"Oh! tin's all right. But I've got a constitutional dislike to marching along at the tail of a brass band, that's all. Besides I feel an awful humbug when all these silly stay-at-home people insist on believing that the one and only reason I went up country was to chop down old Kallee's private crucifixion tree. Have a cigar?"
"Not me in here, me lad. I came home from the Islands with the old _M'poso_ full of passengers, and I've smoked myself half sick on cigars. I'll suck at a pipe. By the way, I've got a message for you from Kallee. The old sinner came on board himself when we were lying off Edmondson's factory trying to get your ore, and nearly drank the ship dry before I could get quit of him. Owe-it Slade's been palming off I.O.U.'s on him. He'd got quite a sheaf of them. He says when you marry Laura he'll give them to you as a wedding present, or words to that effect. But in the meanwhile if he can catch Slade he's just going to chop his head off to prevent him putting any more paper into circulation."
"Well, you see, me lad, Slade owes our fo'c'sle shop a matter of four pounds odd which we can't collect, and he's got a Holland gun of mine that I shouldn't really like to lose. Besides, come to thinking of it, I suppose Laura's fond of him anyway. Couldn't you do something for him?"
Carter stared. "Has he left O'Neill and Craven's, then?"
Captain Image stopped down the tobacco in his pipe with a horny forefinger. "Why, no, and you'll have to pay to get him away."
Captain Image's pipe worked hard and he spoke in jerks. "Rubber palaver. Owe-it Slade's the smartest man at dem rubber palaver on the Coast."
"That's where you're making the usual mistake. Slade's got his faults. He wastes his money, he never pays his bills, he sponges for all eternity, and he makes out he was born lazy. But don't you believe him. Who got Miss Kate all these rubber properties that she's floated off into such whacking big companies?"
"No more than you did, me lad. It was just Owe-it Slade. And to think," Captain Image added with a sigh, "I always put that man down as a borrowing waster, and never even hustled him to collect cargo for me. Why, if I'd known then what I know now, I could have bought rubber lands through him, for a half surf boat full of gin, that I might have sold to a company myself, and dined off turkey in my own house ashore every day for all the rest of my natural life. Why, my Christian Aunt! I might even have married, if I'd worked him properly."