. At one end of the stick he had slung
the stolen lump in a fiber net. At the other he had attached a battered
tin can of the kind that the beneficent enterprise of an American oil
company had spread to most of the dark parts of the earth. On this
balance of an ancient and primitive design he was engaged in weighing
his ill-gotten gains, squatting to the task.

"A gallon of water weighs a good eight pound," he declared. "I figger
five quarts an' a 'arf. And five is ten and the 'arf is one--"

Willems stood beside him in an attitude of stolid skepticism. There was
no mistaking the breed of this big derelict. He had managed to assert it
on a Pacific isle by fashioning himself somehow a pipe with a clay bowl
and a long stem of the true drooping line. He looked quite domestic and
almost paternal as he shuffled his broad feet and towered over the
little larrikin. But the fists he carried in the pockets of his
dungarees bulged like coconuts, and his hairy arms were looped brown
cables. A tough man for an argument was Mynheer Willems.

"Yaw," he was saying. "But how you know you got five quarts and a half?"

"W'y, any fool could guess near enough!" cried Sydney, with the
superflous violence that was his caste mark. "And you--y' big
Dutchman--'in't you swilled enough beer in your time to judge? Besides,
the bally can 'olds three gallon--bound to. There's one sure measure....
I say we got, anyw'y, eleven pounds of this stuff, and I 'appen to know
that Bendemeer's fair crazy after it. He'll pay big. We ought to 'ave
two thousands dollars Chile to split.... Two thousands silver dibs!"

It was a cue to friendly feeling, that luscious phrase. The two men
beamed upon it as Sydney dumped the balance and swung the fiber net.
But it was also a cue of another kind, for it brought Junius Peabody on
stage. He arrived by the simple process of sliding on a bundle over the
brow of the cliff.

"That's mine," he announced.

The beachcombers stayed stricken, which was pardonable. Surely there
never showed a less heroic figure on a stranger defiance than that of
Mr. Peabody, torn, bedraggled, and besmeared. There was nothing muscular
or threatening about him. He took no pose. He offered no weapon. He came
on at them limping, with quivering lip and empty hands, even with open
hands. And yet the incredible fact remained that he did come on at them
and continued to come.

"It's mine," repeated Junius. "All mine, and I'm going to have it--all