I ask is that you set the guns up after I've finished my
business here with Tabu-Tabu. He's been on a war vessel, and
knows what guns are, and if he saw you mountin' them it might
break up our friendly relations. He'll think we don't trust him."

"Well, we don't," replied McGuffey doggedly.

"Well, we do," snapped Captain Scraggs.

There is always something connected with the use of that pronoun
of kings which eats like a canker at the heart of men of the
McGuffey breed. That officer now spat on the deck, in defiance of
the rules of his superior officers, and glared at Captain
Scraggs.

"Speak for yourself, you miserable little wart," he roared. "If
you include me on that cannibal's visitin' list, and go to
contradictin' me agin, I'll----"

"Mac," interrupted Mr. Gibney angrily, "control yourself. It's
agin the rules to have rag-chewin' and backbitin' on the _Maggie
II_. Remember our motto: 'All for one and one for all'----"

"Here comes that sneakin' bushy-headed murderer back to the
vessel," interrupted McGuffey. "I wonder what devilment he's up
to now."

Mr. McGuffey was partly right, for in a few minutes Tabu-Tabu
came alongside, climbed aboard, and salaamed. Mr. Gibney, fearful
of McGuffey's inability to control his antipathy for the race,
beckoned Captain Scraggs and Tabu-Tabu to follow him down into
the cabin. Meanwhile, McGuffey contented himself by parading
backward and forward across the fo'castle head with a Mauser
rifle in the hollow of his arm and his person fairly bristling
with pistols and cutlasses. Whenever one of the flotilla of
canoes hove to at a respectful distance, showed signs of crossing
an imaginary deadline drawn by McGuffey, he would point his rifle
at them and swear horribly. He scowled at Tabu-Tabu when that
individual finally emerged from the conference with Mr. Gibney
and Scraggs and went over the side to his waiting canoe.

"Well, what's in the wind this time?" inquired McGuffey.

"We're invited to a big feed with the king of Kandavu," replied
Captain Scraggs, as happy as a boy. "Hop into a clean suit of
ducks, Mac, and come along. Gib's goin' to broach a little keg of
liquor and we'll make a night of it."

"Good lord," groaned McGuffey, "does the man think I'm low enough
to _eat_ with niggers?"

"Leave him to his own devices," said Mr. Gibney indulgently.
"Mac's just as Irish as if he'd been born in Dublin instead of
his old man. Nobody yet overcome the prejudice of an I