sn't
often," Mr. Gibney continued. "I've shrunk half an inch since
them days. I weighed a hundred an' ninety-seven pounds in the
buff an' my chest bulged like a goose-wing tops'l. In them days,
I was an evil man to monkey with. I could have taken two like
Scraggsy an' chewed 'em up, spittin' out their bones an' belt
buckles. I sure was a wonder."

"You must ha' been with them red whiskers on your face," McGuffey
agreed. He refrained from saying more, for instinct told him Mr.
Gibney was about to grow reminiscent and spin a yarn, and B.
McGuffey had a true seaman's reverence for a goodly tale, whether
true, half-true, or wholly fanciful.

Mr. Gibney sniffed again the subtle tang of the South Seas
drifting over from the _Tropic Bird_, and when a Kanaka, scantily
clad, came on deck, threw a couple of fenders overside and
retired to the forecastle singing one of those Hawaiian ballads
that are so mournfully sweet and funereal, Mr. Gibney sighed
again.

"Gawd!" he murmured. "I've sure made a hash o' my young life."

"What's bitin' you, Gib?" Mr. McGuffey's voice was molten with
sympathy.

"I was just thinkin'," replied Mr. Gibney, "just thinkin', Mac.
It's the pineapples as does it--the smell of the South Seas. Here
I am, big enough and old enough and ugly enough to know better,
and yet every time the _City Of Papeete_ or the _Tropic Bird_ or
the _Aorangi_ come into port and I see the Kanaka boys swabbin'
down decks and get a snifter o' that fine smell of the Island
trade, my innards wilt down like a mess o' cabbage an' I ain't
myself no more until after the fifth drink."

"Sorter what th' feller calls vain regrets," suggested McGuffey.

"Vain regrets is the word," mourned Mr. Gibney. "It all comes
back to me what I hove away when I was young an' foolish an'
didn't know when I was well off. If there'd only been some
good-hearted lad to advise me, I wouldn't be a-settin' here on a
hemp hawser, a blasted beachcombin' bucko mate and out of a job.
No, siree. I'd 'a' still been King Gibney, Mac, with power o'
life an' death over two thousand odd blackbirds, an' I'd 'a' had
a beautiful wife an' a dozen kids maybe, with pigs an' chickens
an' copra an' shell an' a big bungalow an' money. _That's_ what I
chucked away when I was young an' nobody to advise me."

McGuffey made no comment on Mr. Gibney's outburst. There are
moments in life when silence is the greatest sympathy one can
offer, and intuitively McGuffey felt tha