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Gibney's classic features when the shells from the Maxim-Vickers gun exploded in his immediate neighbourhood, and as he naïvely remarked to Bartholomew McGuffey, he was in luck to be alive. McGuffey surveyed his superior officers, cursed them bitterly, and remarked, with tears of joy in his honest eyes, that both gentlemen had evaded their just deserts when they escaped with their lives.
Gibney came quickly to the front with an excuse for getting back to the ship. He stepped quickly toward the little group around the outraged royal ambassador and inquired the cause of the disturbance. Quivering with rage, Tabu-Tabu informed him of what had occurred. Mr. Gibney's rage, of course, knew no bounds. Nevertheless, he did not have to simulate his rage, for he was truly furious.
For nearly an hour the three castaways had sat on the beach in dumb horror, gazing seaward. They were not alone in this, for a little further up the beach the two Fiji Islanders sat huddled on their haunches, gazing stupidly first at the horizon and then at their white captors. It was the sight of these two worthies that spurred Mr. Gibney's torpid brain to action.
Gibney's perfect sportsmanship caused him to protest, and reluctantly Captain Scraggs permitted Gibney to buy. Scraggs decided to have a cigar, however, instead of another Martini.
It's freight from the S.P. railroad that's never been called for by the consignees, and after it's in the warehouse a year and isn't called for, we have an old horse sale and auction it off to the highest bidder. Savey?" Mr. Gibney took refuge in a lie. "Of course I do. I was just kiddin' you, my hearty." Gibney's glance rested on two long heavy sugar-pine boxes, or shipping cases.
Gibney's voice was a trifle husky as he concluded his tale. He opened and closed his clasp knife and was silent for several minutes. Presently he sighed. "When a feller's young, he never stops to think o' th' hurt he does," continued the erstwhile king of Aranuka. "Sometimes I lay awake at nights an' wonder whatever became o' Pinky.
Now, I notice that the king is a miserable, skimpy, sawed-off, and hammered-down old cove. By all the rules of the prize ring he's in Scraggsy's class." McGuffey flashed a lightning wink to the commodore. It was an appeal for Mr. Gibney's moral support in the engineer's scheme to put up a job on Captain Scraggs, and thus relieve the tedium of the homeward trip. Mr.
For about an hour thereafter all three sat around the little cabin table, talking, and presently it became evident, to Mr. Gibney's practiced eye, that Captain Scraggs had something on his mind. Mr. Gibney, suspecting that it could be nothing honest, was surprised, to say the least, when Captain Scraggs made a clean breast of his proposition. "Gib an' you, too, McGuffey.
They shook, and as Captain Gibney's eye wandered aloft, First Mate Scraggs and Chief Engineer McGuffey looked up also. From the main topmast of the Maggie II floated a long blue burgee, with white lettering on it, and as it whipped out into the breeze the old familiar name stood out against the noonday sun. "Good old dishcloth!" murmured Mr. Gibney. "She never comes down."
To-morrow morning, right after breakfast, we'll turn the guns loose and pepper the bush for a mile or two in every direction. If there's a native within range he'll have business in the next county and we won't be disturbed none." Mr. Gibney's programme was duly put through and capital of Kandavu looted of the trade accumulations of the years.
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