# The Crowing Hens of Totulu

Extracted from Adventure magazine, April 1916, pp. 72-85
THE CROWING HENS OF TOTULU by J. ALLAN DUNN
Author of "The Cold Lust," "The Island of the Dead," etc.
"NEVER speak to a woman before twelve o'clock, noon. Follow that rule, Jimmy, my lad," said Riley Hardin, "and you'll avoid trouble with the sex. By twelve their blood gets to circulatin’ properly and they forget to be peevish."
"Ho, yus," replied Jimmy. "That’s a fine hold bit hof a rule, that his. You ’as your dooties on deck, an’ w’en you ain’t got none you can pretend you ’as, an’ she none the wiser. But w’ot price me? My job’s below an’ she knows hit, an’ fair chivvies me hall hover the place till Hi’m barmy. Hi’m sick of hit, Hi tell yer. W’ot did she come haboard for hanyway, that’s w’ot Hi’d like to know? W’ot hif she his the skipper’s missis. Hi’ve got shares hin the ship myself."
"She came aboard, Jimmy, my son," replied the first mate," because she preferred the Margaret Ann to jail."
"She’ll turn the ship hinter a bloomin’ loonatic asylum hif she keeps hit hup this w’y, wiv me has chief patient. W’ot was she goin’ to get hin jail for? Wimmen’s wrongs what they wants made wimmens’ rights, I suppose?"
"Well, Jimmy, you know she’s had the sufferaging bug bad for a year. She’s what we call back in the States a limelighter. Wants to stand in the spot all the time and thinks she’s a natural-born leader."
"Hi know hall that. W’ot appened to get the coppers hafter ’er."
"You were out of town, Jimmy. It was a week before we sailed——"
"W’ot did she do? ’Eave ’arf a brick hat a bobby?"
"First," said Hardin, "her limelightin’ got her to start a subscription to place a marble monument above the grave of an English sufferagette that had tried to blow up all the poets’ and dooks’ and warriors’ tombs in Westminster Abbey, but had miscalculated the length of the fuse. That fell flat, owin’ to the lady who was fightin’ her for the leadership of the Sydney Sufferagettes being a sixteenth cousin of the nephew of Nelson, or Byron or some one.
"So then some of ’em got into the gallery at the mayor’s banquet and threw a lot of cheap eggs while the soup was being served. One egg was a chiny one and hit the mayor on the bean, so that his bald head looked as if it was tryin’ to raise eggs on it’s own account. The skipper got the tip that the police knew who chucked it, so we smuggled Mrs. B. aboard and telegraphed you, and the next day we sailed,
"I told the skipper they couldn’t prove it on her, because she couldn’t possible have aimed it at the mayor and hit him too, but he didn’t see the joke."
"Well, Hi’m goin’ to tell ’im something hon my hown ’ook. Blowed hif she don’t think Hi’m some sort of stooard. Started harrangin’ my trade-room shelves. Told me Hi ’adn’t got no tyste in dress goods, Me! W’ot ’ave hintrodooced more ’its hin percales hand muslins than hany supercargo hin the South Seas! Said Hi hought to ’ave stocked hup wiv calico wiv lilock sprigs hon hit. Lilock sprigs, for Tamatau’s fahines!"
"Make allowances, Jimmy. She can’t help it. She’s a bit of a freak, you know. Most of these sufferagettes are, I reckon. Crowin’ hens, I call ’em."
"Crowin’ ’ens? She’s a bloomin’ cuckoo, that’s w’ot she his. Crowdin’ ’erself hin w’ere she don’t belong hand hain’t wanted, hand tryin’ to shove me hout hof my hown trade-room. Came hin this hafternoon w’en Hi was workin’, hand flounced hout becoz Hi was peeled to my hundershirt hand pants. Told the skipper Hi was hindecent, she did. Honly peace Hi ’ave, his w’en she’s seasick and, thank Gawd, she turns yeller hevery time the cabin lamp swings hin the gimbals."
"Maybe she’ll work it out of her system that way," opined Hardin. "It’s largely a matter of bile, to my way of thinkin’."
"Hif hit honly was," said Jimmy, "you could cure h’em heasy. Put h’em hall haboard a rollin’ little steamer and send h’em hout hin the Channel somew’eres w’ere hit’s nice and choppy. That ’ud beat hall the ’unger strikes. Wouldn’t ’ave to feed h’em hat hall."
"What about the ones who wasn’t seasick?"
"Make h’em wait hon the rest. They’d ’ave to, hout hof ’umanity. ’Old their ’eads and rush the bowls. Ho! Hi’d cure h’em."
"Well, if it gives you any comfort," said the mate, "the glass is down to thirty, and pumpin’ at that. There’s somethin’ comin’ our way, and soon. That’s why it’e so hot."
"Hit his warm," agreed Jimmy, mopping his brow. "H’ill tell Talua to put hon the racks hat supper. She starts feelin’ sick the minnit she sees h’em hon the table. ’Ullo, ’ere’s the skipper."
"Jimmy," said Captain Boyle, coming aft and speaking a little wearily, "Mrs. Boyle isn’t feeling very well. I wish you’d fix her up a little toddy. She thinks it’ll make her feel better."
Jimmy glanced at the mate, who averted his eyes. Then he went to the companionway, looking as if he’d like to fiz a draught for the wife of his esteemed skipper that would prove far from being a nepenthe.
"Mrs. Boyle under the weather, captain?" asked Hardin solicitously.
"Yes, Hardin, she’s a bit nervous yet. And the heat. Glass is still falling—down to twenty-nine-ninety. You’d better shorten sail. We’ll be needin’ storm canvas before midnight. Monsoon weather.
"I’ll handle it," he added as four bells struck; "if you want to go below? It’s my watch."
"Never mind, skipper," answered his mate hastily. "I’ll stay on deck and ’tend to it. I want to smoke a bit anyway."
The orders given, the two paced the deck together.
"Women," said the captain after a while, "are peculiar, Hardin. Especially these days. They seem to want something out of the ordinary to occupy themselves with."
"What most of ’em need," replied Hardin, "if you don’t mind my sayin’ so—is kids."
Captain Boyle sighed.
"I guess you’re right Hardin," he said. "I guess you’re pretty nearly right.
THE next day found the barometer and the thermometer still moving in opposite directions. The sky was filmed with a dull haze through which the sun shone like a tarnished copper wafer. The ocean seemed covered with gray scum. As the bows of the barkentine lunged sullenly through the water, they turned up long swathes of dull, slimy green, like crude oil. The life had gone out of the sea, no foam showed at stem or stem, only a few thick-rinded bubbles that floated out of sight without breaking. The wind slapped suddenly at the scant canvas from every quarter and the barkentine rolled heavily from side to side as if it’s timbers had lost their buoyancy.
Mrs. Boyle, fat to the creasing point, her ample form swathed in a Paisley shawl, yet looking somehow shrunken for all her stoutness, with a face the color of fresh putty, appeared on deck, and made her.way care fully to the mainmast where she clung feebly.
"I can’t stand it below," she said to her spouse. "The heat’s awful and there’s that Brownbill whistling in his trade-room till my head fair splits with it."
"I wouldn’t stay on deck if I were you, my dear," said the captain. "There’s goin’ to be dirty weather in short order."
"I’ll stay here if it kills me," retorted the lady with what in healthier hours would have been temper. "If you had any consideration for me, you’d get me my deck-chair."
"Billy-Boy," called the captain.
"Why can’t that Brownbill fetch it?"
"That is hardly his duty, my dear. And he has others."
"Duties?" sniffed the lady sinking into the chair. "He’s messin’ with a lot of paints down below. Thinks he’s an artist. ’Mfff!
"Oh!" as the barkentine lurched suddenly. "Can’t you fix the wheel or something and keep the ship even?"
"No, my dear, I can’t," said the captain with some acerbity, leaving her to meet his first mate.
"Well," retorted the lady, "as soon as I get my feet on solid ground you’ll not get me to sea again in a hurry."
"And that," thought the mate, though he did not speak it, "is the best news this trip."
"Glass twenty-nine-seventy," he said aloud. "Gettin’ mighty dark, ain’t it?"
The muggy heat seemed to increase as the sky film thickened, shutting off the sun till the day dulled to premature twilight.
Captain Boyle strode back to the chair.
"Get below, Maggie," he said.
"I’ll not," said the lady, waxen in the dusk.
"You will!" replied her husband, master on his own quarterdeck. "Billy-Boy, help Mrs. Boyle below!"
She went, her handkerchief to her mouth, seemingly corroborating Jimmy’s theory of a cure for ultra-suffragitis.
"Can’t tell red from bloo below," said the little supercargo, coming on deck.
"Here she comes," announced Boyle suddenly, as the line of the onrushing wind ruled the water with a line of black, throwing forward a skirmish-line of whitecaps.
The storm canvas filled as the breeze strengthened and the barkentine amended her sluggish speed.
"Everything snug, Mr. Hardin?"
"All snug, sir!"
The breeze suddenly turned to a gale that blew momentarily more fiercely till a shout died to a whisper on the lips. Streaks of oily spume sped horizontally across the deck.
"Center’s to the east’ard, I think," yelled Boyle into the mate’s ear, cupped by his hand. "Stand by to wear ship!"
A minute later the Margaret Ann was thrashing toward the horizon where no sunset was to grace the close of that day.
Mrs. Boyle, below in her cabin, recked not of casting votes or addressing applauding sisters. She was not silent, but her eloquence was not that of speech.
IT WAS a sunny afternoon when the lady ventured on deck once more and evinced a languid but growing interest in the lifting of the coco-palms of Totulu above the horizon.
In her lap, as she reclined in her chair, were two pieces of coarse canvas which she was adorning with colored wools disposed in the patterns of bright red animal-heads with shoe-button eyes, supposed to represent foxes, on a background of sickly green.
"What size shoes did you say King Tamatau wears?" she asked her husband.
"I don’t think he ever wore any, my dear."
"Then why didn’t you say so?"
"I didn’t know what you were making."
"Well, he’ll wear these," said the original Margaret Ann of the barkentine’s christening, regarding her work with pride. "I got the biggest soles there were in Sydney—fourteens. If they’re too small, we can take off the heels and turn back the canvas. Don’t you think he’ll like them?"
"He ought to," said Boyle diplomatically.
"Hold Tomato hin carpet slippers!" whispered Jimmy to Hardin. "Ho, my heye!
THE Margaret Ann swung at her moorings in the lagoon of Totulu off the long copra wharf, dipped ensign and fired a royal salute for the monarch of the little atoll-kingdom of which Totulu was the capital.
"When are we going ashore?" demanded Mrs. Boyle, decked for the occasion in white duck skirt, peekaboo-waist, long, white gloves and a wide-brimmed magenta hat with yellow ostrich plumes.
"Not until the king comes off," said Boyle.
"Then get me a fan," said the lady. "I should have brought a sunshade."
"Some by-by doll," murmured Jimmy as he sped Billy-Boy on the errand. "She’ll make a ’it wiv Hold Tomato, Hi don’t fink."
"Are those women rowing?" asked Mrs. Boyle excitedly, as Tamatau’s whaleboat, propelled by six lusty queens, shot out from the private wharf.
"Yes’m," replied Hardin. "They do it for exercise. Keeps ’em reduced."
Mrs. Boyle looked sharply at the mate. "Ha!" she said. "Well, it ain’t ladylike. I thought they wore clothes?"
Jimmy, addressed thus abruptly, sputtered something about "the ’eat," and retired to the cabin to dispense the inevitable "ginnybeer" for Tamatau.
"She’s a startin’ of somefing already," he confided to second mate Wilkins as they hastily shared an extra bottle of beer. "She’ll be a cuckooin’ on Totulu before you can s’y Jack Robinson. You watch."
Tamatau, to whom every year brought more of girth and less of breath, grunted heavily up the sideladder, resplendent in pajamas the design of which seemed to be an impressionistic attempt to portray orange starfish in a purple sea. Puffing, he stood at the rail, gazing fixedly at the vision of Mrs. Boyle. Great drops of perspiration ran down his fat jowls and splashed on the deck, while his enormous head smoked from the exertion of his climb.
"Looks like a meltin’ chocklate drop in a tuck-shop winder," said Jimmy, sotto voce, to Hardin, as he waited with a huge tankard of beer reinforced with gin. "Look hat ’is lamps buggin’ hout at the missis. Like ’ard boiled heggs hin a myonnaze salad."
Still enthralled, the heated monarch stretched an automatic arm for the tankard.
"My wife, King," said Boyle.
Mrs. Boyle curtseyed low.
"After all," she thought, "a king is a king." And made up her mind to be kodaked with him at the earliest moment.
"Humph!" said Tamatu from the depths of the goblet.
Then, relinquishing it to Jimmy for a fresh supply—
"Momona kela fahine papalangi."
"What does he say?" asked Mrs. Boyle smilingly of the captain.
The skipper’s embarassment was saved by Hardin.
"He says’m," said the mate, "that you’re ‘some lady.’" Which was an approximate, if not a literal translation.
The "momona fahine" (fat woman) held out a white-gloved hand, none too small, which was engulfed in the sweaty paw of Tamatau. She made another mental note—"To preserve the glove, as trophy Number Two."
"Aren’t the ladies coming aboard?" she asked.
"Them?" answered Tamatau. "Ugh! No."
"Mrs. Boyle looked as if she was about to say something which etiquette forbade, and followed the group to the cabin.
There was one question certain to be propounded by Tamatau within five minutes of his boarding either of the two vessels with the captains of which he traded—the barkentine Margaret Ann, Captain Boyle, and the schooner Shamrock, Captain McShane —both of Sydney. It came after the draining of the monarch’s fourth mug.
"What you bring me, kapitani?"
"Ah," said Boyle. "Present this time very fine, King. You remember light-stick Captain McShane give you last year?"
"Umph!" replied Tamatau, who had forborne to slip the switch of the electric torch in question, imagining it a perpetual flame inspired by papalangi magic. "That" no dam good"—Mrs. Boyle coughed—"two day, light all gone!"
"Well, this is different, King. This is big, oh plenty big light. Can see all around lagoon. I show you tonight. Can burn all time. I show Kokua how to fix."
"Kokua, he dam fool, too. Two, maybe three month now, he break noise-box you bring me last time. Kokua plenty too much dam fool."
This was a real grievance with Tamatau, for the circus orchestrion presented him by Captain Boyle had been a source of delight to all Totulu, until it broke down, to the disgrace of Kokua, general factotum of Tamatau’s little atoll-kingdom of Totulu.
"Jimmy can fix that, King," assured Boyle. "I bring you new tunes for that too."
"Maiti," said the mollified monarch, as Jimmy handed him his fifth flagon.
"Mrs. Boyle, she bring you something too, King."
Tamatau, whose glance had seldom wandered from the buxom countenance of the skipper’s lady, which seemed to hold for him some strange fascination—somewhat to her embarassment, though she set it down as homage due—gazed at her with renewed interest. On her part, she had carefully rehearsed her presentation speech.
"I trust, sire, that they will fit," she said. "If they don’t, I can fix ’em."
The king viewed the gift with admiration and thrust one paw in either slipper. But he made no effort to try them on, though the donor was itching to see the working effect of her industry.
"Maiti," he said. "Maiti!"
The talk drifted to copra and shell and hawkbill turtle, and presently the monarch rose ponderously from the settee which creaked it’s relief.
"I go now," he said. "You come ashore soon, I show fahine all my present."
He puffed himself laboriously up the companionway, attended by Boyle, and puffed himself down the sideladder to his waiting whaleboat.
"A most agreeable person," said Mrs. Boyle as the skipper returned to the cabin. "But I wish he wouldn’t stare so."
"You have made an impression, my dear. He seldom sees a woman of your style."
As a general rule, compliments from her husband were regarded as a suspicious commodity by Mrs. Boyle, but she accepted this one as currency.
"I shall love to see the things in his storehouse," she said.
The skipper, remembering pictures that had been cajoled from waterfront saloons to catch the robust fancy of Tamatau, hesitated.
"Don’t think you’ll care for it much," he said.
"The man’s respectable, isn’t he?"
The use of this adjective in connection with the South Sea ruler was so strange to Boyle that he gasped.
"Oh, Lord, yes. In that way," he answered.
"Then I shall go there first and visit with the ladies afterward."
It was a busy afternoon for the skipper, spent in making arrangements for loading a cargo, and it was close to twilight before he returned to his whaleboat.
"Where’s Mrs. Boyle?" he asked of the waiting Jimmy, whose vigil had been beguiled by the company of a slim, golden skinned, midnight hair-and-eyed young lady of Totulu.
Jimmy had a na-u (gardenia) wreath about his neck and the friendship seemed to have passed the first stages. The skipper eyed them sharply, and the girl with a poorly staged attempt at unconsciousness walked off to the village, swinging her lissome hips.
"No philanderin’, Jimmy," said Boyle.
"’Er name’s Fuatina," answered Jimmy, dodging the issue.
"I don’t care what her name is. I said no philanderin’, my son, and I meant it. A friendly interest for the good of trade, but no mix-ups. Where’s Mrs. Boyle?"
"She’s hover wiv the wimmin in the queenery. Bin there two ’ours hor more. ’Ere she is, now!"
Escorted by a score of queens and lesser ladies, Mrs. Boyle came to the boat request ing to be rowed aboard promptly, as "she was hungry."
"The ladies," she announced later in the privacy of the cabin, "are interesting, but the king is a beast."
"What’s wrong?" asked Boyle quickly.
"He took me to that stuffy storehouse of his, filled up with junk like a second-hand shop. There were pictures on the walls that were worse than indecent. I couldn’t look anywhere but what I saw one. I think, seeing I am your wife, you might have warned me."
"My dear——"
"But that was nothing! The creature didn’t want to show me anything. He wanted to look at my teeth."
"Your teeth?"
"I said my teeth, Captain Boyle."
"You must have been mistaken."
"I can read signs as well as the next person, I believe. I tell you he wanted me to open my mouth and let him see my teeth, as if he had been a dentist. But I told him exactly what I thought of him, and though he didn’t appear to understand all of it, I don’t think he’ll care to renew the acquaintance in a hurry. Is supper ready?"
It was. And the lady’s teeth were relegated to more pleasant purposes than the amusement of a monarch.
Captain Boyle wisely set aside the subject, resolving to open it later with Tamatau. But the explanation came naturally in the evening.
JIMMY had repaired the worn valves of the orchestrion and the entire population, fixed and visiting, of Totulu and it’s lagoon, assembled on the beach to hear the strains—using the word advisedly—of the new records. Mrs. Boyle was the only absentee, having retired early after the excitements of the day. The concert was a grand success, "Come, oh, my hero" being first favorite, with "My Hoolah Boolah Maid" a close second.
But the searchlight made the supreme hit. With a full supply of carbide in the cylinder, Tamatau delighted in thrusting into unexpected publicity couples who had sought the security of shadows in which to make love. His guffaws of joy came to a sudden end, however, as the beam disclosed his reigning favorite, Fatua, palpably flirting with a stalwart Totuluan in the comparative obscurity of the side of a canoe.
Jimmy created a diversion by starting a new record and the blare and clang of one of Sousa’s marches—butchered to make a South Sea holiday—restored the monarch’s equanimity. He turned the searchlight on the orchestrion and shouted approval at Jimmy, who grinned in reply.
"Hi," said Tamatau. "Jimmy, you come along here."
The little supercargo came over to where the king and the skipper sat side by side on the sand.
"What you want, King?" he asked.
"I like look um teeth," said Tamatau, pointing to his own substantial masticators.
"My teef?" said Jimmy, wonderingly.
"Sure," said the king, indicating the molars of his massive jowl.
"H’im hon," said Jimmy. "You want um see gold teef."
He opened his mouth in the full ray of the searchlight, while Tamatau ponderously rose, and gazed at the crown-teeth of the supercargo’s bridge work.
"Maiti no," he said. Then, to Captain Boyle:
"Your fahine, she plenty fine gold tooth."
A light dawned on the skipper.
"Sure, King! Many gold teeth, very fine, cost plenty much money. You like um?"
"I like," said Tamatau. "Where she get?"
"Sydney, King. Where did you get yours Jimmy?"
"Sydney, one side. This side was fixed in Tahiti, three years ago. Old Boileau, the French dentist."
"Tahiti!" said the king. "Suppose I go Tahiti, you think I can get?"
"Lord, King, you don’t need any new teeth," said Boyle.
"I like," persisted Tamatau, evidently enraptured with his new idea of personal decoration. "Suppose you take me along in ship?"
"When?"
"Tomorrow. I pay. I give you pearl—maybe two."
Now Tamatau had many pearls which even at his reserve prices were bargains. Tahiti was a scant three hundred miles away. Boileau the dentist could probably be persuaded to rush his job as crownmaker to Totulu."
So reflected Boyle, but, wise in the responsibilities of South Sea trade, he warned the king—
"I think, maybe he hurt plenty much, King."
"All same I no give a dam," said Tamatau.
Jack Johnson must have had the same indifference to pain when he ordered his golden smile.
"All right, I look at pearls tomorrow," assented Boyle.
But the bargain did not end with the king. There was Mrs. Boyle to be considered, and that lady, though mollified at the explanation of Tamatau’s interest in her teeth—she had thought it connected with a desire to learn her age—was not to be won over to the plan of the trip until she had secured one of the pearls of passage.
"It’ll be a nice run," said Boyle. "You’ll like Tahiti."
"I am not going!" returned his wife firmly.
"Not going?"
"For three reasons," replied the lady. "After all I suffered on the trip, I intend to stay ashore till my stomach is settled. And I’m not going to be cooped up with that king. Do you know what he did with my slippers? He was wearing them like a Scotch thingumajig."
"Sporran, my dear," said Boyle, remembering Tamatau’s display of his latest gift, hung from the girdle of his pajamas.
"Besides," went on the lady, "the queens are very interesting. We have already discovered interests in common."
"I don’t see how you get along with them. You don’t know the language and few of them can even talk beach-English."
Mrs. Boyle regarded her husband with scorn.
"Women have no trouble understanding each other," she answered. "We got along very well yesterday," she concluded complacently, remembering the pleasant afternoon on which she had been the star of the reception.
Certain subjects of burning feminine interest had been inevitably left out. The questions of servants, of dressmaking and favorite salads, were naturally terra incognita to the Totuluans; but there had been the important matters of sickness to discuss, of patent medicines and the proper handling of husbands, that had all gone swimmingly, despite the lack of mutual vocabulary. Also, Mrs. Boyle had discovered a sad state of affairs concerning Women’s Rights in the despotic little monarchy which she had already determined to alleviate. But of this she said nothing.
"Well," said the skipper, "if you’ve set your mind on staying, it can be arranged. I’ll leave Jimmy with you."
"That sparrow! I can take care of myself."
"There’s no question of that, my dear. They are perfectly friendly natives. It’s a matter of your own dignity. Besides, Jimmy has work to do, getting the cargo ready."
"As long as he attends to his own business?"
"We’ll fix him up a tent. As for your quarters——"
"I shall sleep in the Queen-House."
Visions of Mrs. Boyle—who was fond of her comfort—trying to sleep in a grass house open to the four winds and wandering insects, on a mat bed with a wooden pillow, surrounded by a score of queens, half of whom were obese and given to snoring; flashed across the skipper’s mind.
"You wouldn’t like that, my dear. Those grass houses are full of spiders—and centipedes."
"Ugh!"
"I’ll have a proper bed fixed for you in the king’s storehouse—we’ll take out the pictures. There’s a high fence on three sides and the lagoon in front. Besides, it’s practically tapu. You’ll need privacy."
"We-e-ell," said Mrs. Boyle, her flesh still crawling at thoughts of marauding spiders. "Perhaps that’s the best thing to do."
"That’s settled then. I’ll go talk with Jimmy.
THE Margaret Ann left on the afternoon tide, with Tamatau, accompanied by the repentant Fatua—under discipline—ensconced in state upon the after deck. The orchestrion sobbed out "The Wearing of the Green" as a farewell lament, and the village, in canoes and afoot along the curving beaches of the lagoon, accompanied the barkentine to the reef-passage. Mrs. Boyle was in the king’s whaleboat, manned, at her insistence, by men instead of it’s regular crew of queens.
Jimmy had proved less difficult over the matter of staying behind than Boyle had feared. The work the skipper had mentioned was largely hypothetical until the barkentine returned; and the supercargo had six unused canvases and a new outfit of oils and brushes. Besides, there was Fuatina. Mrs. Boyle’s quarters had been established to her satisfaction and Jimmy had a tent, improvised from a spare awning by Billy-Boy, set up on the beach away from the village.
The first two days passed quietly. Mrs. Boyle was in constant companionship with the select female society of the atoll, save when she was taking lessons in Totuluan from Kokua, who had acquired a fair knowledge of English on whaling voyages.
Jimmy was working hard on a canvas at a general picture of the head of the muleshoe shaped lagoon. Fuatina, adoring at his feet, held the spare brushes.
"Hits ’ell, getting this sand right," complained the artist, squeezing prodigally from fat tubes. "Hit looks w’ite, but hit hain’t, w’en you see the foam. Hit’s pink, hand yeller, hand the shadders his bloo."
A long cobalt shadow fell across the canvas from behind. Atupa, honorary paymaster of Totulu, spoke his approbation.
"Maiti, no," he said.
"You like?" asked the flattered artist.
"Maiti. Coco-palm plenty much good. All same walk about in wind. I like you make um pikitura my house."
"This paint, this canvas, cost plenty much money," said the astute little super cargo—Atupa had pearls. "This picture I sell um Sydney stop along."
"How much?"
"Maybe one hundred dollars."
Atupa mused.
"You take um pearl?"
"Hi’ll look hem hover. W’ere’s the ’ouse?"
The home of Atupa was on the windward side of the atoll in a clump of glossy bread fruits with the tumbling Pacific beyond. Both the view and a fine pearl stimulated Jimmy’s ambition, and with the spell bound Fuatina as official assistant, he started work the next day. In the afternoon Atupa came to overlook the satisfactory progress. Jimmy’s palette stopped mostly at secondary hues, but the result was academic to Atupa and he said so.
"That fool fahine papalangi," he said presently, as Jimmy shared with him beer from his private stock," plenty soon she make heap pirikia."
"What kind of trouble?"
"Oh too much pirikia. She speak men no good, women too much plenty good. She speak she think pretty soon men do all work. Women no work. Fahines they just sit along all time. Dam fool."
"Startin’ the bloomin’ cuckoo racket," said Jimmy.
But it was not his rôle to condemn the skipper’s lady.
"Hit’s just ’er talk," he commented.
Atupa’s anticipation of trouble was shortly confirmed. First came Kokua that evening, complaining bitterly.
"That kapitani fahine," said the concertmaster and handyman of Totulu, "she all same crazy. She speak fahines no cook um, no work in taro patch, no fix um copra, no pick um pearl, no work um turtle-shell."
Jimmy turned to the lustrus-eyed Fuatina, never far away.
"Sure Kimo (Jimmy)," she corroborated. "Tonight plenty fahine no cook. Tomorrow they no work in copra shed. That fahine papalangi tongue plenty too much walk about."
"Well Hi’m not goin’ to butt hin," announced Jimmy. "Hit’s hup to the skipper hand Hold Tomato."
Next morning the men of the village gathered in groups instead of going fishing or working at their nets, volubly discussing the matter. They had had to cook their own breakfasts, Atupa said, and the women had refused to pound poi.
Jimmy was putting the finishing touches to the sketch of Atupa’s house when Mrs. Boyle, tagged by a bodyguard of Amazons, obviously excited, appeared with a request that was a demand.
"I want you to paint a sign," she said.
"Who? Me? Hi’m no ’and hat letterin’," lied Jimmy.
"Then let me have some paint and a brush and I’ll do it myself," said the lady, picking up a big tube of ebony black and taking the largest brush from Fuatina’s helpless hands.
"’Ere, Hi s’y, Hi need that," demurred Jimmy.
"You can settle with the captain," returned the triumphant Mrs. Boyle, conscious of scoring, amid the giggles of the women. "Do you know where there’s a hammer and nails?"
"Hi do not," he replied sulkily.
"Plenty hamma, plenty naili in storehouse," announced one of the older women, whose sleeveless garment of black and orange stripes projected in front like an awning, by reason of high living.
Jimmy went on painting, but his heart was not in it and he mussed viciously at the shadows.
WORK for women, in the apparent opinion of Mrs. Boyle, was only harmful when applied to the needs of the other sex, for in the next two days ample evidences of hard labor on the part of Totuluan femininity were plainly to be seen.
A scrambling fence of barbed wire—bought by Tamatau to keep the pigs out of his plantations—was stapled from tree to tree, zigzag across the widest point of the atoll. Bruised thumbs and scratched hands were much in evidence amongst the women, and glowering astonishment showed on the faces of the men who had been firmly advised to keep on one side of the crude, but effective trocha.
Jimmy, intent upon keeping out of trouble, stayed close to his own strip of beach, watching things develop. He watched with amusement the attempts of the island fahines, under the superintendence of the Woman’s Champion—late of Sydney—to stretch a banner of white cloth between the two flagpoles in front of the storehouse. Presently it was fixed and the group of militants stepped back to admire.
Jimmy and Fuatina got into their canoe and paddled into the neutral waters of the lagoon for a closer inspection.
VOTES FOR WOMEN
So read the challenge, somewhat marred in effect by the crowding of the last letter against the edge of the cloth.
"And what have you got to say about it?" asked Mrs. Boyle aggressively, advancing to the edge of the lagoon.
Jimmy grinned.
"Hit’s a fine job," he said—adding, "Hi don’t fink," under his breath— "Honly w’ots the huse? They hain’t no votin’ hon Totulu. Tamatau’s the boss."
"Was the boss," corrected the flushed suffragette. And there will be votes. If the men have never voted, the way is clearer. For once the better sex shall come into their rights, without having to wrest them from the men. These long wronged sisters"—she indicated the huddle of complacent women—"shall see the dawn of a new day. Here in the South Seas the banner of militancy shall be flung abroad for all the world to see!"
"Here, where the spirit of rebellion is rampant, these vigorous Amazons shall establish the true kingdom of feminity. Here-"
"Ho, ’ave hit your hown w’y," said Jimmy as he backpaddled from the shallows. "Just you bloomin’ well wait huntil the king and the skipper come ’ome. That’s hall."
"What do you fink hof hit?" he asked Fuatina when Mrs. Boyle’s harangue had become an echo. "You no want work hany more?"
"Fahine —— fool," said Fuatina conclusively. "Suppose we go along now, I cook you fine supper."
THE Margaret Ann came in "next day to a divided reception. The men, who had pre-empted the canoes, met the barkentine at the reef-passage and clambered aboard before the anchor was down. The women were ranged in a phalanx beneath the banner of their slogan.
"What’s all this fool business?" demanded Boyle of his supercargo, who was first to gain the deck.
"You can read hit, carn’t yer?" said Jimmy. "Votes fer Wimmin. The missis ’as broke hout hagain, that’s hall."
"And what kind of muck have you got inside your head, not to stop it?" asked his exasperated skipper.
"Hi didn’t get no lessons hon ’ow to ’andle hit hin Sydney," retorted Jimmy.
His skipper subsided and turned to meet Tamatau, already apprised of the state of affairs, and raging. His face was muddy purple, his eyes congested, the veins of his neck ready to burst. The golden teeth, acquired at much sacrifice of pain and pearls, showed in a threatening grin.
"I fix it —— plenty quick," he announced. "You come along, kapitani!"
The ladder was rigged and the furious monarch descended with Captain Boyle into a hastily lowered whaleboat, urged swiftly toward the shore under the stroking of Billy-Boy.
The rank and file of the South Sea suffragettes faltered as the boat approached the storehouse, wavered again and shrank into the shelter of the trees as Tamatau bellowed a torrent of fluent Totuluan invective. Only their leader stood her ground, pale and trembly, but determined.
Tamatu strode ashore, grinding his golden crowns together as he passed her with a glare of apoplectic wrath.
The leader of the vanished legion turned to her husband but found in his stern countenance neither comfort nor opportunity for argument. She sniffed indignantly in the grinning faces of the whale boat’s crew, now backed by the canoes of the Totuluan men, and followed her recreant recruits in their retreat.
In the late afternoon Fuatina brought a note to Jimmy, addressed to Captain Boyle, which the supercargo delivered to his skipper, still closeted with Tamatau inside the storehouse.
The skipper read it hurriedly and crammed it into his pocket.
"Get that truck out of here, Jimmy," he ordered, pointing out the bed that had been arranged for his wife. "Have Billy-Boy take it to the Queen-House. Mrs. Boyle is not going aboard tonight. That makes everything all right, King," he added.
"Sure," said Tamatau.
His complexion had resumed it’s natural chocolate and the expensive golden smile was now expansively amiable. A group of empty bottles explained the nature of the emollient.
"I’m going to try the king’s idea, Jimmy," said Boyle. "It’s a good one. Can’t kill, and it may cure."
"Jimmy, you take um drink?" invited Tamatau.
"Here’s the scheme," went on the skipper, while Jimmy swigged at his glass. "The announcement is that men are unnecessary. We are goin’ to put it up to them to prove it. Ebb runs till midnight or a little later. Every man-jack on Totulu will be aboard, quietly, and we’ll take a little trip and let the ladies try it out."
"Fine," said Jimmy. "W’ere do we go?"
"You don’t go at all. You stay here."
"W’y?"
"Because I’m not goin’ to leave Mrs. Boyle alone on the island. This isn’t a pleasant remedy and you’ve got to help me apply it. Besides, when things shape as I think they will, I’ll want you to send word. We’re going to Uafotu atoll. It’s scant seven miles due southwest. But you’re not to know where we’ve gone."
"Hi’m hon," replied Jimmy. "But Hi don’t see w’y Hi should be picked hout."
"I’ll make it right with you."
"Hany hanswer to the note?"
Captain Boyle considered.
"No. I guess not. Let it work itself out. Send Hardin to me and help round up the men."
A little after midnight, the moon sunk, the starset lagoon ruffled by the last of the ebb, the Margaret Ann, lightless, slipped her cable, and, under headsails and mizzen, two whaleboats ahead to help steerage in the scant breeze; sneaked away from the unsuspecting village where the women, braced anew by the arguments of Mrs. Boyle against desertion at the first issue, slept after the turmoil of the day.
Clear of the reef, the boats were called in, sail made and yards braced, and the barkentine was wafted silently on the light wind toward Uafotu, leaving the atoll manless, save for Jimmy—whose martyrdom held it’s ministering angel in Fuatina, the only unconverted fahine on Totulu.
IT WAS the third day of the reign of women on Totulu. The banner still flaunted it’s solgan between the flagpoles, the ensign of Margaret Ann, regnant; and that lady still maintained a dominance that was, however, beginning to show signs of internal dissension.
Fuatina supplied Jimmy with a service of verbal bulletins.
"Pirikia plenty soon I think," she reported. "Coconuts all gone and only young fahine can climb um tree. Young fahine mad along huapala (sweetheart) all gone. Fahine not very good catch um fish. No musika, no hula. Plenty pirikia."
It was even so. Mrs. Boyle was up against it. She was fighting primeval instinct that her own veneer of civilization prevented her from understanding. In the South Seas—and elsewhere—such instinct is divided into two parts, Sex and Stomach. Stomach had already set up it’s complaint and Sex was realizing it’s lack.
The twenty odd queens, having but one man between them, remained fairly loyal to the new principles. But there were babies in Totulu who wanted their daddies, wives who craved their husbands and providers. There were disconsolate sweethearts. There were younger maidens who were still angling in the delightful waters of flirtation where many fish swam and there were grand prizes for the lucky and skilful.
Kokua no longer played ravishing tunes on the noise-box and Kimo wouldn’t, or couldn’t—being as a man, anathema in the eyes of their leader. There was therefore no more singing, or dancing, or swimming in the lagoon with lusty male partners while the noise-box gurgled and clanged and hooted more or less melodiously. There were no more laughing exploits on the reef—with the same male comrades—with torches to spear for pool-fish when the nights were too warm and far too fair for sleeping.
The first row started over the lack of coconuts. Water was comparatively scarce on the atoll and seldom used for drinking—not to be compared with the milky, bubbling juice of young nuts, gathered at dawn and kept cool beneath banana leaves. The younger women, peeved at the lack of lovemaking facilities, balked at furnishing the supply for the whole crowd and climbed only for themselves. The maturer women with children, began to draw apart in groups. This fahine papalangi, they learned, had no children. "What was she to advise the mothers of men-babes?" The elders, who preferred gin and beer to coconuts, and sometimes got them when a ship was in the lagoon and their men were kind, grumbled among themselves.
Mrs. Boyle noted the symptoms of defection, but she could not prescribe for them. She was conscious of growing a little tired herself of her most faithful satellites, the queens. Curiosity, she realized had been the chief link between them, and that was getting rusty. She wondered where the barkentine was, and fought a constant temptation to question Jimmy, whom she had herself placed beyond the pale.
Sex and Stomach began to assert themselves in her, also. The captain was far oftener in her thoughts than he had been for many a month, and she remembered all sorts of good qualities he possessed that long custom had dusted with non-appreciation. She craved the delicacies set on the shelves of the Margaret Ann's pantry for her especial benefit. Poi and dried fish appealed less at every meal.
The storm burst on the fifth day. Jimmy was struggling with his third canvas in which the ever-troublesome sand persisted on looking more like snow, or powdered sugar. Fuatina was broiling some mullet they had speared together, and two bottles of beer were safely moored in the lagoon close by.
The skipper’s lady, ploughing through the sand far faster than the lines of her build intended she should, received the whiffs of the savory fish in her nostrils as the kneeling camel does the last straw. Two tears started from her eyes and rolled slowly down her flushed cheeks.
"Oh Jimmy," she gasped. "They’re drunk."
"Who’s drunk?" asked Jimmy, glancing involuntarily toward the beer.
"The queens. All of the women, for all I know. They’ve been brewing some of that awful stuff all morning—lava, I think."
"Kawa," amended Jimmy.
"Whatever it is," said the lady, more tears following the first. "And—and they said I was only a hapa-fahine (half-woman) because—because I had no babies!"
Jimmy was standing by this time and Mrs. Boyle literally fell into his arms, a proceeding that—as she outweighed the little Cockney by some seventy pounds— was trying to the latter’s balance and dignity.
"’Ere now," he said, bracing himself with wide planted legs. "’Ere now, you sit down hand ’ave a bit hof mullet wiv me. Hand a bottle hof beer," he added generous ly. "Fuatina, you cut halong hand find hout what’s hup. Then come back to the storehouse. Hi’ll paddle the lydy hover."
The astonished Fuatina, hungry despite her lovesickness, cast a reluctant glance at the mullet and sped on the errand of her heart’s lord.
It was dusk, and an hour later before she came back, her eyes circling with news.
"I tell you, Kimo," she announced breathlessly. "My word, plenty pirikia walkabout quick along her. Pretty soon they too drunk, get plenty mad. They speak fahine papalangi no good. They speak she tahunga (witch). I think, soon they come along find her."
"Hi s’y, you know, this his a bit hof a muck," said Jimmy. "You go back, Fuatina, and all same watch out. Suppose trouble he start walk along you come back here plenty quick.
"You’re safe ’ere’m’", he assured the frightened woman. "There’s a ’igh fence hon three sides hand we can put some barbed wire halong the front to keep h’em hout, hif they start to get fresh. Hi wish Hi ’ad a gun!"
"You don’t think they really mean any harm, do you?" asked the now alarmed lady.
Jimmy was humane—as his sharing of his fish and beer testified—but he was also human, and the recollection of his treatment by his skipper’s wife during the voyage still held it’s smart. He had no idea that there was any real danger and he decided that he might help, as his skipper had suggested, apply the remedy.
"Carn’t s’y," he said. "No tellin’ w’ot they’ll do w’en they get properly tight."
"They aren’t"—the voice of the militant faltered—"they aren’t cannibals, are they?"
"Not lytely, not has Hi’ve ’eard hof. Hof course they was hall kai-kanaks once."
"Jimmy, do you know where Captain Boyle is?"
"W’y——"
The conversation was broken abruptly by howls from the direction of the Queen-House. Mrs. Boyle shuddered and shrank back as Fuatina darted around the fence.
"They walk along plenty quick," she panted. "Pretty soon all kawa gone, they come."
"What you think they do?" asked Jimmy.
"I think they try kill um fahine papalangi," said the girl, in evident earnest.
Another burst of yells added sincerity to her statement and spurred the little super cargo to instant action.
"’Ere," he said. "Fuatina, you catch wire back there on lanai. Mrs. Boyle you scare hup the ’ammer hand staples. You know where to find h’em?"
"Yes, thank God!" tremulously replied the disavowed leader. "I’ll get them."
Swiftly a barrier was thrown across from fence to fence and stapled to the flag-poles beneath the discredited banner. They ran strand after strand across, the women feverishly helping with bleeding hands while the supercargo plied the hammer.
"They’ll ’ave one ’ell hof a time gettin’ through that," he announced at last. "Did they s’y w’ot they laid hout to do, Fuatina?"
"They speak they fix um fahine along post by reef. Suppose ship he come along next time, she all right. Ship no come, she mate—die.
Jimmy glanced at Mrs. Boyle, but she had retreated to the veranda.
"’Ell," he said. "You think they mean hit. Sure will do?"
"Sure, Kimo! They plenty drunk, plenty mad."
"Lokke ’ere Fuatina," said Jimmy prying out some staples. "You climb um through here, you run along canoe and go fast to Uafotu, plenty quick you paddle. You speak Kapitani Boyle, you speak Tamatau, they come quick!"
The girl slipped between the strands and was gone in the shadows. Jimmy could hear her swift feet lightly padding on the sand as he started to refasten the staples.
"My Gawd!" he said, half to himself. "Hif Hi honly ’ad a gun!"
"There’s one in the storehouse," said Mrs. Boyle. "Where’s the girl gone?"
"Gone to get ’elp," said Jimmy tersely. "Where’s the gun?"
"It’s a shotgun," said Mrs. Boyle, shivering as the drunken yells sounded from beyond the fence. "But I don’t think it’s loaded. It’s on the wall."
"To ’ell wiv the load," said Jimmy. "Git hit. Hi’ll bluff h’em. H’im goin’ to start the searchlight."
He found fresh carbide and charged the lamp.
"Not a drop hof water in the bloody shop," he announced presently. "’And me that bottle hof gin. Hit may work."
As the spluttering burner broke into a spasmodic flame, it seemed to wrench forcibly from the darkness the leaders of a rabble of women with wildly rolling blood shot eyes and dishevelled hair, streaming round the corner of the fence.
"You keep back hout hof sight," commanded Jimmy to Mrs. Boyle. "’And me the gun!"
"Now then," he cried, as the frenzied savages shrank back from the barbs of the wire, "W’ot do yer want?"
"Eyah!" shrilled the dusky harridans, "Eyah! kela fahine papalangi!"
The front rank, thrust against the torturing strands, extricated themselves with bleeding hands and tom garments, only to be jammed against the wires once more by the rest.
"Eyah!"
Jimmy held the barrels of the empty shotgun where the searchlight shone on the barrels.
"You cut your luckies hout hof this," he shouted, "Helse Hi shoot. Fuatina she go fetch Tamatau—come along plenty quick. Chuck hit now, I tell yer. Hall of yer!"
MRS. BOYLE, cowering on the veranda, looked fearfully at the howling mob, their mouths slavering, hands clutching between the wires, vivid in the strong but uncertain ray of the sputtering lamp that threatened instant darkness as it choked on the mixture of carbide and squareface.
"You git back w’ere you belong now, Hi tell yer," repeated Jimmy. "Hi, you Tiarau!" He singled out a gaunt old hag with a frizzly mop of gray hair above her leathery face, wrinkled by time and her own passions till it looked like the leather of an imitation alligator-skin bag.
Her mouth, horny-lipped, held two yellow tusks in the thrust-forward lower jaw. Her face was like that of a giant lizard. She was an ancient of ancients, the oldest living being on Totulu, an aunt of Tamatau’s, accredited with powers of witchcraft and puri a’naana—praying to death.
"You, Tiarau," said Jimmy, speaking in Totuluan. with a Hoxton, London, England, accent, "Tamatau will be here with the captain right away. You make these foolish women go home."
"E-yah," snarled the crone in her own language. "This white woman is a witch and she has set her spells upon our men as she did upon us. Only with us, being women, her magic could not last. You say the men will come back. I have known white people to lie. How do we know they will come back? I tell you if they do not come on the intide, the white witch shall die! For, at the outtide, we women of Totulu, whom she bewitched, will set her out by the reef to work her spells and bring back the men, or she shall surely die."
In the vindictive attack of the hag’s speech, Jimmy could glimpse a picture of sharks coming in with the rising tide at dawn, swirling through the gray sea and tearing at something tied to a stake. The affair was grim. The little civilization these Totuluan women had acquired, had been stripped from them as they might have tossed aside a garment. They were junglefolk now, clamoring for their mates.
"Some of you will die first," he answered, menacing with the useless barrels.
"Let it be so! Yet shall the white witch die, unelss the men come with the intide. We will go now until the outtide flows. Then we will come with fire and burn down the fence."
Tiarau turned to the mob and spoke rapidly to them. There were yells of assenting "Ais" in reply and they withdrew, savage face after savage face appearing in the dying ray of the searchlight and vanishing into the blackness.
Jimmy drew a long breath. It was up to Fuatina now.
"Hif Hi could honly find some cartridges," he muttered, as he entered the storehouse.
Mrs. Boyle spoke from the darkness.
"What did they say?" she whimpered.
"Nothing much," answered Jimmy. "They’ve gone now." He scratched a match and lit a cabin-lamp that hung from a rafter.
"Are they coming back? Are they going to kill us, Jimmy?"
"Not hif Hi can find some cartridges," he said, pawing over the junk in the big room. "Hi suppose Hold Tomato’s fired h’em hall hoff long hago."
"Don’t you worry," he told the frightened woman. "They hain’t goin’ to do nuffin’ till the hebb. That don’t start huntil habout heleven, hand I think they’ll wait till the tide’s nearly hout."
"What time is it now?"
"Close hon to nine." He consulted his wrist-watch. "Hit’ll be hall right. Don’t you worry. Fuatina can make hit hin a little hover a hour. Thye’ll come back a kitin’ hin the whaleboats. Hought to be ’ere by ten."
"May I have your watch, Jimmy?"
Jimmy looked round the room. He needed the watch himself to check the anxious minutes.
"Hi!" he said, his eyes catching what they looked for. "’Ere’s a clock. Hi’ll wind hit hup."
He turned the clicking key and set the hands. As he stepped down a little door flipped open above the dial and a wooden bird jerked forward while a throaty cry sounded nine times.
"What’s that?" nervously exclaimed Mrs. Boyle.
"Hit’s a cuckoo-clock," explained Jimmy. "A cuckoo," he went on, "his a Hinglish bird w’ot’s halways buttin’ hin w’ere hit hain’t wanted. Mostly the ’ens, I reckon."
If Mrs. Boyle caught any personal allusion she was too far gone to resent it. She shrank, as far as her figure would allow her, into one of Tamatau’s roomy upholstered chairs, and moaned feebly.
"Not a bloody cartridge," announced Jimmy. "Hand that —— light’s gone hout."
He went outside to tinker hopelessly with the caked carbide.
The ridiculous wooden bird clucked at it’s appointed intervals until the hands pointed to half-past ten.
Jimmy, on nervous watch outside, heard a growing murmur from the village and saw a glow from behind the rear fence that spoke of advancing torches.
"Gawd!" he exclaimed under his breath. "This his too bloody close to be hamusin’. Ho, for just one load hof number twelve! Gawd!"
The murmurs died away and he could hear the woman moaning in the storehouse.
A flaring palm branch was tossed over the fence, followed by another. A little flame licked through the angle of the stock ade and the dry posts began to crackle, while triumphant howls sounded from the frenzied Totuluans.
The cries suddenly merged with, then were drowned by deeper tones, among which the exultant Jimmy recognized the voices of his captain and of young Wilkins, the second mate.
"’Ooray! Won hin the larst lap! Come hon hout, Mrs. Boyle, hit’s hall right." And he pried at the staples of the improvised fence.
"Take me away, Jerry lad, take me away," pleaded Mrs. Boyle, sobbing in her husband’s arms.
"Sure, my dear," he comforted. "Sure! The ship can’t get in against the ebb. Tide’ll run for six hours. But we’ll go in the mornin’ to Tahiti and rest up a bit at the hôtel Êgalite. We came in the boats. There’s another comin’. Tamatau’s in it. There, there, acushla, it’s all right, it’s all right!"
Kokua, who had been working over the searchlight, succeeded, and the ray swept the lagoon. Jimmy and Fuatina had disappeared. All about stood the once more friendly women with those of their men who had come in the first boat. The disappointed ones grouped together like human candelabra, holding aloft the torches they had intended to use in burning the stockade. The fire had been smothered with sand.
A shout went up as the searchlight picked up the second whaleboat, working along close to shore in the slack of the tide. In the stem, Tamatau urged on the rowers. The queens, fearing wrath to come, sneaked away to their quarters.
Then, from where Jimmy and Fuatina had disappeared, came the sobbing toots of the orchestrion, with bang and clash of it’s drum and triangle attachments. Jimmy had selected unerringly the proper record.
"Come! COME! CO-O-Ome, oh, my He-e-ro, Come! COME! CO-OME!" sounded through the night.
"JIMMY," said his skipper, as they strolled along the waterfront at Tahiti, two days later, "Mrs. Boyle and myself will stay here at the hotel, while Mr. Manners takes back the Margaret Ann for cargo. You’ll go with him, of course.
"I want to get a present of some sort for the missis," he continued. "She’s still pretty badly upset and I want to make it up to her someway. What do you suggest?"
The present was really an exchange for a promise given by the thoroughly subdued lady to leave the question of Women’s Rights in other hands.
"Lesable’s got some noo joolry," said Jimmy. "Nuffin like a bit hof bright stuff to please the lydies. H’ill look haround. Hi want to pick hout somefing myself."
"Fuatina?" quizzed his skipper. "That’s a good idea, Jimmy. She deserves it. She saved the situation. And I take back what I said about philanderin’. I’ll get her something myself."
"Hand Hi’ll make Mrs. Boyle a present," said Jimmy. "Lesable’s got some fine cuckoo-clocks. Hi’ll buy ’er one hof them."
"A cuckoo-clock? What on earth for? She’s got plenty of clocks at home."
"Ho, just for a sooveneer," said Jimmy. "Hit’ll remind ’er of kings. There was a cuckoo-clock in Hold Tomato’s storehouse. Hit’ll remind me, too, w’en Hi come hup to the ’ouse for dinner."
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1941, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 82 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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