His beginnings was a mystery, where he come from a conjecture, and his
business in Manihiki Island one of them things that bothered a fellow in
his sleep and yapped at his heels when he was awake. Captain Corker had
picked him up at Penrhyn, and the trader there said he had been landed
from a barkentine, lumber laden, from Portland, and from there back
there was a haze on his past thicker than Bobby Carter's. Leastways,
with Bobby there was his forty-five different stories to account for the
leg-iron scars on his ankles, but with Old Dibs you hadn't even that to
chew on. Nothing but five large new trunks and the clothes he stood in.
Remarkable clothes, too, they were, for a coral island in the mid
Pacific, being invariably a stovepipe hat and a Prince Albert coat, with
trousers changing from pearl gray to lead color, with stripes, till
you'd think he'd melt!
He was a fine man to look at, about sixty years of age, very portly and
pleasant spoken, and everything he said sounded important, even if it
was only about the weather or why cocoanut milk always gave him cramps.
He said his name was Smith. People who change their names seem always
to change it to Smith, till you wonder sometimes they don't choose
Jones, or maybe Patterson, or Wilkins. But you'll notice it is Smith
every time, though we always called him Old Dibs, because of the money
that he had and threw around so regardless.
My first sight of him was on the front porch, mopping his forehead, and
asking whether he might have board and lodging by the week. I told him
that we hardly carried style enough for a gentleman like him, but all we
had he was welcome to--and if not too long--for nothing. He seemed
pleased at this, and more pleased still when he looked over our big
bedroom and noticed my wife's smiling, comely face. She's only a Kanaka
girl, but I wouldn't trade her for a million. And he laid down a shining
twenty-dollar gold piece and asked if that would do every Tuesday?
Now I am as fond of money as any man, but I'm not a pirate, and so I
said it was too much. But he wouldn't take no denial, and flung it down
on the trade-room counter again, saying he counted it settled. Then I
turned to with his trunks, told my wife to bundle out into the boatshed,
and opened beer.
"Making a long stay, sir?" said I.
"I hardly know, Bill," he said. (I had told him my name was Bill.) "I
hardly know, Bill," and with that he heaved a tremendous sigh.
"We don't often have visitors here," I said. "The last was eighteen men
of the British bark _Wolverine_, in boats, from French Frigate Shoals,
where they were cast away."
"I'm looking for a quiet place to end my days in," he says.
"Well, I guess you've found it," I says.
"It looks as though I had, Bill," he answers, gazing seaward where the
palms was bending in the trade breeze and there was nothing but the
speck of Captain Corker's schooner beating out. I could see he was
pretty downhearted, and though I set the music box going to cheer him
and asked if he fancied a nice mess of gulls' eggs for supper, it wasn't
no good, and finally he went into his room and set out the rest of the
day on one of the trunks.
I went along the same evening to talk it over with Tom Riley, the other
trader in Manihiki, who, in spite of our being in opposition and all
that, was more like my own born brother than a rival in business. We
never let down the price of shell or copra on each other, and lined up
shoulder to shoulder if a third party tried to break in, and so we had
enough for both of us and a tidy bit over. Tom was afire to hear all
about Old Dibs, and had been getting bulletins the whole afternoon from
the Kanakas, down to the twenty dollars and the five trunks, and even
the way he sighed.
Tom knew right away he was a defaulter, and said we were in powerful
luck to have got him. It was fine of Tom to take it like that, for what
luck there was was mine, and he said he'd help out with chickens and
fresh fish and some extra superior canned stuff he had, so that Old Dibs
would be comfortable and want to stay. Tom was a good deal like that
professor who could make a prehistoric animal out of one prehistoric
bone, and then, when later on they discovered the whole beast entire, it
was head and tail with the one he had drawn on the blackboard. And by
the time the square-face had made a second round, Tom's fancy had flown
higher than a yellow-back novel, Old Dibs being dead, blessing me with
his last breath and making me the heir of all his riches!
Tom walked home with me, still talking, for we had now bought a
ninety-ton schooner with my legacy, me captain and him supercargo, and
we had taken out French naturalization papers so we might be free of the
Paumotu and Tubuai groups. When we said good night, whispering so as not
to disturb Old Dibs, who was snoring out serene, it had grown to be a
fleet, with headquarters at Papiete, and a steam service to 'Frisco! We
were a pair of boys, both of us, and could make squid taste like lamb
chops just by telling ourselves it was so!
I reckon Old Dibs was a little suspicious of me and Tom, and small blame
to him for that, the Islands being pretty full of tough customers, with
never no law nor order nor nobody to appeal to in trouble unless it was
your gun. He made me put a stout bolt on his door and chicken wire over
the windows, and always slept with the lamp burning in his room; and it
was noticeable, too, that he never cared to wander far away from the
house. He was given to playing the flute in the stern of an old
whaleboat, which was drawn up near the station with a cocoanut shelter
over it. He never went anywhere, except to the native pastor's (Iosefo
his name was). I suppose he felt a kind of protection in him--Iosefo
being the nearest thing to an official in the island--and he made
himself very solid in that quarter, giving to the church lavish and
going there every Sunday. He always come back from them visits with a
ruminating look in his eye, and the first thing he did was to make a bee
line for his room, like somebody might have been tampering with his
trunks.
Finally one day he took me aside and said: "Bill, that Iosefo is a very
agreeable man, and if it would be the same to you, I'd like to have him
a little about the house."
"Why, Mr. Smith," I said, "you needn't have troubled to ask me that; any
friend of yours is welcome, I am sure, and I never saw no harm in
Iosefo, even if he is a missionary."
I thought he meant to have the fellow in to talk with him or play
checkers, to while away the time that hung so heavy on his hands. But it
wasn't this at all--except for a halfway pretense at the beginning. No;
he paid Iosefo ten dollars a week, for what do you think? To sit on one
of his trunks (_the_ trunk, I reckon) from seven in the morning till six
at night, barring service time Sundays. Yes, sir; nothing else than a
squatting sentry, mounting guard over the boodle inside the trunk and
protecting it from me! I wonder what the home missionary society would
have said to see Brother Iosefo yawning all day on the top of a trunk,
or writing his sermon on his knee, Saturdays!
At first I felt pretty hot about it, for it smacked too much of setting
a thief to catch a thief, or at least offsetting the pastor and me like
the compensating idea of a ship's chronometer; but my wife liked the
respectability it give us before the natives; and Tom said my resenting
it would be like putting the cap on my head. So I acted like I didn't
give a whoop, the one way or the other.
And then it wasn't easy to be anything but fond of Old Dibs, for he was
a nice man to live with, never turning up his nose at the poor food we
give him, and always so kind and polite to Sarah, my wife, that she
fairly idolized him. He was a real gentleman through and through, and if
his money (he called it his "papers," his valuable "papers") weighed
heavy on his mind, I guess I'd have been no better in his shoes, having
to trust to strangers who might cut your throat. He had the whole island
to roam over now, instead of being cooped up like a chicken in a coop,
and we all noticed what a change in him it made for the better, throwing
off flesh, and not panting so heavy between the spells of his flute, and
walking with his head in the air like the island belonged to him.
He wasn't much of a fluter, playing mostly from notes, and often picking
them out so slow that you'd forget what the tune began like. He despised
simple things like "Way Down Upon the Suwanee River," and the difficult
things seemed to despise _him!_ But he stuck at it indefatiguable, and
blew enough wind through his flute to have sailed a ship. After
breakfast in the morning, which he took in his panjammers like me, he
would dress himself up nice in his Prince Albert, give his topper a
wipe, and start away with the flute and a roll of music in a natty
little case, like he was off to the Bank for the day. The only thing
that ruffled him any was the children, about eighty of them, who always
went along, too, and set in a circle around him when he played. I told
him they'd soon tire of tagging after him, which he said he was mighty
glad to hear; but if it was flies, they couldn't have been more
pertinacious. I spoke to the king about it, and Old Dibs he complained
to Iosefo, but it only seemed to whoop it up and add to the procession.
The king said if he'd just flute in one place, he would put a taboo
around it which neither children nor grown-ups would cross; but Old Dibs
said that the looking on, even from a distance, would be quite as
disturbing as being sprawled all over; and so the children followed him
unabated.
Then I had a happy thought, and suggested the graveyard! This was a
walled-in inclosure, perhaps a hundred feet each way, on the weather
side of the island, and on a windy day, with the surf thundering in, it
was the lonesomest spot where a man could find himself. The natives left
it alone at all times, except to bury somebody, and none of them came
nearer to it than they could help. The Kanakas have a powerful dread of
spirits, and even in the daytime they'd give the place a wide berth. The
walls, too, being about seven feet high, prevented the children from
peeking in, except at the gateway, which was so narrow that it was easy
to get out of view.
Old Dibs perked up at this and cottoned to the idea tremendous; and the
graveyard soon become his regular stamping ground, except when there was
a funeral. He rigged up a little shelter for himself in the center, with
a music stand I made for him out of scantling; and often he took his
lunch in his pocket and spent the whole day. Not a child ventured to
show himself, and he had it as much to himself as though he owned it;
and he could lay his stovepipe down now without any fear of its being
greased up or sat on. It led to his asking a raft of questions about the
natives and their superstitions, and how none of them ventured to go
near the place unless in a big party. He came back to that again and
again, and always with the same interest. I ought to have suspected what
was running in his head, but I didn't. In fack, we had all settled down
now like we had always lived together, and I didn't bother any more
about him, or what he said or did, than if he had been my wife's father!
It was a good deal like having a rich uncle to stay with you, and after
the first excitement you took it all as a matter of course.
Even Iosefo, sitting on the trunk in the bedroom, became one of them
things that ran into habit; and in some ways it was a good idea, too,
for it brought custom to the store, what with the deacons coming over to
talk about church affairs, and the Committee on Ways and Means meeting
there regular. Even the gold twenty every week settled down in the same
channel of routine, and I didn't bite it any more, as I used to do, nor
hold it in my hand wondering where it come from. I just put it away with
the rest and thought no more about it. The only concern of me and Sarah
was to feed up the old fellow to the best of our ability and try and
make him pleased.
We had been running along like this for I don't know how long, when one
night, toward the small hours, a singular thing happened. I was sleeping
very light, and I woke up all of a sudden and saw Old Dibs standing in
the doorway! He had a candle in his hand and bulked up enormous in his
red silk dressing gown, and there was a wild look on his unshaved face.
I held my breath and watched him through my half-shut eyes--watched him
for quite a spell, till he softly tiptoed away again in his naked feet,
and I heard the door close behind him in the house. I waited a long
while wondering what to do, and what there could be in the boatshed to
bring him out at such an unlikely hour. At first I was for getting my
rifle and sitting up the balance of the night; but then, as I waked up
more and tried to think it out, it seemed that he had a better right to
be afraid of me than me of _him_. It couldn't be to do me no harm, I
reckoned, but probably to assure himself that I was asleep.
He was plainly up to something, and it was equally plain he didn't want
me to know it. So I got out of bed--if you can call a stack of mats and
a schooner's topsail a bed--and lit out to see what was doing. It was no
good trying to get into the house, for Old Dibs had nailed the keys and
handed them out every morning through the winder when I went to take him
his shaving water. But the curtains of the bedroom weren't extra close,
and if I could get up on the veranda without too much of a creaking I
knew I could see in all right. There's a lot of cat in a sailor, even to
the nine lives and the dislike of getting wet, and I was soon on my
knees at the sill, taking in the performance.
The room was lit up as usual, and all the big five trunks were open,
with Old Dibs diving into them like he was packing for the morning
train. Leastways, that was my first thought; the second was, that
something stranger than that was up, and that people didn't usually go
traveling with an outfit of pinkish paper cut into shavings. You've seen
them, haven't you?--the kind of packing they put into music boxes, fine
toys, and the like, flummoxy twisted paper ravelings that protect the
varnish and have no weight to speak of. Well, that was what was in them
trunks, and Old Dibs was pawing it out till it stuck up in the room,
yards high, like a mountain. Occasionally he seemed to strike something
harder than paper--something that would take both his hands to lift--and
it was only a little clinking canvas bag that big.
Money? Of course it was money! And he was stacking it in a leather
dress-suit case laid on the floor next his bed.
You could see he was nervous by the way he kept looking behind him; and
once, when a rat ran across the attic, he jumped awful and the whole
floor shook. It was a queer sensation to look right into a man's eyes
and him not see you, which I did with Old Dibs again and again as he'd
stop and listen. I ought to have said that one of the trunks was clothes
all right, but even here there was three or four bags of coin, which he
got out and added to the others.
Then he counted the bags and tried to turn the top of the suit case on
them, but couldn't manage it. He arranged them first this way and then
that way, but there was always about a dozen outstanding. The canvas
itself was very coarse, and there was lots to spare, the slack being
turned over and over, and tied with heavy twine extra. Then he took them
all out, and slitting them open, just let the stuff rip naked.
Lord! but it was a dandy sight, a dazzle of double eagles cascading like
a river, and so swift that you couldn't pretend to count them! He seemed
satisfied to go on like that, cutting one open after the other, till the
suit case brimmed up solid. There was fifty-eight bags in all, and the
Lord only knows how much in each; but, as I said, it took both his hands
to lift a single one. I reckon I didn't know there was so much money in
all the world, and it came over me afresh how fond I was of Old Dibs,
and how good I was going to be to him.
When the last bag was emptied he thought he'd put back the suit case
into one of the trunks, never recollecting that he might as well have
tried to lift a locomotive. Then he laid hands on just the handle at one
end, and he couldn't even shift it. You disremember how heavy gold is,
seeing so little of it, and counting a hundred dollars a fortune. But he
had there, considering the trunks weighed the usual amount, say about a
hundred and fifty pounds each, and gold at nearly twenty dollars an
ounce--well, the next day Tom worked it out to about two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars.
Think of it! With nothing between it and me but some chicken wire and an
old gentleman in a dressing gown! It would have seemed a snap to some
people, but I never made a dishonest dollar in my life--except in the
way of trade, and then it was to natives (who water copra on you and
square the difference); and he was in no more danger of harm than if it
had been Lima beans.
Then--to get along with my yarn--he took the comforter off the bed, and
setting it down flat on the floor, begun to cover it with double
handfuls ranged in rows, till he had worked down the suit case to where
he could lift it. He carried it over to the nearest trunk, placed it
snug in the bottom, and started to load it up again from the stacks on
the quilt. I don't know how long he took to do it, but it was quite a
time, and he looked pretty well tired out when it was over, and he sat
back in the rocker and rocked--me still glued at the winder--and he
reached out for his flute and put it to his lips (though he didn't blow
into it), and worked his fingers like he was playing a piece. After a
time he laid it down, and drawing his dressing gown closer around him,
took another go at filling up the trunks again with the paper packing.
This seemed a good time for me to skip, which I did more cautious than
ever, my heart beating that loud I wonder he didn't hear me. I felt for
my pipe in the dark, and went out under the stars to the edge of the
lagoon, to think it all over. You might wonder what I had to do with it
unless it was to make away with him and scoop the pool for me and Tom;
but, as I said before, I wasn't that kind of a man, and millions
wouldn't have made no difference. But I was in a sort of tremble for the
old fellow himself, for what was he doing alone with it in the far
Pacific, unless there were others after him, hotfoot?
Wherever there's a carcass there's sharks to eat it, though you may have
sailed a week and not seen a fin; and human sharks have the longest
scent of any, especially when they have the law on their side and courts
of justice behind them. I wanted to keep the money in the family, so to
speak, and I was not only unwilling to harm Old Dibs myself, but I
didn't want no others to harm him neither.
I talked it over with Tom next morning, till the eyes nearly bulged out
of his head. Tom was less of a pirate even than me, but he had to have
his fling in fancy, being, as I said, one of them natural-born yarners,
and he never got back to earth till we had poisoned Old Dibs (wavering
between Rough on Rats and powdered glass), covered up all traces of the
crime, divided the money equal, and sailed away West in his five-ton
cutter, to bring up at last in one of the Line islands. After arranging
it all to the last dot, even to the name of our ninety-ton schooner, and
the very bank in Sydney where we'd lay the stuff in our joint names, he
said there was only one thing to do, and that was to warn Old Dibs, and
arrange some kind of a scheme to protect him.
"They are bound to run him down," said Tom. "A man that skips out with
nothing, and a man that skips out with a quarter of a million, are in
two different classes; and it wouldn't surprise me the least bit if
there was six ships aiming for Manihiki simultaneous."
By the time I started back to find Old Dibs I was worked up to quite a
fever, and I'd keep looking over my shoulder expecting every minute to
see one of them six ships in the pass. He had finished breakfast and had
gone, and so I followed him over to the weather side, where, as usual,
he was sitting under his tarpaulin in the graveyard, tootling for all he
was worth. He looked up, a little surprised to see me, and I guess ships
were running through his head also, for that was his first question.