"I dunno," replied McGuffey. "It's pretty hard to distinguish between niggers and folks that goes to work an' eats with 'em."
"Mac," said Captain Scraggs severely, "you're prejudiced."
CHAPTER XXV
At 6:30 o'clock of the morning of the day following the frightful experience of Commodore Gibney and Captain Scraggs with the cannibals of Kandavu, the members of the Maggie II Syndicate faced each other across the breakfast table with appetites in no wise diminished by the exciting events of the preceding day. Captain Scraggs appeared with a lump on the back of his head as big as a goose egg. The doughty commodore had a cut over his right eye, and the top of his sinful head was so sore, where the earthenware pot had struck him, that even the simple operation of winking his bloodshot eyes was productive of pain. About a teaspoonful of Kandavu real estate had also been blown into Mr. Gibney's classic features when the shells from the Maxim-Vickers gun exploded in his immediate neighbourhood, and as he naïvely remarked to Bartholomew McGuffey, he was in luck to be alive.
McGuffey surveyed his superior officers, cursed them bitterly, and remarked, with tears of joy in his honest eyes, that both gentlemen had evaded their just deserts when they escaped with their lives. "If it hadn't been for the mate," said McGuffey severely, "I'd 'a' let you two boobies suffer the penalty for your foolishness. Any man that goes to work and fraternizes with a cannibal ain't got no kick comin' if he's made up into chicken curry with rice. The minute I hear old Scraggsy yippin' for help, says I to myself, 'let the beggars fight their own way out of the mess.' But the mate comes a-runnin' up and says he's pretty sure he can come near plantin' a mess of shells in the centre of the disturbance, even if we can't see the wari on account of the jungle. 'It's all off with the commodore and the skipper anyhow,' says the mate, 'so we might just as well have vengeance on their murderers.' So, of course, when he put it that way I give my consent——"
At this juncture the mate, passing around McGuffey on his way to the deck, winked solemnly at Mr. Gibney, who hung his war-worn head in simulated shame. When the mate had left the cabin the commodore pounded with his fork on the cabin table and announced a special meeting of the Maggie II Syndicate.
"The first business before the meeting," said Mr. Gibney, "is to readjust the ownership in the syndicate. Me and Scraggsy's had our heads together, Mac, and we've agreed that you've shot your way into a full one-third interest, instead of a quarter as heretofore. From now on, Mac, you're an equal owner with me and Scraggsy, and now that that matter's settled, you can quit rippin' it into us on the race question and suggest what's to be done in the case of Tabu-Tabu and this cannibal king that almost lures me and the navigatin' officer to our destruction."
"I have the villains in double irons and chained to the mainmast," replied McGuffey, "and as a testimonial of my gratitude for the increased interest in the syndicate which you and Scraggs has just voted me, I will scheme up a fittin' form of vengeance on them two tar babies. However, only an extraordinary sentence can fit such an extraordinary crime, so I must have time to think it over. These two bucks is mine to do what I please with and I'll take any interference as unneighbourly and unworthy of a shipmate."
"Take 'em," said Captain Scraggs vehemently. "For my part I only ask one thing. If you can see your way clear, Mac, to give me the king's scalp for a tobacco pouch, I'll be obliged."