"They are bound to run him down," said Tom. "A man that skips out with nothing, and a man that skips out with a quarter of a million, are in two different classes; and it wouldn't surprise me the least bit if there was six ships aiming for Manihiki simultaneous."
By the time I started back to find Old Dibs I was worked up to quite a fever, and I'd keep looking over my shoulder expecting every minute to see one of them six ships in the pass. He had finished breakfast and had gone, and so I followed him over to the weather side, where, as usual, he was sitting under his tarpaulin in the graveyard, tootling for all he was worth. He looked up, a little surprised to see me, and I guess ships were running through his head also, for that was his first question.
"The fack is, Mr. Smith," I said, very meaningly, "you paid me a little visit last night and I paid you one."
"Oh, my God!" he said, turning whiter than paper, and the voice coming out of him like an old man's.
"There's no 'my God' about it," I said. "But me and Tom Riley's been talking it over, and we'd like to bear a hand to help you."
"It's mine," he said, very defiant, and trembling. "It's mine, every penny of it, and honest come by."
"No doubt," I said, "but would I be guessing wrong if there were others who didn't think so?"
"There _are_ others," he said at last, seeing, I suppose, that my face looked friendly, and realizing that me and Tom would hardly take this tack if we meant to massacre him in his sleep.
"Mr. Smith," I said, "you never had two better friends than Bill Hargus or Tom Riley."
"I'd never feel in any danger with that good wife of yours about," he said. It didn't seem quite the right remark under the circumstance, but there was a power of truth back of it. That girl of mine was regularly struck on Old Dibs, and, being a Tongan, was full of the Old Nick, and would have bit my ear off if I had lifted my hand to him. The two of them had patched up an adoption arrangement, him being her father, and she used to play _suipi_ with him, and taught him to repeat Psalms in native. It's only another proof how women are the same everywhere, and how far it goes with them to be treated with a little respeck and consideration.