“I'll give you your revenge when I come back from the Carolines, Lannigan,” said the redoubtable captain as he scooped in every dollar of the trader's takings for the past six months. And Lannigan, grasping his hand warmly and declaring it was a pleasure to be “claned out by a gintleman,” bade him good-bye and went to sleep away from home for a day with some native friends. Tariro, his Manhiki wife, had a somewhat violent temper, and during the poker incident had indulged in much vituperative language outside, directed at white men in general and Lannigan in particular.
“See, thou swiller of gin, see what thy folly has brought us to,” said the justly-incensed Tariro, when he came back, and with her took stock of his trade goods; “a thousand and five hundred dollars' worth of trade came we here with, and thou hast naught to show for it but five casks of oil and a few stinking shark-fins; and surely the ship of the malo (his firm) will be here this month.”
Lannigan was in a bit of a fix. The firm he was trading for on Motukoe didn't do business in the same free-and-easy way as did Bobby Towns' captains and the unconventional Bully Hayes. They made him sign papers, and every time the ship came the rufous-headed Scotch supercargo took stock, and a violent altercation would result over the price of the trade; but as the trader generally had a big lot of produce for the ship, matters always ended amicably. He—or rather his wife, Tariro—was too good a trader to have an open rupture with, and the wordy warfare always resulted in the trader saying, in his matter-of-fact way, “Well, I suppose it's right enough. You only rob me wanst in twelve months, and I rob the natives here every day of my life. Give me in a case of gin, an' I'll send ye a pig.”
But he had never been so much in debt as he was now. Tariro and he talked it over, and hit upon a plan. He was to say, when the ship came, that he had but five casks of oil; all his trade had been sold for cash, and the cash—a thousand dollars—represented by a bag of copper bolts picked up on the reef from an old wreck, was to be taken off to the ship and accidentally dropped overboard as it was being passed up on deck. This was Lannigan's idea, and Tariro straightway tied up the bolts in readiness in many thicknesses of sail-cloth.
“Here's Lannigan coming,” called out the captain of the trading vessel to the supercargo, a week or so afterwards, “and that saucy Manhiki woman as usual with him, to see that he doesn't get drunk. The devil take such as her! There's no show of getting him tight.”
“How are you, Lannigan?” said the supercargo, wiping his perspiring brow. He had just come out of the hold where he had been opening tinned meats, and putting all the “blown” tins he could find into one especial case—for Lannigan. This was what he called “makin' a mairgin for loss on the meats, which didna pay well.”
“Fine,” said the genial Lannigan, “an' I haven't got but five casks of oil for yez. Devil a drop av oil would the people make when they looked at the bewtiful lot av trade ye gave me last time. They just rushed me wid cash, an' I tuk a matter av a thousand dollars or so in a month.”