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One afternoon, from the bench, I heard them raise a cry of ” Pahi, Pahi,” and I run out of the copra-shed, where I was weighing, to see a schooner heading in. She was a smart-looking little vessel of fifty or sixty tons, and she come up hand over hand, making a running mooring off the settlement. Tom and I was waiting for her in a canoe, Old Dibs meanwhile climbing into the attic and dropping the trapdoor, with “Under Two Flags” and a lamp to support the tedium. That was getting to be routine now, and his last words were to buy all the books and papers we could lay our hands on, and not forget Sarah’s list of stores she was out of. Bless my soul! he was always mindful of them things, and it was always carte blanche in the trade room for anything she fancied.

Well, we climbed aboard, and they told us she was the Sydney pilot boat Minnie, under charter to two gentlemen aboard who had an option on one of Arundel’s guano islands. They had struck a leak in their main water tank, and were in for repairs and filling up fresh.

Tom and me got more of a welcome than seemed quite right, captains usually being shortish with traders till the gaskets are on; but in this case it was all so damn friendly that I nudged Tom and Tom nudged me. We all trooped below to have a drink in the cabin, and the two guano gentlemen were introduced to us, and likewise another they called their bookkeeper. All three of them were hulking big men, very breezy and well spoken, with more the manner of recruiting sergeants soft-sawdering you to enlist than the ways of people high up in business. Mr. Phelps, who took the lead, did several things to make me chew on, and he shivered over his “h’s” like he had been brought up originally without any. He was so genial, that if you had any money in your pocket you would have held on tight to it, and taken the first opportunity to get out. And his big hearty laugh was altogether too ready and his manners too free, and when he clapped me on the back I felt glad to think Old Dibs was tight in his attic, and his tree in good running order.

“Very little company hereabouts?” he asked, filling up our glasses for the second round.

“Nothing but us two,” says Tom.

“My wife’s father is somewhere down this way,” volunteered Mr. Phelps.

“You don’t say!” says I, nudging Tom again under the cuddy table.

“A fine old gent,” went on Mr. Phelps, “but he met misfortunes in the produce commission business, and had to get out very quiet.”

“Too bad!” said I.

“It grieves my wife not to know where he is,” continued Mr. Phelps, “she being greatly attached to her father, and him disappearing like that; and she told me not to grudge the matter of fifty pounds to find him.”

“There’s a lot of room in the South Seas to lose a produce commission merchant in,” says I.

“Here’s a likeness of him,” says Mr. Phelps, taking a photograph out of his pocket, while four pairs of eyes settled on Tom and me like gimlets, and there was the kind of pause when pins drop.

“A very fine-appearing old gentleman,” says I, starting in spite of myself when I saw it was a picture of Old Dibs.

“Give us a squint, Bill,” says Tom, taking it out of my hands as bold as brass. And then: “I’ve seen that face somewhere; I know I have. Lord bless me, wherever could it have been?” And he looked at it, puzzled and recollectful, me holding my breath, and the rest of them giving a little jump in their seats.

Tom brought his fist down on the table with a blow that made the glasses ring.