"I bet a dollar that fellow wouldn't swap billets with the angel
Gabriel at this partikler moment," said our profane mate thoughtfully.


* * * * *


We started weighing and shipping the copra next day. After finishing
up, the solemn Charley invited the skipper and supercargo to remain
ashore till morning. His great trouble, he told us, was that he had not
yet secured a wife, "a reg'lar wife, y'know." He had, unluckily, "lost
the run" of the last Mrs Charley during his absence at another island
of the group, and negotiations with various local young women had been
broken off owing to his having run out of trade. In the South Seas, as
in the civilised world generally, to get the girl of your heart is
usually a mere matter of trade. There were, he told us with a
melancholy look, "some fine Nukunau girls here on a visit, but the one
I want don't seem to care much about stayin', unless all this new trade
fetches her."

"Who is she?" enquired the skipper.

"Tibakwa's daughter."

"Let's have a look at her," said the skipper, a man of kind impulses,
who felt sorry at the intermittency of the Long One's connubial
relations. The tall, scraggy trader shambled to the door and bawled
out: "Tibakwa, Tibakwa, Tibakwa, O!" three times.