"No, sir, my laddy buck. He was the bully boy with the glass eye. The
nigger didn't live that'd lift his head. But they got 'm. They got 'm.
He lasted fourteen years, too. It was his cook-boy. Hatcheted 'm before
breakfast. An' it's well I remember our second trip into the bush after
what was left of 'm."

"I saw his head after you'd turned it over to the Commissioner at
Tulagi," Van Horn supplemented.

"An' the peaceful, quiet, everyday face of him on it, with almost the
same old smile I'd seen a thousand times. It dried on 'm that way over
the smokin' fire. But they got 'm, if it did take fourteen years.
There's manny's the head that goes to Malaita, manny's the time untooken;
but, like the old pitcher, it's tooken in the end."

"But I've got their goat," the captain insisted. "When trouble's
hatching, I go straight to them and tell them what. They can't get the
hang of it. Think I've got some powerful devil-devil medicine."

Tom Haggin thrust out his hand in abrupt good-bye, resolutely keeping his
eyes from dropping to Jerry in the other's arms.

"Keep your eye on my return boys," he cautioned, as he went over the
side, "till you land the last mother's son of 'm. They've got no cause
to love Jerry or his breed, an' I'd hate ill to happen 'm at a nigger's
hands. An' in the dark of the night 'tis like as not he can do a fare-
you-well overside. Don't take your eye off 'm till you're quit of the
last of 'm."

At sight of big _Mister_ Haggin deserting him and being pulled away in