But he's fine for one thing, I'll
tell the world; you just have to have a drink every time you look at
him."

But my eyes fell on a calabash that hung against the wall over the
table, and I got up to look at it. I had been hunting for an old one and
this was better than any I had seen outside the museum.

"It was given me by a chief over on one of the islands," said the
captain, watching me. "I done him a good turn and he wanted to give me
something good."

"He certainly did," I answered.

I was wondering whether I could discreetly make Captain Butler an offer
for it, I could not imagine that he set any store on such an article,
when, as though he read my thoughts, he said:

"I wouldn't sell that for ten thousand dollars."

"I guess not," said Winter. "It would be a crime to sell it."

"Why?" I asked.

"That comes into the story," returned Winter. "Doesn't it, Captain?"

"It surely does."

"Let's hear it then."

"The night's young yet," he answered.

The night distinctly lost its youth before he satisfied my curiosity,
and meanwhile we drank a great deal too much whisky while Captain Butler
narrated his experiences of San Francisco in the old days and of the
South Seas. At last the girl fell asleep. She lay curled up on the seat,
with her face on her brown arm, and her bosom rose and fell gently with
her breathing. In sleep she looked sullen, but darkly beautiful.

He had found her on one of the islands in the group among which,
whenever there was cargo to be got, he wandered with his crazy old
schooner. The Kanakas have little love for work, and the laborious
Chinese, the cunning Japs, have taken the trade out of their hands. Her
father had a strip of land on which he grew taro and bananas and he had
a boat in which he went fishing. He was vaguely related to the mate of
the schooner, and it was he who took Captain Butler up to the shabby
little frame house to spend an idle evening. They took a bottle of
whisky with them and the ukalele. The captain was not a shy man and when
he saw a pretty girl he made love to her. He could speak the native
language fluently and it was not long before he had overcome the girl's
timidity. They spent the evening singing and dancing, and by the end of
it she was sitting by his side and he had his arm round her waist. It
happened that they were delayed on the island for several days and the
captain, at no time a man to hurry, made no effort to shorten his stay.
He was ver