Had either Gibney or McGuffey glanced back as they headed for
their haven of forgetfulness they might have seen Captain Scraggs
poking his fox face up over the edge of a tier of potato boxes
piled on the bulkhead not six feet from where Gibney and McGuffey
had been sitting. Upon his return to the _Maggie_, about the time
Mr. Gibney commenced spinning his yarn, he had almost walked into
the worthy pair, and, wishing to avoid the jeers and jibes he
felt impending, he had merely stepped aside and hidden behind the
potato boxes in order to eavesdrop on their plans, if possible.
Had Mr. Gibney been less interested in his past or Mr. McGuffey
less interested in the recital of that past they would have seen
Scraggs.
The owner of the _Maggie_ shook his fist in impotent rage at
their retreating backs. "You think you've suffered before," he
snarled. "But I'll make you suffer some more, you big brute. I'll
hurt you worse than if I caved in your head with a belayin' pin.
I'll break your heart, that's what I'll do to you. You wait."
In the course of an hour Gibney and McGuffey returned, and
Scraggs met them as they leaped down on to the deck of the
_Maggie_. "Gentlemen," he remarked--"an' at that I'm givin' you
two all the best of it, even if you two have got a quit-claim
deed that you ain't pirates--I wish to announce that if you two
have come aboard my ship for the puppose o' havin' a little fun
at my expense, I'm a-goin' to call the police an' have you
arrested for disturbin' the peace. On the other hand an' futher,
if your mission's a peaceful one, you're welcome aboard the
_Maggie_. I may have a temper an' say things that sounds mighty
harsh when I'm het up, but in my calmer moments my natural
inclination is to be a sport."
"Scraggsy, old hard-luck," Mr. Gibney boomed, "we won so we can
afford to be generous in victory. Like you, me an' Mac is
inclined to be uppish at times, particularly in the hour of
triumph, an' say an' do things we're apt to be ashamed of later."
"Them's my sentiments," McGuffey chimed in.
"We ain't comin' aboard to beg you for no job," Mr. Gibney
warned. "Git that idea out o' your head--if you got it there. Me
an' Bart each got close to a thousand dollars in bank this minute
an' we're as free an' independent as two hogs walkin' on ice. Any
ol' time we can't stand up we can set down."
Captain Scraggs was frankly mystified. "If you two got a thousand
dollars each in bank--an' I ain't disputin' it, for I hear on good
authority you got that much for salvin' the _Chesapeake_--what're
you hangin' around the _Maggie_ for?"
Mr. Gibney approached and placed his great right arm fraternally
across Scraggs's skinny shoulder. Mr. McGuffey performed a
similar office with his brawny left, and Captain Scraggs looked
apprehensive, like a man who is about to be kissed by another in
public.
"Scraggsy, when all is lovely an' the goose honks high, it's our
great American privilege to fight like bearcats if we feel that
way about it. But when misfortune descends on one of us, like a
topmast in a typhoon, it's time to stop bickerin'. Me an' Bart,
driftin' along the docks for a constitootional this mornin',
bears the sorrerful tidin's that your new navigatin' officer an'
your new engineer has quit. Judgin' from that shanty on your left
eye, at least one of 'em quit under protest. Immediately,
Scraggsy, me an' Mac decided you might hate our innards but just
the same you needed us in your business. Consequently, we're here
to help you if you'll let us an' for not another durned reason in
the world."
"There's four alleeged mechanics down in the engine room loafin'
on the job an' gettin' ready to soak you a dollar an' a half an
hour overtime to-night an' Sunday," McGuffey informed the
skipper. "An' that hurts me. I don't mind takin' a poke at you
myself but I'll be shot if I'll stand idly by an' see somebody
else do it. With your kind permission, Scraggs, I'll climb into
my dungarees an' make things hum in that engine room."
Captain Scraggs was truly affected. His weak chin trembled and
tears came to his little mean green eyes. He could not speak; so
Mr. Gibney hugged him and patted him on the back and told him he
was a good fellow away down low, if the truth were only known;
whereat Captain Scraggs commenced to sob aloud. McGuffey coughed
and tears as big as marbles cascaded down the honest Gibney's
rubicund countenance.
"I ain't wuth your sympathy after the way I treated you," Captain
Scraggs cried brokenly.
"Shet up, you little bum," Mr. Gibney cried furiously. "Or I'll
bang you in that other eye that's ready for bangin'."
"If you're shy a few bucks----" McGuffey began.
"I am," Captain Scraggs wailed. "I'm worried to death. I don't
know how I'm ever goin' to pay for that bloody boiler an' git to
sea with the _Maggie_----"
"Little sorrel-top," Mr. Gibney murmured, ruffling Scraggs's thin
blonde hair. "Forget them sordid monetary considerations. I'm
somethin' like forty jumps ahead o' the devil an' ruination for the
first time since me an' Bull McGinty organized the Brotherhood o'
the South Seas----"
"Leggo me," snarled Captain Scraggs and springing back, he bent
and looked earnestly into Mr. Gibney's happy countenance. "Good
land o' Goshen, if you ain't him!" Hate gleamed in his eyes.
"Ain't who, you shrimp!" Mr. Gibney was mystified at this abrupt
change of attitude.
Captain Scraggs blinked and passed his hand wearily across his
brow. "Forgive me, Gib," he answered humbly. "I was sort o' took
back, that's all."
"Took back at what?"
"We won't say nothin' more about it, Gib, except that while I'd
like to accept your kind offer an' put you back on the job again,
I--I just can't bring myself to do it. I'll have to forget
first."
"Forget what? Bart, is Scraggsy gone nutty?"
"Out with it, Scraggs," Mr. McGuffey urged. "Spit it out,
whatever it is."
"I'd rather not, but since you ask me I suppose I might as well.
Gib, ever since me an' you first hooked up together, away back in
the corner o' my head there's been lurkin' a suspicion that once
before, a long time ago, you an' me have had some business
dealin's, but for the life o' me I couldn't place you. One minute
I'd just be a-staggerin' on the brink of memory, as the feller
says, an' the next it'd slip away from me. But just now, when you
mentioned Bull McGinty an' the Brotherhood o' the South
Seas--well, Gib, it all come back to me like a flash. Bull
McGinty an' the schooner _Dashin' Wave_!" Captain Scraggs shook
his head as if his thoughts threatened to congeal in his brain
and he desired to shake them up. "Bull had a dash o' the
tar-brush in his make up, if I don't disremember, an' you was his
young mate. Man, how funny you did look with them long red
whiskers--an' you little more'n a boy."
"Jumpin' Jehosophat, Scraggsy! Was you one o' the Brotherhood?"
Captain Scraggs came close and thrust his face up for Mr.
Gibney's inspection. "Gib," he said solemnly, "look at me! Touch
the cord o' memory an' think back. D'ye remember that pore little
feller you robbed of five hundred dollars twenty-odd year ago in
the schooner _Dashin' Wave_? D'ye remember that typhoon we was in
an' how, when I was that tuckered out an' so seasick I couldn't
stand up, you made me pump ship an' when I protested, you stuck a
horse pistol under my nose an' _made_ me? That man, Adelbert P.
Gibney was _me! Me! Me!_" Scraggs's voice rose in a crashing
crescendo; his teeth clicked together and he shook his skinny
fist under the great Gibney nose. Gibney paled and drew away from
him.
"How was I to know, Scraggsy?" he faltered. "The whole bunch was
runts--sickly, measly little fellers. Nevertheless an' agin, you
shouldn't ought to have any kick comin'. You had a fine trip an'
a heap of adventure an' me an' Bull paid your passage back to San
Francisco. Come, Scraggs. Be sensible. What's the use holdin' a
grudge after twenty-five years?"
"Oh, I ain't holdin' a grudge, exactly, Gib, my boy. I admit I
had a good run for my money an' it was a smart piece o' work, an'
I got to admire the idea, same as I got to admire the seamanship
you displayed sailin' the _Chesapeake_ single-handed. It ain't
what you done to me as makes my blood boil. It's what you went
an' done afterward."
"What'd I do afterward? You can't hang nothin' on me, Phineas P.
Scraggs. Bluffin' don't go. Cough it up."
"All right, since you drive me to it. How about that lovely,
untootered savage that you lures into your foul clutches so's you
can make yourself king of Aranuka? Hey? Hey? How about that
little tropic wild flower you carelessly plucked an' thrun away?
Oh, I'll admit she was a savage, but she was sweet an' human for
all that an' she had feelin's. She had a heart to bust an' you
busted it for fair."
Mr. Gibney attempted to hoot, but made a poor job of it. "Why,
wherever do you get this wild tale, Scraggsy, old spell-binder?
You're sure jingled or you wouldn't talk so vagrant."
"You can't git away with it like that, Gib. I trailed you. Gib,
for two mortal years I follered you, after you dropped us at
Suva, an' I was just a thirstin' for your blood. If I'd met up
with you any time them first two years I'd have shot you like a
dog. I got a whisper you was in Aranuka but when I got there
you'd left. But I found your wife--her you called Pinky. She
couldn't believe you'd slipped your cable for good an' there she
was, a-waitin' an' a-waitin' for her king to come back. Gib, I'm
free to tell you that piracy, barratry, murder an' homicide pales
into insignificance compared with what you went an' done, for you
broke an innercent an' trustin' heart an' hell's too good for a
man that'll pull a trick like that."
"Scraggsy, Scraggsy, Scraggsy," Mr. Gibney protested. "Them's
awful hard words."
"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."
Mr. McGuffey appeared on the point of weeping and put his arm
around his old comrade in silent sympathy. Presently Mr. Gibney
shook hands with him and Scraggs and, motioning them not to
follow him, went ashore. Before him, in his mind's eye, there
floated the picture of a South Sea Island with the nodding,
tufted palms fringing the beach and the glow of a volcano against
the moonlit sky. Standing on the headland, waving him a last
farewell, stood the broken-hearted victim of his capricious
youth, the lovely Pinky Poui-Slam-Bang. Every lineament of her
beautiful features was tattooed indelibly on his memory; he knew
she would haunt him forever.
He went up to the Bowhead saloon, had a drink, leaned on the end
of the bar and thought it over. There was but one way to get back
to Aranuka and that was to ship out before the mast on a South
Sea trader--and with that thought came remembrance of the _Tropic
Bird_, soon to be discharged and outward bound.
Five minutes later, Mr. Gibney was aboard the _Tropic Bird_ and
had presented himself at her master's cabin. "Where're you bound
for next trip, sir?" he inquired.
"General trading through the Marquesas, the Society Islands, and
the Gilberts."
"Happen to be goin' to Aranuka, in the Gilberts?"
"You bet. Got a trading station there."
"How are you off for a good mate?"
"Got one."
"How about a second mate?"
"Got a crackerjack."
"Well, I'm not particular. I'll make a bully bo'sun, sir."
"Very well. We'll be sailing some day next week and you can sign
up before the Commissioner any time you're ready. By the way,
what's your name?"
"Gibney, sir. Adelbert P. Gibney."
"Any experience in the South Seas?"
"Heaps of it. I was mate for three years with Bull McGinty in the
old _Dashin' Wave_ more'n twenty years ago."
The master of the _Tropic Bird_ blinked. "Gibney! Gibney!" he
murmured. "Why, I wonder if you're the same man. Are you the chap
that was king of Aranuka for six months and then abdicated for no
reason at all?"
"I was, sir," Mr. Gibney confessed shamefacedly. "I'm King Gibney
of Aranuka."
"What was your wife's name?"
"I called her Pinky for short."
"By Neptune, what a coincidence! Why, Gibney, I saw Her Majesty
on our last trip, less than two months ago, and she was telling
me all about you. Great old girl, Pinky, and mighty proud of the
fact that once she had a white husband. So you're King Gibney,
eh? Well, well! The world is certainly small." The skipper
chuckled, nor noticed Mr. Gibney's bulging eyes and hanging jaw.
"Going back to take over your kingdom again, Gibney?" he demanded
jocosely.
"You say you saw her _two months ago_?" Mr. Gibney bellowed.
"D'ye mean to tell me she's alive?"
"I did and she's very much so."
"An' the twins. How about them?"
"There are no twins. Pinky never had any children until after
Bull McGinty took up with her, which was after you left her. They
say she doesn't think quite as much of McGinty as she did of you.
He has a dash of dark blood and it shows up strong."
"The dog wrote me he'd married a sugar plantation in Maui."
"Perhaps he did. If the plantation didn't produce, though, you
can bet Bull McGinty wouldn't stay put. By the way, I have a
photograph of Queen Pinky. Snapped her with my kodak on the last
trip." He searched around in the drawer of his desk and brought
the picture forth. "Think you'd recognize Her Majesty after all
these years?" he asked.
Mr. Gibney seized the picture, gazed upon it a moment, and
emitted one horrified ejaculation which in itself would have been
sufficient to bar him forever from polite society. For what he
gazed upon was not the lovely Pinky of other days, but a very
fat, untidy, ugly black woman in a calico Mother Hubbard dress.
The face, while good-natured, was wrinkled with age and
dissipation; indeed, worldling that he was, Mr. Gibney saw at a
glance that Pinky had grown fond of her gin. From the royal lips
a huge black cigar protruded.
"I guess I won't take that bo'sun job after all," he gasped--and
fled. Two minutes later, Captain Scraggs and Mr. McGuffey, were
astonished to find Mr. Gibney waiting for them on deck. His face
was terrible to behold; he fixed Scraggs with a searching glance
and advanced upon the _Maggie's_ owner with determination in
every movement.
"Why--why, Gib, we thought you was headed south by this time,"
Scraggs sputtered, for something told him great events portended.
"You dirty dawg! You little fice! You figgered on breakin' my
heart an' sendin' me off on a wild-goose chase, didn't you?" Mr.
Gibney leaped and his great hand closed over Captain Scraggs's
collar. "Own up," he bellowed. "Where'd you git this dope about
me an' Pinky? Lie to me agin an' I'll toss you overboard," and in
order to impress Captain Scraggs with the seriousness of his
intentions he cuffed the latter vigorously with his open left
palm.
"I was behind the potato crates this mornin' whilst you an' Mac
was yarnin'," Scraggs hastened to confess. "Ow! Wow! Leggo, Gib!
Can't you take a little joke?"
"Was Mac here in on the joke? Was you let in on it after I went?"
Mr. Gibney demanded of his Fidus Achates.
"I was not, Gib. I don't call it no joke to wring a feller's
heart like Scraggsy wrung yourn."
"In addition to makin' a three-ply jackass o' me!" Captain
Scraggs cowered under the rain of ferocious slaps and attempted
to fight back, but he was helpless in the huge Gibney's grasp and
was forced to submit to a boxing of the ears that would have
addled his brains, had he possessed any. "Now, then," Mr. Gibney
roared, as he cast the skipper loose, "let that be a lesson to
you to let the skeletons in my closet alone hereafter. Mac,
you're not to lend Scraggsy a cent to help him out on expenses,
added to which me an' you quit the _Maggie_ here an' now."
"You're a devil," McGuffey growled at Scraggs, "an' sweet
Christian thoughts is wasted on you."
Glowering ferociously, the worthy pair went over the rail.