ng.

I was in two minds what to do; but I noticed the bookkeeper's lip was
cut, and there was dried blood on Mr. Nettleship's knuckles, and it
didn't seem good enough. I saw they had begun on Tom first, and that
decided me to take water with my formality.

"Walk in," says I.

They didn't wait for a second asking, and a minute later were poking and
rummaging all through the place. They thought I might have hid him
somewheres, and turned over everything to that end, not opening as much
as a chest or pulling out a single drawer. It wasn't much pleasure to
look on and see them doing it, but I had to take my medicine, and it was
common sense to appear cheerful about it. They crawled into all kinds of
places, and backed out of all kinds of others, and tapped the walls to
see if any was hollow, and turned over sacks of pearl shell and copra,
and sneezed and swore and burrowed and choked, till at last Mr. Phelps
really found something, and that was a centipede that bit him. This
brought them all out on the front veranda again, where I had to pretend
I was sorry, which I was--for the centipede.

I asked what they were going to do next, and they said, "Get aboard and
bathe it with ammoniar"; and I said, "No, I meant about Runyon Rufe";
and Mr. Phelps he give me a wicked look, and said that they'd lay him by
the legs before long, together with a few white trading gentlemen,
maybe, to keep him company; and I said, "Oh, dear, I hope that isn't any
insinuation against present company!" and he said, "the present company
might put the cap on if it fitted them"; and I said "if he couldn't keep
a civil tongue in his head he had better get off my front stoop"; and
he said "he wouldn't demean himself by bandying words with a
beach-comber," and went off sucking his hand, with the others crowding
around him, and asking him how it felt now.

I suspicioned there had been a leak somewheres, and was surer than ever
when Tom came around with his eye bunged up where Nettleship had hit
him. And it certainly looked black that they made no appearance of
moving, raising an awning over the quarter-deck, and bringing up tables
and swinging hammocks like it was for a week. The pastor had told Tom
that one of the children had reckonized Old Dibs's photograph, and
clapped his hands before he could be stopped, crying out, "Ona! Ona!"
the name Old Dibs went by among the Kanakas.

We put in a pretty anxious day, for they began a systematic prowl all
ov