Part 15 (1/2)
Daisy was still wondering what it was that could o, and walked out of the door in his funny, heavy, lurching sea walk, looking straight before hi the ”Happy Noo Year, Mr Bob!” she called after him in a pitiful little voice
”Poor Mr Bob!” said Daisy to herself; and then, happening to put her hand to her hair, she discovered that the red ribbon was gone!
”Hehim!” she exclaimed ”Oh, you bad, bad Mr Bob!”
But her eyes sparkled nevertheless, as she ran out to greet papa and s was a mystery, where he come from a conjecture, and his business in Manihiki Island one of thes that bothered a fellow in his sleep and yapped at his heels when he ake 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 theinvariably a stovepipe hat and a Prince Albert coat, with trousers changing froray to lead color, with stripes, till you'd think he'd melt!
He was a fine e, very portly and pleasant spoken, and everything he said sounded important, even if it was only about the weather or why cocoanut ave hie their nae it to Smith, till you wonder sometimes they don't choose Jones, or maybe Patterson, or Wilkins But you'll notice it is Sh ays called him Old Dibs, because of the ardless
My first sight of hi whether heby the week I told hientleman like hi--for nothing He seemed pleased at this, andbedroo, coirl, but I wouldn't trade her for a old 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 tooit down on the trade-roo 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 treh
”We don't often have visitors here,” I said ”The last was eighteen men of the British bark _Wolverine_, in boats, froate Shoals, where they were cast away”
”I' for a quiet place to end uess you've found it,” I says
”It looks as though I had, Bill,” he answers, gazing seahere the pal but the speck of Captain Corker's schooner beating out I could see he was pretty downhearted, and though I set theto cheer his 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 sa 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 To bulletins the whole afternoon from the Kanakas, down to the twenty dollars and the five trunks, and even the way he sighed
Toht away he was a defaulter, and said ere in powerful luck to have got him It was fine of Tom to take it like that, for what luck there as 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 coood 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 her than a yellow-back novel, Old Dibs being dead, blessingme the heir of all his riches!
Toht a ninety-ton schooner with o, and we had taken out French naturalization papers so we ood night, whispering so as not to disturb Old Dibs, as 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 couldourselves it was so!
I reckon Old Dibs was a little suspicious ofpretty 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 s, and always slept with the la in his room; and it was noticeable, too, that he never cared to wander far away fro 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 hi to an official in the island--and heto the church lavish and going there every Sunday He always co look in his eye, and the first thing he did was to ht have been ta with his trunks