his clothes in camphor-wood chests under a
top dressing of trade. Old Dibs made no bones about giving her the keys,
while I took it on myself to tell Iosefo the enemy had arrived, and he'd
better move about the village warning everybody of the fack. It was well
I did so, for Phelps and Nettleship and the rest come ashore soon
afterwards with their pockets full of trifles for the children and the
girls, and they strolled about the settlement, stopping to rest and
drink cocoanuts in the different houses. Phelps had brought the
photograph along and showed it right and left, asking if they had ever
seen anybody like that. I guess some of them would have cried out if it
hadn't been for the pastor joining the party, like he wanted to do the
honors of the island, telling the natives beforehand about the
photograph, and shooing off the children when they come too close to it.
The whites probably thought he was talking what nice folks they were,
for he had a kind of bland missionary way of talking, though he was
really calling them the sons of Belial, and saying how the person who
gave Old Dibs away would have his house burned and go to hell.

The pastor did yeoman's service that day, and at sundown they all went
back to their ship, very grumpy and dissatisfied, returning no wiser
than when they'd come. Iosefo held a service afterwards to rub it in,
and the king spoke at it, and likewise the chiefs, and so in our
different ways we all pulled together for the common good. They had
quite a jollification that night on the schooner, singing songs and
playing some kind of a hurdy-gurdy on deck, and the sound of it come
over the water very pleasant to hear. I sneaked off in a canoe toward
ten o'clock, to make sure it wasn't a blind, but there was no
misdoubting what they were up to. They were all drunk, and getting
drunker, and I couldn't but think what a poor, tipsifying set of sleuths
they were, and how different from Sherlock Holmes in the book. I lay for
nearly an hour under their quarter, to hear what I could hear, and all I
got was the odds and ends of some smutty stories, and once being very
near spit on the head.

When I got back to the station there was Tom to meet me, it being eleven
now, and the village fast asleep. We overhauled the gear to make sure it
was all in order, Sarah making up a basket of provisions for the old
man, together with his toothbrush, comb, panjammers, blanket, a demijohn
of water, and a bottle of gi