ife.

Two days later he came on board the tender, shook hands in his silent,
undemonstrative way, and held out for my acceptance an old octagon
American fifty dollar gold piece.

"Got a gal, boss?" "I admitted that I had.

"Pure white, I mean. One thet you like well enough to marry?"

"I mean to try, Paul."

"In Samoa?"

"No--Australia."

"Guess I'd like you to give her this 'slug' I got it outer the wreck of
a ship that was sunk off Galveston in the 'sixties,' in the war."

It would have hurt him had I declined the gift. So I thanked him, and he
nodded silently, filled his pipe and went back to the _Montiara_.

Nearly a year passed before we met again, for his lugger and six others
went to New Guinea; and our next meeting was at Callie Harbour, where
I found him down with malarial fever. Again I became his doctor, and
ordered him to lie up.

He nodded.

"Guess I'll have ter, boss. But I jest hate loafin' around and seein'
the other divers bringin' up shell in easy water." For he was receiving
eighty pounds per month wages--diving or no diving--and hated to be
idle.

"Paul," I said, as we lay stretched out under the wild mango tree,
"would you mind telling me about that turn-up you had with the niggers
at New Ireland, six years ago."

"Ef you like, boss." Then he added that he did not care about talking
much at any time, as he was a mighty poor hand at the jaw-tackle.

"We were startin' tryin' some new ground between New Hanover and the
North Cape of New Ireland. There were only two luggers, and we had for
our store-ship a thirty-ton cutter. There were two white divers besides
me and one Manila man, and our crews were all natives of some sort
or another--Tokelaus, Manahikians and Hawaiians. The skipper of the
storeship was a Dutchman--a chicken-hearted swab, who turned green at
the sight of a nigger with a bunch of spears, or a club in his hand.
He used to turn-in with a brace of pistols in his belt and a Winchester
lying on the cabin table. At sea he would lose his funk, but whenever we
dropped anchor and natives came aboard his teeth would begin to chatter,
and he would just jump at his own shadder.

"We anchored in six fathoms, and in an hour or two we came across a good
patch of black-edge shell, and we began to get the boats and pumps ready
to start regular next morning. As I was boss, I had moored the cutter in
a well-sheltered nook under a high bluff, and the luggers near to her.
So far we had