"I can't help it. You told me to speak out an' I'm a-doin' it. You hooks up with this unsophisticated, trustful woman—she ain't a woman; she's a young girl at the time—an' she ain't civilized enough to be on to your kind. So you finds it easy to make her love you. Not with the common sordid love of a white woman but with the fierce, undyin' passion o' the South Seas. An' when you get her in your clutches, her an' her whole possessions an' she's yours body an' bones, in the sight o' God an' the sight o' man—you ups an' leaves her! You throw her down like she's so much dirt an' leave her to die of a broken heart. An' she'd a-done it, too, if it hadn't a' been for the children."
Captain Scraggs was fairly thunderin' his denunciation as he concluded with: "You—you murderer! Ain't you ashamed of yourself?"
Mr. Gibney, thoroughly crushed, hung his head. "If there was kids, Scraggsy," he pleaded, "they wasn't mine, not that I knows on."
"I ain't sayin' you don't speak the truth there, Gib. Maybe you don't know that part of it, because you left before they was born. Yes, sir, that gal had two twins—a boy an' a girl an' both that white, when I see them as yearlings, you'd never suspect they had a dab o' the tar-brush in 'em at all. The boy had red hair—provin' he was yourn, Gib."
Mr. Gibney could stand no more. He sat down on the hatch coaming and covered his face with his hard red hands. "If there was kids, Scraggsy," he sobbed, "I didn't know it. I had everything else, Scraggs, but heirs to my throne. Scraggsy, believe me or not, but if I'd had children I'd have stuck by Pinky. I wouldn't desert my own flesh an' blood, so help me."
"Well," Scraggs went on sorrowfully, "Pinky's dead an' so her troubles is over. I heard some years ago she'd passed on with consumption. But them two hapahaole kids o' yourn, Gib. Just think of it. Banged an' ragged around between decks, neither black nor white—too good for the natives an' not good enough for the whites. Princes on their mother's side, they been robbed o' their hereditary rights by a gang o' native roughnecks, while their own father loafs alongshore in San Francisco an' enjoys himself."
"Looky here, Scraggs," Mr. McGuffey struck in ominously. "Ain't you said about enough? Don't hit a feller when he's down."
"Well, he ain't down so low that he can't climb back. If he's got a spark o' manhood left in him he'll never rest until he goes back to Aranuka, looks up them progeny o' his, an' does his best to make amends for the past. Gib, you can't work for me aboard the Maggie—not if the old girl couldn't turn her screw until you stepped aboard. Pers'nally you got a lot o' fine p'ints an' I like you, but now that I know your past——"
He threw out his hands despairingly. "It's your morals, Gib, it's your blasted morals."
"You're right, Scraggs," Mr. Gibney mumbled brokenly. "It's my duty to go look up them poor children o' mine. Bart, you stick by old Scraggsy. I owe him somethin' for showin' me my duty an' I'm lookin' to you to pay the interest on my bill till I get back with them poor kids o' mine. Until then I guess I ain't fit to 'sociate with white men."