“You bet I do,” replied Hendry; “but I'd like to get even with that spiteful little half-bred Portuguese devil----”
“Steady, Louis, steady,” said Chard, with a half-drunken leer; “you must remember that she is to be Mrs. Samuel Chard.”
“Don't think you have the ghost of a chance, as I said before. She's in love with that fellow.”
“Then she must get out of love with him. I tell you, Louis”--here he struck his fist on the table--“that I mean to make her marry me. And she'll be _glad_ to marry me before we get to Ponapé. And if you stick to me and help to pull me through, it's a hundred quid for you.”
“How are you going to do it?” and the captain bent forward his foxy face and grinned in anticipation.
“Same old way as with that Raratongan girl last year. She'll go to sleep after supper, and I can open any door in the saloon, as you know, don't you, old man?” and he laughed coarsely. “Dear, dear, what times we have had together, Louis, my esteemed churchwarden of Darling Point, Sydney!”
The Dane tugged at his beard, and then poured out some brandy for himself and his fellow scoundrel. “We have, we have, Sam,” he said, uneasily. “But what about the native woman who sleeps with her?”
“The native woman, when _she_ awakes, my Christian friend, will find herself in the trade-room in the company of Mr. Tim Donnelly, one of the firemen. And Mr. Tim Donnelly, to whom I have given two sovereigns, will bear me out, if necessary, that 'the woman tempted him, and he did fall.' Also he will be prepared to swear that this native woman, Maoni, told him that her mistress expected a visit from Mr. Chard, and had asked her to be out of the way.”
“After that, my dear Christian friend, with the rudely executed diagrams in sticking-plaster on the facial cuticle, my pious churchwarden with the large family of interesting girls--after that, Miss Tessa Remington will be glad to marry Mr. Samuel Chard, inasmuch as when _she_ awakes it will be under the same improper conditions as those of the dissolute Tim Donnelly and the flighty Miss Maoni; for the beauteous Tessa will be fortuitously discovered by Captain Louis Hendry and several other persons on board, in such circumstances that an immediate marriage of the indiscreet lovers by one of the American missionaries at Ponapé will present the only solution of what would otherwise be a 'terrible scandal.'”