Desperately, imploringly, Schrofft argued with him, dangled larger and juicier bait before his eyes. "You might be a partner in the House!" he cried. But Mr. Roe remained unmoved, even at that dazzling prospect, and at last Schrofft lost his temper.
"You are a bum," he shouted angrily. "It's chust what I say before. You haf no home, no food, no chob, no money, and--" he finished helplessly, "_Mein Gott!_ You do not care!"
"Money could not buy the glorious uncertainty I enjoy," Mr. Roe replied pleasantly. "Calm down, Schrofft. I'm going out to tell 'em to get a canoe ready for me."
Late that afternoon he left, with his tattered clothing and his shining boots and his little bag of gold, and his smile, which he shed benignantly on the worshippers who thronged the beach. Only three residents of all Bagalayag were missing. Down the street Lame Duck and Gouty Hen stolidly made up lost time--_Ugh! Kch-chee-e-e-Arghh! Kch-chee-e-e-Ugh!_ And up in the _sala_ of the Tin-Roofed House a shaggy little man, his back resolutely turned to the window and the leave-taking, puffed savagely at a big china pipe, and exploded every now and then: "Chust a bum! A good-for-nothin' bum!" But when the sun was gone and all the shadows on the mountain had thickened into one, he laid down the pipe and went to the window and gazed out long over the darkening sea. "My poor little bum god from the machine," he said wistfully. "Now I must forget him."
It was not so easy to forget Mr. Richard Roe. The memory of him clung to Schrofft even after his work was done in Mindoro, and he had bidden Bagalayag an everlasting farewell. In Manila, Mr. Richard Roe's image dogged his busy footsteps, and when at last he climbed the side of the _Rosetta Maru_, bound for Hongkong and home, Mr. Roe was at the surface of his thoughts. "_Mein Gott!_" Schrofft mused, as he leaned on the rail that first night out and saw Bolinao looming faintly in the gulf of blackness, far to leeward, "he saved my life, and now I leave him in the Philippines."
He leaned there, absorbed in a vision of the companionship which could never be, till the last shadow of the islands had faded in the night. Then brusquely, as if he awakened himself, he turned forward to the smoking-room and the nightcap of rum and lime-juice which was his concession to the luxury of rest. "My poor little bum god," he muttered, "if he was here, I'd buy him a drink. He's had too many drinks already, though, poor deffel."