grinning.
I was in two minds what to do; but I noticed the bookkeeper's lip was cut, and there was dried blood on Mr. Nettleship's knuckles, and it didn't seem good enough. I saw they had begun on Tom first, and that decided me to take water with my formality.
They didn't wait for a second asking, and a minute later were poking and rummaging all through the place. They thought I might have hid him somewheres, and turned over everything to that end, not opening as much as a chest or pulling out a single drawer. It wasn't much pleasure to look on and see them doing it, but I had to take my medicine, and it was common sense to appear cheerful about it. They crawled into all kinds of places, and backed out of all kinds of others, and tapped the walls to see if any was hollow, and turned over sacks of pearl shell and copra, and sneezed and swore and burrowed and choked, till at last Mr. Phelps really found something, and that was a centipede that bit him. This brought them all out on the front veranda again, where I had to pretend I was sorry, which I was—for the centipede.
I asked what they were going to do next, and they said, "Get aboard and bathe it with ammoniar"; and I said, "No, I meant about Runyon Rufe"; and Mr. Phelps he give me a wicked look, and said that they'd lay him by the legs before long, together with a few white trading gentlemen, maybe, to keep him company; and I said, "Oh, dear, I hope that isn't any insinuation against present company!" and he said, "the present company might put the cap on if it fitted them"; and I said "if he couldn't keep a civil tongue in his head he had better get off my front stoop"; and he said "he wouldn't demean himself by bandying words with a beach-comber," and went off sucking his hand, with the others crowding around him, and asking him how it felt now.
I suspicioned there had been a leak somewheres, and was surer than ever when Tom came around with his eye bunged up where Nettleship had hit him. And it certainly looked black that they made no appearance of moving, raising an awning over the quarter-deck, and bringing up tables and swinging hammocks like it was for a week. The pastor had told Tom that one of the children had reckonized Old Dibs's photograph, and clapped his hands before he could be stopped, crying out, "Ona! Ona!" the name Old Dibs went by among the Kanakas.
We put in a pretty anxious day, for they began a systematic prowl all over the island, obviously dividing out the territory and doing it simultaneous. That night they set a watch on my house and Tom's, the news coming in from Iosefo, who had spies out watching them. It was regular wheels within wheels, and I couldn't but wonder how poor Old Dibs was faring up his tree, waiting and waiting for us to come!
The next day they prowled harder than ever, this time the crew joining in, mate, cook, cabin boy, and four hands. Like was natural, they made me and Tom's first—the crew, I mean—and we both had the same happy thought, square-face. The mate went off with only three drinks in him, taking the cabin boy with two, but the rest of them sucked it in by the bucket, and the fartherest any of them got away was a hundred yards, and him with a bottle in his hand. They were a pretty ugly crowd by nightfall, refusing to go back to the ship when ordered, and roaring and yelling about the settlement to all hours. The afterguard still kept tab on me and Tom, however, and so yet another night passed without our daring to make our date with Old Dibs. But in the morning they lost all patience, rounding up the crew with handspikes, and all going off to the schooner with half of them in irons. Phelps and Nettleship helped to get up anchor themselves, and toward nine o'clock we had the blessed sight of their heels, beating out of the lagoon against a stiff trade.
It was hard to have to wait the balance of the day doing nothing, for we might need the tree idea again, and it would have been a mug's game to have given away the secret to the Kanakas. Tom and me both felt considerable rocky, besides, from having drunk so much gin with the schooner's people; for though we had held back all we could, and had tipped our glasses on the sly, we couldn't seem too behindhand in whooping it up with them. But we were dead dogs now all right, and the main part of breakfast and dinner was the buckets of water we poured over each other's heads. It was what you might call a very long day, and it seemed like the sun would never set, for we were both of us in a sweat about Old Dibs, and more than anxious how he had made out.