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Show J 1 ' INSTALLMENT SEVENTEEN THE STORY SO FAR: Karen Water-son, Water-son, believing herself to be the heir to Alakoa, the Island estate of her grandfather, grand-father, finds herself no heiress at all, when the old gentleman, Garrett Water-son, Water-son, turns up after a long disappearance. Meantime she and her lawyer have been engaged In a dispute over the rights to the property with the Wayne family, who have been In possession since the old man left, many years before. Richard (Tonga Dick) Wayne has fallen in love with Karen, as has also the lawyer, John Colt. After a quarrel with Dick, Karen decides to leave Alakoa with Colt. Old Garrett Waterson has arrived at Alakoa and is very 111 with fever but expresses ex-presses a wish to see Karen. Dick gathers a crew, overtakes Karen and Colt and argues with their ship's pilot, Ramey, to turn back. Ramey refuses, saying he can bring piracy charges against Dick. Now continue with the story. "Such as will get you laughed out ol the Islands. It's too bad, but those will have to wait. Turn your boat, Ramey." "Hold your course as you go," Colt ordered. "Are you going to turn, or not?" "And what if I don't?" Ramey jittered. jit-tered. "The Holokal has orders to come alongside, lash fast, and board, In Just about another two minutes. You can turn your boat, or my crew will turn your boat, I don't care a damn which." "He's blurring," Colt said. "Hold your course, and I promise " "No, he Isn't," Ramey whimpered. whim-pered. The little one-eyed skipper looked as if he were going to break down and cry. "I wouldn't put it past him to do it, by God! And if those crazy-headed Kanakas of his "All right, all right," Dick said. "I'll go to Nuku Hiva." "Have to go myself," Waterson Insisted. ther Garrett Waterson's recovery or his demise. ' Dick saw to it that the Sarah find out from Garrett Waterson if this might be the case. Karen Waterson was taking an start running wild "You won't like that, will you? Well here they come!" The Holokal was swinging nearer now; by her deck lights they could see Dick's Kanakas, eager at the rail. "Oh, dear God in heaven!" Ramey Ra-mey blubbered. The Seal turned back. CHAPTER XV Whatever else Dick Wayne accomplished ac-complished or failed to accomplish by bringing the unhappy Seal back to Alakoa, that extravagant gesture undoubtedly saved the life of old Garrett Waterson. The Seal's anchor was no more than down when Dick took Karen aboard the Sarah. Dick and Karen still had nothing to say to ('each other; so that Dick had no way of knowing what was going on in her mind. It seemed to him that she was timid, but also a little eager; and, in the face of his supposition that she had left Alakoa in preference prefer-ence to facing her grandfather, he found this surprising. At first it seemed that they were too late. Garrett Waterson was was provided with everything that Karen or Dr. Shimazu wanted, but he hardly ever went aboard her himself. When he did go aboard, Karen Waterson avoided him; and when this was not possible she still managed to disregard him so com. pletely that he was left with a curious curi-ous feeling of not being in existence any more. Reports on Garrett Waterson's Wa-terson's condition were encouraging, encourag-ing, but Dick found that they did not interest him much. Dick Wayne was rapidly drifting into a state of mind where nothing interested him at all. Honolulu was pestering him to come there for the reading of James Wayne's will, and there was nothing to prevent his going; but he stayed where he was, for no more reason than that it seemed too much trouble to go anywhere any-where else. Ernest Wayne tried to talk to him from Honolulu on the wireless phone, but Dick did not go ashore to take the call. He let his days drag out in a morose inactivity, inactivi-ty, chiefly filled in with innumerable innumera-ble games of solitaire in the cabin. Yet at night he was unable to sleep. For a day or two he drank heavily, heav-ily, in the hopes that it would make him sleepy, but it did not; and when hour ashore, so that her grandfather was alone. He was propped up on clean pillows, smoking a cigar which he had probably taken this opportunity oppor-tunity to steal; and though he looked feeble, and somehow chastened, he was surprisingly himself. "Where the hell have you been?" he demanded gustily, in what was evidently meant to be a roar. "You've got to get me out of this!" That Garrett Waterson was notably nota-bly tamed In spirit needed no more proof than his concession that he needed any help from anybody; but other evidence was not lacking. Such a change had taken place in Garrett Waterson's quarters as Dick would not have believed. All the great litter of charts and miscellaneous miscel-laneous duffle had disappeared; even the bulkheads, which had been a scaling and ancient green, had been scraped and painted white. "We've got to go to Nuku Hiva," Garrett Waterson announced, "and we've got to go now. This fool Jap doctor and this girl of mine don't understand." The old man, it now appeared, had worked himself into a state of mind. Dick knew enough about Garrett mumbling weakly from the depths of a fever haze; he recognized no one, and could not be made to understand un-derstand that the person Dick had brought him was the granddaughter whom he had never seen. When finally he was persuaded to fix his eyes upon her in what appeared a moment of clarity, the effect was worse than as if he had not seen her at all. "I won't talk to you,'-' he said, his words suddenly strong and distinct. "I'm positively not interested in any further marine insurance. I've told you before, I do not wish to discuss insurance in any way." Tears came into Karen's eyes as she turned to Shimazu. "You're the doctor? Do you think he's going to die?" 1 "What I cannot understand," said Shimazu, "is why he is still alive at all." Karen's eyes darted about the smothering confusion of the little cabin. "We'll have to move him out of here to some place where he can be taken care of. This place Isn't even clean." "You can't move him." Stahlquist said from the door; "he would fieht-" "It would be dangerous, Shimazu agreed. "I would be afraid to move him now." "Then we'll have to do the best we can here." Karen said. She took off her hat and tossed it aside. Will somebody have my things sent over from the Seal?" "What are you going to do? "I'm going to find some way to get some air in here. And then I'm going to clear up this litter There aren't even any sheets on that bed. The doctor will have to tell me what else a nurse is supposed to do. "You can't change anything in here " Stahlquist said pessimislical-51 pessimislical-51 "He'll fight like hell. This is a errible old man; pretty near everybody's every-body's afraid of him. but me. "I'm not afraid of him," Karen said. "I'm 6oing t0 take Care hlrhat was the beginning of a week that seemed a long time for them all in the face of a good deal of discouragement Karen persisted m t -Z iust what she had said she d ,H 3 She moved onto the Sarah Td siayeS the. and somehow she persuaded Garrett Waterson to sub-P sub-P o the care which no one had r beS .M. to force on him be- frnlt fumed and paced upon the o ? Finest and Willard Wayne Sea 1 in Honolulu; and Dick Wayne Xdmaboanrd the Holokal. hardly Onleot Alakoa the three Karen Waterson triangle-each or. -fr-were iSh "" ta a deadCk which only suspended in a ae by ei. could be broken, apparently, w the Holokai's liquor ran out he did not bother to have it replenished. He stayed away from Karen Water-son, Water-son, trying to accustom himself to the idea of a world in which, for him, she did not exist; for he knew what was the matter with him well enough. . Ramey came to see him in the middle of the week, driven by a need of supplies. Now that it was apparent that the return of the Seal to Alakoa had resulted in a lengthening length-ening of John Colt's charter, the Seal's one-eyed skipper seemed to hold no grudge. "I'll send you your engine oil," Dick said, "if you'll tell me one thing." "Like what?" Ramey asked dubiously. du-biously. "I'd kind of like to know," Dick said, "where Colt and Miss Water-son Water-son were going, and what for, the night I had to come out and fetch you back." "Oh. is that all?" Ramey grunted. grunt-ed. "Why, they was going to Honolulu Hono-lulu to get married." "So that was it." He managed a faint, sardonic grin. "She certainly had a busy evening." "Huh?" "Let it go." Dick went back to his solitaire. When the week had stretched on into ten days it was known that Garrett Waterson, definitely, was going go-ing to live. The tremendous vitality of the old man had asserted itself once more. When this was conclusively conclu-sively evident, even to the unbelieving unbe-lieving Shimazu, Dick knew that Karen would not be at Alakoa much longer. He knew that he ought to try to interest himself in something anything, any-thing, to overcome the lethargy upon which he was stranded; but it took the departure of John Colt to get him into half-hearted action. The Seal moved out of the bay of Alakoa unostentatiously one morning morn-ing at daybreak. She blundered her way through the shoals by means of the curious luck which seemed to follow Ramey no matter what folly he committed, and eased off around the east point of the island roughly in the direction of Honolulu. Nobody No-body on the Holokai knew the meaning mean-ing of this at first It was hours before they knew definitely that Colt had gone back to Honolulu on the Seal but that Karen Waterson was still aboard the Sarah. Dick's curiosity was sufficiently aroused by this to cause him to row all the way over to the Sarah a distance dis-tance of some two hundred yards for a visit with the convalescent old man. He tried to conceal from himself him-self his reason for wishing to talk to Waterson, but he could not He was aware of a weak but persistent hope that something had happened to cause John Colt and Karen Water-son Water-son to break up; and he wanted to waterson s scattered ana loose-Kmi affairs to know why he thought he had to go to Nuku Hiva. Once the old man had purchased an option on a site for a wharf, or something of the sort. Then he had forgotten about it, only to remember it suddenly sud-denly and inauspiciously just as the option was about to run out. Dick did not believe that either Water-son Water-son or Nuku Hiva needed a wharf, but it was no use arguing, he supposed. sup-posed. "If we don't take that thing up by the first of the month," Waterson declared, "that English outfit will get in there, and the opportunity of a lifetime will go up in smoke just like that!" He blew a blast of smoke at Dick to illustrate what was going to happen to the opportunity of a lifetime, and it made him cough, so that he spilled cigar ashes on the highly scrubbed deck. "All right, all right," Dick said. "I'll go to Nuku Hiva." "Have to go myself," Waterson insisted. "You'll stay here," Dick said, "or I'll have nothing to do with the business at all. Then where will you be?" The old man finally had to be satis-fled satis-fled with that. Not until the long digression about lifetime opportunities opportuni-ties in Nuku Hiva was settled, was Dick abhS to raise the question which had really brought him here. He put out a tentative feeler. "I see John Colt has gone back." "So I hear." "It's none of my business," Dick said, "but I'd kind of like to know why he should be rushing back to Honolulu while Karen is still here." "I sent him back," Garrett Waterson Wa-terson said complacently "You sent him back?" "He was over here with some scoundrelly proposition, whereby I was supposed to throw in with him, and we were supposed to get the island of Alakoa away from the Waynes. He made me kind of mad. Seemed that all I had to do was offer proof that I'm out of my mind that gets us the islands back. I told him to get to hell out. I told him if he wasn't out of the bay in twelve hours I was going to have my crew grab him and keel-haul him. I guess he must have taken me literal." "But Karen is going to stay with you?" "I'd like her to; but she says not I believe she'll be following Colt to Honolulu directly." "Following Colt?" "She's kind of a little poker face," Garrett Waterson complained. com-plained. "It's past me to make out what she's going to do. But if you want my private personal opinion, I think she's going to marry the guy." Dick managed to say, "How are you going to like that?" (TO BE CONTINUED) |