gambler, and boaster. Rough and ready, witty, profane, and obscene,
he bubbled over with tales of reef and sea, of women and men he had
met, of lawless tricks on natives, of storm and starvation, and of
his claimed illicit loves. Loud-mouthed, bullet-headed, beady-eyed,
a chunk of rank flesh shaped by a hundred sordid deeds, he must get
the center of attention by any hazard.

"Brown's purty stuck up now," he said acridly. "I remember the time
when he didn't have a pot to cook in. He had thirty Chile dollars a
month wages. We come on the beach the same day in the same ship. His
shoes were busted out, and he was crazy to get money for a new girl
he had. There was a Chink had eighteen tins of vanilla-beans worth
about two hundred American dollars each. He got the Chink to believe
he could handle the vanilla for him, and got hold of it, and then out
by the vegetable garden Brown hit the poor devil of a Chink over the
nut with a club."

McHenry got up from the table, and with Llewellyn's walking-stick
showed exactly how the blow was struck. He brought down the cane
so viciously against the edge of the table that he spilled our rum
punches.

"Mac," exclaimed Llewellyn, testily, as he shot him a hot glance
from the melancholy eyes under his black thatch of brows, "behave
yourself! You know you're lying."

McHenry laughed sourly, and went on:

"I was chums with Brown then, and when I caught up to him,--I was
walkin' behind them,--he asked me to see if the Chink was dead. I