“Got a gal, boss?”
I admitted that I had.
“Pure white, I mean. One thet you like well enough to marry?”
“I mean to try, Paul.”
“In Samoa?”
“No—Australia.”
“Guess I'd like you to give her this 'slug' I got it outer the wreck of a ship that was sunk off Galveston in the 'sixties,' in the war.”
It would have hurt him had I declined the gift. So I thanked him, and he nodded silently, filled his pipe and went back to the Montiara.
Nearly a year passed before we met again, for his lugger and six others went to New Guinea; and our next meeting was at Callie Harbour, where I found him down with malarial fever. Again I became his doctor, and ordered him to lie up.
He nodded.