Had either Gibney or McGuffey glanced back as they headed for their haven of forgetfulness they might have seen Captain Scraggs poking his fox face up over the edge of a tier of potato boxes piled on the bulkhead not six feet from where Gibney and McGuffey had been sitting. Upon his return to the Maggie, about the time Mr. Gibney commenced spinning his yarn, he had almost walked into the worthy pair, and, wishing to avoid the jeers and jibes he felt impending, he had merely stepped aside and hidden behind the potato boxes in order to eavesdrop on their plans, if possible. Had Mr. Gibney been less interested in his past or Mr. McGuffey less interested in the recital of that past they would have seen Scraggs.

The owner of the Maggie shook his fist in impotent rage at their retreating backs. "You think you've suffered before," he snarled. "But I'll make you suffer some more, you big brute. I'll hurt you worse than if I caved in your head with a belayin' pin. I'll break your heart, that's what I'll do to you. You wait."

In the course of an hour Gibney and McGuffey returned, and Scraggs met them as they leaped down on to the deck of the Maggie. "Gentlemen," he remarked—"an' at that I'm givin' you two all the best of it, even if you two have got a quit-claim deed that you ain't pirates—I wish to announce that if you two have come aboard my ship for the puppose o' havin' a little fun at my expense, I'm a-goin' to call the police an' have you arrested for disturbin' the peace. On the other hand an' futher, if your mission's a peaceful one, you're welcome aboard the Maggie. I may have a temper an' say things that sounds mighty harsh when I'm het up, but in my calmer moments my natural inclination is to be a sport."

"Scraggsy, old hard-luck," Mr. Gibney boomed, "we won so we can afford to be generous in victory. Like you, me an' Mac is inclined to be uppish at times, particularly in the hour of triumph, an' say an' do things we're apt to be ashamed of later."

"Them's my sentiments," McGuffey chimed in.

"We ain't comin' aboard to beg you for no job," Mr. Gibney warned. "Git that idea out o' your head—if you got it there. Me an' Bart each got close to a thousand dollars in bank this minute an' we're as free an' independent as two hogs walkin' on ice. Any ol' time we can't stand up we can set down."

Captain Scraggs was frankly mystified. "If you two got a thousand dollars each in bank—an' I ain't disputin' it, for I hear on good authority you got that much for salvin' the Chesapeake—what're you hangin' around the Maggie for?"

Mr. Gibney approached and placed his great right arm fraternally across Scraggs's skinny shoulder. Mr. McGuffey performed a similar office with his brawny left, and Captain Scraggs looked apprehensive, like a man who is about to be kissed by another in public.

"Scraggsy, when all is lovely an' the goose honks high, it's our great American privilege to fight like bearcats if we feel that way about it. But when misfortune descends on one of us, like a topmast in a typhoon, it's time to stop bickerin'. Me an' Bart, driftin' along the docks for a constitootional this mornin', bears the sorrerful tidin's that your new navigatin' officer an' your new engineer has quit. Judgin' from that shanty on your left eye, at least one of 'em quit under protest. Immediately, Scraggsy, me an' Mac decided you might hate our innards but just the same you needed us in your business. Consequently, we're here to help you if you'll let us an' for not another durned reason in the world."

"There's four alleeged mechanics down in the engine room loafin' on the job an' gettin' ready to soak you a dollar an' a half an hour overtime to-night an' Sunday," McGuffey informed the skipper. "An' that hurts me. I don't mind takin' a poke at you myself but I'll be shot if I'll stand idly by an' see somebody else do it. With your kind permission, Scraggs, I'll climb into my dungarees an' make things hum in that engine room."

Captain Scraggs was truly affected. His weak chin trembled and tears came to his little mean green eyes. He could not speak; so Mr. Gibney hugged him and patted him on the back and told him he was a good fellow away down low, if the truth were only known; whereat Captain Scraggs commenced to sob aloud. McGuffey coughed and tears as big as marbles cascaded down the honest Gibney's rubicund countenance.

"I ain't wuth your sympathy after the way I treated you," Captain Scraggs cried brokenly.

"Shet up, you little bum," Mr. Gibney cried furiously. "Or I'll bang you in that other eye that's ready for bangin'."

"If you're shy a few bucks——" McGuffey began.

"I am," Captain Scraggs wailed. "I'm worried to death. I don't know how I'm ever goin' to pay for that bloody boiler an' git to sea with the Maggie——"

"Little sorrel-top," Mr. Gibney murmured, ruffling Scraggs's thin blonde hair. "Forget them sordid monetary considerations. I'm somethin' like forty jumps ahead o' the devil an' ruination for the first time since me an' Bull McGinty organized the Brotherhood o' the South Seas——"

"Leggo me," snarled Captain Scraggs and springing back, he bent and looked earnestly into Mr. Gibney's happy countenance. "Good land o' Goshen, if you ain't him!" Hate gleamed in his eyes.

"Ain't who, you shrimp!" Mr. Gibney was mystified at this abrupt change of attitude.

Captain Scraggs blinked and passed his hand wearily across his brow. "Forgive me, Gib," he answered humbly. "I was sort o' took back, that's all."

"Took back at what?"

"We won't say nothin' more about it, Gib, except that while I'd like to accept your kind offer an' put you back on the job again, I—I just can't bring myself to do it. I'll have to forget first."

"Forget what? Bart, is Scraggsy gone nutty?"

"Out with it, Scraggs," Mr. McGuffey urged. "Spit it out, whatever it is."

"I'd rather not, but since you ask me I suppose I might as well. Gib, ever since me an' you first hooked up together, away back in the corner o' my head there's been lurkin' a suspicion that once before, a long time ago, you an' me have had some business dealin's, but for the life o' me I couldn't place you. One minute I'd just be a-staggerin' on the brink of memory, as the feller says, an' the next it'd slip away from me. But just now, when you mentioned Bull McGinty an' the Brotherhood o' the South Seas—well, Gib, it all come back to me like a flash. Bull McGinty an' the schooner Dashin' Wave!" Captain Scraggs shook his head as if his thoughts threatened to congeal in his brain and he desired to shake them up. "Bull had a dash o' the tar-brush in his make up, if I don't disremember, an' you was his young mate. Man, how funny you did look with them long red whiskers—an' you little more'n a boy."

"Jumpin' Jehosophat, Scraggsy! Was you one o' the Brotherhood?"

Captain Scraggs came close and thrust his face up for Mr. Gibney's inspection. "Gib," he said solemnly, "look at me! Touch the cord o' memory an' think back. D'ye remember that pore little feller you robbed of five hundred dollars twenty-odd year ago in the schooner Dashin' Wave? D'ye remember that typhoon we was in an' how, when I was that tuckered out an' so seasick I couldn't stand up, you made me pump ship an' when I protested, you stuck a horse pistol under my nose an' made me? That man, Adelbert P. Gibney was me! Me! Me!" Scraggs's voice rose in a crashing crescendo; his teeth clicked together and he shook his skinny fist under the great Gibney nose. Gibney paled and drew away from him.

"How was I to know, Scraggsy?" he faltered. "The whole bunch was runts—sickly, measly little fellers. Nevertheless an' agin, you shouldn't ought to have any kick comin'. You had a fine trip an' a heap of adventure an' me an' Bull paid your passage back to San Francisco. Come, Scraggs. Be sensible. What's the use holdin' a grudge after twenty-five years?"

"Oh, I ain't holdin' a grudge, exactly, Gib, my boy. I admit I had a good run for my money an' it was a smart piece o' work, an' I got to admire the idea, same as I got to admire the seamanship you displayed sailin' the Chesapeake single-handed. It ain't what you done to me as makes my blood boil. It's what you went an' done afterward."

"What'd I do afterward? You can't hang nothin' on me, Phineas P. Scraggs. Bluffin' don't go. Cough it up."

"All right, since you drive me to it. How about that lovely, untootered savage that you lures into your foul clutches so's you can make yourself king of Aranuka? Hey? Hey? How about that little tropic wild flower you carelessly plucked an' thrun away? Oh, I'll admit she was a savage, but she was sweet an' human for all that an' she had feelin's. She had a heart to bust an' you busted it for fair."

Mr. Gibney attempted to hoot, but made a poor job of it. "Why, wherever do you get this wild tale, Scraggsy, old spell-binder? You're sure jingled or you wouldn't talk so vagrant."

"You can't git away with it like that, Gib. I trailed you. Gib, for two mortal years I follered you, after you dropped us at Suva, an' I was just a thirstin' for your blood. If I'd met up with you any time them first two years I'd have shot you like a dog. I got a whisper you was in Aranuka but when I got there you'd left. But I found your wife—her you called Pinky. She couldn't believe you'd slipped your cable for good an' there she was, a-waitin' an' a-waitin' for her king to come back. Gib, I'm free to tell you that piracy, barratry, murder an' homicide pales into insignificance compared with what you went an' done, for you broke an innercent an' trustin' heart an' hell's too good for a man that'll pull a trick like that."

"Scraggsy, Scraggsy, Scraggsy," Mr. Gibney protested. "Them's awful hard words."

"I can't help it. You told me to speak out an' I'm a-doin' it. You hooks up with this unsophisticated, trustful woman—she ain't a woman; she's a young girl at the time—an' she ain't civilized enough to be on to your kind. So you finds it easy to make her love you. Not with the common sordid love of a white woman but with the fierce, undyin' passion o' the South Seas. An' when you get her in your clutches, her an' her whole possessions an' she's yours body an' bones, in the sight o' God an' the sight o' man—you ups an' leaves her! You throw her down like she's so much dirt an' leave her to die of a broken heart. An' she'd a-done it, too, if it hadn't a' been for the children."

Captain Scraggs was fairly thunderin' his denunciation as he concluded with: "You—you murderer! Ain't you ashamed of yourself?"

Mr. Gibney, thoroughly crushed, hung his head. "If there was kids, Scraggsy," he pleaded, "they wasn't mine, not that I knows on."

"I ain't sayin' you don't speak the truth there, Gib. Maybe you don't know that part of it, because you left before they was born. Yes, sir, that gal had two twins—a boy an' a girl an' both that white, when I see them as yearlings, you'd never suspect they had a dab o' the tar-brush in 'em at all. The boy had red hair—provin' he was yourn, Gib."

Mr. Gibney could stand no more. He sat down on the hatch coaming and covered his face with his hard red hands. "If there was kids, Scraggsy," he sobbed, "I didn't know it. I had everything else, Scraggs, but heirs to my throne. Scraggsy, believe me or not, but if I'd had children I'd have stuck by Pinky. I wouldn't desert my own flesh an' blood, so help me."

"Well," Scraggs went on sorrowfully, "Pinky's dead an' so her troubles is over. I heard some years ago she'd passed on with consumption. But them two hapahaole kids o' yourn, Gib. Just think of it. Banged an' ragged around between decks, neither black nor white—too good for the natives an' not good enough for the whites. Princes on their mother's side, they been robbed o' their hereditary rights by a gang o' native roughnecks, while their own father loafs alongshore in San Francisco an' enjoys himself."

"Looky here, Scraggs," Mr. McGuffey struck in ominously. "Ain't you said about enough? Don't hit a feller when he's down."

"Well, he ain't down so low that he can't climb back. If he's got a spark o' manhood left in him he'll never rest until he goes back to Aranuka, looks up them progeny o' his, an' does his best to make amends for the past. Gib, you can't work for me aboard the Maggie—not if the old girl couldn't turn her screw until you stepped aboard. Pers'nally you got a lot o' fine p'ints an' I like you, but now that I know your past——"

He threw out his hands despairingly. "It's your morals, Gib, it's your blasted morals."

"You're right, Scraggs," Mr. Gibney mumbled brokenly. "It's my duty to go look up them poor children o' mine. Bart, you stick by old Scraggsy. I owe him somethin' for showin' me my duty an' I'm lookin' to you to pay the interest on my bill till I get back with them poor kids o' mine. Until then I guess I ain't fit to 'sociate with white men."

Mr. McGuffey appeared on the point of weeping and put his arm around his old comrade in silent sympathy. Presently Mr. Gibney shook hands with him and Scraggs and, motioning them not to follow him, went ashore. Before him, in his mind's eye, there floated the picture of a South Sea Island with the nodding, tufted palms fringing the beach and the glow of a volcano against the moonlit sky. Standing on the headland, waving him a last farewell, stood the broken-hearted victim of his capricious youth, the lovely Pinky Poui-Slam-Bang. Every lineament of her beautiful features was tattooed indelibly on his memory; he knew she would haunt him forever.

He went up to the Bowhead saloon, had a drink, leaned on the end of the bar and thought it over. There was but one way to get back to Aranuka and that was to ship out before the mast on a South Sea trader—and with that thought came remembrance of the Tropic Bird, soon to be discharged and outward bound.

Five minutes later, Mr. Gibney was aboard the Tropic Bird and had presented himself at her master's cabin. "Where're you bound for next trip, sir?" he inquired.

"General trading through the Marquesas, the Society Islands, and the Gilberts."

"Happen to be goin' to Aranuka, in the Gilberts?"

"You bet. Got a trading station there."

"How are you off for a good mate?"

"Got one."

"How about a second mate?"

"Got a crackerjack."

"Well, I'm not particular. I'll make a bully bo'sun, sir."

"Very well. We'll be sailing some day next week and you can sign up before the Commissioner any time you're ready. By the way, what's your name?"

"Gibney, sir. Adelbert P. Gibney."

"Any experience in the South Seas?"

"Heaps of it. I was mate for three years with Bull McGinty in the old Dashin' Wave more'n twenty years ago."

The master of the Tropic Bird blinked. "Gibney! Gibney!" he murmured. "Why, I wonder if you're the same man. Are you the chap that was king of Aranuka for six months and then abdicated for no reason at all?"

"I was, sir," Mr. Gibney confessed shamefacedly. "I'm King Gibney of Aranuka."

"What was your wife's name?"

"I called her Pinky for short."

"By Neptune, what a coincidence! Why, Gibney, I saw Her Majesty on our last trip, less than two months ago, and she was telling me all about you. Great old girl, Pinky, and mighty proud of the fact that once she had a white husband. So you're King Gibney, eh? Well, well! The world is certainly small." The skipper chuckled, nor noticed Mr. Gibney's bulging eyes and hanging jaw. "Going back to take over your kingdom again, Gibney?" he demanded jocosely.

"You say you saw her two months ago?" Mr. Gibney bellowed. "D'ye mean to tell me she's alive?"

"I did and she's very much so."

"An' the twins. How about them?"

"There are no twins. Pinky never had any children until after Bull McGinty took up with her, which was after you left her. They say she doesn't think quite as much of McGinty as she did of you. He has a dash of dark blood and it shows up strong."

"The dog wrote me he'd married a sugar plantation in Maui."

"Perhaps he did. If the plantation didn't produce, though, you can bet Bull McGinty wouldn't stay put. By the way, I have a photograph of Queen Pinky. Snapped her with my kodak on the last trip." He searched around in the drawer of his desk and brought the picture forth. "Think you'd recognize Her Majesty after all these years?" he asked.

Mr. Gibney seized the picture, gazed upon it a moment, and emitted one horrified ejaculation which in itself would have been sufficient to bar him forever from polite society. For what he gazed upon was not the lovely Pinky of other days, but a very fat, untidy, ugly black woman in a calico Mother Hubbard dress. The face, while good-natured, was wrinkled with age and dissipation; indeed, worldling that he was, Mr. Gibney saw at a glance that Pinky had grown fond of her gin. From the royal lips a huge black cigar protruded.

"I guess I won't take that bo'sun job after all," he gasped—and fled. Two minutes later, Captain Scraggs and Mr. McGuffey, were astonished to find Mr. Gibney waiting for them on deck. His face was terrible to behold; he fixed Scraggs with a searching glance and advanced upon the Maggie's owner with determination in every movement.

"Why—why, Gib, we thought you was headed south by this time," Scraggs sputtered, for something told him great events portended.

"You dirty dawg! You little fice! You figgered on breakin' my heart an' sendin' me off on a wild-goose chase, didn't you?" Mr. Gibney leaped and his great hand closed over Captain Scraggs's collar. "Own up," he bellowed. "Where'd you git this dope about me an' Pinky? Lie to me agin an' I'll toss you overboard," and in order to impress Captain Scraggs with the seriousness of his intentions he cuffed the latter vigorously with his open left palm.

"I was behind the potato crates this mornin' whilst you an' Mac was yarnin'," Scraggs hastened to confess. "Ow! Wow! Leggo, Gib! Can't you take a little joke?"

"Was Mac here in on the joke? Was you let in on it after I went?" Mr. Gibney demanded of his Fidus Achates.

"I was not, Gib. I don't call it no joke to wring a feller's heart like Scraggsy wrung yourn."

"In addition to makin' a three-ply jackass o' me!" Captain Scraggs cowered under the rain of ferocious slaps and attempted to fight back, but he was helpless in the huge Gibney's grasp and was forced to submit to a boxing of the ears that would have addled his brains, had he possessed any. "Now, then," Mr. Gibney roared, as he cast the skipper loose, "let that be a lesson to you to let the skeletons in my closet alone hereafter. Mac, you're not to lend Scraggsy a cent to help him out on expenses, added to which me an' you quit the Maggie here an' now."

"You're a devil," McGuffey growled at Scraggs, "an' sweet Christian thoughts is wasted on you."

Glowering ferociously, the worthy pair went over the rail.