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The Meanness Of Rosy
by
“‘But w’at about this good thing you was mentioning, Mr. Rosebury?’ asks Cap’n George, polite, but staring hard at the bag. Jule and the cook was in the cabin likewise. The skipper would have liked to keep ’em out, but they being two to one, he couldn’t.
“‘That’s it,’ answers Rosy, cheerful.
“‘W’at’s it?’
“‘Why, the things in the grip; the photograph things. You see,’ says Rosy, getting excited, his innocent, dreamy eyes a-shining behind his specs and the ridge of red hair around his bald spot waving like a hedge of sunflowers; ‘you see,’ he says, ‘my experience has convinced me that there’s a fortune right in these islands for a photographer who’ll take pictures of the natives. They’re all dying to have their photographs took. Why, when I was in Hello Island I could have took dozens, only they didn’t have the money to pay for ’em and I couldn’t wait till they got some. But you’ve got a schooner. You could sail around from one island to another, me taking pictures and you getting copra and–and pearls and things from the natives in trade for ’em. And we’d leave a standing order for more plates to be delivered steady from the steamer at Suva or somewheres, and–‘
“”Old on!’ Cap’n George had been getting redder and redder in the face while Rosy was talking, and now he fairly biled over, like a teakettle. ”Old on!’ he roars. ‘Do I understand that THIS is the good thing you was going to let me in on? Me to cruise you around from Dan to Beersheby, feeding you, and giving you tobacco to smoke–‘
“”Twas my tobacco,’ breaks in Julius.
“‘Shut up! Cruising you around, and you living on the fat of–of the–the water, and me trusting to get my pay out of tintypes of Kanakas! Was that it? Was it?’
“‘Why–why, yes,’ answers Rosy. ‘But, cap’n, you don’t understand–‘
“‘Then,’ says George, standing up and rolling up his pajama sleeves, ‘there’s going to be justifiable ‘omicide committed right now.’
“Jule said that if it hadn’t been that the skipper’s sore back got to hurting him he don’t know when him and the cook would have had their turn at Rosy. ‘Course they wanted a turn on account of the tobacco and the dinner, not to mention the stone bruises. When all hands was through, that photographer was a spiled negative.
“And that was only the beginning. They ain’t much fun abusing Kanakas because they don’t talk back, but first along Rosy would try to talk back, and that give ’em a chance. Julius had learned a lot of things from that mate on the bark, and he tried ’em all on that tintype man. And afterward they invented more. They made him work his passage, and every mean and dirty job there was to do, he had to do it. They took his clothes away from him, and, while they lasted, the skipper had three shirts at once, which hadn’t happened afore since he served his term in the Sydney jail. And he was such a COMFORT to ’em. Whenever the dinner wa’n’t cooked right, instead of blaming Teunis, they took it out of Rosy. By the time they made their first port they wouldn’t have parted with him for no money, and they locked him up in the fo’castle and kept him there. And when one of the two Kanaka boys run away they shipped Rosy in his place by unanimous vote. And so it went for six months, the Emily trading and stealing all around the South Seas.
“One day the schooner was off in an out-of-the way part of the ocean, and the skipper come up from down below, bringing one of the photographing bottles from the carpetbag.
“‘See ‘ere,’ says he to Rosy, who was swabbing decks just to keep him out of mischief, ‘w’at kind of a developer stuff is this? It has a mighty familiar smell.’