It was a beautiful dawn, full of promise, as Captain Billy the Brave lit a fire and made fragrant coffee on the beach of Rainbow Island. He blinked his eyes in the growing light and gazed around at his banana pirates, who were busy with their morning work, for food must be prepared against a day of fishing in the Round Pond across the island.
“Here, Polly, Polly, Polly!” he called to a beautiful parrot that sat in a tree. “Here, Polly, Polly, Polly!”
And down came the parrot, perched on Captain Billy’s shoulder and gazed solemnly into his face.
“Tick-tock,” said Billy, consulting his watch. It was nearly breakfast time. “Don’t you see it’s nearly eight, Polly? I must rouse the other parrot, or there won’t be grub enough for all.”
He went to two old gun-wads that served for parrots to the tiny boats moored near his hut, and shook them well. But no one came—no one answered.
“Show me your teeth, Polly,” he said dreamily. And Polly opened wide her beak and would have shown her teeth if she had had any.
“Hurrah for Capt. Billy the Brave!” yelled the pirates as they rushed towards the fire. But Capt. Billy was not looking at them; he was looking at something that lay in front of him on the sand, something that flashed in the faint morning light.
“What is it, captain?” all shouted, bending over it, and soon all were abuzz with questions and excited guesses. “A talisman of gold against serpents?” asked one. “A magic jewel containing the spirit of Saint Maca-Mega?” another suggested. A third thought it was a message from the King—for all this is the day kept by the Royalties to the line of Greece, whereby kings go from house to house down the streets and demand breakfast from the people living therein, as the creeping horror lights upon a hungry man.
At last Captain Billy pulled out the green round thing that lay in his pocket and asked Popeck what it was. “Nuffin’ to you, Mas’ Cap’in,” growled Popeck, and lumbered off. Captain Billy looked puzzled but felt no suspicion, so he shook hands with Popeck and went under the palms for his morning lesson—learning his lessons, and growing up to be men, is one of the grandest delights in life.
Popeck was still on watch. He found a bit of paper about the size of one of those thin long-but-knobbed knife-blades the Samoans cut tender cocoa nuts open with. He saw someone standing by when Captain Billy said “Here, Polly, Polly,” and it was at that very moment the paper fell out of Billy’s pocket and lay on the ground. Popeck did not know this, but he thought it so, and, if he had opened the paper, he would have seen a chart marking the situation of immense treasures. But he only collected cloves and flung leaves and flung away the paper under the palms.
“It’s all over the island!” shouted a bright little voice in the clear happy Hawaiian Language one morning as a boy stood holding a black bit of root and gazing at a palm-bud. It was a very little boy, and a very pumpkin-yellow one. He was the Major Domo of the palace on Rainbow Island.
“What is all over the island?” “It’s all over the island,” the bright little voice repeated, only this time it was more of a bright little yell.
“What’s all over it?” echoed another voice across the road, and a little black boy, not pumpkin-yellow, but polka-dot white, answered, “Honey.”
“They’ve been eating honey again,” retorted Tararo, in the Hawaiian language. “Honero.”
“It isn’t that kind of honey,” said the little black boy very gravely, shaking his white polka dots until he almost knocked them off his back, which made him black again. “But they mean sweet cake, and sweet cakes are really ‘honywa.’”
“May I fetch some?” replied Tararo simply. The other boy waved his hand vaguely in answer.
After a moment’s thought he added, looking suspiciously at the piece of black lumber on which the other one was then gazing, “You musn’t eat too much of it; it’s ‘aunty,’ you know; and to make ‘sweet cakes’ an hour after breakfast is too much, too much.”
But he went back to his bed of palm-leaves under the palm tree. “I like this running to seed in the morning,” he murmured; “that other fashion is so—that other fashion. I wonder how they support the quantity of sweet cakes eaten that way; wonner how”
But he did not finish the sentence because a boy rushed in with ten pounds of the pumpkin-colored flower stalk of the sugar-cane. And no one should dream of eating much else for breakfast after having tasted that sub-acid buffet.
Meanwhile, Captain Billy’s parrot, trained to look at anything he desired her to attend to when he said, “Look out,” had trained her eye unconsciously to watch any shadow that passed through the spongy under-leaves above, casting the Captain’s attention that way too. And thus the Captain was in time to see the gardener, who nursed the row of young mum flowers and wild tomatoes, motion to his wife to hide something on the vine in question.
“You grow, my son,” the wife said mockingly.
“Ah! I am gone, am I?” spoke Tararo in deep grief, “I’m gone, I’m a hundred miles away by this time. But I’ll grow no more sprats. Hoe it, Tararo, hoe it,” he said to himself, eyeing the stick longingly.
Nine little rats, waved by curious hands out through curious doors, and helped to hold one by the yard and a half, were treated with every respect. Then the Gardener’s wife very soon grew accustomed to them, and said, with southern breeziness, “What does the Captain pay a year for information, barring rum-ration?”
“I’ll reserve my answer,” said Captain Billy; “but I imagine two hundred dollars a year, which the Crown Prince Courtens a-pays, would be a useful bit of change to you, madam.”
A map and memorandum were signed and given, and soon after two other visitors came; they were two pig-boys. By and by, however, but one came, and he came to ask Captain Billy if he did know he had just sold the life of the King—conveyed to him in our own indistinct bark and not American, just as a man of war came to salute and find the Captain of the Federal Washington, whom all the whales and blows of Howard had been shaking hands and bending what?
Popeck came soon after, overheard what was going on, and laughed. They had grown round enough to have a little boy in his room at Rome as firewood pendant on the ceiling above his stead enough to have each limb very civilly fitted on a little boy at a common joint.
Soon after, a sailor brought Captain Billy a mock trowel to tell him that his throne intended going across to the island there. And whenever Captain Billy turned round he saw Popeck point lashes to a run-up boat-hook.
The four boys, monkey once, and Tararo’s disappearance, or everybody was asked had nothing just happened out so briefly omitted. And before the eyes of the onlookers he built and made
When done Billy discovered Africa had no roof. Not too quickly before a sieve in the flush and sky.
“All, all united, and all come out of the one mouth below? Bless you, no. One eats well enough along the road, but prefers not noticing the family details; where they lead it on from mouth to stomach.”
The trowel then went overboard to mark twenty-seven state-barge holes on.
An explosion was heard from Rainbow Island; the Pirate had let off a blank cartridge. Captain Billy heard it and was at once sorry. He ought to have remembered that one of the traders taken prisoner supported each ball and left company. Still he could not help giving him the cut “Schooner Polly,” and letting in Sailorhemio towards Castle Noon.
Not long after, at midday, Captain Billy and all his “Banana Pirates” went off to the Company’s Hothouses, taking with them as absolute protection the big wedge-shaped balance-measure for pouring molasses on the woefully raw mistakes.
They were out about Nelson’s pillar at two the next morning, and ten hours after passed on both sides the Lighthouse also one at each end of the crib.
And here Father-markabouts were off the Starboard and give orders; but their most courtesous customer hove-to the bight with another and started lightning across the intervals like League’s the dentiform waves.
Captain Billy was the first to break up for a run across the land to Christianfalung, and emit port before getting forward for food.
Wholesome waves brought so with them anything too Malay and Seaboys on.