With a jerk of abruptness, he deposited Jerry in Van Horn’s arms and turned away along the deck.

“An’ if bad luck comes to him I’ll never forgive you, Skipper,” he flung roughly over his shoulder.

“They’ll have to take my head first,” the skipper chuckled.

“An’ not unlikely, my brave laddy buck,” Haggin growled.  “Meringe owes Somo four heads, three from the dysentery, an’ another wan from a tree fallin’ on him the last fortnight.  He was the son of a chief at that.”

“Yes, and there’s two heads more that the Arangi owes Somo,” Van Horn nodded.  “You recollect, down to the south’ard last year, a chap named Hawkins was lost in his whaleboat running the Arli Passage?”  Haggin, returning along the deck, nodded.  “Two of his boat’s crew were Somo boys.  I’d recruited them for Ugi Plantation.  With your boys, that makes six heads the Arangi owes.  But what of it?  There’s one salt-water village, acrost on the weather coast, where the Arangi owes eighteen.  I recruited them for Aolo, and being salt-water men they put them on the Sandfly that was lost on the way to the Santa Cruz.  They’ve got a jack-pot over there on the weather coast—my word, the boy that could get my head would be a second Carnegie!  A hundred and fifty pigs and shell money no end the village’s collected for the chap that gets me and delivers.”

“And they ain’t—yet,” Haggin snorted.

“No fear,” was the cheerful retort.

“You talk like Arbuckle used to talk,” Haggin censured.  “Manny’s the time I’ve heard him string it off.  Poor old Arbuckle.  The most sure and most precautious chap that