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Promptly at twelve o'clock, the longshoremen knocked off work for the lunch hour and Neils Halvorsen drifted across the street to cool his parched throat with steam beer. While waiting for Scraggs to come up out of the engine room, and take him to luncheon, Mr.
The first business before the meetin' is a call for volunteers to furnish a money-makin' idee for the syndicate." Neils Halvorsen shook his sorrel head. He had no ideas. B. McGuffey, Esquire, shook his head also. Captain Scraggs wanted to sing. "I see it's up to me to suggest somethin'." Mr. Gibney smiled benignly, as if a money-making idea was the easiest thing on earth to produce.
Gibney was never so vulnerable as when one he really loved called him by his Christian name. He drew an arm across the shoulders of McGuffey and Scraggs, while Neils Halvorsen stood by, his yellow fangs flashing with pleasure under his walrus moustache. "So you two boys're finally willin' to admit that I'm the white-haired boy, eh?" "Gib, you got an imagination an' a half."
Down the index went the old deckhand's calloused finger and paused at "Friendly islands page 177"; whereupon Neils opened the book at page 177 and after a five-minute search discovered that Tuvana-tholo was a barren, uninhabited island in latitude 21-2 south, longitude 178-49 west. Ten days from the Friendly Islands, the paper said. That meant under power and sail with the trades abaft the beam.
"The last I remember the king was puttin' it all over Scraggsy. And that Tabu boy was no slouch." McGuffey paused, and glanced warily around the boat, while a dawning horror appeared in his sunken eyes. "Go back, Neils go back for God's sake. There's two niggers still on the island. Bring 'em some water. They're cannibals Neils, but never mind. Get them aboard the poor devils if they're living.
But the continued absence of Captain Scraggs from his old haunts created quite a little gossip along the waterfront, and in the course of time rumours of his demise by sundry and devious routes came to the ears of Neils Halvorsen.
As a result, Neils became confused regarding the exact number of blasts from the siren of a river steamer desiring to pass him to port. Consequently the Willie and Annie received such a severe butting from the river steamer in question as to cause her to careen and fill.
A tall dark man, wearing an ancient palmleaf hat, sat smoking on the hatch coaming, and him Neils Halvorsen addressed. "Aye bane want to see Cap'n Scraggs," he said. The tall dark man stood erect and cast a quick, questioning look at Neils Halvorsen. He hesitated before he made answer. "What do you want?" he asked deliberately, and there was a subtle menace in his tones.
It would take nearer fifteen days for the run from Honolulu to that desert island, and Neils Halvorsen wondered whether the marooned men would still be alive by the time aid could reach them. For by some sixth sailor sense Neils Halvorsen became convinced that his old friends of the vegetable trade were marooned.
But whatever I do, as the leadin' sperrit o' this syndicate, the motto o' the syndicate will ever be my inspiration: "All for one an' one for all United we stand, divided we fall." "How about Neils?" queried Captain Scraggs. "Do we continue to let that ex-deckhand in on our fortunes?"
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