that an' she had feelin's. She had a heart to bust an' you
busted it for fair."

Mr. Gibney attempted to hoot, but made a poor job of it. "Why,
wherever do you get this wild tale, Scraggsy, old spell-binder?
You're sure jingled or you wouldn't talk so vagrant."

"You can't git away with it like that, Gib. I trailed you. Gib,
for two mortal years I follered you, after you dropped us at
Suva, an' I was just a thirstin' for your blood. If I'd met up
with you any time them first two years I'd have shot you like a
dog. I got a whisper you was in Aranuka but when I got there
you'd left. But I found your wife--her you called Pinky. She
couldn't believe you'd slipped your cable for good an' there she
was, a-waitin' an' a-waitin' for her king to come back. Gib, I'm
free to tell you that piracy, barratry, murder an' homicide pales
into insignificance compared with what you went an' done, for you
broke an innercent an' trustin' heart an' hell's too good for a
man that'll pull a trick like that."

"Scraggsy, Scraggsy, Scraggsy," Mr. Gibney protested. "Them's
awful hard words."

"I can't help it. You told me to speak out an' I'm a-doin' it.
You hooks up with this unsophisticated, trustful woman--she ain't
a woman; she's a young girl at the time--an' she ain't civilized
enough to be on to your kind. So you finds it easy to make her
love you. Not with the common sordid love of a white woman but
with the fierce, undyin' passion o' the South Seas. An' when you
get her in your clutches, her an' her whole possessions an' she's
yours body an' bones, in the sight o' God an' the sight o'
man--you ups an' leaves her! You throw her down like she's so
much dirt an' leave her to die of a broken heart. An' she'd
a-done it, too, if it hadn't a' been for the children."

Captain Scraggs was fairly thunderin' his denunciation as he
concluded with: "You--you murderer! Ain't you ashamed of
yourself?"

Mr. Gibney, thoroughly crushed, hung his head. "If there was
kids, Scraggsy," he pleaded, "they wasn't mine, not that I knows
on."

"I ain't sayin' you don't speak the truth there, Gib. Maybe you
don't know that part of it, because you left before they was
born. Yes, sir, that gal had two twins--a boy an' a girl an' both
that white, when I see them as yearlings, you'd never suspect
they had a dab o' the tar-brush in 'em at all. The boy had red
hair--provin' he was yourn, Gib."

Mr. Gibney could stand no more. He sat down on the hatch coaming