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Show rNSTALLMENT SIXTEEN 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. disappear-ance. 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 she quarrels with Dick, Karen decides to leave Alakoa Ala-koa with Colt. Old Garrett Waterson has arrived at Alakoa and Is very ill with fever but expresses a wish to see Karen. As Tonga Dick goes to find her he sees that she and Colt have put out to sea. He is determined to bring Karen back to see her grandfather. Now continue with the story. The one eyed Captain Ramey was waiting at so nearly the exact spot where Dick took the deck that he had to jump back. CHAPTER XIV Even yet, behind the beach of Alakoa, Ala-koa, continued the music and dancing danc-ing which was an extension of the wake for the death of James Wayne; relaxing now into an emotional debacle deb-acle which had forgotten the reason that it began. Consequently the crew of the Holokai, held on the vessel when they had expected to go ashore, was in resentful and surly mood. From that frustrated and dark-skinned crew any skipper could expect a sullen handling of lines and gear, and the uneasy, heavy-weighted obedience of men who like nothing noth-ing about their work. But this time as Dick Wayne swung aboard the Holokai something different happened. hap-pened. Tonga Dick came aboard relaxed and smiling, and every move that he made was lazy. The easy droop of his whole figure would have seemed, at first glance, to be that of a man upon whom anybody could Impose. And yet, as soon as he stepped aboard, a peculiar and un-explainable un-explainable discipline came over the whole length of the Holokai. The crew forgot the doings behind the beach, and the drinking they had missed, and the girls they had missed; suddenly they wanted nothing noth-ing except to be out of range of the inevitable explosion. Tonga Dick didn't see any of that. He didn't notice the unaccustomed smartness with which deck Kanakas got out of his way, nor the naval precision with which Inyashi attended attend-ed him not too close. The rail felt unnatural as he swung over it because be-cause his hands were cold and trembling; trem-bling; and he was seeing nothing except ex-cept the wavering lights of the Seal, probing out through a channel which no one aboard her knew. The tall rollers that came across two thousand miles of Pacific were breaking low upon the coral reefs. No one could make his way through there who had not been born among those reefs not as the tides lay now. Certainly Captain Ramey, bad navigator and weak pilot, could not find his way through. Dick watched the Seal swing perilously in the rip of the tide; he waited confidently, even hopefully, knowing what kind of rock was reaching for the Seal's plates. Presently, he believed, he would take the people off the foundering foun-dering Seal, and put them back where they belonged where he had told them to stay. He waited for the reel of the Seal's lights, the sick check of her motion which would mark the physical concussion between be-tween John Colt's will and the actualities actu-alities of land and water. There was a moment, suspended in hair-breadth contest, in which he knew the Seal could not live that the one-eyed Ramey had made one mistake too many. Then, unaccountably, unaccount-ably, by a whim of the sea, the Seal shook off the reef through a course in which no vessel had ever succeeded yet and was free in open water. Even the broken-toothed coral seemed to have failed Dick Wayne. "Take your anchor up," Dick said. His voice was so low that Inyashi, waiting near as be was. had to ask him to repeat. "Weigh your anchor, and give me the Diesel! What is this? Doesn't anything I say ever stick any more?" The Seal was in the open sea; but now the Holokai was coming out, brought by a shorter and easier way. When Dick Wayne had brought her through the treacherous and angling an-gling channel he set his hip against the wheel, letting the Holokai buck brokenly against the cross chop. "Inyashi," Dick said, "that is our seems the image of a god, can look like scum in dungarees. "You see that boat up there?" Dick said. None of them said anything, and their faces were inexpressive. The question was rhetorical. Whatever these brown-skinned ' men might miss in this world or the next, they never missed anything on the face of the sea. "We're going to come up close on that boat in a minute," Dick said. "We're going to swing so close to her that maybe we'll smash her rudder rud-der off. I'm going aboard, and I'm going to take her back to Alakoa. After I've gone aboard, the Holokai is going to stand by for maybe ten minutes. Within ten minutes the malahine boat will turn and go back. If it doesn't turn " Dick Wayne stopped a moment, while he turned the Holokai more carefully into the wake of the Seal's lights. "Then, Captain?" Inyashi prompted. prompt-ed. In the undistinguished yellow face the canine teeth were showing in Inyashi's peculiar new smile. "If," Dick said, "the Seal does not turn in ten minutes after I have boarded her, the Holokai will corrte alongside the Seal and lash fast." "And then ?" Inyashi said again. "One way or another," Dick said, "I'm going to take the Seal back to Alakoa." Dick Wayne didn't even look at the faces of the Kanakas he knew what was there. They were looking at each other then, but not in sullen-ness sullen-ness nor rebellion. The faces of these men were thick-skinned as leather, weathered by a thousand tropic suns; but now there was a curious cu-rious drawing up of the faces of the first man and the third different from a smile, and at the same time nothing else as if the deep-skinned leather had been drawn up by inner cords. If any haole had anything these men could understand, Dick Wayne had it; and they understood him now. Without looking at them at all, he knew that they would take the Seal, if he named the Seal, no matter what else happened after that. Dick had to grin a little, but not without affection, as he recognized rec-ognized that he was perfectly certain cer-tain of what these men could be counted on to do. "Get your buffers out to star- Nobody moved on the deck of the Holokai as Dick went over the rail of the Seal. Everyone of those sea-riding sea-riding men must have known what inspiration was in Inyashi's hand as he drew the Holokai past the Seal, against the restless swell of the countering sea. But they stood, waiting their turn, while Dick made his jump across better than a fathom fath-om of open water; and, gaining the Seal's deck, signaled Inyashi to stand clear. The one-eyed Captain Ramey was waiting at so nearly the exact spot where Dick took the deck that he had to jump back when Dick came down over the rail. "What's this. What is this?" "How would you like to turn your boat?" Dick said. "Listen wait listen!" There was a frantic expostulation in Ramey's voice, not without its note of appeal. ap-peal. "You can't do this! What are you going to do? Damn me, you can't do it! You know I hardly ever get a decent charter, and when I do, do you have to butt in, and" Everyone upon the Seal had known that the Holokai was coming from behind, had seen Dick Wayne come aboard. There was a ring of faces, now, all around Ramey and Dick Wayne. Through the quick fog that action makes he saw that John Colt, too, was there.' "You can't do this," Ramey said again. "I'll hang you higher than a kite in any court " Dick saw now where Karen Wa-terson Wa-terson was. She was leaning against the bulkhead of the cabin, detached still, with an unreadable face. "You don't even know what I'm going to do." "Sure, I know," Ramey said with as much black malice as can be put through one eye. "Go ahead and do it and see what happens to you! Will you, now?" "You have your choice," Dick said. "You can turn back, if you're willing to turn back." John Colt spoke then. He said, "I really don't understand " "Shut your head," Dick said crudely. He spoke across them all, to Karen who stood against the bulkhead bulk-head of the cabin; and although he did not raise his voice, no one could have mistaken to whom he spoke. "You're going back now," Dick said. "You're going back, and you're not even asking why." John Colt said, with a singularly decent poise, "Are we to understand?" The Seal was all out, and, as Dick already knew, Ramey's boat bad a surprising turn of speed; but there was nothing she could do to get away from the Holokai, in the open sea. The Holokai had been built for sail, but she had taken to her power with a surprising surety, so that under her Diesel she went over the water like a thrown shell. Definitely Def-initely and steadily, with an arithmetic arith-metic accuracy, the Holokai came up on the Seal; and nothing that men's intentions or present emotions might do could effect that steady overtaking. She could overhaul the unhappy Seal tonight simply by a mathematics of oil and iron contrived con-trived by forgotten designers, some of whom were dead . . . "I have to go now," Dick said to Inyashi. "You mean you mean " "Take the wheel, and throw her so close that you pick her wheelman's wheel-man's teeth with the buckle of your belt." "What are you going to do?" Inyashi In-yashi demanded. "I'm going to leave this rail, and go aboard this other boat," Dick said. "Tonga," Inyashi said, lapsing into the name under which he had first known Dick, "if I miss the swing, even by inches it just cannot can-not be done." "You go ahead and do it. Take the wheel." The Holokai's deck crew were lounging against the weather rail as Dick left the wheel. They appeared to be resting; but Dick caught the gleam of a long knife in the belt of a boy who looked the laziest of all. "Stay back," be warned them. "Stay back until your time comes!" "You wouldn't understand this. An old, dying man wants to see what his grandchild looks like. I have guaranteed that he will. The girl is going back." "If you mean Miss Waterson," Colt said, "she is going where she chooses to go." . ... "Sorry." The sound of the sea was all around them, but within it there was a peculiar silence, in which nothing human had anything to say. John Colt stepped forward across the swaying deck, into that ring of faces. "This isn't a hundred years ago. We're not in the days of Captain Cook; we're not even in the days of Henry Morgan. We're not living in the old days, Wayne." ' "No," answered Tonga Dick, "but this is the sea." "Am I to suppose " "I don't care what you suppose. I have to take Karen Waterson back to Alakoa." "This is an outrage," Captain Ramey Ra-mey put in. "I'll fight this through every court of admiralty that " "You will be very happy," Tonga Dick said, "not to raise your head before admiralty at all. How would you like the admiralty courts to hear what happened at Lord Randolph's Island?" "You mean to blackmail me?" Ramey screamed. Dick Wayne grinned. "You bet your life I'll blackmail you if it's any good to me" It was singular the way Ramey faded, after that. "I'll have you for this this Is piracy," John Colt said. "I can bring charges such as will " 'TO BE CONTINUED) "Our boat, Captain?" "I'm going aboard that boat and bring her back," Dick said. Something special showed in Inyashi In-yashi then. Sometimes people wondered won-dered why a squatty little yellow man, who looked like a clerk in a Japanese dry goods store, should be right-hand man to Dick Wayne. If they had been watching, they might have found out something about that now Inyashi's face wrinkled m a peculiar grin; it was deferential still but a peculiar drawing of the lips' made the eye teeth show, so that all at once, without ever stepping step-ping out of his place, Inyashi was something else than he had been before. ,, "Are all the Kanakas aboard? Dick asked. M "All five, Captain Dick. "Bring 'em here." The crew of the Holokai d.dn look like much as Inyashi taought them up to the wheel which Dick still held. These were slovenly look ing men, not very well washed. Thir faces were dark; the hau : oi : some of them had a crinkly bush the nose, of some were nothmgfebf flat, and the lips noticeably thick. A Polynesian who, on a surfboard, |