e was sitting under his tarpaulin in the graveyard, tootling for all he
was worth. He looked up, a little surprised to see me, and I guess ships
were running through his head also, for that was his first question.

I sat down on a near-by grave.

"The fack is, Mr. Smith," I said, very meaningly, "you paid me a little
visit last night and I paid you one."

"Oh, my God!" he said, turning whiter than paper, and the voice coming
out of him like an old man's.

"There's no 'my God' about it," I said. "But me and Tom Riley's been
talking it over, and we'd like to bear a hand to help you."

"It's mine," he said, very defiant, and trembling. "It's mine, every
penny of it, and honest come by."

"No doubt," I said, "but would I be guessing wrong if there were others
who didn't think so?"

"There _are_ others," he said at last, seeing, I suppose, that my face
looked friendly, and realizing that me and Tom would hardly take this
tack if we meant to massacre him in his sleep.

"Mr. Smith," I said, "you never had two better friends than Bill Hargus
or Tom Riley."

He laid down his flute.

"I'd never feel in any danger with that good wife of yours about," he
said. It didn't seem quite the right remark under the circumstance, but
there was a power of truth back of it. That girl of mine was regularly
struck on Old Dibs, and, being a Tongan, was full of the Old Nick, and
would have bit my ear off if I had lifted my hand to him. The two of
them had patched up an adoption arrangement, him being her father, and
she used to play _suipi_ with him, and taught him to repeat Psalms in
native. It's only another proof how women are the same everywhere, and
how far it goes with them to be treated with a little respeck and
consideration.

"You have a plan?" he says. "Well, Bill, what is it?"

"It's a plan to get a plan," I said. "What chance would you have as
things are now?"

"Chance?" he inquires.

"You'd be in irons and aboard, before you'd know what had happened to
you," I said.

He looked at me a long time and then heaved a sigh.

"I'd do for myself first," he said. "They'll never put me in the dock so
long as I have a pistol and the will to use it on myself."

"I think me and Tom could improve on that," said I.

"This island's too small to hide in," he said. "No background," he said.
"I was looking for a place where there was mountains and inland
country--and maybe caves."

"You never could make a success of it by yours