The effect was magical: Bilbao’s face flushed with rapturous thoughts; he blew clouds of tobacco smoke from his lips and chuckled: “I’m bound for New Guinea! Bound for a heathen, a Macka Rajah! Good old Macka—he’s mine! He’s destined to meet one by name Samuel Bilbao. I’ll find him! I’ll claim the girl too!” he added, as he nudged Hillary in the ribs and winked. Following this sally, he gave the apprentice a tremendous thump on the back and said: “Youngster, don’t get down in the mug; come to Parsons’s parlour in the morning and we’ll see what’s best to be done to secure the girl.”
Then he took the apprentice back into the grog bar and called for drinks. “Git it down,” said he, as Hillary hesitated over the fiery liquor. And there for quite one hour the huge man told of his mighty deeds far and near, and multiplied his credentials, so that Hillary might not go off seeking someone else for the position which he, Ulysses, knew he was especially suited for.
Before Hillary departed for home Bilbao impressed upon him to be at the grog bar on the following morning.
Hillary could never remember how he got back to his lodgings that night. All that he ever did know was that when he arrived in his small bedroom he imagined that Koo Macka lay helpless on the floor before his window. Mango Pango, and two natives who slept just by, and the landlady rushed in in their night attire to see what was the matter, and found Hillary singing, “O! O! for Rio Grande!” as he swayed a big war-club and smashed an imaginary Rajah Macka’s head into pulp.
In the morning Hillary made a thousand apologies to his native landlady and to pretty Mango Pango. Mango Pango graciously accepted each apology, and grinned with delight to think that at last the young Englishman had taken to drink, and that fun was going to begin as the craving strengthened.
As soon as Mango Pango had given Hillary his clean shirt and breakfast he got ready and then once more left his diggings, bound for Parsons’s grog bar. When he arrived the shellbacks were very numerous, for a schooner had just put into Bougainville, and the crews were standing treat.
Samuel Bilbao met the apprentice in his usual volcanic style.
“Where’s yer fiddle, youngster,” said he, as though Hillary had come to perform violin solos.
“Damn it! Left it at yer lodgings?” Then he continued: “Why, bless me, you ask me to help you find a Macka, and rescue a beautiful——” He stopped short, thinking it would not do to let the bystanders know everything, and continued: “Go and fetch your fiddle, boy.”
Hillary felt little inclination to play a fiddle, but there was something about the personality of that man that told him that if he asked a favour he expected it granted.