'as breakfast every day, he don't know what it is," observed
the clerk.

"The next point is dinner," said Herrick; and then with a passionate
utterance: "I wish to God I was a Kanaka!"

"There's one thing sure," said the captain. "I'm about desperate; I'd
rather hang than rot here much longer." And with the word he took the
accordion and struck up "Home, sweet Home."

"O, drop that!" cried Herrick, "I can't stand that."

"No more can I," said the captain. "I've got to play something though:
got to pay the shot, my son." And he struck up "John Brown's Body" in a
fine sweet baritone: "Dandy Jim of Carolina" came next; "Rorin the
Bold," "Swing low, Sweet Chariot," and "The Beautiful Land" followed.
The captain was paying his shot with usury, as he had done many a time
before; many a meal had he bought with the same currency from the
melodious-minded natives, always, as now, to their delight.

He was in the middle of "Fifteen Dollars in the Inside Pocket," singing
with dogged energy, for the task went sore against the grain, when a
sensation was suddenly to be observed among the crew.

"_Tapena Tom harry my_,"[4] said the spokesman, pointing.

And the three beachcombers, following his indication, saw the figure of
a man in pyjama trousers and a white jumper approaching briskly from the
town.

"That's Tapena Tom, is it?" said the captain, pausing in his music. "I
don't seem to place the brute."

"We'd better cut," said the clerk. "'E's no good."

"Well," said the musician deliberately, "one can't most generally always
tell. I'll try it on, I guess. Music has charms to soothe the savage
Tapena, boys. We might strike it rich; it might amount to iced punch in
the cabin."

"Hiced punch? O my!" said the clerk. "Give him something 'ot, captain.
'Way down the Swannee River': try that."

"No, _sir_! Looks Scots," said the captain; and he struck, for his life,
into "Auld Lang Syne."

Captain Tom continued to approach with the same business-like alacrity;
no change was to be perceived in his bearded face as he came swinging up
the plank: he did not even turn his eyes on the performer.

"We twa hae paidled in the burn,
Frae morning tide till dine,"

went the song.

Captain Tom had a parcel under his arm, which he laid on the house roof,
and then turning suddenly to the strangers: "Here, you!" he bellowed,
"be off out of that!"

The clerk and Herrick stood not on the order of their going, but fled
incontinen