In another moment he was in the loft, and the sailors with a crowd of natives followed.
“Now,” said the missionary, “hand over those pistols, or I will have to assert my authority, even as the good King David did of old. I know you, Garnett, a fierce and unholy man, but you have enough sins on your soul now, so don’t force me to set these men upon you.”
“By thunder!” growled the mate, “it’s to protect ourselves we’ve been forced to fire, to scare that drunken Sangaan out of the room below. It’s a pretty mess he’s been making in a decent mission house, coming here drinking that tar—I mean rum, and waking us out of peaceful sleep.”
“Fact, he woke us up with his yelling,” said Gantline, “and we fired down below just to scare the crowd away.”
“But what is this the men say about you two fighting?” asked the missionary.
“Oh, they were as badly frightened as the niggers. Hey, Jim, ain’t that so?” said Garnett, and he gave the sailor so fierce a look that the fellow stammered out, “Faith, an’ it must ’a’ been so; it was so dark we couldn’t see nothing at all.”
“Well, come with me, anyway,” said the missionary. “It won’t do for Sangaan to take it into his head to come back here if he gets drunk. He is easy enough to manage sober, but you remember the Petrel affair.”
“Sangaan be blowed,” grunted Garnett. “I can take care of any crowd o’ niggers that ever saw a mission, but if you insist on our cruising with a sky-pilot, why, we’re agreeable. Come on, Gantline.”
They followed the good man down the ladder and up the village street to his house. When they were in the starlight the mates noticed that several of the natives who had followed the men back carried short spears, and one or two had long knives in the belts of their grass cloths. When they saw this they began to realize that perhaps the missionary was right after all, and it was just as well that they changed their sleeping quarters for the remainder of the night.
The next morning they patched the stove-in plank on the boat’s bottom, and after getting all the gear into her, including the keg into which they had put their treasure the day before, they ran her out into the surf and started off. Several natives helped them until they were beyond the first line of breakers, but Garnett was in a bad humor and accepted this favor on their part in very bad grace.