kes _me_. Then the line can move up one. That's the thing about New
York. Say, man, len' me a cigarette.--But that's the thing about
Broadway. When you make, you make _big_. I know a guy turned out a
powder-puff looked like a lor'nette--a quarter of a dollar. You know how
the Janes'll fall for a thing like that--"

It was completely preposterous, almost uncomfortable. It made a man look
around him. On the schooner's port side spread the empty blue of the
South Pacific; the tenuous snowdrift of the reef, far out, and the
horizon. On the starboard hand, beyond the little space of the
anchorage, curved the beach, a pink-white scimitar laid flat. Then the
scattering of thatched and stilted huts, the red, corrugated-iron store,
residence and godowns of the Dutch trader, the endless Indian-file of
coco palms, the abrupt green wall of the mountain.--A twelve-year-old
girl, naked as Eve and, I've no doubt, thrice as handsome, stood
watching us from the mid-decks in a perfection of immobility, an empty
milk tin propped between her brown palms resting on her breast. Twenty
fathoms off a shark fin, blue as lapis in the shadow, cut the water
soundlessly. The hush of ten thousand miles was disturbed by nothing but
that grotesque, microscopic babbling:

"Say you play in bad luck. Well, you can't play in bad luck _f'rever_.
Not if you're wise. One time I get five good wheezes. Good ones! Sure
fire! One of 'em was the old one about the mother-'n-law and the doctor,
only it had a perfectly novel turn to it. Did I make? I did not. Why?
Well, a good friend o' mine lifts them five wheezes, writes a vaudeville
turn around 'em, and makes big. Big! What does that learn me? Learns me
to go bear on friendship. So next time I get an idea--"

The girl had put the milk tin down between her toes on deck and turned
her head.

"Digger!" I called to the mate. "Clear the vessel! Shove them all
overboard! Here comes the Dutchman!"

Before the advance of the trader's canoe, painted vermillion like his
establishment and flying over the water under the paddle strokes of his
six men, Signet took himself hastily overboard with the rest. There was
no question of protest or false pride. Over he went. Rising and treading
water under the taffrail, and seeing the trader still some fathoms off,
he shook the wet from the rag of a beard with which long want of a razor
had blurred his peaked chin and gathered up the ends of the
conversation:

"No, Dole, you ca