Short Stories
employer, told him; but Ah Chun knew his own mind best, and
for knowing it was called a triple-fool and given a present of fif-
ty dollars over and above the wages due him.
The firm of Ah Chun and Ah Yung was prospering. There
was no need for Ah Chun longer to be a cook. There were boom
times in Hawaii. Sugar was being extensively planted, and la-
bour was needed. Ah Chun saw the chance, and went into the la-
bour-importing business. He brought thousands of Cantonese
coolies into Hawaii, and his wealth began to grow. He made in-
vestments. His beady black eyes saw bargains where other men
saw bankruptcy. He bought a fish-pond for a song, which later
paid five hundred per cent and was the opening wedge by
which he monopolized the fish market of Honolulu. He did not
talk for publication, nor figure in politics, nor play at revolu-
tions, but he forecast events more clearly and farther ahead than
did the men who engineered them. In his mind's eye he saw
Honolulu a modern, electric-lighted city at a time when it strag-
gled, unkempt and sand-tormented, over a barren reef of uplift-
ed coral rock. So he bought land. He bought land from mer-
chants who needed ready cash, from impecunious natives, from
riotous traders' sons, from widows and orphans and the lepers
deported to Molokai; and, somehow, as the years went by, the
pieces of land he had bought proved to be needed for ware-
houses, or coffee buildings, or hotels. He leased, and rented, sold
and bought, and resold again.
But there were other things as well. He put his confidence
and his money into Parkinson, the renegade captain whom no-
body would trust. And Parkinson sailed away on mysterious
voyages in the little Vega. Parkinson was taken care of until he
died, and years afterward Honolulu was astonished when the
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