osening his neck. "Let me
get at it gradual or I'll explode. I've not only sold it, boys, I've
wrung out a charter on my own terms to 'Frisco and back,--on my own
terms. I made a point of it. I fooled him first by making believe I
wanted copra, which, of course, I knew he wouldn't hear of--couldn't, in
fact; and whenever he showed fight I trotted out the copra, and that man
dived! I would take nothing but copra, you see; and so I've got the
blooming lot in specie--all but two short bills on 'Frisco. And the sum?
Well, this whole adventure, including two thousand pounds of credit,
cost us two thousand seven hundred and some odd. That's all paid back;
in thirty days' cruise we've paid for the schooner and the trade. Heard
ever any man the match of that? And it's not all! For besides that,"
said the captain, hammering his words, "we've got thirteen blooming
hundred pounds of profit to divide. I bled him in four thou.!" he cried,
in a voice that broke like a schoolboy's.

For a moment the partners looked upon their chief with stupefaction,
incredulous surprise their only feeling. Tommy was the first to grasp
the consequences.

"Here," he said in a hard business tone, "come back to that saloon: I've
got to get drunk."

"You must please excuse me, boys," said the captain earnestly. "I
daren't taste nothing. If I was to drink one glass of beer it's my
belief I'd have the apoplexy. The last scrimmage and the blooming
triumph pretty nigh-hand done me."

"Well, then, three cheers for the captain," proposed Tommy.

But Wicks held up a shaking hand. "Not that either, boys," he pleaded.
"Think of the other buffer, and let him down easy. If I'm like this,
just fancy what Topelius is. If he heard us singing out, he'd have the
staggers."

As a matter of fact, Topelius accepted his defeat with a good grace; but
the crew of the wrecked _Leslie_, who were in the same employment, and
loyal to their firm, took the thing more bitterly. Rough words and ugly
looks were common. Once even they hooted Captain Wicks from the saloon
verandah; the Currency Lasses drew out on the other side; for some
minutes there had like to have been a battle in Butaritari; and though
the occasion passed off without blows, it left on either side an
increase of ill-feeling.

No such small matter could affect the happiness of the successful
traders. Five days more the ship lay in the lagoon, with little
employment for any one but Tommy and the captain, for T