The pastor did yeoman's service that day, and at sundown they all went back to their ship, very grumpy and dissatisfied, returning no wiser than when they'd come. Iosefo held a service afterwards to rub it in, and the king spoke at it, and likewise the chiefs, and so in our different ways we all pulled together for the common good. They had quite a jollification that night on the schooner, singing songs and playing some kind of a hurdy-gurdy on deck, and the sound of it come over the water very pleasant to hear. I sneaked off in a canoe toward ten o'clock, to make sure it wasn't a blind, but there was no misdoubting what they were up to. They were all drunk, and getting drunker, and I couldn't but think what a poor, tipsifying set of sleuths they were, and how different from Sherlock Holmes in the book. I lay for nearly an hour under their quarter, to hear what I could hear, and all I got was the odds and ends of some smutty stories, and once being very near spit on the head.
When I got back to the station there was Tom to meet me, it being eleven now, and the village fast asleep. We overhauled the gear to make sure it was all in order, Sarah making up a basket of provisions for the old man, together with his toothbrush, comb, panjammers, blanket, a demijohn of water, and a bottle of gin. She said he had eaten no dinner, groaning and carrying on awful, wanting her to shoot him with his pistol and end it all. But he seemed to have pulled himself together by the time we were ready, for he let himself down from the attic quite spry, and made us all laugh by the remarks he passed. But one could see he just forced himself to do it, and his face looked powerful haggard and flabby in the lantern light, and he moved queer on his legs, like a push would have sent him over.
I had a little two-wheeled truck that I used about the store to run bags of shell about in, and copra, and on this we put the treasure, eight bags of it, each one as heavy as could be lifted comfortably. Old Dibs insisted on cutting one open and serving us out a double handful each, not forgetting a share for Tom's wife as well as mine, and saying, "Take it, and God bless you, my dear, kind friends!" We dropped it into my tool chest, and threw the key on the floor of the bedroom, meaning to divide up equal later on.