ull of the moon," remarks
Tom, "and you'd be wise to take this good spell while it lasts."

I guess Tom overdid it this time, and I gave him hell for it when we
went ashore, for I saw the change on Phelps's face, and that he suddenly
suspicioned Tom was playing double.

"Business comes first," he says, rolling up the chart, "and though I
would like to find him, just for my poor wife's satisfaction, I can't go
wild-goose-chasing all over the Pacific for a woman's whim."

Tom was beginning to feel that he had overdone it, too, and roused more
suspicion than he had laid; so he thought to make it up by losing
interest in Old Dibs, and what was Fitzsimmons doing now, and was it
true that John L. had retired from the ring? But he didn't seem to
recover the ground he had lost, and I judged it a bad sign when we went
up the companion for Phelps to say, kind of absent-minded, that he'd go
two hundred and fifty pounds for his father-in-law, alive or
dead--raising it to five hundred as we dropped over the side.

We pulled first to Tom's house, so as to divert suspicion, and from
there I went along by myself to tip off the news to Old Dibs. When I had
given the knocks agreed on, three sets of four, he drew back the trap,
and asked very cheerful how I had made out with the books and papers.

"Good God, man, they're here!" says I.

"Who's here?" he asks, incredulous.

"A whole schooner of detectives from Sydney," says I. "They say they're
buying guano islands, but there's already five hundred pounds out for
you, dead or alive."

His great fat hand began to shake on the trap.

"Never you mind, Mr. Smith," I says reassuring. "Tom will be due here at
midnight, and then we'll run you up your tree."

But that didn't seem to soothe him any, and he quavered out he would be
better where he was. But I said they'd rummage the whole island upside
down before they were done, and all he had to do was to lay low, not
worry, and let me and Tom handle the thing for him.

He reached down his hand through the trap, and I shook it, he saying,
"God bless you, Bill--God bless you!" And then it went shut, and I heard
him blow out the lamp.

The next step was to take my old girl into the secret, she being a
Tongan, as I've already said, and as true as steel. She didn't say much,
but I guess it would have done Old Dibs good to have seen her eyes
flash, and the way her teeth grit, and how quick she was to understand
her part--which was, to pack