OCR Text |
Show INSTALLMENT FIFTEEN TUB STOHY SO FAR: Karen Water-who Water-who b como to Honolulu to press ,on' juimi to the Island estate ol Ala-" Ala-" learns that she Is not an heiress at 'tI her grandfather, Garrett Water-l Water-l still alive and on his way to the Iliad She and Tonga Dick or Richard m, a member of the Wayne family Men ' " ln contro1 ' 'h" BrP-since BrP-since her grandfather's disappear- ce tney ln l0Ve bl" Uley 1U"r" "J over Karen's claim to the Island. L"ren and her lawyer, John Colt, who , ,150 In love with her, decide to leave " koa. But when their ship's captain, Ramey. asks for a man to pilot them ttroush the dangerous reefs In Alakoa's ' harbor, Dick refuses him. Now continue with the story. W N U-RELEAS I ii ir fu vi'iu mmim -- "So that's the way the wind sets," Garrett Waterson said at last. "Well, I guess that's the worst of aU." By Gar, then," Ramey jabbered, "I'll pi'ot ner out m'seLt! r11 run your damn channel! I'll run your damn shoals! There's no coral in the pacific that can stop me. , "You won't pilot this." Dick told him. "The tide has changed on you, Ramey; you'll never find the way without' someone to tell you where you are. Go ahead and pile up your boat; when you've piled her up I'll take your people off. But the Seal will never get out of this bay tonight." to-night." "I'll get a Kanaka pilot off the beach!" "You've already tried that or you wouldn't be coming to me." A storm of blasphemous vituperation vitupera-tion from Ramey's boat assured Dick that what he had guessed was true; Ramey had already failed to find a pilot ashore. Weary of argument, argu-ment, weary, of Ramey, very much tired out with everything that was going on around him, Dick left the rail and went to the other side of his ship. For a little while the shouted shout-ed imprecations of the Seal's skipper still disrupted the night. But, since he answered no more, even these at last died away; and the bay of Alakoa was silent except for the clink and thug of oarlocks as the u." "took after" this gnarled and huge old man; yet Dick could see that in both there was a certain essential spirit that was the same. The old man seemed to rest for a moment, and Dr. Shimazu took the opportunity to attempt a counting of Waterson's pulse. Waterson made ' an irascible resistance. "Get this Jap's hands off of me! Who do you think" "You'll either let him examine you," Dick said, "or I'll walk out on you altogether, and you'll probably proba-bly never so much as set eyes on this girl!" There was anger in old Water-son's Water-son's eyes, but he must have known his disadvantage. He attempted to ignore the situation by pretending not to notice Shimazu as the Japanese Japa-nese put a stethoscope to work. "No wonder." Garrett Waterson thing arresting, even terrible, about this big frame which had been built to a vitality for which the fuel was now gone. And there was no doubt about the fuel being gone. A faint surprise showed in the eyes of Dr. Shimazu as he perceived that Garrett Waterson Wa-terson was still definitely alive. Little Lit-tle but the body structure of the frame itself now remained to show what Garrett Waterson had been. First inspection found no sign of life in the face, or in the big skeletonized skel-etonized form under the blankets. After a minute, though, they saw the gleam of the living eyes. In Garrett Waterson's eyes still lived the embattled flame which had driven driv-en this man always to wild, extravagant, extrava-gant, and uncompromising things. Garrett Waterson spoke huskily to said to Dick, "that she goes rattling all over the Pacific, trying to grab stuff that doesn't belong to her. II you take my advice you'll stay away from this girl! She isn't going to come to any good end. And neither will you, if you fool around with the likes of her!" "That's a hell of a fine way," Dick said, "to talk about your own granddaughter." "Don't you think," Garrett Water-son Water-son said savagely, "I know my own breed? She's no good, you mark my word! Or else what's she doing here, at this late date, trying to dig up old trouble?" Old Waterson closed his eyes, exhausted ex-hausted again. ' Shimazu looked at Dick queerly as he rolled up the tubes of his stethoscope; stetho-scope; he came to the door and consulted con-sulted with Dick in whispers. "I'll take his temperature as soon as we're sure he's asleep." Shimazu said. "But even without that, I can tell you, this is a very weak man. He should have been in a hospital long ago certainly he should never have tried to come here now. We're going to find out there's more than one kind of fever in this case. Black-water Black-water certainly; and maybe something some-thing worse." "Do you think he's in danger this time?" you little squirt, you are," he said. "What's the idea?" Perhaps no one else in the warm seas had ever been able to dominate domi-nate Tonga Dick as Garrett Water-son Water-son could. Shimazu was amazed to hear Dick speak hesitatingly. "Well," Dick said, without much effect, "I thought I ought to come back here." Garrett Waterson's voice roared hollowly. "What the hell else should we do but come back? Do you have to duck out with our only fast ship?" "Didn't know you meant to come." This time the effect was galvanic. The- old skeleton form that had seemed dead whipped up on one elbow el-bow with a dreadful, inappropriate energy. Garrett Waterson's voice came like the ghostly shell of a roar that once would have blown a mains' main-s' 1 down. "Who are you, you insufferable pup, to say what we are going to do?" As Garrett Waterson raised himself, him-self, Shimazu made a quick, instinctive instinc-tive movement, as if he wished to stop an effort which obviously was more than that ancient and wasted frame could stand. But Dick halted Shimazu with a gesture so casual that it carried an implication of utter ut-ter fatality. He knew, if Shimazu did not, that only one thing would Seal s Boat weni nome. 1 Dick grinned sardonically at the anchor lights of the Seal; but it was not the boat he was thinking about. "At least," he said aloud, "I know exactly where she is; and where she will stay, this one night more." CHAPTER XIII Presently Dr. Shimazu came on deck and talked to Dick Wayne. "I think she's all right now," he said. "You go look for yourself." "The knife wound?" Dick asked. "The wound isn't going to amount to anything, I hope. But you come with me and look, so I can go home." Dick went below with Dr. Shimazu, and hesitantly made his way into the little stateroom in the stern where he usually slept Hokano was stretched out face down upon the bunk beside Lilua, his face upon his arms; and Lilua had turned a little so that she could hide her face in Hokano' s shoulder. When Dick had stood there for a moment, Lilua lifted her head, and looked at Dick without expression. At first he thought that she was unable to see him; but in a few moments mo-ments he decided that she did. She was simply looking at him with complete com-plete impersonality, like a cat; or perhaps simply like a girl looking at someone who doesn't mean anything to her any more. Soon Lilua lowered low-ered her head again, returning her face to Hokano' s shoulder; and it was perfectly evident that Dick was instantly gone from her mind. "I guess you were right," Dr. Shimazu Shi-mazu said. "It takes a Kanaka to fix a Kanaka providing they don't kill each other first." "Of course I was right," Dick said. "Can she be moved ashore now?" "I think so; yes." "Inyashi! See that the girl is moved ashore carefully and taken home." "Yes, Tonga." "Maybe," Dr. Shimazu suggested, "I can go home now?" "Your night is only starting," Dick answered; "I've got other work Shimazu permitted himself a queer waxy smile. "At his age, and with so much wrong with him, there's no reason why he should be alive at all. His heart is very irregular, weak, and slow. My advice ad-vice is if you want anything from this man, get it soon. For all I can guarantee, he may never talk lucidly again." "It's as bad as that, is it?" Shimazu shrugged. "This is a worn out machine. Yes," he added, returning to the understatement that he favored, "this man is sick." They stood silent for the space of more than a minute, looking at the figure in the bunk. A huge flying cockroach, with a body bigger than a mouse, flew blunderingly across the cabin, and hit the bulkhead with a metallic clatter; it recovered itself immediately, and ran behind a large ever stop Garrett Waterson from any unwisdom whatever. "Sorry, sir." "Damn your sorriness," Garrett Waterson said in a diminished voice. He eased himself back until he lay as lifeless as before. "And damn you," he added. "Okay," Dick said. "Damn me. What then?" "Where is this girl?" Waterson demanded. "Well," Dick began, "the fact is " "What's she like?" Garrett hurried hur-ried him. "Well," Dick began again, she weighs about one hundred and twenty twen-ty pounds, with kind of blue eyes, and " "Blonde and sallow," Garrett Waterson Wa-terson said bitterly. "By God, I know it! Self-righteous, holier-than- lor you now." Dick called away the shoreboat again, and, with Shimazu, went aboard the Sarah. Garrett Waterson's cabin, as they entered it now, was a strange mess. It differed from all other cabins in that it was full of more charts than most people have ever seen. There were charts all over the wall, overlapping over-lapping each other in reefs and pads and a great number of these had been drafted by Dick Wayne. There ' was even a chart nailed to the bottom bot-tom of the deck above Garrett Waterson's Wa-terson's bunk, where he could read it as he lay in bed. Hardly anyone any-one ever got into this room; certainly, cer-tainly, since Garrett Waterson had first taken possession, no one had ever cleaned it up. Old shoes, and sea boots, and miscellaneous clothing cloth-ing were piled about, or hung UPn nails. But all this litter could mean nothing in this room the charts were everything here. Everything, that is, except the man. The ancient figure in the bunk had been a man of huge frame, once. Fever had carved his face very close to the bone, taking away much of his substance. Yet neither old age nor wasting fever could ever make this man appear ascetic he simply never had been made on ascetic as-cetic lines. Everything about him had been built in the beginning to be big and vital. There was sonie- thou Preaching half the time. Wears starchy clothes. Oh, I knew it!" The outburst winded the old man, and the silence that followed gave Dick time to consider. He supposed that Garrett Waterson was assigning assign-ing to Karen the attributes he had chosen to recognize in the family into which his son had married. Or, perhaps, the old man's resentment had been inspired by something even more unhappy than that. "No " Dick said. "She isn t like that. There isn't anything like that about her at all." Garrett Waterson rolled questioning question-ing eyes upon Dick and waited. She has blue eyes, like I said, but she has black hair; and she's the color of a gardenia, and she doesn't ever tan at aU. There's no Aching about her-for all I know there isn't even any morality. And she's more alive than anything you ever set eyes on yet." There was a silence again. So that's the way the wind sets' 'Garrett 'Gar-rett Waterson said at last Well, I euess that's the worst of all. g Doesn't anything ever please y.UFrom what you say," Garrett Waterson said, "the girl takes after Ze What worse luck could you ave than that. I'd like to know? There was something ridiculous in the suggestion that Karen Waterson chart of Rotoava Anchorage. "I've got to get up," Garrett Waterson Wa-terson mumbled. "I've got to see James Wayne." They ignored this, and the mumbling mum-bling ceased. There were a few moments of complete silence. Suddenly the still figure spoke in a surprisingly strong voice, a voice that seemed wrung from it by an unexplainable emotion. "I would have given my whole life my whole life, and a lease on my soul in hell, just to see her just to look at her one time!" For some unknown reason Shimazu Shima-zu looked appalled. - "By God." Dick said, "then you shall!" He turned to the ladder. "It's no good," Shimazu said. "By the time you get her here, he'll never nev-er know her. Tomorrow maybe, if he is still alive" "Then she'll be here tomorrow, too," Dick promised. He went up the ladder like the jump of a marlin. Then, as he came out of the companionway, he was instantly checked. Now that he was on the : open deck he could hear, across the quiet waters of the bay. the clatter of the Seal's loose-jointed Diesel, and i he could see the Seal's lights mov- j ing away from her anchorage. Cap- l tain Ramey had weighed his anchor, and was putting to sea. (TO BE COXTl.M EDJ |