Chapter I

I’ve told you, said Brent, that Slane had an old uncle in San Francisco, Pat O’Brien, worth over two million dollars they said he was and I don’t doubt them. Pat had landed in New York somewhere in the ’fifties or ’sixties without a jitney, then he’d come along to ’Frisco; he hadn’t struck gold, he hadn’t struck oil, nor Luck in any special way as far as we could make out, he’d just become a millionaire, and one day when we were on the trip back to ’Frisco with a full cargo, I said to Buck: “Look here, Buck,” I says, “you and me has been trading together the last ten years. We’re up to every game on the Pacific coast, we aren’t simple sailors no more than a mule is all an ass. Well, we’ve got sixty thousand dollars between us put by, but four years ago we had forty thousand. We make our money hard and earn it slow, seems to me. Look at Pat, he’s none of our natural advantages; the chap can’t more than read and write his name, he’s only one brain and we’ve got two, but look at him, rolling in dollars. How’s it done?”

“Search me,” says Buck. “It’s the way they all do it. Seems to me it’s the start. If you’re American-born you start selling newspapers, if you’re only a blistered alien you land without a cent in your pocket, whereas we’d got a few dollars, but there’s no going back.”

We left it at that and got into ’Frisco next day and went to the lodgings we had in Tallis Street. We’d always lived small considering that we could have cut a bigger dash if we’d chosen, but the fact of the matter is, living big for the likes of us would have meant soaking in bars and all the trimmings that go with that. It’s God’s truth that a plain sailor man who isn’t what the damn fools who run the world call a “gentleman” is clean out of it in the big towns—unless he’s a millionaire. So, not being able to sit on the top of the pyramid, we just sat on the sand waiting for some big strike, and stuck to our rooms in Tallis Street in a house kept by a Mrs. Murphy.

Well, as I was saying, we went to our lodgings, and a couple of days after, old Pat O’Brien, hearing we were back, called on us. Pat, though he was near eighty, was an early bird, and though he was worth two millions he always footed it about the town; he was the spit and image of Mr. Jiggs in the comic papers, and as we were sitting at breakfast in he came with a cigar butt stuck in the corner of his mouth.

“Lord love me,” says Pat. “Nine o’clock and you at breakfast. No,” he says, “I won’t have no coffee, a glass of hot water is all I take till one o’clock in the day, and then I have a porterhouse-steak and a pint of claret, and that’s why I have all my teeth though I’m close on eighty—and how’s the old Greyhound been doing this trip?”

I’ve told you before how Buck got the Greyhound out of Pat at our first go off, and he made it a habit always to call on us when we were in from a trip to ask after her. He didn’t care a dump about her, he just wanted to pick up Island news that might be useful to him in his business—but we never pretended we knew that.

“Doing fine,” says Buck.

Then Pat sits down and borrows a match to light his cigar stump, and in half an hour he’d got to know all he wanted; then, when we’d given him a cigar to get rid of him, off he goes stumping down the stairs, and a minute after, the window being open owing to the hot weather, we heard him talking to Micky Murphy, the landlady’s little boy, who was playing in the street. Couldn’t hear what he was saying at first till a bit of a breeze came in and we heard him say to the child: “So Micky is your name,” he says. “Well, come along, and bring your play toy with you and I’ll buy you some candy.”

I stuck my head out of the window, and there was the old chap and the child hand-in-hand going off down the street towards the candy shop at the corner.

“Well,” I says, “Buck, we’ve misjudged him; he’s got a heart somewhere and he’s not as mean as he advertises himself.”

Buck was as much taken aback as myself. You see, we’d had a lot of dealings with the old man and he’d always forgot his purse if a tram fare was to be paid, and I’ve seen him pick up a match in the street to light his cigar, which he was always letting go out to save tobacco—and there he was going off to buy a child candy.

But that was only the beginning of things, for two days later we had a note from him asking us to dinner.

He had only asked us to dinner once before, years ago, and that was when he was shook out of himself by a deal we’d done over pearls, and it was at a restaurant. This time he was asking us to his house.

“What’s he after?” says Buck, turning the letter over. “Day before yesterday he was giving Micky Murphy candy, and now he’s asking us to dinner. He’ll bust himself with generosity if he doesn’t mind out. Will you go?”

“Sure,” said I, and we went.

Pat was married, as perhaps I haven’t told you, and when the darkie let us in, there was Mrs. Pat waiting to receive us in the big room hung with pictures opening from the hall, and a minute after in come Pat’s daughter Sadie with her hair frizzed out, and when Pat toddled in after, if it wasn’t McMorrows Jiggs family to the life, call me a nigger.

We didn’t feel comfortable by no means, not being used to female society done up in diamonds, but they were anxious to please, though I could see plain enough that behind everything those two women looked on us as plated goods, but Pat kept the ball rolling, chatting away, and at dinner, after the champagne had gone round, the girl suddenly turns to Buck, and, “Tell us about your last voyage, Mr. Slane?” says she.

“Oh,” says Buck, “there’s nothing much to tell; we went to Levua. We’ve been there three trips; there’s several German traders we’re in with and they give us a lot of business. We’re off there again in a month.”

“Is it a long way?” she questions.

“Yes, it’s a good bit of a way,” he answers, “and it would be longer only the _Greyhound_ is no tortoise.”

“How interesting,” she says, “and I suppose you see plenty of other islands on the way there and back. Are they as pretty as people say?”

“Well,” says Buck, “as a matter of fact we stop nowhere but a place we call Palm Island. We put in there for water and fruit; it’s not on the charts and there’s no trade to be done there, but it’s pretty enough.”

He describes the place, and then she tackles him on Levua again, and the manners of the natives, and then Mrs. Pat cuts in and talks of the opera and the theatres and such.

Dinner over, we go to the drawing-room, where the women squall at the piano for a bit, and then we go to Pat’s den for cigars.

I remember Buck, who was livened up a bit with the champagne, asking Pat how to become a millionaire.

“Why,” says Pat, cocking his eye at the other, “you just pick a million up and stick to it. It’s not the picking it up that’s the bother, it’s the sticking to it,” he says. Then we went home thinking that Pat had been joking with us. But he hadn’t.