The longest answer to a short question I ever heard given was delivered by Captain Tom Bowlby, master mariner, in the back parlour of Jack Rounds’ saloon away back in 1903.

Bowlby still lingers as a memory in Island bars; a large mahogany-coloured man, Bristol born and owned by the Pacific; he had seen sandalwood wane and copra wax, had known Bully Hayes and the ruffian Pease and Colonel Steinberger; and as to the ocean of his fancy, there was scarcely a sounding from the Kermadecs to French Frigate Island he could not have given you.

An illiterate man, maybe, as far as book reading goes, but a full man by reason of experience and knowledge of Life—which is Literature in the raw.

“And so, usin’ a figure of speech, she’d stuck the blister on the wrong chap,” said the Captain finishing a statement.

“I beg your pardon, Cap’,” came a voice through the blue haze of tobacco smoke, “but what was you meanin’ by a figure of speech?”

The Cap’, re-loading his pipe, allowed his eyes to travel from the window and its view of the blue bay and the Chinese shrimp boats to the island headdresses and paddles on the wall and from thence to the speaker.

“What was I meanin’ by a figure of speech?—why, where was you born?” He snorted, lit up, and accepted another drink and seemed to pass the question by, but I saw his trouble. He couldn’t explain, couldn’t give a clear definition off-hand of the term whose meaning he knew quite well. Can you?

“Well, I was just asking to know,” said the voice.

Then, like a strong man armed, his vast experience of men and matters came to the aid of Captain Tom:

“And know you shall,” said he, “if it’s in my power to put you wise. When you gets travelling about in Languige you bumps across big facts. You wouldn’t think words was any use except to talk them, would you? You wouldn’t think you could belt a chap over the head with a couple of words strung together same as with a slung shot, would you? Well, you can. You was askin’ me what a figure of speech is—well, it’s a thing that can kill a man sure as a shot gun, and Jack Bone, a friend of mine, seen it done.

“Ever heard of Logan? He’d be before your time, but he’s well remembered yet down Rapa way, a tall, soft-spoken chap, never drank, blue-eyed chap as gentle as a woman and your own brother till he’d skinned you and tanned your hide and sold it for sixpence. He had offices in Sydney to start with and three or four schooners in the trade, bÊche de mer, turtle shell and copra, with side interests in drinkin’ bars and such, till all of a sudden he went bust and had to skip, leaving his partner to blow his brains out, and a wife he wasn’t married to with six children to fend for. What bust him? Lord only knows; it wasn’t his love of straight dealin’ anyhow. Then he came right down on the beach, with his toes through his boots, till he managed to pick a living somehow at Vavao and chummed in with a trader by name of Cartwright, who’d chucked everything owing to a woman and taken to the Islands and a native wife—one of them soft-shelled chaps that can’t stand Luck, nohow, unless it’s with them. Logan got to be sort of partner with Cartwright, who died six months after, and they said Logan had poisoned him to scoop the business. Some said it was the native wife who did the killing, being in love with Logan, who took her on with the goodwill and fixtures. If she did, she got her gruel, for he sold out to a German after he’d been there less than a year, and skipped again. I reckon that chap must have been born with a skippin’ rope in his fist by the way he went through life. They say wickedness don’t prosper; well, in my experience it prospers well enough up to a point; anyhow Logan after he left Vavao didn’t do bad, by all accounts; he struck here and there, pearling in the Paumotus and what not, and laying by money all the time, got half shares in a schooner and bought the other chap out, took her blackbirding in the Solomons, did a bit of opium smuggling, salved a derelict and brought her right into ’Frisco, turned the coin into real estate at San Lorenz, and sold out for double six months after; then he went partners with a chap called Buck Johnstone in a saloon by the water side close on to Rafferty’s landin’ stage, a regular Shanghai and dope shop with ward politics thrown in, and a place in the wrecking ring, and him going about ’Frisco with a half-dollar Henry Clay in his face and a diamond as big as a decanter stopper for a scarf pin.

“He didn’t drink, as I was saying, and that gave him the bulge on the others. He had a bottle of his own behind the bar with coloured water in it, and when asked to have a drink he’d fill up out of it, leaving the others to poison themselves with whisky.

“Then one night James Appleby blew into the bar.

“Appleby was a chap with a fresh red face on him, a Britisher, hailing from Devonshire and just in from the Islands. He’d been supercargo on a schooner trading in the Marshalls or somewhere that’d got piled on a reef by a drunken skipper and sea battered till there wasn’t a stick of her standing and everyone drowned but Appleby and the Kanaka bo’sun. He was keen to tell of his troubles and had a thirst on him, and there he stood lowering the bilge Johnstone passed over to him and trying to interest strangers in his family history and sea doings. Logan was behind the bar with Johnstone, and Logan, listening to the chap clacking with a half-drunk bummer, suddenly pricks his ears. Then he comes round to the front of the bar and listens to his story, and takes him by the arm and walks him out of the place on to the wharf and sits him on a bollard, Appleby clacking away all the time and so full of himself and his story, and so glad to have a chap listening to him, and so mixed up with the whisky that he scarce noticed that he’d left the bar.

“Then, when he’d finished, he seen where he was, and was going back for more drinks, but Logan stopped him.

“‘One moment,’ says Logan, ‘what was that you were saying about pearls to that chap I heard you talking to. Talking about a pearl island, you were, and him sucking it in; don’t you know better than to give shows like that away in bars to promiscuous strangers?’

“‘I didn’t give him the location,’ hiccups the other chap, ‘and I don’t remember mentioning pearls in particular, but they’re there sure enough and gold-tipped shell; say, I’m thirsty, let’s get back for more drinks.’

“Now that chap hadn’t said a word about pearls, but he’d let out in his talk to the bummer that down in the Southern Pacific they’d struck an island not on the charts, and he had the location in his head and wasn’t going to forget it, and more talk like that, till Logan, sober and listening, made sure in his mind that the guy had struck phosphates or pearls, and played his cards according.

“‘One moment,’ says Logan. ‘You’ve landed fresh with that news in your head and you’re in ’Frisco, lettin’ it out in the first bar you drop into—ain’t you got more sense?’

“‘It’s not in my head,’ says the other, ‘it’s in my pocket.’

“‘What are you getting at?’ says Logan.

“‘It’s wrote down,’ says Appleby. ‘Latitude and longitude on my notebook, and the book’s in my pocket. Ain’t you got no understanding? Keeping me here talking till I’m dry as an old boot. Come along back to the bar.’

“Back they went, and Logan calls for two highballs, giving Johnstone the wink, and he takes Appleby into the back parlour and Johnstone served them the highballs with a cough drop in Appleby’s, and two minutes after that guy was blind as Pharaoh on his back on the old couch—doped.

“There was a stairs leading down from that parlour to a landing stage, and when they’d stripped the guy of his pocket-book and loose money, they gave him a row off to a whaler that was due out with the morning tide and got ten dollars for the carcase. Jack Bone was the boatman they always used, and it was Jack Bone told most of the story I’m telling you now.

“Then they comes back and closes up the bar, and sits down to investigate the notebook, and there, sure enough, was the indications, the latitude and longitude, with notes such as ‘big bed to west of the break in the reef,’ and so on.

“‘That does it,’ says Johnstone; ‘we’re made men, sure; this beats ward politics by a mile and a half,’ says he. ‘It’s only a question of a schooner and hands to work her and diving dresses; we don’t want no labour; see here what the blighter says, “native labour sufficient.” Lord love me! what a swab, writing all that down; hadn’t he no memory to carry it in?’

“He’d struck the truth. There’s some chaps never easy unless they’re putting things on paper. I’ve seen chaps keeping diaries, sort of logs, and putting down every time they’d scratched their heads or sneezed, blame fools same as Appleby.

“Well, Logan sits thinking things over, and says he: ‘We’re both in this thing, though it’s my find. Still I’m not grumbling. What’s the shares to be?’

“‘Half shares,’ says Johnstone, prompt. Logan does another think:

“‘Right,’ says he, ‘and we each pays our shot in the fitting out of the expedition.’

“‘I’m agreeable,’ says the other, with a grin on his face, which maybe wouldn’t have been there if he’d known what was going on in Logan’s mind.

“Next morning they starts to work to look for a likely schooner; Johnstone keeping the bar and Logan doing the prospecting. It wasn’t an easy job, for they had to keep things secret. They knew enough of the Law to be afraid of it, and though this island of Appleby’s was uncharted, they weren’t going to lay no claims to it with the Britishers popping up, maybe, or the French or the Yanks with priority claims, and every dam liar from Vancouver to Panama swearing he’d done the discovering of it first. No, their plan was to sneak out and grab what they could, working double shifts and skimming the hull lagoon in one big coop that’d take them maybe a year. Then when they’d got their pearls and stored their shell, they reckoned to bring the pearls back to ’Frisco, where Johnstone had the McGaffery syndicate behind him, who’d help him to dispose of them, and after that he reckoned if things went well, to go back and fetch the shell. Pearl shell runs from three hundred to a thousand dollars a ton depending on quality, and gold-tipped being second quality the stuff would be worth carting.

“Well, Logan had luck and he managed to buy Pat Ginnell’s old schooner, the Heart of Ireland, for two thousand dollars, Pat having struck it rich in the fruit business and disposing of his sea interests; they paid twelve hundred dollars for diving gear and a thousand for trade goods to pay the workers, stick tobacco and all such; then they had to provision her, reckoning the island would give them all the fish and island truck they’d want, and, to cap the business, they had to get a crew that wouldn’t talk, Kanakas or Chinks—they shipped Chinks. Logan knew enough navigating to take her there, and Johnstone was used to the sea, so they were their own afterguard.

“Then one day, when all was ready, Johnstone sold out his interest in the saloon, and the next day, or maybe the day after, out they put.

“I’d forgot to say they took Bone with them. They’d used the chap so much in the outfitting that they thought it was better to take him along than leave him behind to talk, maybe; and they’d no sooner cleared the Gate and left the Farallones behind them than the weather set up its fist against them, and the old Heart with a beam sea showed them how she could roll; she could beat a barrel any day in the week on that game; it was an old saying on the front that she could beat Ginnell when he was drunk, and Bone said the rolling took it out of them so that it was a sick and quarrelling ship right from the start to the line. All but Logan. He never quarrelled with no one, he wasn’t that sort; always smooth spoken and give and take, he held that show together, smilin’ all the time.

“Then ten degrees south of the line and somewhere between the Paumotus and Bolivia they began to keep their eyes skinned for the island, struck the spot given by Appleby and went right over it.

“There wasn’t no island.

“About noon it was on the day they ought to have hit the place, an’ you can picture that flummoxed lot standin’ on the deck of the old Heart; thousands of dollars gone on a schooner and trade and all, and then left.

“The sails were drawing and they were still heading south, and Johnstone up and spoke:

“‘Appleby’s done us,’ says he, ‘and there’s no use in crying over spilt milk. There’s nothing for it but to go back and sell off at a loss. I’m done worse than you, seein’ I’ve sold the saloon. Tell you what, I’ll give you fifteen hundred dollars for your share in the ship and fixin’s; maybe I’ll lose when I come to realise,’ says he, ‘for there’s no knowing what she and the truck will fetch when it comes to auction.’

“He was one of them lightning calculators, and he reckoned to clear a few hundred dollars on the deal.

“Logan was likewise, and he thinks for a moment, and he says, ‘Make it sixteen hundred and I’ll sell you my share in the dam show right out.’

“Done,” says Johnstone.

“The words were scarce out of his mouth when the Chink stuck in the crosstree cries out ‘Ki, hi.’

“The whole bundle of them was in the rigging next minute lookin’ ahead, and then, right to s’uth’ard, there was a white stain on the sky no bigger than a window.

“Logan laughs.

“‘That’s her,’ says he.

“Then they see the pa’m tops like heads of pins, and they came down.

“If that was the island, then Appleby’s position was near fifty miles out, and again, if it was the island, Logan was done, seeing he’d sold his interest in the show to Johnstone. Bone said he didn’t turn a hair, just laughed like the good-natured chap he was, whiles they cracked everything on and raised the place, coming into the lagoon near sundown.

“But Bone had begun to have his suspicions of Logan by the way he took the business, and determined to keep his weather eye lifting.

“It was a big atoll, near a mile broad at its narrowest and running north and south, with the reef break to north just as given in Appleby’s notebook. They ran her to the west a bit when they got in, and dropped anchor near the beach, where there was a Kanaka village with canoe houses and all, and the Kanakas watching them. They didn’t bother about no Kanakas; it was out boat as soon as the killick had took the coral, and hunt for oysters. And there they were, sure enough, a bit more up by the western beach as Appleby had noted in his book, square acres of them, virgin oysters if ever oysters were virgins, and a dead sure fortune.

“The chaps came back and went down below to have a clack, and Johnstone turns generous, which he couldn’t well help, seeing that Logan might turn on him and blow the gaff, and says he: ‘You’ve stood out and sold your share in the venture, but I’m no shyster, and, if you’re willing, you shall have quarter share in the takings and half a share in the shell.’

“‘Right,’ says Logan.

“‘You helping to work the beds,’ said Johnstone.

“‘I’m with you,’ says the other.

“Old Jack Bone, who was listening, cocked his ear at this.

“It seemed to him more than ever that Logan was too much of a Christian angel over the hull of this business. He knew the chap by instinc’ to be a dam thief, or maybe worse, but he said nothing, and then a noise brought them up on deck, and they found the island Kanakas had all put off in canoes with fruit and live chickens and was wanting to trade.

“It was just after sundown, but that didn’t matter to them; they lit up torches and the place was like a regatta round the old Heart.

“Two of the chiefs came aboard and brought their goods with them and squatted on their hams, Johnstone doing the bargaining, and, when the bazaar was over, Johnstone turns to Logan, and says he: ‘Lord love me,’ says he, ‘where did these chaps learn their business instinc’s? Chicago I shud think. Where in the nation will we be when it comes to paying them for the diving work? They’ll clear us out of goods before a month is over, and that knocks the bottom out of the proposition. It’s the Labour problem over again,’ says he, ‘and we’re up against it.’

“‘We are,’ says Logan, ‘sure. These chaps aren’t Kanakas; they’re Rockfellers, virgin ones, maybe, but just as hard shelled. I’ll have to do a think.’

“The Chinks had all congregated down into the fo’c’sle to smoke their opium pipes, and Logan, he lit a cigar and sat down on deck in the light of the moon that had just risen up, and there he sits like an image smoking and thinking whiles the others went below.

“It was a tough proposition.

“The Chinks were no use for diving. They’d been questioned on that subject and risen against it to a man. The island Kanakas were the only labour, and, taking the rate of exchange, the pearls would have had to be as big as turnips to make the game pay.

“But this scamp Logan wasn’t the chap to be bested by Kanakas, and having done his think, he went below and turned in.

“Next morning bright and early he tells Johnstone to get the diving boat out, and he sends Bone ashore in the dinghy with word for the natives to come out and see the fun. Bone could talk their lingo. He’d been potting about forty years in these seas, before he’d taken up the Shanghai job in ’Frisco, and he could talk most all the Island patter. Off he goes, and then the Chinks get the diving boat out, pump and all, and two sets of dresses, and they rowed her off and anchored her convenient to the bed, and they hadn’t more’n got the anchor down when the canoes came out, and Logan, talking to the Kanakas by means of Bone, told them he was going down to walk about on the lagoon floor, dry.

“Then he gets into a dress and has the headpiece screwed on, and down he goes, the Kanakas all hanging their heads over the canoe sides and watching him. They see him walking about and picking up oysters and making a grab at a passing fish’s tail and cutting all sorts of antics, and there he stuck twenty minutes, and they laughing and shouting, till the place sounded more like Coney Island than a lonesome lagoon, God knows where, south of the line.

“Then up he comes, having sent up half a dozen bags full of oysters, and steps out of his diving gear—dry.

“They felt him, to make sure he was dry, and then the row began.

“The chief of the crowd, Maurini by name, wanted to go down and play about, but Logan held off, asked him what he’d give to be let down, and the chap offered half a dozen fowl. Logan closed, and the chap was rigged up and got his instructions from Bone of what he was to do, and how he wasn’t to let the air pipe be tangled, and so on, and how he was to pick up oysters and send them up in the bag nets. Down the chap goes, and gets the hang of the business in two minutes, after he’d done a trip up or two and nearly strangled himself. After that the whole of the other chaps were wild to have a hand in the business, and Logan let them, asking no payment, only the oysters.

“In a week’s time he had all the labour he wanted. Those Kanakas were always ready for the fun, and when any of them tired off there was always green hands to take their places; the work was nothing to them; it was something new, and it never lost colour, not for six months. Then the pumps began to suck and they’d had enough. Wouldn’t go down unless under pay, and didn’t do the work half as well.

“Meanwhile, Logan and Johnstone had built a house ashore and hived half a hat full of pearls, and about this time the feeling came on Bone strong that Logan was going to jump. He didn’t know how, but he was sure in his mind that Logan was going to do Johnstone in for his share, seeing the amount of stuff they’d collected.

“He got Johnstone aside and warned him.

“‘You look out,’ says he, ‘never you be alone with that chap when no one’s looking, for it’s in my mind he’s going to scrag you.’

“Johnstone laughed.

“‘There ain’t no harm in Logan,’ says he, ‘there’s not the kick of a flea in him; you mind your business,’ says he, ‘and I’ll tend to mine. Whach you want putting suspicions in chaps’ heads for?’ says he.

“‘Well, I’ve said what I’ve said,’ says Bone, ‘and I’m not going to say no more.’

“Then he goes off.

“Meanwhile, those island bucks had got to fitting things together in their minds, and they’d got to connecting pearls with sticks of tobacco and trade goods, and they’d got to recognise Johnstone as boss and owner of the pearls and goods. They’d named Johnstone ‘the fat one’ and they’d labelled Logan ‘the one with teeth,’ and the specifications fitted, for Johnstone weighed all two hundred and fifty, and Logan was a dentist’s sign when the grin was on his face, which was frequent.

“And so things goes on, the Kanakas diving and bringing up shell and the trade goods sinking till soon there was scarcely none left to pay the divers, and level with that was the fac’ that they’d collared enough pearls to satisfy reasonable chaps.

“One day Bone comes back from the diving and there wasn’t any Johnstone.

“He wasn’t in the house nor anywhere in sight, and Logan was sitting mending a bag net by the door.

“‘Where’s Johnstone?’ says Bone.

“‘How the —— do I know?’ says Logan. He was a most civil spoken chap as a rule, and as soon as he’d let that out of his head, Bone didn’t look round no more for Johnstone.

“He sat down and smoked a pipe, and fell to wondering when his turn would come. He had one thing fixed in his head, and that was the fact that if he let on to be suspicious old smiler would do him in. He’d be wanted to help work the schooner back to ’Frisco, and it was quite on the cards if he pretended to know nothing and suspec’ nothing he might get off with his life, but he was in a stew. My hat! that chap was in a stew. Living with a man-eating tiger at his elbow wouldn’t be worse, and that night, when no Johnstone turned up, he could no more sleep than a runnin’ dynamo driven by a ten thousand horse-power injin stoked by Satan.

“Logan said a wave must have taken Johnstone off the outer beach of the reef, or he’d tumbled in and a shark had took him, and Bone agreed.

“Next day, however, when Bone was taking a walk away to the north of the house, he saw a lot of big seagulls among the mammee apple bushes that grew thick just there, and making his way through the thick stuff and driving off the birds, he found old man Johnstone on his face with his head bashed in and etceteras.

“Bone was a man, notwithstandin’ the fact that he’d helped to Shanghai poor sailor chaps, and when he seen Logan’s work he forgot his fright of Logan, and swore he’d be even with him.

“There wasn’t no law on that island, nor anyone to help him to hang old toothy; so he fixed it in his mind to do him in, get him by himself and bash him on the head same as he’d bashed Johnstone.

“But Logan never gave him a chance, and the work went on till all the trade goods were used up and there was no more to pay for the divers.

“‘That’s the end,’ said Logan to Bone, ‘but it doesn’t matter; we’ve pretty well skinned the lagoon, and we’ll push out day after to-morrow when we get water and fruit aboard.’

“‘Where for?’ says Bone.

“‘Sydney,’ says the other; ‘I’m not going back to ’Frisco, and seeing Johnstone is drowned, the show is mine; he’s got no relatives. We’ll make for Sydney, and to make you keep your head shut, I’ll give you the old schooner for keeps; she’ll fetch you a good price in Sydney, more than you’d make in ten dozen years long-shoring in ’Frisco. I only want the pearls.’

“‘All right,’ says Bone, ‘I’ll keep my head shut and help you work her,’ having in his mind to tell the whole story soon as he landed, for he’d given up the notion of killing the other chap, not being able to get him alone. But they never put out for Sydney, and here’s the reason why.

“There was a Kanaka on that island by name of Kiliwakee, a chap with a head all frizzled out like a furze bush. He was a looney, though a good enough workman, and he’d got no end of tobacco and fish scale jewellery and such rubbish from Johnstone for his work, and now that supplies had dried up he was pretty much down in the mouth; he’d got to connect pearls and tobacco in his woolly head, and now the lagoon was skinned and there were no more pearls, he saw there was to be no more tobacco, nor jewellery, nor canned salmon.

“Well, that night there was a big Kanaka pow-wow on the beach; the chaps were sitting in a ring and talking and talking, and Bone, catching sight of them, crawled through the bushes to listen.

“He heard the chief chap talking.

“He couldn’t make out at first what he was jabbering about; then at last he got sense of what he was saying.

“‘There’ll be no more good things,’ says he, ‘sticks of tobacco, nor fish in cans, nor knives, nor print calico to make breeches of, nor nothing, for,’ says he, using a figure of speech, ‘the man with the teeth has killed the fat one and swallowed his pearls.’

“Then the meeting closed and the congressmen took their ways home, all but Kiliwakee, the half-lunatic chap, who sits in the moonlight wagging his fuzzy head, which was his way of thinking.

“Then he fetches a knife out of his loin cloth and looks at it, then he lays on his back and begins to strop it on his heel, same as a chap strops a razor.

“Bone said he’d never seen anything funnier than that chap lying in the moonlight stropping away at that knife. It give him a shiver, too, somehow.

“Well, Kiliwakee sits up again and does another brood, feeling the sharp edge of the knife. Then, with the knife between his teeth, he makes off on all fours like a land crab, for the house.

“Bone follows.

“Kiliwakee listens at the house door and hears someone snoring inside—Logan, no less; then he crawls through the door, and Bone guessed that looney was after the pearls. If Bone had run he’d have been in time to save Logan, but he didn’t. He just listened. He heard a noise like a yelp. Then, five minutes after, out comes Kiliwakee. He’d done Logan in and cut his stomach open, but he hadn’t found no pearls, not knowing the chief chap had been usin’ a figure of speech.

“Now you know what a figure of speech is, and don’t you forget it, and if you want to know any more about it go and buy a grammar book. Bone—Oh, he never got away with the schooner, nor the boodle neither. A Chile gunboat looked into that lagoon next week and collared the fishin’ rights and produce in the name of Chile, and told Bone to go fight it in the courts if he wanted to put in a claim. Said the place had been charted and claimed by Chile two years before, which was a lie.

“But Bone wasn’t up for fighting. Too much afraid of questions being asked and the doing in of Logan put down to him by the Kanakas.

“So he took a passage in the gunboat to Valdivia. He’d six big pearls stolen from the takings and hid in the lining of his waistcoat, and he sold them for two hundred dollars to a Jew, and that got him back to ’Frisco.

“Thank you, I don’t mind; whisky with a dash, if it’s all the same to you.”