"Not at all a bad fellow, Mr. Barry; but rather too fond of the wine when it is red, or gamboge, or green, or any other damned colour. He and I were shipmates some years ago in the Solomon Island labour trade. He has, it seems, had a quarrel with the natives of Ponapé, who attacked him, and he and his crowd had to clear out to save their lives. I've told him that I'll give him a passage to Providence Lagoon with us. His natives, he tells me, are good men, and I daresay they'll prove useful to us."
The mate gave a curt assent. "I daresay his natives will prove useful, sir. As for the man himself, I don't think he will be much of an acquisition, if he is to be judged by first impressions. He's as drunk as a pig, and I don't wonder at the Ponapé natives wanting to get rid of him, for in my opinion he's nothing better than a drunken, swaggering bully. Why, the fellow carries a brace of pistols in his belt. No decent trader does that."
Rawlings held up his hand deprecatingly. "Don't be too hard on poor Warner, my dear Barry. He's not as bad as he looks. I'm sure you'll get to like each other by-and-by. Good-night."
"Good-night, sir," replied Barry courteously. "I think we had better keep on towing until daylight."
CHAPTER V.
VELO, THE SAMOAN, PROPHESIES.
The advent of Mr. Billy Warner of Ponapé with his entourage of sixteen truculent, evil-faced Solomon Islanders was not regarded with enthusiasm by the chief officer and the native crew of the Mahina.
Warner himself was an insolent, overbearing ruffian of the first water, and yet strangely enough his retinue, whom he at times treated with the most savage brutality, were intensely devoted to him, and every one of them would have cheerfully given up his life to protect the drunken, foul-mouthed, and unmitigated scoundrel who knocked them about one day and fraternised with them the next.
Velo, who, though a Samoan, was the acknowledged leader and mentor of the native crew—men who mostly came from the Equatorial Islands of the South and North Pacific—was quick to convey his impressions of the newcomers to Barry, and expressed his fears for the future.