No Man's Island

 Extracted from Adventure magazine, January 1921, pp. 3-53. "Cannibals and pearls"

No Man's
Island

A Complete Novel

by

By J. Allan Dunn

I

TO MOST of us an aquarium seems an unlikely place for a diver to choose in which to spend a holiday. Sam Manning thought differently. And the aquarium at Kapiolani Park at Waikiki is different. It is an out-of-doors institution and one may smoke and watch the strange shapes and vivid colors of the occupants of the tanks in a combination of pleasure and comfort that was most acceptable to Manning.

Romance and poetry to the contrary, your deep-sea diver does not take in much of the sub-surface life while he’s at work. There are too many things to look out for: life-line, air-pipe, signals, currents, to say nothing of the actual work in hand. Then too the helmet-glasses get misty in spite of the vinegar film used to keep them clear. Like, as not, the water is roily, and it is ten to one the diver is working in a place that more nearly resembles a neglected backyard than a sea-garden aglow with color.

But there was a streak of romance, and not a narrow one, in the composition of Manning. And, when he could do so at leisure, he liked to see through the glass of the tanks the tropical, underwater beau ties that he missed at Pearl Harbor, where he had just completed a contract at the Naval station.

Striped and splotched trigger-fish in blue and gold, or black and scarlet; strange, darting shapes of silver, azure and flaming red, spotted eels, sulking squid, gorgeous anemones, like orchids of the sea, vivid marine growths, spiny sea-urchins, nightmare crabs, live coral, live sponges; a fascinating display ever shifting is kaleidoscopic review. Manning refilled his pipe, seated in the scattering shade of date-palms opposite the tank labeled Hippocampidæ, which Manning translated as sea-horses.

He played chess once in a while, and the striking resemblance of the mailed fishes, with their prehensile tails and elongated snouts, to the knights of his favorite diversion always fascinated him. Just now his attention was divided between them and a man whom he had observed, more or less closely, for the past hour.

The stranger was a riddle to Manning and the diver liked to solve such riddles. To begin with, he was dressed in a slop suit of serge that was shapeless as a collection of gunny sacks but could not hide the erect figure, the broad, square shoulders and narrowing hips of the man. He was painfully thin, but Manning sensed muscles and well-coordinated strength and action. Clad like a common sailor, evidently of the sea, Manning was sure that the man belonged aft, that he was one who gave orders rather than obeyed them.

He was pretty certain that the man was both hungry and broke. He knew that the stranger had glanced at him more than once with a look that was a part of the puzzle. It had held a hint of entreaty. Only a hint, tempered by pride that showed in the tilt of the well-shaped jaw, the carriage of the well-shaped head. It was a tentative hail to one who might or might not answer in kind.

In the look had been a suggestion of recognition. And this Manning reciprocated to a certain extent. He could not place the man and he prided himself upon his recollection of faces. Their former meeting must have been under different circumstances, he decided. The chap had been through a sickness of some kind, he fancied. Clothes and additional poundage made a vast difference.

“He’s a Yank,” decided Manning, “but he’s no stranger in these latitudes. And he’s got a good nose.”

Manning was a crank on noses. He liked the way the stranger, if he was a stranger, wore his, jutting out in an aquiline aggressiveness from between gray eyes; curving down, lean and well sculptured, ending above a close-clipped mustache that accented a firm mouth.

“About thirty,” he placed his age. Manning had just topped forty. The other was close to six feet, perhaps a trifle over the fathom. Manning was five-feet-ten, solid, vigorous.

The man regarded the fishes apathetically, hands in his pockets, frowning, opposite the Hippocampidæ. The tank might have been empty for any real attention he gave it though he was looking straight at the glass front that reflected his lean visage to Manning, who once again thought he caught that speculative glance.

“He’s no panhandler,” the diver decided. “I like him. And he looks as if he needed a lift, if it’s only a friendly word. Rum place for him to come if he’s feeling the way he looks.”

Generous always, with the generosity happily leavened by inherent caution and a habit of going about things methodically, Manning got up and strolled over nearer to the sea-horses, ranging up alongside the other.

“Funny little beggars, ain’t they?” he said. “Don’t seem like fishes, somehow.”

“Ran into a whole herd of ’em one time,” he went on as the other did not answer. “Herded in the cabin of a wreck I was goin’ through in twelve fathom of water. I’ll bet there was four or five hundred of ’em.”

The man turned swiftly, eagerness in his eyes, his thin body tensing.

“You’re a diver?”

The gray eyes were ablaze with hope, boring at Manning. There was the note in his voice of a marooned sailor who, almost hopeless, suddenly sees a ship’s boat coming round the point and hails it, with a certain incredulity. It was a deep-sea voice with a ring to it that confirmed Manning’s impression that the man was used to issuing orders.

“That’s been my job for twenty-odd years,” he answered. “Name of Manning. Sam Manning.”

“Manning—Manning?”

The brows of the other knitted, lines of effort showing above them in a struggle for recollection. Then his face cleared.

“You were at Tahiti in—let me see—1913. Working on the hull of the Esperance?”

“Correct.”

Manning still cudgeled his brains in vain for the connecting links of memory.

“I used to watch you from the wharf. Don’t know that I met you. But you may have heard of me. I was there selling pearls. My name’s Hooper, Tom Hooper of Huapai.”

Now his voice held a note of entreaty. It was almost as if he had had reason lately to doubt his own identity, or had had it questioned, Manning thought shrewdly.

“It seems to fit in somewhere,” he said slowly. “But I can’t just place it. Pearls? And you’ve got the handle of captain, I’m thinking.”

Hooper nodded a trifle impatiently.

“I don’t look much like Hooper of Huapai just now,” he said. “I met one man this morning who ought to know me and he said he didn’t. I am not sure whether he lied or not. But Tom Hooper of Huapai is fairly well known in Tahiti. Or was. ‘Lucky’ Hooper they called me. I handled more pearls than the rest of them. My own. Tahiti is the clearing-house for pearls, you know.”

“Yes; I’ve heard so. I’ve never dived for ’em. Never had anything to do with ’em. But——”

Manning’s face suddenly lightened.

“Did you own the three-masted schooner in the harbor that time? The only three-master there. A beauty—called the—the——”

“Moanamanu. The Ocean Bird."

“Yes, sir. The Moanamanu. I remember that schooner. I’ve always had a notion to own a schooner myself. I’ve put in so much of my life under the surface I like to sail on top by contrast for the joy of it. Sail—not steam. A beauty, that schooner. She’s not with you?”

“She’s lying in ten fathoms inside a double reef, half-way between the Galapagos and the Marquesas.”

“Tough luck. You ran her ashore?”

“I didn’t. But I was in her.”

The man who had named himself Hooper, Lucky Hooper of Huapai, had been subjecting Manning to close inspection, a searching inquisition that began and ended eyes to eyes. And Manning did not resent it. Inwardly he chuckled. The apparent derelict had assumed the act of investigation, conducting it as a natural privilege. He liked the rising of Hooper above clothes and obvious circumstance.

“You said you were a diver?” queried Hooper after a quick glance to see if any one was in earshot, or so Manning interpreted it. “Deep-sea, I take it.”

“Anything down to twenty fathoms.”

“Are you working?”

“Just got -through. Haven’t made up my mind whether I’ll sign up again or not. I’m a bit stale after a steady spell. Expect to lay off for a week or so, anyway.”

Hooper nodded.

“Got your own outfit, I suppose?”

“Two suits, one with oxygen tank. Four assistants. Why?”

He countered sharply with the question. A grim twist of an approving smile showed on Hooper’s face.

“You may imagine I’m not rolling in wealth just now,” he said. “But there’s a reason. I think I can explain it satisfactorily to you.” His voice got a little bitter but changed again. “I know the kind of job you did at Tahiti,” he went on. “I know your reputation. You’ve only got a hazy recollection of me. I am not in a position to offer credentials. And I am in a hurry. To offset what I know of you, and you don’t know of me, I’ll give you a share in my secret. It’s a business proposition. I need a partner. I need a diver. Have you got any money, Manning?”

SUCH a conversation, overheard, might have seemed incongruous. The wrong man appeared to be putting a question of that kind. But it did not seem out of the way to Manning. Odd bits of memory were piecing themselves together about Hooper of Huapai. And he did not doubt that this was the man. He was quite certain the chap was neither crook nor adventurer.

He had met many of them in his calling and invariably there had been something about them that gave them away. They had been too specious, too overdressed for their roles, one way or the other. This chap was straight, in his opinion, and he had taken some time that morning to make it up. Once fixed, Manning was ready to back it.

“I might get hold of some,” he said. “Why? Why a diver? Sunken treasure?”

“Yes. Sounds fishy, I suppose. Man told me so this morning the minute I broached it. Said Honolulu was fed up on those sorts of yarns. He meant the Coco Island expedition. The old scallawag that put across that deal let in a bunch of Honolulu men. I’ve been told a good many things in the last forty-eight hours that I couldn’t resent openly. I look like a beachcomber, I’ll admit. It’s sunken treasure. Pearls. Inside the hold of the Moanamanu. And it’s a strange sort of yarn, with only my word to prove it. I was discharged from the Seaman’s Home two days ago with a dollar and this suit of slops. But I've got to take in some one. You look like a godsend, doubly, because you’re a diver. There’s a double reason, to my mind, for haste, though you may not look at it in that way. But I can offer you an inducement, if you take any stock in what I’m saying.

“There’s a third of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in it, Manning, for your share, if you’ll put up for a craft of some sort, outfit, grub and crew. The diving part of it’s easy. The rest isn’t. There are risks.”

Manning looked at a sea-horse twined about a stalk of seaweed.

“Suppose you come back with me on the car to Honolulu,” he said. “And talk it over. I’ve got rooms there where we can go over the thing at length. We’ll have supper together and go into it afterward. I’m hungry.”

Something leaped into Hooper’s eyes at the word “supper.” Hunger is a hard thing to control. But his voice was even.

“Suits me,” he said. “What have we got to go by? Have you got any charts there of the Southern Pacific?”

“That’s my business. Yes, I’ve got a lot of them.” He glanced at his watch. “We can just catch a car,” he said. “Come along.”

There were two or three soldiers on the car, part of the island garrison. Manning saw Hooper regarding them interestedly.

“Making quite a military and Naval base out of the Islands,” he remarked casually. “Big work at Pearl Harbor. With a general eye to the Japanese, I fancy. They’re swarming here. Eight of ’em on this car. But I hope we don’t have any more trouble for a while. Got a chance for real preparedness, now. Good thing the war’s over.”

“Were you in it?”

The inquiry was not casual. Manning looked at Hooper with some surprize. The tone was bitter; there was a flash in his eyes.

“I was under it,” Manning answered. “I did what they set me at. It didn’t take me across. Kept me busy at the Navy yards. How about you?”

“I was out of it,” said Hooper, his voice bitter. “But it wasn’t my fault. And now the war’s over, or as good as over, —— it.”

The repressed feeling in his words, ending in the clipped oath, gave Manning food for thought. It made him the keener to hear Hooper’s story. But he was not going to talk about it on the car, if the other had seemed willing. And Hooper relapsed into a broody silence.

II

SAM MANNING, master diver, had cozy quarters in a narrow, short and twisty lane that runs between Beretania and King Streets. Three of his assistants were quartered elsewhere between contracts. The fourth, Fong, a Chinaman of placid countenance and uncertain age, acted as Manning’s cook and house-boy.

Fong was a man of parts. He had been with Manning for eight years after the diver had rescued him from a nasty bit of trouble at Singapore. For which he believed Fong, with reason, grateful. In many ways he was invaluable. He could repair a diving-suit as deftly as he could scramble eggs or make a bed. Manning trusted him at the air-pump. Fong had even gone down successfully with the suit that had the oxygen gas-tank attachment.

After supper, while Manning and Hooper smoked, Fong clattered with the dishes, then poked his head in at the door.

“Me go along Chinatown now,” he said. “You wan’ something mo’?”

“You’ll bunk here tonight, Hooper? Fong, fix up a bed. Got plenty of hot water?”

“That all fix,” said Fong with a grin. He had an uncanny way of forestalling things but Manning wondered a little. “I sabe him stop,” Fong went on. “I fix um bed, put out pajamas, fix um wateh fo’ bath. All time I sabe Cap’n Hoopeh. Plenty too much he skinny now, but I sabe him along that time Tahiti. Sabe him ship. T’lee masts. Schooneh.”

His grin widened at the look of astonishment on both their faces. Manning knew the capacity of Fong’s memory. Hooper narrowed his eyes and then his face cleared.

“You knew my cook, Qui Ling?”

“Sure. Qui Ling sabe me. Plenty. Where Qui Ling now?”

A shadow darkened Hooper’s face.

“I don’t know, Fong. I wish I did. I hope he’s safe.”

“Huh! Qui Ling he plenty sabe to take care of Qui Ling. He win fo’ty dollar from me that time along Tahiti. Goo’ night.”

“There’s an endorsement,” said Manning as the door closed.

“Out of the sky.”

“Good enough for me,” rejoined Manning. “I’m glad it happened, Hooper. Not that I doubted you but for your own sake.”

“I’m glad myself. I’ve got a queer yarn to spin. Where are those charts?”

Manning produced the roll and Hooper selected one of them. He flattened it on the table Fong had cleared, weighting it down with books, and picked up a pencil, poising it for a minute and then bringing it down with a light swoop that left a dot on the map in a wide space of ocean.

“There it is,” he^, said. “Due north of faster Island, close to the line. One hundred and nine-twenty, east longitude, three-seventeen south. I won’t swear to the exact reckoning, but it’s close enough, and it’s the only landfall within thirteen hundred miles, north, south, east or west. I got at the figures with some difficulty. But they’ll serve.”

“All right,” said Manning, his eye's on the tiny speck. “Go ahead, Hooper.”

“I am going to cut it as short as possible,” said Hooper. “It’s all past history. If you are interested when I get through I’ll enlarge on details.

“Here is Huapai.” He used the pencil again to indicate the position. “Lies between the Paumotus and the Tubuai Archipelago. Belongs to neither. The chief I bought it from owed no sovereignty to France. It was my headquarters. I went in for pearls, hunting virgin lagoons, looking up half-born atolls, where there is no soil on the reef as yet with the coral awash. They are the richest. I was a pearl prospector and I made a study of the game. Both of finding and selling.

“I had been holding ever since the war started, waiting for it to end and prices to go up. But I forgot about the pearls after I read about Belgium. All my news came by way of Tahiti and I got it in chunks. I thought America would have to get into the scrap. I knew I would, sooner or later. The Lusitania settled it. I started for San Francisco in the Moanamanu on a four-thousand-mile trip, as a steamer would make it. I took my pearls along. I didn’t know just what I was going to do except to offer my services as sailing-master.

“I had a vague idea of buying or building a fast chaser for submarines with my pearl sales. I thought they would have their U-boats in the Pacific before long. I took along my supercargo, Thompson, who was as eager to get into it as I was, Neilssen, first mate of the schooner, Scandinavian and neutral, ’Pulu, the second mate, Tahitian, and my full crew of Tahiti boys. I figured to send them all back under ’Pulu from San Francisco, either in the schooner or by steamer.

“We barely got half-way. The wind failed between the trades, as usual, but we had worked up to about two hundred miles south and west of Clipperton Island when the German raider came tearing out of the eye of the sun and chucked a shell across our bows. It was heave to or sink. We flew the American flag and you’d have thought us small game for them but we suited their purpose; all was fair to them in war, and they took us.

“I wasn’t overpolite to them. They couldn’t understand why I had nothing in the hull and only a little trade stuff aboard and I told them plainly that I was on my way up to the U. S. A. to join in the scrap. I wasn’t even politic. I was boiling over at the time. The raider sent an oberleutnant aboard by the name of Steiner and I insisted on pretending his name was Schweiner. Which didn’t help matters?

“He told me America would never get into the war, unless it was on the side of Germany. He told me the vessels in the Pacific trade were getting a bit shy of raiders and that they were going to use the Moanamanu for a decoy. They shipped off ’Pulu, all the native boys and Qui Ling, my cook, in two of my boats to get to land as best they could. Let them take grub and water and let me give them their reckoning and a compass. ’Pulu is a good man and I hope they made it. They were right in the equatorial counter-current and that helped them. Neilssen they took aboard the raider.

“Thompson wasn’t backward about say ing how he felt about things and Steiner, after he had signaled the raider, told us we two were too eager to get into the fighting to be given a seat in the boats. We might get through. So we were to be kept on the schooner because they were a bit crowded on the raider. That was a fast steamer taken from some South American line, German owned. I wouldn’t wonder if it had been built with the purpose in mind. Steiner brought a few men aboard and they tried to make me and Thompson help navigate. When we wouldn’t they stowed us in the trade-room.

“They fitted up a wireless on the schooner. The raider would stay below the horizon and the schooner would sail along, sending out S. O. S. signals and flying a flag of distress. When a ship would answer, giving position and coming up, the raider would get ready. And Thompson and I would see the whole thing through the ports.

“It worked well. They didn’t get my pearls. I stowed them in a belt the minute they fired the shell at me and, when I knew we weje to be kept aboard and how they were going to use the schooner, I hid them in a safe place before they thought to search me. If I couldn’t have them myself I wasn’t going to make them a present of a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of pearls.

“NEVER mind the details of what they did. The war’s over. They played their game too long. It couldn’t last forever. Landed or picked-up boats’ crews gave the details and an Australian battle-cruiser came scooting up over the horizon one afternoon under forced draft, flinging steel. There was a nasty sea running; it was working up to a gale, but it would have done your heart good to see that shooting. The raider was making a running fight of it and both of them came up fast toward us in the schooner where Thompson and I had our eyes glued to the glass of the ports, yelling at every hit. I imagine the raider made all of twenty-two knots but the cruiser was on top of her with thirty, with bigger guns and longer range.

“It was like boys throwing rocks at a can in a mill-pond, with the raider the can, and mighty accurate throwing. Lead-colored sea, leaden clouds over the lowering sun, the lead-colored cruiser coming up hand over hand, spewing fire and steel, and the raider limping along over the angry sea, going down a mass of smoke and flame, stern first.

“Then they turned their attention to us. I don’t suppose they knew we were aboard. That was part of the fortune of war. I’ll say this for Steiner. He knew how to handle my schooner. It was getting dark; wind and sea were heavy; we were a hard mark to hit and, though we could only guess at what they were doing on deck, I know he shortened canvas and reduced the target while keeping all sail she could stand in that gale.

“Squalls were breaking and Steiner sailed right into the heart of one, clawing into it, curtained off from the cruiser. It must have blotted us right out, but the cruiser kept after us and one shell got our main mast, grooving half its thickness away.

“We fled through that night like a booby with a broken wing before a hurricane. The mainmast went by the board and we could hear them trampling the deck and cutting the mast away where it banged against the side. A gale is always worst to those below. It seemed to me the hardest I have ever known. Every hour that wind strengthened. We couldn’t keep our feet, and Sid about the floor in the lurch and lunge of the schooner. They had taken all the furnishings out of the traderoom but the shelves, a small table and a couple of chairs, but we had a rare time dodging those in the dark, with a flash of phosphorus whenever a wave surged along over the ports. The Moanamanu was flung from surge to surge like a chip in a millrace. Helm and sail useless. I’ve an idea we were under bare poles, with maybe a rag of headsail.

“We lost the cruiser, inevitably. I reckon it was about two in the morning when we struck. I’m combining what I learned later with what I knew at the time, Manning. Somewhere about two in the morning we hit the outer reef of the island Steiner named Sckwarzklippen—Black Cliffs. It was a thousand to one shot that we ever struck it though currents may have helped swing us to it. It has a double reef. There are two entrances, not opposite each other, and we didn’t find either of them in that welter of storm.

“We hurdled that first barrier without striking and we crashed across the inner reef with the coral ripping out the lower strakes and leaving us hung up by one jag of rock in her stern, bows down and in the lagoon, wind and wave still battering at us.

“Even that gale could not do much to that twice-belted lagoon. The spume was flying like wet snow in a blizzard and the wind lashed at the sheltered water but, compared to the turmoil outside, it was a millpond. Steiner got off two boats. One splintered into toothpicks when it was launched.

“They may have forgotten us. But they left us in the traderoom, locked up. We tore the shelves down and used the table and chairs for clubs and rams with the water rising fast to our waists on the slanting floor. Once the schooner lurched and we went down, striking out in that trap, believing it was all over.

“But we smashed the door down and scraped through the panels, scrambling on deck and going overside just as a big wave, all streaky with green fire, came thundering over the outer reef, shattered, gathered itself, came on and spent its strength on the stern of the old Moanamanu, sending it to the bottom in ten fathoms, well inside the lagoon, my pearls inside of her.

“Thompson and I made a little beach in a bit of a cove that bottomed a wrinkle in an obsidian cliff. Black sand, we found it, when the dawn came. Thompson had his scalp torn somehow and I was badly bruised. But we were safe for the time and we found some mussels to chew. No water, no fire. We were glad to lie in the sun and nurse ourselves for a bit.

“We didn’t know then if the Germans had got ashore or not. But, while we were talking things over, a whale-boat passed us with Steiner in the stern sheets and the men rowing the German man-of-war stroke, choppy and hard. They saw us but paid no attention. They were out looking for stuff from the wreck. Presently they came back, loaded up, and went by us as if we had been a couple of penguins. In an hour or so they returned and picked us up.

“Schwarzklippen is made up of a hollow crater with a narrow promontory leading to a cone. That cone is covered with bush and palms. The inner walls of the crater, sloping to the lagoon, the same, with two or three streams cascading down all the time. On the slope facing the sea the wall is terraced, partly by nature, partly by man, and paved with great blocks a fathom long.

“On the lower terrace there are great images of gray lava with crowns of red tufa on their heads, all the way from four feet to forty on their pedestals, staring out to sea. The same sort of images they have on Easter Island. Put there by the same prehistoric race, I imagine. The natives on the island are a tribe of Melanesians under a chief named Tiburi. They have only been there for about five generations and they know nothing about the origin of the statues. They only worship them.

“Behind the statues there are caves running away back and communicating with caves on the beach below them that are filled with water, even at ebb tide. Steiner made his camp on the terrace. Thompson and I were allowed to build a grass house on the beach. They kept the whale-boat in one of the lower caves, with the oars and mast taken up to the camp when they were not used.

“Thompson and I were allowed to do all the work we could stagger under. We fished for them and gathered fruit and did kitchen chores. We were prisoners to them, who were also prisoners of the sea. I don’t know that they treated us overbadly though they weren’t overconsiderate.

“The natives came around in canoes that first afternoon and some of them clambered down trails on the crater slopes. They tried to make a demonstration and got the worst of it. Steiner had managed to get arms ashore and some ammunition. Later he made friends with them, in a way. They thought he and his men were gods. They had a different idea about us until we convinced ’em to the contrary.

“Steiner showed Tiburi a few tricks and fixed up some sort of a pact that lasted until they began to get familiar with the women and carried off some of the younger ones. Then Tiburi sulked and went off to the cone. He was still afraid of the guns. Some of the natives stuck with Steiner, those who didn’t get along with Tiburi, for one reason and another.

“They showed Steiner and his crowd how to make kawa and white alcohol from the root of the ti plant. They began to spend most of their time drinking and singing and Steiner’s authority weakened. Discipline got slack and Tiburi attacked. But they beat him off. The promontory is a regular knife-edge and Steiner didn’t dare tackle it to clean them up.

“They made us rig a flagstaff for them on top of the cliff and the women made a flag of bark paper and colored it red, white and black. It was flying day by day for a possible ship. We hauled up wood for a signal-fire but there was small chance of using it. Steiner had his sextant and saved a chronometer and worked out the position, as I gave it to you. I fancy he was accurate. I got it out of one of the men when he was drunk. It looked hopeless enough. The island is uncharted and likely to be.”

“But they had their boat,” said Manning. “Why didn’t they provision up and get away?”

“The boat wouldn’t hold more than six teen and there were twenty-three of them,” said Hooper. “They talked about it but none of them would consent to stay and let the rest go. Afraid what Tiburi would do to them. They’d have gone into the ovens, and they knew it. Steiner suggested drawing lots but they wouldn’t hear to it. And there was no hardwood on the island to build a ship with. Nothing but brush and palms and pithwood trees.

“THEY fished up a spar or so from the schooner, with odds and ends of line and tarpaulin and canvas, but they couldn’t lift the hull. I used to look at it when we were fishing in the lagoon or out on the inner reef. The knowledge my pearls were there, safe, kept me going, kept up my resolution to get away. Two of the men watched down on the beach each night, armed, both to prevent our stealing the boat or letting the natives get it.

“Our clothes wore out and our shoes. We went native fashion and Thompson and I got covered with yaws and coral scratches. They kept us working as long as we could stand and any of them thought of some thing for us to do. We had twenty-three masters to serve.

“I meant to steal the whale-boat and make for the Marquesas and Thompson was game. The Galapagos were out of the question with the prevailing winds and the south equatorial current against us. It seemed a crazy scheme for two fhalf-starved men to tackle with scant chance of provisioning—seventeen hundred miles in an open boat. But we were half-crazy, I reckon.

“We made a couple of paddles and a mast and hid them. We braided a big mat sail from pandanus, working in the dark when they thought we were asleep. I stole bits of rope for rigging and spliced them. We dried fish and Thompson stole two calabashes from the natives for water. At the last we gathered a lot of young coconuts to supplement them.

“The night we got away it was moonless and still. The crowd was howling out songs on the terrace until midnight, when it died down. We sneaked up on our guards. They were careless by this time and figured we hadn’t any spirit left. Never dreamed of us tackling the open boat, I reckon. We strong-armed them, tied them up and gagged them, and we got clear.

“There was a wind outside the reef and by morning we were well away. Maybe they sent canoes after us but we never saw them. I won’t tell you what we went through. Don’t recollect a quarter of it. We didn’t make the Marquesas. A Peruvian bark picked us up on the Callao-Honolulu run, half-mummies, half-maniacs. They brought us to Hilo, half-dead when we got there. Later they shipped us to Honolulu to the Sailors’ Home after the bark had left.

“All the data they had was we had been picked up at sea in a whale-boat, which they hadn’t brought along. Thompson is still in bad shape. He didn’t have as much surplus to lose as I did. I saw him this morning. He’s coming round. I told you they dismissed me the day before yesterday.

“Of course I found out the war had ended while we were on Schwarzklippen but I didn’t realize just what that meant. I had dreamed of getting a cruiser to go down there, or a destroyer, and seeing Steiner and his crowd rounded up. But—the war is over.

“I saw the shipping commissioner here yesterday. A man with the blood and eyes of a fish. He didn’t believe me.

“‘It’s a good yarn, my man,’ he says. ‘Pity you haven’t any proof of it.’

“‘We haven’t signed peace with Germany,’ I told him. ‘There are twenty-three Germans waiting to be interned and punished for raiding.’

“‘They may be there and they may be not,’ he said. ‘You say the island is uncharted. It’s a good place for them. They’re interned all right. Good morning. If you want to ship I can put you in the way of a berth.’

“I went to see the commandant of the Naval yard and I didn’t get past the sentry at the gate.”

“Sending down after them wouldn’t get you back your pearls,” said Manning. “Even if they took you with them you couldn’t expect them to provide a diver.”

“I realize that. But what about ’Polu and my Kanakas? What about the rest of the crews they sent off in boats? The war is over but they kept me out of it, —— them! And they still stand between me and the pearls.”

“Not to mention Tiburi,” put in Manning.

“Those are the risks I told you of. I made one more trial. This morning. There is a man here named Butler. He is a factor. Supplies the plantations with everything they need. And he has other big interests. I met him in Tahiti. Put him up at the club and entertained him. If I ever came to Honolulu he was going to reciprocate. You know the usual thing.

“When I got in to him by sending in my name I saw he put me down for a fake. Twenty-five pounds lost and these, clothes robbed me of any resemblance to Hooper of Huapai. He told me frankly he didn’t believe I was the same man. To him I was just a beach-comber. I didn’t give anything away beyond the fact that I could make it worth his while to outfit me to an island that wasn’t charted. I didn’t even mention the German end of it.

“He cut me short.

“‘If it’s a mysterious island with buried treasure, or a stranded galleon, or a wonderful pearl lagoon,’ he said, ‘I’m not biting.’

“And then he mentioned the Cocos Island fake. He started to put his hand in his pocket but he didn’t take it out. When I began to eye him I fancy he thought for the first time I might be Hooper of Huapai after all, but I was down and out and he was not dealing with derelicts.”

“You didn’t mention the position of the island to any one?”

“I didn’t get a chance. You are the only one who knows the whole yarn, Manning. It’s up to you. It’s wild enough but it’s true, every word of it.”

Manning stretched out his hand to the other above the map.

“I believe it,” he said. “What do you want to do?”

III

FONG looked in upon the conference of two, his moon face at the full, clear shining with the information he divulged that he had won “slixty dolla at Chinese lottely.” Manning looked at the clock.

It was a quarter after three. For hours they had talked and planned, Hooper going over his narrative to the smallest details at the diver’s request. As Fong entered Hooper was telling where the pearls were hidden.

“They had locked Thompson and me in the traderoom after the crew got in the boats and started. Steiner went to the raider for further orders concerning us, I suppose; perchance to confirm his own plan of keeping Thompson and me aboard the schooner. They hadn’t searched us as yet but I was taking no chances of their overlooking that. And I got busy, with Thompson.

“There was tobacco on the traderoom shelves, package stuff in leadfoil, And we stripped a lot of that off and put the tobacco in an empty tin. There were crackers in waxed paper inside their cartons and we took the paper and left the crackers. One of my best-bet trading-gifts had been rubber hot-water bottles. There is a lot of toothache and bellyache in the islands and once I had introduced a chief to the comfort of a hot-water bag, they were all crazy for them. There were two or three of these along.

“I made up the pearls in long slim packages that would go down the neck of the bag and I wrapped them, first in waxed paper and then in leadfoil. I screwed down the metal stopper hard and fast and Thompson sealed it up with sounding-wax while I got his kit of tools and went to work on the floor.

“The hull ran under the traderoom, which was amidships. There was a hatch used mostly for ventilation and I lifted this. It was framed for the width of the traderoom floor, and the space between that and the hull ceiling, where it had been furred down between the beams. That was the risky part, for I was afraid some one would rubber through the skylight at us. Thompson kept a lookout and they didn’t think of it.

“So I carefully pried out one side of the frame and knocked out the furring till I could reach in to a transverse beam. Thompson, while he watched, took his oilskin that hung in the room and ripped the seams. He wrapped up the rubber bag in the back and then pulled the two sleeves over that, making a package of it. I muffled my hammer-head in my handkerchief and spiked that package to the transverse beam, replaced the frame and chucked the rest of the oilskin out of the port. Then my empty belt. Ten minutes later Steiner came in with two men and went through us and the traderoom. They took everything of value we had, including all papers. They took the stores away. Steiner lifted the hatch and peered into the hold. They fastened the ports and then the skylight and went away again.

“The pearls are safe, Manning. Those transverse beams won’t rot, even under water, for fifty years. They are selected oak. The rubber might rot a bit but it will hang together in the oilskin package and the foil and wax paper will preserve the pearls. Even if they dull a trifle, we can bring back the full luster by contact with a healthy body or, at the worst, they can be skinned. And their price is going up all the time.

“The upper deck blew up a bit under air-pressure when she went down but the traderoom floor is in place. They are safe and waiting for us.”

“Good!”

Manning picked up a sheet of paper on which he had made some memoranda and read it over.

“I’ll attend to the money end of it first thing in the morning,” he said. “Or, I should say, later this morning. While you see Thompson and refit yourself a bit. Then we’ll go after the ship, the stores and the crew.”

“It isn’t going to be easy to find ship or men, I’m afraid,” said Hooper. “But we may have luck. You, Fong and your three men will be practically passengers. I’ll try and land a mate to share watch and work with me on the navigation end. Eight sailormen, if we can scare up that many, will be enough. With Thompson, that brings the crew to sixteen. I’d like to get a few more men who would be good in a scrap. There’s Tiburi and there are Steiner and his crowd. They don’t know the war’s over and they may show fight. They would probably try to capture us and take over our ship. They wouldn’t be apt to let us dive peaceably. Steiner is smart enough to figure that we were after something worth while.

“You said there were twenty-three of them,” said Manning. “Half of them armed.”

“Seven rifles and five automatics in the bunch. Steiner has two of the pistols himself.”

Hooper began to laugh, silently at first, then in a hearty peal.

“What’s the joke?” asked Manning.

“I’m thinking of Steiner, interned or marooned, whichever you please, knowing nothing of what has happened. He may figure the war is over by this time but he’ll figure it his way. That Germany owns the earth and is putting a fence around it. I’m laughing at the thought of his face when the news sinks in. Manning, I’m going to get hold of a bunch of newspapers, back numbers. I’ll pick the ones that’ll rub it in and I’ll see he gets them, first thing after we arrive. It may stop a nasty fight. They may kamerad it. Though I doubt it. But I want to watch Steiner reading those papers. It’ll be funny. Now let’s turn in.”

They were both down-town at eight o’clock, Hooper visiting his sick supercargo, whose convalescence took an immediate upward trend at the news, and then rehabilitating' himself at the Fort Street stores with money advanced by Manning. When the latter met him, close to noon, he saw a different Hooper in the tall, lean man, straight as a plumb-line, striding briskly in a suit of stiff pongee silk and a Panama. He was still the sailor but now he was eminently the commander.

“Hooper of Huapai, all right,” commented Manning to himself. “I’ll warrant Butler would have listened to him if he had gone to him in those duds. And the sentry would have passed him. Their loss is my gain.”

“What luck?” Hooper hailed him.

“Men are scarce but you’ll be better able to handle that than I can. But I doubt if we’ll be able to pick our crew. I cabled my bank in San Francisco. The money will be here by noon. And I’ve got word of a schooner. Of course I’m no judge of what will suit us but it seems the only one available, if we can charter it. I have let slip a hint that we are on the track of a guano island. I thought it might be as well not to be too secret. Questions are bound to be asked. We can be mysterious about it and let it appear that we are trying to cover up the leak.”

“Good!” said Hooper. “Tell me about the schooner.”

“It’s the Mary L. Was a pleasure craft. Well fitted. About ninety tons. Belonged to a man who was killed in the war. His widow has no use for it. One or two have spoken about buying it for island yachting, but it is too big for most of them. It has an auxiliary engine and a wireless.”

“Fine. We don’t need the wireless but we do the engine. Talk price?”

“I’m to see the owner this afternoon. But perhaps you’ll do that.”

“Not me. You do the negotiations. I’ll look over the Mary L. Sounds pretty good. We evidently can’t afford to be fussy.”

The Mary L. suited Hooper. She was pretty luxuriously fitted up aft but she was roomy and she had good lines for speed.

“If they’ll let us put up a temporary partition in the main cabin to give us some privacy aft,” he told Manning, “she’ll suit first rate if they don’t want a fortune for the charter.”

“They want three thousand dollars for six months,” answered Manning. “They won’t take less money or shorten the time of the charter. And I shall have to put up a bond for seven thousand more in case we don’t bring her back.”

Hooper whistled.

“The lady is some financier,” he said. “Not that the charter price is so much but she seems business-like.”

“She talked with her business adviser over the phone before she’d give me an answer. Her brother-in-law. I can manage the bond easily by putting up some California real estate as security. I talked with the man myself. Who do you suppose it is?”

“Who?”

“Your friend Butler.”

Hooper whistled again.

“There’s an element of humor in that,” he said. “More than one element. I suppose he doesn’t know I’m in on the deal. But he may guess, and he’s bound to find out. The main joke is that Butler owns a fertilizer-mill; he supplies the plantations with fertilizer and if he gets wind of the guano yarn you started, he’ll be wild. Wouldn’t wonder if he tried to horn in, after all.”

“The joke is on him, at all events,” said Manning. “Then I’ll get in touch with him and we'll start cabling about the security. We may have to wait till the deeds arrive on the next steamer.”

“That’s all right. The schooner has got to go on the marine railroad. She’s foul. It will take several days to outfit and get the crew together. I’ll start Thompson on the provisioning end in a couple of days. He’s well enough now to make out lists. See if you can get permission to start cleaning the schooner right away. They can’t lose on that. If the charter money is put up they ought not to kick. And I’ll scout for men.”

MEN came slowly though they offered big wages. Two Hooper practically shanghaied from a ship in the harbor. Others dribbled in. Few of them could have been described as able seamen but Hooper saw promise enough in them for him to sign them. Sometimes a good man showed after an indifferent one had been taken, but the partners decided that an extra man or so would do no harm.

They were a mixed-pickle lot, the sailors, American, English, Finn, Swede, Dutch, negro and Kanakas. Fong supplied an engineer for the kicker engine that was capable of eight knots and meant much in crossing windless patches of sea on both sides of the equator, and bucking currents. The engineer was also Chinese, a man who had run into tong trouble and was glad to get away. His name was Ling and Fong guaranteed him, which was enough for Manning, who knew a good deal about engines himself.

But, with the bond provided for, the Mary L. off the marine railroad, outfitted, ready to start, they were still short of their complement. They had almost decided to sail short-handed when the man named Edwards appeared upon the scene. Hooper and Manning were aboard the schooner, now moored to the lading-wharf. Thompson was supervising stowage and the mate that Hooper had turned up was having the standing rigging overhauled.

This mate, Andersen, had had a row with his skipper and he was a lush when he could get hold of liquor. But the Mary L. was to be a prohibition ship and the man was a good sailor who could handle men and work out a reckoning.

The partners stood in the bows talking when Edwards boarded, spoke to Andersen and then made his way forward, cap in hand, deferential, capable-looking. He addressed himself to Hooper, who was now in skipper’s serge, brass-buttoned, peak-capped.

“I understand you are looking for men, sir?” he began.

“Well?” Manning surveyed the applicant approvingly, and Hooper seemed to endorse his attitude. “What capacity?”

“Steward, for myself, sir. With willingness to make myself generally useful. I can take my trick at the wheel, I can handle that wireless for you, I can wait on table and I don’t mind helping out in the galley.”

“Why are you out of a berth?”

“I’ve been trying it ashore, sir. I have been head luna on a plantation, that is a head foreman of the bosses of the Japanese cane-gangs. It don’t suit me. I can give plenty of references, sir. I was head steward on the Moana, one time. And I can turn up a few men for you. I have understood”—he lowered his voice—“that you needed them for some sort of guard-duty. I can get you four good men, lunas who have been under me.”

It was plain he had heard the guano rumor that was current and thought that guards might be left on the island to hold off other comers. The idea struck the partners favorably. The steward was a frank-looking chap, glib, but that was not out of the way in his profession, neatly dressed. They had not thought of a steward but Fong would have his work cut out in the galley. The four lunas provided an inducement.

“When can you turn up these men?” asked Hooper. “And what wages do they want?”

“I’ll bring them down tomorrow, sir. They’ll be off duty. They’re fair sick of handling Japs. I fancy your wages will suit.”

“And what’s your name?”

“Edwards. Williams Edwards.”

The upshot of it was that the five were engaged and the complement completed. Twenty-one all told.

The start had been originally scheduled for the early morning flood but a delay in important stores threatened to put it off, until the afternoon. Hooper fumed silently while Thompson went up-town to find out the trouble. Everything was shipshape aboard the Mary L. There was a stiff breeze blowing outside the harbor when the halt came. Hooper paced the wharf impatiently with Manning.

“It’s the dynamite,” he said. “I’ve half a mind to sail without it but it’s apt to come in uncommonly useful in more ways than one. I’m not sure about the opening in the inner reef, for one thing. We may have to blast it. But this delay’s bad for discipline; looks as if we had slipped a cog in our arrangements. We can hardly get it now unless Thompson jimmies his way into the store. He might do that. Tommy’s a handy lad when he gets going. But he’ll have to have it down here inside of an hour or we lose the tide. And we can’t have the crew loafing. Andersen hasn’t got the initiative of a drowning cat.”

He went aboard and Manning heard him issuing orders, to which the crew jumped with feverish energy, polishing brass and coiling down sheets and halyards anew. It was a few minutes after six o’clock. No stores or warehouses would open for almost two hours. They would lose the tide. Yet he held a faint hope in Thompson’s ability to deliver. The supercargo had gone off at boiling-point.

A car came down the water-front and braked at the wharfhead. Out of it stepped Butler, the factor, and Manning stared at him in amazement to see him out at such an hour, evidently with business on the Mary L. For a moment he wondered if anything had turned up against them. Butler was not the sort of gentleman to turn out at dawn merely to say good-by to the men who had chartered his sister-in-law’s schooner yacht. He might have begun to change his mind about Hooper, but Manning did not think Butler the sort to make an apology.

The object of the visit flashed in his mind suddenly. Butler had heard about the guano. He either wanted to get into partnership at the last moment, or, more likely, get an option on their supposed prospect. Manning chuckled silently as Butler approached him with an evident pose of trying to appear as if an early-morning trip to the water-front was his usual appetizer. Hooper had gone below.

“Good morning. Going out on this tide? I happened to hear that you were expected to clear this morning. I see you have left the wireless?” added Butler, looking up to where the delicate aerials stretched between the fore and main.

“Yes. It was specified in the contract that nothing was to be dismantled, if you remember,” said Manning dryly.

“Was it? I just glanced through it. Well, it doesn’t interfere. Wanted to wish you good luck.”

“Good of you to turn out for that.”

Manning did not bother to cover up the sarcasm he felt. With the deal closed, he had scant use for the factor, remembering how he had treated Hooper. And just then Hooper came on deck and to the gangplank, staring at Butler with cold eyes but not halting his stride toward Manning.

“My partner, Captain Hooper, Mr. Butler. Captain Thomas Hooper of Huapai.”

Hooper nodded curtly but Butler was too clever a business man to show confusion.

“I met Captain Hooper some days ago,” he said, “and I have met him before. But I didn’t recognize him and I told him so rather bluntly. You can’t blame me, Hooper,” he went on with a show of frankness that if it was insincere, was admirably acted. “I’m sorry, but you looked like anything but the man I met at Tahiti. If there is anything I can do now?”

“I don’t think so,” returned Hooper. “Thank you just the same. I did look like a derelict. In a way, I was.” The two measured glances.

“Look here, you two,” said Butler. “I understand you’re after guano. You’ve tried to keep it dark, naturally, but I picked it up. If you land what you’re after come and see me, I’ll talk business with you and I’ll see if I can’t treat you better this time, Hooper. I can make it an object. If you want capital to develop, or will sell out right, give me the first chance. I’m interested in fertilizer two ways: making it and selling it. We need the urates, oxalates and phosphates in the stuff. Bring me samples and an idea of the depth of the deposits and maybe I can make my peace with you for the interview we had the other morning. I’m sorry for that.”

Manning left the talking to Hooper. It was his affair. There was no hint of a twinkle in Hooper’s eyes as he answered.

“If we find anything good in that line I’ll come to see you, Butler,” he said.

“Fine. Nothing else I can do for you?”

“I think not.” A figure came hurrying down the wharf. It was Thompson, his face scarlet with mortification and anger.

“Nothing doing,” he exclaimed. “The stuff’s there, marked and ready, but it got left over last night. Found the watchman but he wouldn’t loosen. Butler and Company have got a fine system, I don’t think.”

“Coming from Butler’s was it, Thompson?”

“Yes. Only place in town we could get the stuff.”

“Well, this is Mr. Butler.” There was a twinkle in Hooper’s eyes now. “We’re held up on this tide by some boxes your warehouse failed to deliver, Mr. Butler. Wonder if you could help us out?” He looked toward the car. “They are neither big nor heavy.”

“Of course,” said the factor promptly. “Let your man come up with me and point them out. I’ll bring them down myself. Glad to oblige.”

He turned to Manning as Thompson went off with Butler.

“I’ll bet you an even hundred Butler doesn’t come down with the dynamite,” he offered.

Manning laughed and shook his head.

“He may not even risk his car. But I think he’ll do that much. He seems to want that guano badly. And he’ll imagine dynamite will be used for blasting to determine the depths of deposit. I wish he had to hang by his feet till we showed him the samples.”

“You don’t like him?”

“No. He’s a cutthroat in business.”

“There are others.”

IN FIFTEEN minutes the car, which had gone off at high speed, came back gingerly on to the wharf, Thompson alone in the tonneau with the boxes of explosive.

“Butler had an appointment up-town,” he said. There was a trace of a grin on the face of Butler’s driver.

“Hustle them aboard, Tommy. We’ll make the tide after all.”

Edwards had been standing by the rail. He touched his steward’s cap as Hooper and Manning went aboard.

“How soon will you have breakfast, sir?” he asked. He had already served them hot coffee.

“Soon as we clear the bell-buoy. Make it half an hour.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Capable man, that,” Hooper said to Manning.

“Yes. Gets on well with the crew. Got a vein of good humor that’s catching. But Fong don’t like him.”

“No? Too nosey about the galley perhaps. What’s Fong’s verdict?”

“Too —— slick.”

They laughed as they watched the careful stowage of the dynamite.

“The men are going to wonder about that,” Manning went on. “Are you going to let them stick to the guano idea?”

“Might as well for the present. All ready, Tommy? All right, Mr. Andersen.”

Ordered bustle took place. The spring cables were cast off, the canvas hoisted and the Mary L., heeling to the wind a little, started to slide down-channel with the breeze aft, gathering way, sailing past the channel lighthouse with a fine burst of speed. The keeper waved them a friendly greeting.

“She can walk,” said Hooper. “Good lines to her. Easy entry and a sweet run. But I’m glad she’s got an engine aboard, for all that.”

Once about the bell-buoy the partners went down to breakfast. The partition that had been put up in the overlarge main cabin gave them privacy. There was a door in it through which Edwards served their meal from the ’midships galley. Andersen, who ate at their table, had the deck.

“The course to Schwarzklippen is almost due southeast,” said Hooper. “I’ve set it sou’east by east to clear Kauna Point; that’s the southwest cape on Hawaii. Once round the Bib Island and we’ll start on our best point of sailing, a long, long reach with a short leg now and then to fetch up leeway. And we’ll go kiting. The Mary L ’ll do better than twelve.”

He spoke with enthusiasm and Manning shared it. They were off at last and all obstacles seemed cleared until they reached the island. The little turn with Butler had furnished a happy to touch. Each had an after stateroom to himself. The spare room was occupied in Manning’s quarters by his diving-suits, which he had to overhaul, and which he kept under his own eyes when at sea.

The rest of his apparatus was stowed forward. Hooper had the rifles and automatic pistols with their ammunition stowed in his spare berth and under it. The crew’s quarters were a bit cramped but the weather was fair and they would spend most of their time on deck. The one problem that seemed to vex Hooper was to find occupation for the men who had shipped as guards. They were a roughish lot but they seemed fit.

“I don’t like idleness. It brews too much loose talk,” he said. “Your men are different, Manning, but those chaps are practically passengers. I’ll have to keep them busy. One thing will be target practise. I want to see how they can shoot. We may be able to pacify Tiburi; the news of the papers I brought along may change the attitude of Steiner, but it is as well to be prepared.”

He said this while Edwards was in the galley. Ultimately they would have to mention the pearls, as a valuable package be longing to Hooper that was to be salved from a wreck. It seemed likely the men might anticipate trouble with natives on the supposed guano island. There had been talk of it already and neither Hooper nor Manning had contradicted it. The ex-lunas did not seem afraid of the prospect.

“You said you fancied that you were the first white men who had touched on the island,” said Manning.

“Pretty sure of it.”

“Then I’d surely be the first diver?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I’m not quite ready to tell you. But I’ve got a scheme browsing round inside my head,” said Manning. “Something in connection with Tiburi.”

Hooper nodded. He was getting used to Manning’s slow but sure methods.

“Coming on deck?” he asked as he pushed back his coffee-cup; and they went up together.

The northeast trade blew strong and steady and they sailed fast all day. At nightfall Molokai was well behind. Abeam of them were Lanai and Kahoolawe with the loom of Maui’s ten-thousand-foot dead crater back of them. Manning and Hooper paced the afterdeck together, the latter in charge of the deck until midnight.

Behind the great mountain there showed the shimmer of the rising moon. The sky was bright, studded with stars, the Southern Cross just above the horizon, to lift higher for every night of their voyage. The schooner went easily shouldering through the seas, the wind abaft the beam, sheets well in, with the boom ends to the leeward rail, topsails set.

Hooper was not satisfied however. The man at the wheel did not suit him.

“A good helmsman has the thing by instinct,” he said to Manning. “This chap sails by the card and he hasn’t got the feel of her. He wants to keep her full and she’s making too much leeway. I’ll have to try them all out but I don’t believe we’ve got a first-class steersman aboard, barring Andersen, and I don’t want a mate taking a trick. We’re losing time with that sort of chap. No good talking to him either.”

The moon, like a disk of illuminated pearl, topped the fire-blasted peaks of Haleakala, poised there as if for flight and then soared upward. Manning watched the glory of it as Hooper turned toward the taffrail, impatient at the helmsman. Down in the cabin a clock chimed six bells. A sailor came aft and reported.

“Make it six bells,” said Hooper, and walked to the ship’s bell, forward of the main companion, and struck the time.

Edwards appeared from below and stood waiting. Manning noted the weatherwise way in which the steward cocked art eye at the topsails, then the wake. Hooper came aft again.

“Would you like coffee served on deck, sir?”

“None for me. I want to sleep when I turn in. How about you, Manning?”

“You’d have to put laudanum in it to keep me awake, but I don’t want any, thank you, Edwards.”

The steward lingered.

“If you’d like me to take a trick at the wheel, sir,” he said, “I think I could get a little more out of her.”

“You do, eh?” Hooper eyed him sharply. “Not tonight. You’ve been on your feet all day. But, if you can handle the spokes, I may use you, if it doesn’t interefere with your other work.

“Yes, sir? Thank you, sir,” replied Edwards incuriously, and went below.

“I wouldn’t wonder if he could steer,” said Hooper. “He’s a capable chap.”

“Too —— slick,” quoted Manning.

Hooper laughed, looking aft. He suddenly left Manning and went to the companionway where the night-glasses hung on a hook at the head of the stairs.

“See that sail back there?” he asked his partner as he hooded the lenses and focused them.

Manning saw something that looked like a silver of pearl, far astern.

“Been trailing us all day. Overhauling us too. She’s got the legs of us.”

“What is your idea?”

Manning fancied that Hooper did not like the prospect. The skipper stood with his legs apart, balanced to the pitch and steady heave of the deck as the schooner lunged through the seas.

“Think they are following us on purpose?”

“Can’t say. Some one might think they could hang on to us with a faster craft until we head up for the guano island and then beat us to it for possession and nine points of the law. Ten points in such a game.”

“You mean Butler?”

“I don’t really mean any one. Just an idea. We’ll know before long. But I’m off Butler. I saw a bit of the real man in his office that morning. He wants guano, it seems. Better than gold-mining these days. He might be playing both ends to the middle. Grab it off if he can or arrange for an option from us if he can’t do any better.”

“Only there isn’t any guano.”

“True enough. But I don’t like it.”

IV

HOOPER had the morning watch, splitting deck duty with Andersen in default of a second mate. When Manning came on deck at seven he found the skipper watching the trailing vessel of the night before. She had gained considerably in the night. Hooper handed Manning the glasses just as the pursuer, if that was her purpose, came about and tacked across the stem of the Mary L. about half a mile away.

Through the powerful lenses Manning got a fine view of her, a schooner with a black hull, pointing high into the wind and creaming through the crisp waves, sheets well in for the tack, canvas unwrinkled—a beautiful sight. Brass twinkled here and there on her decks. Working up, she tacked again, the crew tailing on to the sheets with yachtsman-like precision. She did not falter in the eye of the wind but swung to her course and came charging down after the Mary L., to leeward now but eating up the distance.

“Smart ship and smartly handled,” said Hooper. “See how she came about. No fuss with her headsails.”

“Looks like a private craft,” suggested Manning. “A yacht. She may be racing with us for the fun of it.”

“Soon find that out. She can go ahead all she wants to. Though I hate to be passed at that rate. If I had the Moanamanu I’d show her a thing or two. But I’ll be glad when she gets off our horizon. She isn’t a yacht, for all her brass. Her rigging is too business-like and her canvas too heavy. Look at her come.”

The stranger, sailing a parallel course, forging up abeam, carried a private signal at her gaff and a triangle of flag at her peak. This last showed plainly, a white star in a blue circle on a scarlet ground.

“She’s a yacht, after all,” said Manning. “That’s the flag of the Hawaii Yacht Club. I’ve seen it too many times at Pearl Harbor to be mistaken.”

Hooper shook his head.

“She’s not a yacht. Name’s Seamew,” he read off through the glasses. “But she may be harmless. She’s dipping her flag.”

He turned and shouted an order to return the salute. The Seamew tacked again, as if satisfied to have displayed her speed and not wishing to humiliate the Mary L. by crossing her bows.

“Sporting,” said Hooper.

“Breakfast is ready, sir.”

Edwards stood there, with eyes that watched the Seamew. He had a faculty of appearing suddenly, without noise, a steward’s attribute that, to Manning, always was a trifle uncanny and annoying. With him was Andersen, ready to take over the deck.

“Know anything of that boat, Edwards? The Seamew?” asked Hooper.

“Yes, sir. Know her well. I’ve been aboard her, sir. A fast one. Belongs to Mr. Huddersleigh of Fanning Island. On her way home. Mr. Huddersleigh makes regular trips to Honolulu every few months, sir. I knew she was in the harbor, sir. But she was over toward Iwilei. You might not have noticed her, sir.”

“Ah!”

Hooper’s exclamation held relief in which Manning shared. There was no especial risk in any one trailing them down to Schwarzklippen but neither fancied the espionage.

“I’ve heard of Huddersleigh,” said Manning. “King of Fanning Island. Exports shagreen mostly. For pocketbooks and polishing, until lately. Now sharkskin has gone up. They’re using it for boots.”

“He’ll be on the same course as we are till we hit the line,” said Hooper at breakfast. “Decent of him not to show us up too much. Gad! That chap can make fourteen knots on his best point of sailing. Sail rings round us on any wind. Doubt if we see much of him after today.”

But they did. Hooper discovered unexpected talent in steering in two of the sailors, one of the Hawaiians and the Finn. The Mary L. developed latent speed as the skipper found out her best points. The Seamew had a good start of them, but on the third day they picked her up again, hull down, and from then on kept intermittent company. In lighter winds the Mary L. had the better of it. The men scented a race and entered into the spirit of it as Hooper set a big fisherman’s staysail between main and fore and the Mary L. showed what she was really capable of.

He massed the men and crew at the rail and shifted them about to preserve the center of effort and, what with varying airs and Hooper’s skill, matters evened up.

“Keeps the loafers doing something,” he remarked to Manning. “Plenty of time for target practise later on.”

Ten degrees north of the equator, the breeze began to falter and threaten to fail altogether. Fong’s compatriot had overhauled the engine and Hooper prepared to abandon canvas for gasoline.

“We can take our time about coming back,” he said. “We’ve got plenty of gas and we can strike a dead course for Schwarzklippen. We’ll bid good-by to the Seamew now. She’s due to change her course for Fanning anyway.”

At noon that day the wind blew out altogether and they started up the engine. The Seamew lay a mile away, rolling in the calm. Hooper dipped his ensign in farewell salute and the Fanning’s Island boat answered. Then they saw her canvas coming down, smartly smothered and reefed. Through the glasses a white wake showed at her stern as she swung off and took course approximately south-southwest.

“She’s got a kicker, too,” said Hooper. “Well, that’s the last of her.”

On divergent courses, the two schooners were soon out of sight of each other. The Mary L., as Thompson put it, commenced to taxi across the line for her destination. At the evening meal Fong himself appeared to serve the after cabin.

“Where is Edwards?” asked Manning.

“That steward all time this afte’noon foolee too much with Ling along that engine, along that dynamo,” said Fong in hid singsong pidgin-English. “He say he fixee wi’less.”

Hooper frowned.

“Has he been interfering with Ling?” he asked.

Fang shrugged his shoulders.

“Too —— slick,” he said just as Edwards entered.

“I have been testing the wireless, sir. Thought you might like to use it.”

“What for?”

“I thought it best to have it in readiness, sir, so I overhauled it. I told you I could handle it when I joined, sir, and, as you said nothing to the contrary, I assumed it was a part of my duties. I waited for the engine to be started regularly.”

“We’ll not need it. Is it in shape?”

“I believe so, sir. I have no means of knowing whether my test sending was received, of course. It would not mean anything. And I have not picked up any message. Hardly likely to in these latitudes. But I think I can say it is in shape, sir. We might intercept some news once in a while if we had a regular operator.”

He had taken overplus duties from Fong, who left a plain impression on his exit that he did not think much of the energetic Edwards.

But the opinions of Fong and Ling, naturally a unit, were not shared by the others aboard. It began to get almost unbearably hot in the windless spaces. What breeze the schooner herself furnished, as she forged steadily ahead, averaging a hundred and sixty miles a day, seemed to come out of an oven. The putty wrinkled and crumbled in the seams, the brass was blistering and general lassitude held all hands by day, enhanced by the fact that there was little to do. But as soon as the, sun dropped blazing into the sea and some relief came with night, Edwards organized entertainment.

He got together a quartet and he told tales that created breathless interest, broken by peals of laughter from the groups that surrounded him on deck, smoking through the long hours when sleep was hard to coax.

Prickly heat and loss of appetite, all the conditions that make for peevishness under such circumstances, were nullified by the ubiquitous steward. He seemed to have the capacity for making a personal friend out of every one aboard, saving the Chinamen. Often the afterguard, Manning, Hooper, Andersen and Thompson, regretted the dignity of office that forbade them joining in the after-dark amusement sessions.

By day, target practise went on with an hour set apart for it. Several of the men bid fair to become good shots; others proved hopeless and Hooper weeded them out as wasters of cartridges. The four ex-lunas and Edwards himself were evidently familiar with the use of firearms. Manning’s steady nerves brought him to the forefront and Hooper was already an excellent marksman with either pistol or rifle. Two of Manning’s assistants also shaped well.

The target practise began to invest the expedition with an earnestness of purpose that brought about more or less talk, much of it in a jesting strain, of the duties that they might have to perform. The general opinion among the crew prevailed that they would have trouble with the natives on landing and that some of them might be left as an armed guard against them or other interference if the guano-deposits proved satisfactory for exploitation. This impression Hooper and Manning allowed to stand for the present. Manning overhauled his diving-suits and that diversified the talk and provided fresh speculation.

THERE was a change in the two leaders as they steadily neared Schwarzklippen. Manning, seldom over talkative, grew taciturn, and Hooper began to flame with an eagerness that manifested itself in his eyes, in his nervous pacing of the deck, working out the daily position, his scanning of the horizon that he knew must, as yet, yield no results. The entire man emanated force and at times, Manning, patching the rubber of his diving-dress, would think of him as a racing engine, constantly evolving unapplied power.

When they reached the borders of the south equatorial current, a hundred and fifty miles south of the line, the southwest trade began to blow with increasing steadiness and soon they were able to shut off the engine and forge ahead with increased speed under canvas. Hooper came below one upon to work his reckoning, his eyes gleaming.

He and Andersen compared and agreed and Hooper took out his chart and dividers.

“We should lift Schwarzklippen by dawn tomorrow, Manning,” he said with a triumphant note.

The news spread about the schooner and all that afternoon watch on deck and watch below, with the idlers, gathered in groups and looked eagerly ahead, hours before there was any possibility of sighting land. Meanwhile there was oiling of weapons and a growing alertness in word and action.

With the exception of Fong and Ling, every soul aboard was on deck at the commencement of the morning watch. One of the Hawaiians was perched in the foremast spreaders before the sun leaped up and day suddenly blazed over the sea and sky. The wind strengthened with the dawn, blowing well aft of the beam, and the schooner surged along at a fast clip through curling, sharply faceted waves of sapphire, dazzling where they caught the sun.

Flying fish soared out of the sea, pursued by dolphins that leaped after them. Two bells came and then three and four. Fong brought up steaming coffee for the men and Edwards served the afterguard.

As the last stroke of five bells sounded the deep voice of the Hawaiian came floating down and back from the fore.

“Land-ho!”

They strained forward into the bows and the port rail, gazing to where the look out pointed, a few degrees aport. Hooper handed the glasses to Manning and sprang to the mainmast, going up it like a cat, barefooted, as he had come on deck, his toes clinging to the rings, clasping the halyards.

A purple speck showed on the horizon’s rim and gradually lifted from the sea, grim, desolate, uncharted. A cheer went up; breakfast was forgotten fore and aft as they crowded to the rail. Aside from Manning and Hooper, it meant little to them materially; they were not in the true secret of the voyage. But no one can sail for leagues across the ocean stretches where there is no plume of smoke, gleam of sail or promise of land, and raise an island unplaced upon the maps, without sharing the thrill of the discoverer.

Landfall, in such circumstances, ever partakes somewhat of the miracle; it heats the blood and rouses the spirit of adventure. There were risks ahead, they knew, fighting against odds with savages, where the penalty of defeat meant cruel death and horrid burial, and the ship’s company faced it with an eagerness that brought a nod of approval from Hooper as he slid down the halyards and regained the deck.

He glanced at Manning triumphantly, as if he had vindicated his story, justified the diver’s investment, but Manning only nodded back and put out his great powerful hand to grip the other’s nervous fingers.

“Congratulations are almost in order,” said Hooper. “We can make a landing this afternoon, if they’ll let us. We’ll land anyway,” he added, his lips tightening. “I must overhaul that budget of newspapers for Steiner.”

From his seniority of some ten years, Manning smiled a little tolerantly at Hooper as the skipper dived below. There was a good deal of the boy in Hooper’s virile manhood, he thought, and then a burst of youth welled up in him and this time he laughed aloud, so that Andersen looked at him in wonder.

For the Goddess Adventure, who reckons time and the calendar and birthdays as a joke as long as a man’s heart beats sturdily and he is able to stand on his hind legs, had taken Manning by the hand like a fairy godmother and he was young again. His blood tingled to his fingertips and he felt the glow of danger and achievement. For the first time, too, the pearls in the lagoon took on material value, material prospects. Hooper had said that they should be fully worth three hundred thousand dollars in the present market and a third of that was to be Manning’s own.

With a score of years of hard work undersea, much of it dull and laboriously wearing, he had had thoughts of retiring somewhere near the sea with Fong as factotum, to sail a sloop, to dig in a garden and grow roses. Something like that. Now fresh vistas opened. The world was wide. And he was in the full strength of his prime.

A thought came to him and he followed Hooper.

“What about letting the crew in a little deeper on this thing?” he asked. “Telling them about Steiner and his men, at all events? The war is over but Steiner doesn’t know it and I take it he won’t be waiting on the beach for you to deliver him those papers. He won’t be in any too good a humor after he reads them. And I suppose they’ll be sighting us soon. Maybe making smoke from that signal-fire you spoke of. And, just exactly what are you intending to do with our Germans when we bag them, peaceably or otherwise?”

“March them in to that commandant at Honolulu,” said Hooper. “Right past that cocky sentry who challenged me for a tramp. It will be up to him to extradite ’em or otherwise dispose of them. The ending of the war evens me up with Steiner personally. His conceit’ll shrivel, like a kid’s balloon when it’s pricked. Though there have been times when I had other ideas of handling him. But I’ll get the men aft and talk to them.”

His speech was short and to the point.

“There is no guano, to speak of, on that island, men,” he said. “My schooner was taken by a German raider and I and Mr. Thompson kept prisoners aboard of it under a German crew. Later one of our own cruisers chased us and we were wrecked in a storm on the island. The schooner lies in ten fathoms in the lagoon, just beyond an inner reef. There are belongings of mine hidden in her that Mr. Manning and his men will dive for. That is what we came after. The Germans are still there. They don’t know the war is over.”

There was a guffaw from the men.

“I got away in a whale-boat with Mr. Thompson. We were picked up at sea and brought to Honolulu. There are natives on the island who are a Melanesian tribe, not friendly to whites. We may have to pacify them. That is why I have brought you along, with arms. The Germans may need some explaining to before they accept the situation. We shall have to act as circumstances guide us. If we succeed in getting back my valuables there will be a bonus paid to every man aboard of two hundred and fifty dollars over and above his wages, Mr. Manning and I being partners in this trip.”

He looked toward Manning, who confirmed the bonus with a nod. The men cheered, led by Edwards.

“We shall try and treat with Steiner, leader of the Germans, and tell him where Germany now stands,” continued Hooper. “We shall try and treat.with Tiburi, chief of the tribe. We do not wish to start bloodshed if we can avoid it. You have been prepared for a certain amount of trouble. But any landing-parties in the face of danger will be made up of volunteers.”

Edwards led another salvo of cheering and one of the men he had furnished stepped forward.

“These ain’t any of our crowd goin’ to back down, skipper,” he said. “Not for Heines nor for cannibals.”

“I thought not,” said Hooper. “That is all.”

He turned to Manning as the men filed forward, talking it over.

“Good spirit there,” he said. “They took it all easily enough.”

“Didn’t even seem to be surprized,” commented Manning. “But they’ll do a lot of jawing about the nature of your valuables from now on. That bonus was a good idea.”

“It cuts into the pile considerably, and we’ll have to sell some of the pearls to raise it, but it seems only fair to give them some sort of a share in the deal.”

“Fair enough. You might offer to sell some of the pearls to Butler, instead of guano,” said Manning with a laugh.

THE island grew, showing the crater, but hiding the green cone back of it. Frowning from the sea, it fitted the name that Steiner had given it. It looked like a barren volcano, water less, incapable of providing for life. Yet the heart of it was thick with vegetation, Hooper promised. No smoke of signal-fire showed and, as they came closer, Hooper trained his glass upon the upper cliffs with a frown.

“Funny,” he muttered. “There’s no flag and the staff has gone.”

“Might have been blown down?” said Manning.

“Fancy they’d have set it up again. I don’t quite like the look of it. They may have smelled a mouse when they sighted us. If they thought I had got clear—but then they would have expected a cruiser rather than a schooner.”

“They may have got heart after you started and built some sort of a raft or craft.”

“Possible. But I don’t believe it. They were getting too soft. Life suited them. No, sir, don’t think they had the guts to tackle that. Things were too easy. But I don’t like it.”

“Can we see their camp, sailing past the open end of the crater, or are you going to go through the reef into the lagoon?”

“We couldn’t see it plainly enough to be sure. And I don’t care to risk that second reef-opening. I told you I thought it would have to be blasted. It’s too narrow between the reefs for much maneuvering. Can’t tackle it on the ebb, anyhow. My idea is to get in touch with Tiburi. If we can keep the fear of the white man in his heart he won’t bother us after some gifts, the promise of more, and good care on our part to cover ourselves. We’ll head up a bit and sail round.”

The course was slightly shifted and they coasted the black, sheer cliffs of the volcanic crest, fissured and fluted here and there, devoid of all life save the wheeling gulls that rose and settled and soared out to meet the schooner, screaming at intrusion. The narrow promontory that joined crater to cone opened up and the sight of the latter, covered with verdure, a green jewel rising from a ring of ivory surf, heartened all of them and lightened the oppression of that silent, grim crater.

Still there was no sign of life, though they swept the beach and the outstanding ledges of the cliffs with glasses. No natives gathered on the sand, no canoes put out to sea. No wisp of smoke showed signs of habitation. Only the birds wheeling and wheeling overhead.

“Looks as if the whole place was deserted,” said Manning. “Some sort of plague might have swept them, or they may have killed each other off, like Kilkenny cats, German against cannibal.”

“Not likely. But there’s something wrong,” returned Hooper. “The natives would not be frightened into hiding by us. If they were frightened, and they are not that breed of cats, they would still be curious. Something wrong! If they are there they are not friendly. Steiner may have won out and be setting a trap with the idea of getting hold of the schooner for his getaway. That’s the most likely thing.”

“Or might be in league with Tiburi?”

Hooper shook his head.

“No. Tiburi is too sore about that woman deal. Steiner kidnaped his daughter. No! Tiburi might pull some treachery in a pretended pact, but Steiner would be too foxy. I— Listen.”

They were now to the south of the island and the wind blew from it. Manning caught a booming note, distinct from the surf. It was followed by another and another, at pulsing intervals. It was the beat of a drum. And it was punctuated by a queer moaning sound, like the hoot of an enormous owl.

“War-drums,” said Hooper. “War-drums and conch shells. Tiburi’s out against us. This is not going to be duck soup. They are waiting for us to make a landing. Then they’ll tackle us from ambush. That bush is full of warriors now, waiting for their chance. Too many odds. Not more than two or three places to land.”

“What’s your plan?”

“It’s close to sunset. Nothing tonight. We’ll tack out and hold council of war.”

“No moon tonight, is there?”

“No. Why?”

“Then I’ve got a plan,” said Manning. “And I think it will work with Tiburi.”.

V

MANNING closely surveyed the shore-line as they coasted about the cone and headed north again to complete the circuit of Schwarzklippen. The steeply slanting sides were thick with growth to the summit. Palms waved above a tangle of bush growth. Along the shore line mangroves clustered thickly with here and there little beaches. The reef, with its double walls of coral, came closer in to the land than off the crater proper and in places the two barriers merged as one.

“What do you figure the average depth of that lagoon?” Manning asked Hooper, who was watching him frown at the land, slowly darkening as the sun dropped and the shadow of the crater fell across it. “Could a whale-boat get through that opening, do you suppose?”

He pointed to where the shifting line of spray rising from the combers breaking on the reef seemed a little less in volume. Hooper surveyed it critically.

“I imagine you could make it at the flood easily enough. Why? What is your scheme, Manning?”

“You say Tiburi was inclined to accept Steiner as a god. By this time he has probably found out that he is not a beneficent deity, if he is one at all, to judge by their present attitude.”

He nodded toward the cone, now on their port bow. They were in its lee and the throbbing beat of the war-drums was plainer than ever.

“But I have had considerable experience with natives as a diver and there is no question but what the sight of a diver rising out of the sea knocks them absolutely cold—until they see you crawl out of your armor, like a hermit crab from its shell. Then they know you are only a man but you are still ace high.”

“Good reason for that,” said Hooper. “There isn’t a tribe but has its legend—they all tie up to the same source, I imagine—of magicians who are able to pass from island to island, group to group. A diver would seem like the biggest kind of a wizard. I begin to see your drift but why scare them stiff? We want to get on terms of communication with Tiburi. They would hide in that bush like rabbits and we’d never find them if you walked out on them.”

“Not if I made them believe I was a friendly god. I’ve thought it out quite a bit, Hooper, and I believe it will work. But we don’t want them to tie it up too closely with the schooner. Let’s talk it over in the cabin.”

Fifteen minutes later Manning’s three assistants were summoned aft, Fong being busy with the evening meal. Hooper Leaded the schooner south, into the wind. The sun dropped; darkness rushed up, save for the stars. The canvas of the Mary L. was taken in and close furled. From the island she could not be picked up by the sharpest of the thousand eyes that had peered at her from the jungle and hoped that the white men might strike the reef or land unguardedly.

In the cabin Manning overhauled his diving-suit and worked over the fixing of some marine fireworks, Coston signals and port-fires used on life-buoys. These he made temporarily water-proof. Thompson arranged a small box, in which he placed gifts that would be most likely to strike the fancy of the natives. This he carefully wrapped in thicknesses of tarpaulin. Hooper busied himself for a while in thoroughly greasing an automatic pistol.

“I prefer the other suit for general work,” said Manning, as he and one of his men carefully inspected and tested the oxygen tank. “But it means a lighter of some sort and the pump, not to mention the pipe and life and signal lines. This leaves me free to go up on the beach. The main thing is to be sure they see me and there’ll be no doubt of that.”

“It’s a big risk, just the same, Manning,” said Hooper. “Of course we’ll be covering you but if they did rush you, you’d be helpless. I mean as to quick action.”

“Not so much as you’d think. I don’t have to wear gloves. I could use my gun. Wouldn’t take you long to get in to me. Besides, I’ve been thinking it’s about time for me to take an active part in this business. Here I’ve been playing passenger while you’ve been working ship. I want to earn my share. All I’ve done is to put up some cash with the practical certainty of getting fifteen to one for my money.”

“You are going to do the diving,” said Hooper, his voice warm with approval.

“An hour or two of my regular line of work. Doesn’t amount to shucks. Well, I guess we’re ready, Hooper, when you are.”

The schooner was well off the island now. It showed as a vague loom against the stars. Hooper ordered the engine started and set the course. The sound of the exhaust would be lost in that of the surf, he calculated. When he went below he found Manning stripped and about to put on a light combination suit of wool, long-legged and long-sleeved. Hooper gazed admiringly at Manning’s brawn. The diver weighed close to two hundred pounds but there was no superfluous flesh, only big bones packed hard with muscle and sinew that rippled as Manning moved like grass beneath the wind.

He put on the rubber suit and went on deck, his two assistants carrying the weighted shoes, the helmet and the oxygen tank that was to strap upon his shoulders. Thompson carried the box of gifts—gaudy handkerchiefs, small mirrors, brass rings and beads—goods selected by Hooper in Honolulu for some such occasion. With Tiburi eliminated as an enemy, giving them the news as to Steiner’s present circumstances, much of their difficulties would be removed and the more he considered Manning’s plan, the more Hooper approved of it and credited the diver with an imagination that he had not suspected him capable of. He was beginning thoroughly to appreciate his partner.

The Mary L. chugged up to within a mile of the reef, then crept in closer. The cone showed dark as they came to a point opposite the place where they had first heard the drums and conch shells. The night was quiet, save for the drum-roll of the surf that showed faintly phosphorescent where it foamed over the reef. The tide was at flood now. It was three bells in the middle watch. Hooper did not doubt but that there were some of Tiburi’s men awake, but he intended to make certain. Manning’s rising from the sea was to be spectacular.

A rocket soared up from the deck and rose curving to burst high above the cone in a shower of fiery stars that slowly settled down. Another and another followed, the last exploding in an aerial bomb, harmless but startling to the native mind.

A whale-boat was lowered and Manning got into the stern sheets with Hooper. Besides the crew his three assistants followed. Then Thompson. Rifles were handed down and the apparatus. They rowed for the reef and then along it, looking for the opening Manning had pointed out to Hooper. They found it without much difficulty and backed water. Hooper had the steering-oar. He watched for a big wave, gave command in a low voice and the stout blades bent as the boat swept through he reef-gate into the calm lagoon. With the surf behind them they backed water while one of Manning’s men sounded from the bows.

“Little better than nine fathom,” he reported.

Suddenly there came to them, borne from the land, the muffled beat of a drum, echoed, repeated. Tiburi was awake. In the boat they worked quickly but quietly. There was little phosphorus in the lagoon and they hoped to be unobserved. It would make the appearance of Manning more mysterious if this was the case. Manning put on his helmet and his leaded shoes and an assistant adjusted the former. His pistol was in his belt holster, together with a knife. A light ladder was attached to one gunwale with hooks.

THE crew edged to the other side to keep balance. Slowly, ponderous but not clumsy, Manning turned and slowly descended the ladder. A few feet below the surface he halted on the rungs, waiting for the little plop in his ears that would tell him the Eustachian tubes were open and the pressure adjusted. Then he went down the pliant rungs, Hooper watching his bulk, ringed and streaked with wreaths of faint luminosity. He carried with him the box of gifts under one arm and his fireworks were attached to his belt with slipknots.

Three quick tugs came and the cord slackened as Hooper coiled it in. Manning had reached bottom. The rowers rested on their oars, paddling now and then to offset the current of the flood and maintain their position. The others held rifles ready. They waited eagerly, hardly drawing breath. From the dark slopes of the cone the drums continued to boom. Now and then came the harsh hoot of a conch shell. The rockets had thoroughly performed their part in the night’s entertainment. On the wrinkled surface of the lagoon the stars were reflected in broken, shifting lights. A hundred yards away the whale-boat was invisible.

The time seemed interminable before the watcher in the bows gave a slight gasp. He had heard rather than seen something inshore. Suddenly the green flare of two portfires broke out on the surface, well toward the land. The illumination extended almost to the boat, but Hooper did not believe the eyes ashore would focus on anything but the object that was rising from the sea, wading toward the beach. In one raised hand Manning held a red Coston signal that he had tipped with sodium underneath a sealed cap, now taken off, and the tube of carmine fire, ignited, flaked and sputtered down on his weird figure, contrasting vividly with the green glare from the portfires, afloat on miniature buoys.

The shining helmet with its goggle eyes, the metal shoulder-pieces increasing his great breadth, the rising sleekness of the rubber-clad body, streaming with water that reflected back the contrasting lights, the gleaming, widening circles that surrounded him as he stalked on, made him impressive enough to those in the boat; to the natives he must have appeared a veritable god or demon of the sea.

Drums and conchs ceased suddenly. Hooper could almost feel the intensity of those straining eyes in the bush. He could imagine the dropped jaws and superstitious consternation as the savages gibbered in their coverts, wondering what this awesome visitation portended. He had no fear now for Manning’s safety, more for the possibility of overdoing the intended effect.

The Coston died down and Manning lighted another. He was only waist-deep now, advancing up the shelving floor of the lagoon. The portfires sputtered on steadily. The little beach between the mangroves that was his objective was blank. And it was sound reasoning that there were no natives in its immediate vicinity. Sound, also, that every movement of the supernatural visitor was noticed.

Manning reached the beach and stood erect, waving his Coston. Then he stooped and placed the box upon the sand well above tide-reach. From the bush shrill cries of terror sounded as he straightened up. Close by grew young cocopalms and palmetto scrub. He severed two palm-leaves, signs of amity, and thrust them on either side of his gift before he turned and stalked down the beach into the lagoon once more. The portfires died out as he submerged.

The boat edged in directly in a line for the beach, paddling softly under cover of the darkness, intensified by the going out of the chemical illuminants. Hooper hung over the stern, watching. In the bows the man with the lead sounded frequently, giving out his depths in a low voice. Then Hooper saw something glowing on the bottom like a submerged star. It was an electric torch carried by Manning, water-proof of case, with a powerful battery, part of his equipment.

“Back water there, men. Over with the ladder,” ordered the skipper.

The weighted rungs slid down, the ladder tautened and shook as Manning mounted with the men seated on the opposite gunwale as before to balance his weight. He climbed heavily in and an assistant unscrewed the helmet and relieved him of its weight and the leaded boots. He took a seat in the stern as they steered for the entrance.

“How did it go?” he asked. “No trouble in making it. Fairly smooth bottom.”

“No question of your making an impression,” said Hooper. “You must have looked like the Old Man of the Sea himself. Only hope you didn’t overdo it, from the friendship standpoint. Otherwise you could set up as a god tomorrow morning and have no fear of their not obeying you.”

“So long as I stayed inside my outfit,” said Manning. “If I took off my helmet to eat I’d descend from my godhood, I’m afraid. My idea was to remain as a hidden power for the present, with the promise of gifts or the menace of destruction fairly well balanced. And, of course, in league with you.”

“We’ll find out if they’ve taken the bait by morning,” said Hooper.

Back on the schooner they sent up two more rockets as a climax to the program. Then they started up the engine once again, shifting to sail when they were well out. All night they tacked off and on, and dawn found them once more off the cone. Hooper focused his glasses on the beach. It was still deserted; there were no signs of natives on sea or land. But the box of gifts had vanished.

VI

“THE only thing to do for the present,” said Hooper, “is to wait and see if it works out. We’ve got our stage set, or ready to be set. If they don’t come out we’ll have to scare ’em into submission. An invasion of the cone by you in your suit and one of your men backing you up from the water in the second would bring them to time. Only we’d have to round them up.”

“There’s a canoe coming out of the mangroves, sir,” said Edwards. “More than one.”

Like scary water-beetles, one by one emerging from the mangroves that apparently masked a fresh-water creek or an inlet, the canoes of Tiburi made their appearance. It was plain that the chief’s brain had evolved two things. First that the apparition of the water-god was connected with the coming of the great white man’s canoe, the second that had ever appeared in his realms, and the first had come only as a wreck. It was probable that they might have seen the whale-boat in the lagoon after all, possible that they had made out the schooner beneath the rising flare of the rockets.

The second thing was that both god and the white men were of friendly disposition. Instead of demanding sacrifice, the god had deposited gifts, some of which were similar to articles used by Steiner and his men. Cupidity and curiosity, building upon these factors, brought out the tribe, timid of a second appearance of the sea-monster, yet hopeful of more gifts, of an alliance with these rich and powerful strangers.

But they were wary. Steiner had not come to them bringing gifts. Steiner had stolen their young women. Steiner had fought them off with magic sticks that shot fire and missiles that tore holes through which life passed out swiftly. They carried their arms, spears of hardwood, others tipped with bone and sharks’ teeth, bows and arrows and clubs. The canoes bristled with the display.

The Mary L. headed up into the wind and hung there, waiting for them. Some of the canoes held fifty men, sitting two to a thwart. The prows and sterns rose high, were carven and inlaid with shell and ornamented with colored streamers. In all there were a full five hundred warriors. First one and then another filed through the reef opening and spread out in crescent formation.

“You see,” said Hooper, “this is a tribe who have never come in contact with white men. Everything we do is wonderful. We constantly perform miracles. That is why Steiner was able to handle them, once he had shown what his guns could do. All the old tricks can be played in full force and this is the time to pull them off. Some of them, at least. If Steiner sees us in combination with Tiburi he’ll capitulate without trouble and we’ll let him read his papers while we salvage the Moanamanu. It begins to look as if it was all ridiculously simple, thanks to you, Manning. I can talk their dialect and I’ll coax ’em in, while you and Fong stand by for your cues.”

The foresail was lowered with the topsails and jibs and the Mary L. stood up to the wind, moving slowly, under staysail and mainsail. By the port rail a four-sided screen of canvas had been erected. A ladder hung down into the water.

Inside the screen Fong, dressed in the suit that Manning had worn, was concealed. Manning’s other assistants stood guard by the screen. In the cabin was Manning, clad in the more elaborate suit, ready to have the helmet adjusted as soon as the natives had been persuaded to come aboard. He sat on one of the plush settees of the schooner-yacht’s furnishings, as if on a throne, prepared to receive new subjects.

Hooper called to him down the companion.

“Tiburi’s in the biggest canoe,” he said. “He’s edging in. You’ll have plenty of time to put on your helmet. I’ll palaver with them.”

“All right,” answered Manning.

Edwards was with him, ready to adjust the heavy headpiece. He felt like the ogre in a child’s play. A good-natured ogre. And the natives were only children in intellect, apt to be treacherous but about to be spellbound by majesty. As Hooper had said, it was all likely to be ridiculously easy from now on. No fighting, no bloodshed. He had no enmity toward Steiner.

Hooper had felt bitter, as was only natural, but with the recovery of his pearls assured, with the war itself having advanced prices sufficiently to cover the price of his schooner, even to indemnify largely the cost of this expedition, he was willing to turn over the Germans to the Government.

On deck, Hooper caught up his megaphone and called to Tiburi by name. Forty paddles struck the water in consternation, sending the canoe backward as if it were a living thing startled by the magnified voice that hailed them in their own tongue, that knew the name of Tiburi.

“Come without fear, Tiburi,” called Hooper. “We are friendly to you. We would add to the gifts of Him Who Walks Under the Water.”

Tiburi, sullen, crafty savage that he was, summoned his courage. He had to save his face or lose dignity. And the white man with the great voice spoke of gifts. He gave an order and the canoe stroked forward again. Then he stood up by the bows, leaning on the carven prow, tall and lean, naked save for a belt and shell-ornaments. His mop of fuzzy hair was orange-colored, his face was smeared with white and scarlet. His pot-belly, bloated by fermenting diets, showed in weird contrast to his bony body.

“Who call Tiburi by name?” he asked, gathering confidence as he spoke.

“Come closer, Tiburi, and see.”

By the side of Hooper men were displaying gaudy cloth, holding out hands that showed gifts of some sort. Tiburi and his men could not see just what they were but they were things the white men brought, therefore precious.

Tiburi shouted an order and the rest of the canoes halted while his own advanced. On the beach other natives were gathering, women with shorn heads, children, old men, boys. Tiburi knew the eyes of his tribe were upon him. He would be the first to board this big canoe. He would get the pick of his gifts. And, perhaps, they might annihilate the white men after all, for they were few and he had half a thousand—he counted them by sets of ten fingers—ten times ten times ten.

The god—Him Who Walks Under the Water—was not in evidence. If they took the canoe and killed the white men they would have all the treasure; they would have their skulls. Perhaps they could do it before the god interfered. He might be sleeping or he might be far off, too far off to come before they had killed and looted and hidden themselves in the bush.

All this he thought as he stood by the prow of his canoe, two of the small round mirrors that had been left on the beach flashing in the distended lobes of his ears. And then his eyes bulged as he gazed on the face of the white man with the big voice. Hooper had put down the shell through which he had made his voice thunder. Tiburi knew that trick himself.

But this man. He was—he was— Surely this was the white man who had been a slave to Steiner, who had escaped with the other white slave in the boat—over whose escape Steiner had gone nearly crazy, cursing and punishing his companions, as Tiburi had been informed by the natives who had left him for Steiner but had fled back to him again, claiming that Steiner had blamed and beaten them for the escape of the slaves and the loss of the boat. And here was the other slave beside him.

“I see you know me, Tiburi,” said Hooper. “Me and my friend. We have come back again, rescued by Him Who Walks Under the Water. And we bring gifts for Tiburi, who. is also the enemy of Steiner. Come and receive them.”

A crafty look came into the chief’s eyes that Hooper could not interpret. He became plainly confident. He swaggered.

“I am your friend, white man,” he answered. “As I am the enemy of him who was your enemy. I will come aboard.”

The canoe came alongside. Hooper warned the savages before they could all leap for the rail, their eyes goggling at the lengths of cloth, the beads and brass rings they now saw plainly.

“Ten men only,” he said, holding up the fingers of both hands.

Tiburi and his followers saw the ready rifles and knew what they could do. Tiburi gave his orders and the unchosen ones sullenly subsided, pacified somewhat by the gifts that Hooper ordered distributed. And the chief, followed by his bodyguard of ten, gained the decks and looked curiously, a little fearfully, about them.

HOOPER gave a command and the crew lowered fore and staysail and gasketed them. Tiburi blinked a a little. He glanced over the side to where his canoes were gradually edging in, against his orders. But he was not displeased. This white man was a fool to lower his sails. True, there were the sticks that spat fire and death, but cunning might prevail. And then he frowned, as doubt and fear smote him. For the white man’s canoe, without sails, without paddles, was beginning to move. Yells came from the savages left in the canoe, clinging to the rail, being dragged along with increasing speed. Yells came from the flotilla, from the shore. Tiburi’s eyes rolled. What magic was this?

“Fear not, Tiburi,” said Hooper. “It is the servants of Him Who Walks Under the Water who move us. We shall go out a little way. Here are gifts.”

Tiburi, his mind jellied, fingered the things offered him without enthusiasm. He did not like the situation. It made him feel powerless. But when Thompson brought him a generous measure of gin, which he first sniffed, then drank, his courage came back to him with the warmth of his stomach.

And the schooner stopped moving. Hooper had started the engine for the double purpose of demonstration and moving away from the reef.

“Does the white man want the other white men given to him?” asked Tiburi.

“Perhaps. Can you deliver them?”

As he spoke Hooper suddenly stepped forward, pointing at the necklace of human teeth that the chief wore. He had caught the glint of gold. Of gold fillings.

“Where did you get those?” he asked.

Tiburi strutted.

“After you left, O white man,” he said, “I, Tiburi, took the other white men captive. They used their fire-sticks but presently they were worn out. Fire came from them no longer. And they had stolen my women and beaten the men they had taken from me. So we took them. Some of them we killed. Their skulls hang in my house. These—” he lifted the necklace—“I took from one of them. Their flesh we did not eat. We fed it to the dogs. It was tough and too salty. Those we took alive we keep for our children to look at. Soon we may kill them. Now our women make a mock of them and they furnish us with amusement. Will you buy them from me, O white man? With gifts? Shall I deliver them alive or dead?”

Here was an unexpected turn. It explained the missing flagstaff, the lack of signal-smoke. Steiner’s ammunition had given out and he had been captured. Hooper felt a revulsion of pity of the Germans. They were white men; they must be rescued. And he suddenly saw them caged in the savage village, jeered at and tormented, kept as white children, sometimes cruel, keep wild things they have trapped, or men who put beasts behind bars for a zoo. Only, Tiburi and his fellows would devise brutal tortures for their captives. Hooper’s face grew stern.

“I may buy them,” he said, “or I may come and take them. Is the chief of them alive?”

“He is alive. But how shall you take them unless you make me gifts? The bush is thick. My men are many. These are not all.”

Tiburi pointed to the canoes, once more in a closing crescent to starboard of the schooner. With the retailing of his victory Tiburi grew more arrogant.

Hooper’s brows met; his eyes flashed; his voice was imperative.

“How?” he demanded. “How shall I get them? I will show you.”

Then he changed his tone.

“First I will show you gifts, Tiburi. Many gifts and many wonders. Come with me. Give him another drink, Thompson, and tell Fong to get ready,” he added in English. “It’s time to put the fear of God in their hearts once and for all.”

Tiburi gulped down the gin and swaggered after Hooper. For a moment he hesitated at the companionway and then descended. He had talked big and nothing had happened. He would get many gifts for these captives of his. Perhaps, if he was cunning, he would get the gifts and more captives. The strong liquor mounted, to his brain. He had forgotten about Him Who Walks Under the Water.

And then he saw Him, mammoth, majestic, seated on a couch of red. The same god, surely, who had walked up from the waters. He had not taken in many details but here was the same enormous head with its big, round staring eyes, the wrinkled flesh, that glittered in spots like the fire-sticks he had taken from Steiner but could not work.

The god held up a hand but did not speak. It did not seem to have a mouth but there were tentacles coming from the place where a mouth should have been, tentacles like that of the giant squid. Tiburi’s knees weakened; his valor dissolved. As the god slowly rose he turned and with a howl of terror bolted up the stairs.

The canvas screen had been displaced and, coming over the rail, dripping with water, was another god, Fong. For a moment Tiburi stood paralyzed. His men had deserted him. Some had dived overboard, others were surrounded by the white men, holding fire-sticks. He himself was so surrounded. Not that the fire-sticks actually threatened, not that any hostile move was made. It was the look on the faces of the white men, the cold, boring look of Hooper’s eyes, that convinced Tiburi that he stood between the devil and the deep sea, or rather, the devil stood between him, the deep sea or his own island, unless he did what the white men, who were in league with the devil, wanted.

This second Him Who Walks Under the Water stood silent, gazing upon Tiburi with enormous immovable eyes that seemed to read his soul, to gaze upon him with the cold wrath of an easily offended god. Its very silence was terrible, disdainful. It was too much for Tiburi.

Yet he was a chief and there was a certain stiffness to his make-up that had given him leadership and helped him to maintain it. Though his knees wobbled and his very bowels crawled about within his pot-belly like so many eels, he resisted the impulse to fling himself upon the deck on all fours. Savage though he was, he held manhood, and Hooper accorded him a measure of respect.

The skipper nodded to Thompson, with a jerk of his thumb toward the companionway. As Fong, terrific in his armor, the water puddling from him on the deck, stood mute and motionless, gasps of horror from his tribesmen caused Tiburi to look fearfully about and see the helmeted, tentacled head of Manning, the Him Who Walks, slowly appearing at the head of the companionway mounting from the cabin. The chief gulped convulsively, summoning the remnant of his courage, and words to help save his face.

“Show me the gifts,” he said sullenly. “And I will deliver the white men to you.”

“Good!” answered Hooper. “Tommy, bring up the stuff we laid out.”

Thompson and two men brought up the trade and displayed it on deck. Tiburi’s eyes glittered. He had a better brain than his fellows but it was apt to move in a groove, to hold but one idea at a time. Now it was greed, tinged with vanity. What a showing he would make before his wives, especially the new ones! But fear was still in the background.

“Tell your men to put them in the canoes, Tiburi. I shall go ashore with you.” He ordered a boat lowered.

Tiburi looked at the gods.

“Do these go, also?” he asked, and his voice squeaked, despite all his efforts.

“They dwell in the sea,” said Hooper, driving the lesson home. He did not want to have to bother with any more masquerading than was necessary. “When they leave the sea for the land, they bring the sea with them, unless they are friendly to those who live on the land. If you break faith with me, Tiburi, they will surely come and the sea will rise above your land and you and your tribe will be dragged to the bottom and be eaten alive, as a squid tears at a live fish with its beak.”

Tiburi shuddered. Hooper made a salaam in front of Fong and the Chinaman lifted his hand. The whale-boat was lowered and four rowers got into it with the four men Edwards had brought. The trade was put into the canoe and Tiburi and his bodyguard of ten went overside. Hooper gave an order or two to Andersen and with Thompson prepared to enter the whale boat after a word with Edwards. All the white men were fully armed.

At the gunwale Hooper paused, turned and dived into the cabin. Manning was now on deck, standing with Fong at the rail nearest to the canoes. Tiburi’s big war-craft was paddling away with quickening strokes, eager to leave the vicinity of the Hims, yet anxious not to displease Hooper, with whom the Hims were so friendly.

Hooper came on deck with the bundle of newspapers destined for Steiner’s perusal and enlightenment under his arm. He had no desire to augment the ober-leutnant’s misery. He was going to relieve it, physically. Mentally, he thought a tonic would do the German officer good. It would help to make a pacifist of him until Hooper delivered him to the Naval commandant at Honolulu.

And that was going to be a problem. It would overcrowd the Mary L.; seriously affect the question of rations. All along Hooper had prepared for a fight with Steiner though he had been willing to avoid it. Now, in the whirligig of things, he had to rescue him. For they were all white men together. And the war was over.

The whale-boat, with springy strokes, forged up alongside Tiburi’s canoe. The rest spread out to right and left, a savage escort, though the cannibals were plainly subdued. From the rail of the schooner, their shapeless arms folded, the two Hims were regarding the canoes.

“Do the gods not speak?” asked Tiburi.

“It is not necessary,” replied Hooper. “They can read the mind and force their will upon it. And, if they spoke, their voice would crack your ears.”

Tiburi nodded. He had asked humbly for knowledge.

“See,” said Hooper, “I will prove it.”

He let his hand, which was on the gunwale, trail in the water casually. Aboard the schooner, Andersen, watching for the signal, passed the word down to Ling. The engine started, was thrown into reverse. With a slight disturbance of the water the Mary L., without paddles, without sails, began once more to move—backward.

ACRY went up from the canoes. Tiburi, gray of face but game, encouraged by the gifts that were piled in his canoe, shouted fiercely to his paddlers to keep quiet. But all the rest of the flotilla, like minnows threatened on the shoals by a hungry bass, went darting for the reef. The churning water was to all of them positive evidence that a Him was towing the schooner from beneath the water, perhaps with its hands clutching the keel. And the two Hims were still on deck. They pictured the sea swarming with lesser gods, horrible shapes.

Yah! Verily it was a wise thing to be friendly with these white men and their supernatural allies!

The Mary L. backed for a while, then sped ahead in a wide curve. Off the reef-gate, too shallow for her entrance, she paused, while Tiburi, following his craven men, went through and Hooper trailed him.

Manning, with the aid of Edwards, divested himself of his helmet and diving-dress. Fong followed suit. Maiming was drenched in sweat. The masquerade, maintained in such weather, had been no joke. Fong was in much the same shape.

“Shall I bring you something to drink, sir?” asked Edwards.

“Got anything cool?”

“There’s ice, sir. Last time we made it I stowed some away in sawdust at the bottom of the hold. It melts fast but there’s a little left. While we’re in port, sir, I’ll start the machine up again, if you can spare the gasoline for the engine.”

“Ask the skipper about that. But dig up a chunk of that ice and make me a long, cool drink with lemons in it. And you can put in a stick of gin, for once. How about it, Fong? Have one?”

Fong signified his assent, and, with the slightest raising of his eyebrows as if in tolerance of Manning’s familiarity with a Chinaman, Edwards disappeared. The only liquor aboard was the small quantity brought along for such purposes as it had served with Tiburi, and kept strictly from the crew. Edwards was accountable for it. Presently he appeared with two long gin rickies. He did not hand Fong his but set it down.

“Edwards,” said Manning, a bit sharply, “you’re a good steward but I suppose every good steward is a good deal of a snob.”

“Sir?”

“I’ve entrusted my life to Fong here a good many times. And I esteem my life a good deal more than I do silly ideas of caste. Fong is my friend. Serve him.”

Fong’s face was imperturbable as Edwards with an “I beg your pardon, sir,” to Manning picked up the ricky and tendered it to the Chinaman. Manning was aware of a tension between the pair, a mental static that might crackle with discharge at any moment. The enmity between them was no small matter, it was plain. And he began to wonder whether he had not been foolish to force Edwards’ hand. Still, the man was only a steward for a voyage.

“Does the skipper expect to bring those Germans aboard, sir?” asked Edwards. “I understand there have some of them been killed, but there must be nearly twenty of them. I was thinking of accommodations and the provisions, sir.”

Fong gave a peculiar little grunt, not quite a cough. Manning knew what that meant—disapproval. But he was inclined to think Fong prejudiced against Edwards.

“I don’t know, Edwards. I didn’t hear what was said between Mr. Hooper and the chief, you know. There were twenty-three of them when Hooper and Thompson got away. I should think it would be a good idea to set a guard over them somewhere in the crater until we are ready to sail. Perhaps in their old camp. As for provisions, we can supplement our stores from shore in many ways.”

“Yes, sir. Of course, sir. I hadn’t thought of that. The plan of frightening them with the diving-suits was a tremendous success. I should call it a great idea.”

“Ah!” said Manning dryly. If there was anything he disliked about Edwards it was the suggestion of flattery the latter injected into much of his talk. “That will be all,” he said.

Edwards withdrew, still with a faint but distinct suggestion of his lack of comprehension of a cook being left drinking on an equality with the skipper’s partner in the cabin. Mild disapproval.

“Don’t like Edwards any better now, Fong?” asked Manning.

“I tell you one-two time he too —— slick,” answered Fong. “All the time he ask too many question. What for he ask so much? Because he want to know. What he know, he use. Too —— slick.”

Manning finished his ricky reflectively. He had a high regard for Fong’s judgment of men. And a tiny distrust of Edwards had crept into his own mind. Perhaps he would bear watching. Not that he could do much, he decided.

VII

ACROWD of naked children, who had been poking bamboo canes through the bars of a stockade, fled like so many monkeys before the approach of the white men accompanying their chief, diving into the jungle from which their eyes stared in awe and wonder. Tiburi strode ahead and, pointing to the enclosure, which was literally a great cage, roofed as well as walled with bamboos stoutly driven into the earth, cross-barred with others, exclaimed—

“There are your white men, O friends of Him Who Walks Under the Water.”

Hooper approached with Thompson close to the stockade and peered in. Shadows from the surrounding bush darkened it. A few shafts of sunshine streaked it here and there with light, a dirt compound in which were raised a few. tent-like structures of palm-leaves, dried and interwoven. For a moment he could see nothing else save a few calabashes in the foreground and some shards and husks of coconuts.

The place was damp and stank of decay and filth. Sprawled out beneath the miserable edifices he made out the prone figures of men, brown as natives, but bearded with long, lank hair, apparently naked, listless, almost lifeless, apathetic to everything.

One of them stirred, feebly got upon all fours and crawled out from a shelter. Out of the bush of matted blond whiskers and tousled hair there shone, in a ray of sun, the light-blue eyes of a white man, a Teuton. The eyes widened as their owner caught sight of Hooper and his companions.

With an effort he got to his feet, grasping a staff of bamboo, and tottered forward. He stopped five feet short of the stockade, his face working with unbelief, with growing credulity, with a wild, feverish gleam that held fear. Then the fear vanished and something like hate, wan and overwrought, took place. The bony shoulders straightened, the head went back.

No one, friend nor foe, could gaze on such a sight without pity. All the resentment that Hooper had held in the back of his brain against them, remembering the crews he had sent out in their own boats from the sunken ships, remembering even his own faithful Kanakas, the cook and ’Polu the mate, remembering his own servitude, dwindled, vanished. The pity showed in his eyes. And the man in the stockade glared back defiance. It was Steiner.

Back of him his comrades were coming out, blinking, dragging themselves, exhausted with effort before they compassed half the distance to the bars; squatting, with chests heaving painfully with the effort of progress, mere shells of manhood, with eyes that lacked the fire in their leader’s, eyes that had learned to look only for fresh torment.

Where the sunbeams striped and spotted them, scars showed, the sting-marks of insects, half-healed festering wounds. One or two had filthy rags about their loins; the rest had none, or had ceased to care for decency. Their blue eyes were pallid in the deep hollows, ribs and hips protruded, elbows and knees appeared frightfully swollen between the sticks that represented their limbs. Hooper turned to Tiburi with a sudden blaze in his own eyes before which the chief quailed though he did not understand the reason. Were these not the enemies of the friend of Him? Had he not delivered them, still alive, to be repaid for what they had themselves done when masters?

Steiner’s voice was a croak, seeming to come unwillingly from deep in his chest. Hooper thought that none of them had spoken for a long time.

“It is you, Hooper?” he said in guttural but excellent English. “So, you escaped! And you have come back. In force. Or have you come back to this No Man’s Island to escape your conquerors?”

He stopped and his knees trembled. He gripped his staff and struggled for mastery, for strength to go on talking. His teeth gritted with the effort and his eyes dilated. Hooper fancied his mind hanging in the balance.

“Deutschland, Deutschland über allies!” croaked Steiner.

Hooper’s pity was tinged with admiration. Here was a man, for all his mistaken creeds.

“Give me the chocolate, Thompson,” he said.

Thompson gave the skipper the cakes of concentrated nourishment he had brought up from the stores and Hooper proffered them between two of the bars. Steiner made no move to take them. Hooper tossed them within and instantly the men began to crawl toward them, tearing at the paper and foil with their teeth, munching at them like starving apes.

“The war is over, Steiner,” said Hooper.

“Ja. And we are over all. You, you with your —— chocolate, you have run away and you think to revenge yourself upon me. But you will pay. Ja! For you have lost your country, American pig. My race is master. For me——”

He shrugged his shoulders and all the bones of his torso shuffled hideously beneath the thin covering of skin and tissue and worn muscles.

“Germany did not win the war, Steiner. And now there is no war. I have not come for revenge. I have come to rescue you from Tiburi.”

“You lie! Pig of an American, you lie! It is impossible!”

But conviction of the truth crept into him from Hooper’s steady, almost sympathetic glance. Steiner began to foam at the mouth; his skull-like face was convulsed. His eyes watched Hooper as the skipper untied and unfolded the papers he had brought. His lips curved back over his teeth and he shook like a leaf, clutching his bamboo support.

“Here are papers, printed papers, dating far back, Steiner. I expected you would doubt my word and I brought these to convince you. Don’t make a fool of yourself and tear them up. I do not want to taunt you. The world is trying to be at peace again. I shall send you up clothes and food so that you can feel fed and decent again. You shall be taken out of this place.”

“And then what? Give me the papers. Unless they are some trick.”

“I would hardly go to all that trouble, Steiner. You will see they are authentic.”

“What do you intend to do with us? To take us prisoners? I’ll rot here first.”

“You can take your choice, Steiner,” said Hooper coldly. “You will be under guard, because there are a good many of you and, when you get back your strength you may attempt tricks yourself. But you are not prisoners. There is no more war between us. I will take you and your men back to Honolulu in a few days and from there, I imagine, you will be sent home to Germany.”

“No.”

“Or you can stay as you are. Don’t be a proud fool, Steiner. You’ve lost. Germany has gone back across the Rhine. I’ll send up those things I mentioned and then we’ll transfer you to your old camp on the crater terrace till we sail. I didn’t come back on your account, but I am giving you choice between Tiburi and Germany.”

“If you speak the truth—” Steiner’s tone quavered, for he felt that Hooper was not talking lightly—“by what right do you take me back? This island belongs to no man. You have no authority here. I will accept nothing from you.”

“Better take the papers.” Hooper tossed them inside the palisade. “You will be more reasonable when we come back.”

Steiner spurned the newspapers with a kick. He snarled at Hooper, broke into a torrent of Teutonic invective and turned his back, walking away. His shoulders heaved. His spirit was in the throes of humiliation. But his men dragged themselves up to the bars. They took the papers and glanced at them. One of them was able to read the English characters and he began to spell out to a little group. Others begged for more chocolate. As Hooper turned away they set up a wailing cry.

“We’ll be back,” Hooper assured them. “What have they been fed on?” he demanded of Tiburi.

“Coconuts,” replied the chief. “A man can live on coconuts.”

Hooper turned away down the bush trail that led past the village to the sea. He did not want to break with Tiburi, but his heart was sick within him.

“I never fancied I’d feel particularly sorry for Steiner, Tommy,” he said. “He had to have the news, and the papers were the best way of convincing him. But I think of no greater torture than it will be for him to read them under the circumstances.”

“Either break him or make him commit murder, first chance he gets,” said Thompson. “Not that I’m not sorry for those poor devils. They’ve been starved and prodded and stung half to death. Tiburi ought to get a taste of his own medicine. He ought to be fed on half a coconut a day, an old one, with sour milk, till his pot-belly blows up with gas.”

“For a cannibal, he’s been lenient,” said Hooper. “Though it was only because white flesh makes them sick. We can’t take it out on Tiburi. But I’ll give him a few pointers about how to treat white men before we leave. Of course he had some repayments of his own to make to that crowd but he has got to learn to respect our stock, the white race. How, I’ll have to work out.

“We’ll tackle that inner reef-entrance,” he went on. “Blast it through enough for the schooner to get into the crater lagoon. Then we’ll get the pearls and sail away from this place as soon as possible. No Man’s Island? That’s a good name for it.

“You can go back with the clothes and food, Tommy. Maybe Manning will want to go. We’ll transfer Steiner and his crowd to the schooner. A day or so will work wonders with them. They need quinine.”

Tiburi halted at his village. He was keen to examine his gifts more carefully, to array himself in them.

“I’ll send back for the white men,” said Hooper curtly. “I want some fish and fruit from you, Tiburi. I’ll pay you for them. And I may need some of your men for work. We shall go to the crater this afternoon. Him Who Walks Under the Water will be with us. Both Hims.”

Tiburi blinked. Savage-like, he had temporarily forgotten the Hims.

“All that you want is yours,” he said.

“Thanks to Manning’s idea of the diving-suits,” said Hooper to Thompson as they descended to the beach and the waiting whale-boat.

VIII

AS A final object-lesson to Tiburi, the Mary L. proceeded under power to the crater. Steiner and his men, many of them pitifully weak from fever, dysentery and semi-starvation, were assembled amidships between fore and mainmast. There seemed little occasion to guard men in such condition, but Hooper took no chances, and four of the crew patrolled with automatics and rifles.

With the completion of the task well in sight. Hooper unleashed his energies. After a short consultation with Manning he ordered Steiner to be brought down to the cabin. The ober-leutnant, clad in white ducks that fitted him fairly well, braced by the food taken up to the stockade, held himself with rigid reserve that did not lack dignity, despite his tangle of hair and beard.

“I am going to set you and your men ashore on the terrace, Steiner,” said Hooper. “In your own camp. You will be supplied with provisions and utensils and you will arrange for your own cooking. You will also have medicines and bedding. You will not attempt to leave the terrace.”

Steiner, erect, impassive, said nothing. But his light blue eyes were baleful. He carried the newspapers under his arm.

“You will be guarded, for your own safety as well as my own peace of mind,” went on Hooper. “I do not trust you. When we are ready to leave, we shall take you with us to Honolulu. That is all. I have provided the means for hair-cutting and shaving,” he added.

Without a word Steiner turned and left the cabin, followed by the man who had come with him as a guard.

“He hardly looks dangerous,” suggested Manning. “But I’ve an idea the man is consumed with curiosity. He knows you did not come down here solely on his account. And that type is always dangerous.”

“None of the crowd are seriously sick,” replied Hooper. “A few days of good food and a little medicine and freedom from that stockade, and they’ll pick up again. They are a sturdy lot. Sixteen of them, all told. That means Tiburi has seven skulls in his house. I don’t see what they could do but we had best be careful. There were some articles in those papers that spoke of punishment to those Germans who had been foremost in horribleness. Steiner has several boats’ crews on his mind—not on his conscience. He may fear reprisal at Honolulu. A trial, or being handed over to the Allied authorities for court martial. I hardly think it likely, but it is possible, of course. That will be up to the Naval commandant or whoever takes them over.

“He’ll likely instil that idea into his men and regain some official control over them. Shouldn’t wonder if he has already by sheer example in that stockade prison. He was the only man who retained any show of grit. I wouldn’t wonder if the rest of them were sorry the war ever started and glad it’s over. But they are all puppets and Steiner is their strong man.”

“He’d like to get possession of the schooner and emulate the survivors of the Emden, I imagine,” said Manning. “But I don’t see where they’ve got much chance to do more than grit their teeth. Have a hard time getting away from that terrace with Tiburi waiting to scoop them up and glean more gifts as a reward.”

“We’ll guard them, just the same. I’ll use those four men Edwards gave us for one watch. Time they began to earn their wages. Smith, Holabird, White and Hayes. Andersen and Thompson, with the Finn and another sailor, can relieve them. Watch and watch, eight hours. That leaves your assistants free for your job.”

Andersen came part way down the companion to report.

“Heading up for that reef opening, sir.”

“All right, I’ll take the deck. Port and starboard boats to be ready after we anchor. Edwards will superintend putting supplies aboard for the Germans. We are going to maroon them on the terrace until we sail. Arm Smith, Hayes, Holabird and White with rifles and automatics. Extra clips and full magazines. They’re to go on guard until nine this evening. You and Thompson will relieve them. I’ll see you about the details later.”

They followed the mate on deck where he prepared to carry out his orders. Hooper himself mounted to the fore-spreaders to con the schooner through the entrance in the outer reef. The tide was flooding and there was plenty of water under their keel in the narrow break in the coral. He ordered the wheel aport and the Mary L. entered the placid channel between the two reefs, coming to anchor in fourteen fathoms with a spring cable to a kedge carried to the inner reef for extra precaution. The barometer was steady, the weather promised fair.

The boats were filled, Manning and Hooper in the stern of one, Thompson and Edwards in the other. All four carried pistols. Two armed guards were in each boat. The second entrance was plainly too shallow for any attempt to take the schooner inside the lagoon proper. And it was wide-ledged. Hooper and Manning both gaged it closely as their boat went through.

“Take days to blast that,” said Manning. “Waste of time, I think. You’ll be needing the whale-boats, I suppose. Why not get two big canoes from Tiburi and put a platform on them for my equipment?”

“Good idea. You are going to use the suit that needs the air-pump?”

“I prefer it. May use both. Can’t tell, till I make a descent. Sand may have filled in. In that case I’ll use Fong to help me. Where is the wreck?”

They spoke in low tones. It was obvious that the sailors were all ears, leaning far forward on their strokes to catch a word.

“About a quarter of a mile to the right,” said Hooper. “We’ll take a look at it as we come back.”

The gap in the side of the crater, which had once emptied it of lava and later admitted the sea, showed like the blow of a giant’s ax in the cliffs of obsidian. As they neared it and caught a fair view of the inner walls the contrast was startling. Half of the crater was in shadow, though it was only midafternoon. The other half showed a jungle of vivid green, palms lifting here and there, water streaming down the sides. One of these cascades fell to a tiny beach to their left, just inside the entrance.

At the far end the great images stood on their stone terrace, staring at the invaders with blind eyes, elliptical in shape, carven deeply in the lava. As they came closer, a trick of light and shade gave them a semblance of crafty watching. There were eleven of these gods, graven and set up by a forgotten race. The largest was in the center and the cliff had crumbled under its weight, a fissure showing beneath the pedestal, so that the image tilted forward at a dangerous angle, threatening whoever intruded into this crater temple.

Trees had sprouted along the terrace and vines twined between the slim trunks. One of these lianas had fairly lassoed the smallest god and lifted it from its pedestal into the air.

The bodies had been dwarfed and distorted. The great faces had long, disproportionate noses above grim lips. There was nothing of benignity about them. They seemed to be biding their time, in brooding resentment, like strange monsters turned to stone. Back of them showed clefts in the cliff, the caves of which Hooper had spoken.

Below the terrace two trails led right and left in zigzag from the beach where Thompson and Hooper had been kept. There, too, were caves, but open to the water. The trails had been fashioned into stairways with wide, shallow treads, faced once with stone slabs that had been shoved out of place by the rank growth of bush and grass. Some were entirely displaced.

The terrace was nearly twenty feet in width. On it were the grass houses that Steiner had built, still in fair preservation. The Germans were escorted to their old camp and the guards installed after the supplies were landed. As the boats rowed off, Manning, twisting in the stern, saw Steiner standing beside the great central image, less in height than the massive pedestal, staring down at them.

HOOPER ordered one boat back to the schooner and steered his own along the inner reef. Manning got ready a water-glass he had brought with him, a hopper-shaped, lidless box with a glass bottom, part of his outfit. Hooper gave the order to paddle slowly and hung over the side, one arm raised. Presently he dropped it and the men ceased rowing.

“Back water. Easy! There, Manning, we’re right over her.”

The diver plunged the glass of his finder below the surface, leaning far over the gunwale, his face lost in the box.

He saw, far down through the crystal water, as if he had been looking through green glass, the broken hull of the Moanamanu. Shoals of brilliant-colored fish swam about above it and played over the decks and through the gaps in the planks. Sea-growths had sprung up already, waving gently in the undercurrents. The bottom was sandy, patched with coral, thick with marine shrubbery. The rowers poised their oars, their eyes shifting, wide with curiosity. The dripping from the blades to the surface of the still lagoon, was the Only sound in the boat.

Manning raised his head.

“Masts all gone by the board,” he said. “Nasty tangle of rigging. Decks are badly broken, but that would be the air. Inner decks likely intact. But there’ll be sand inside the hull by the looks of it. We’ll have to clear it and that is a tedious job. We’ll make two descents a day It’s clumsy work using hand tools. Two days’ job, I reckon it. Make it three, after we get started.”

“We’ve had enough for one day, I think,” said Hooper. “I fancy our friend Tiburi will be round bright and early tomorrow to see if he can get some more trade, not to mention gin. We’ll have the tribe on top of us most of the time. Like so many kids and, as long as you and Fong are working in the suits, as harmless. We’ll set some of them to work fixing up your pontoon for you. Logs across the canoes and then gratings and planks for the real deck will do it. The rest can stock us up with fresh provisions.

“Look at those mullet,” he cried as a school of silver fish rose above the surface. “Two and three-pounders. We must have a mess or two of those before we go. Finest eating in the world. We’ll dynamite ’em. That’s the only use we’re likely to have for the stuff, I’m thinking.”

He spoke buoyantly and Manning was in like mood. The sight of the sunken wreck made the pearls seem more real, almost tangible. The diver’s experience told him that the task that lay before them was not overdifficult. Soon they would be off for Honolulu, with a third of a million dollars in gems aboard. And, from this adventure, he looked forward to others. With Hooper. Where and what, time would show. There was always something to be turned up south of Cancer for men of their kidney. All thoughts of retirement ashore, or cruising for pleasure in a little sloop, had left him.

At nine the relief went off to the terrace and the four guards came back to report that Steiner had established order in his camp and that the men were cheerful. They had cleared out two of the houses and occupied them. There was fresh water in one of the caves.

“Last I see of ’em,” Holabird told his skipper, “one of ’em was playin’ barber to the rest. The officer, he got shaved first of all and had his hair clipped short to his head. He’s got one house all to himself and two of ’em told off to wait on him. Three or four seem pretty sick but the rest are lively enough. Cooked up some chow that smelled mighty good. Turned in by now, I guess.”

“All right, Holabird. You four will relieve Mr. Andersen’s guard at five in the morning. Better turn in yourselves now. You’ll be on until two bells in the afternoon watch.”

The man saluted and went on deck.

But neither he nor his companions turned in. When Manning and Hooper went up—Manning having proposed and Hooper having accepted the suggestion that in the absence of the mate they should split the deck watch, for Hooper did not place implicit confidence in Tiburi—they found the watch on deck, the watch below and the four guards gathered in groups, discussing something avidly in low tones.

There were no duties to be performed at anchor, except a perfunctory one or two; there was no especial rule that the men should not stay on deck, but Hooper after an hour sent the guards below with the admonition that he wanted them to get their rest in order to perform properly their duty.

Manning was to watch until midnight and Hooper turned in. The seamen kept chatting and Manning, pacing the after-deck, saw the glow of their pipes and heard now and then a voice raised and quickly hushed. The topic of conversation was evidently both exciting and communal.

He could not eavesdrop; if he went forward they would stop talking. But he sensed something afoot and was not surprized when at last, the watch below having exhausted their interest or dulled it sufficiently to sleep, a figure came forward along the port rail and spoke. It was Fong.

There being no helmsman, Manning was alone on the after-deck. There was no moon and Fong, padding in his felted shoes as softly as a cat, drifted like a shadow. The watch on deck had gathered in the bows, taking anchor privilege of a cat-nap.

“What is it, Fong?” asked Manning.

“Crew talk too much along that sunk ship inside lagoon,” said Fong, his voice dropped to a pipe, clear enough to Manning but inaudible six feet away. “Too much they talk why-for you dive. Some think gold. Some speak peahl. Plenty too much talk they make. They speak along those fo’ men Edwa’d bling with him. Talk they should have mo’ big piecee pay. All same divide that gold, that peahl. Want that two hundled fifty dolla you plomise. Want mo’. Want it now. Tomollow. That Edwa’d talk along that way, I think. Make tlouble.”

“Edwards wasn’t on deck.”

“Too slick fo’ that. All same he tly make double. Tomollow you see. I smoke one li’l pipe in galley. They forget. They think me sleep. I sabby all they talk.”

“All right, Fong. Thanks. I’ll talk it over with Mr. Hooper.”

It was food for thought. The wreck and its mystery had infected the crew. Talk of treasure. Enormously magnified, without doubt. Breeding greed.

Hooper was not disposed to make light of it when he came up at eight bells.

“I’ll have a little talk with Edwards,” he said. “I suppose he has been entertaining them and himself at the same time. But that crew is poor material for bolshevism. We’ll nip that in the bud. The mistake we’ve made is to have not told them at the start what we were after. That it was my own property. But we’ll mend that. We have no proof that Edwards is in this. Fong and he don’t hit it off.”

“Fong doesn’t jump at conclusions,” said Manning. “Good night.”

At dawn the first canoes of Tiburi put in an appearance, hovering outside both reefs until the chief came along in his big canoe, two hours later.

Manning had come on deck again at four, had seen the relief go off to the crater at five and the boat return with Andersen, Thompson and their two assistants, eager for a mug-up and sleep.

Tiburi sheered alongside at six bells, greeting Manning with a grin. It was the first time the chief had seen him, not dreaming that here was Him Who Walks. Tiburi was togged up in beads and rings and gaudy trade handkerchiefs knotted about his loins and he was evidently much pleased. He made signs of wanting to come aboard after he sensed that Manning could not understand his talk, a fact that evidently lowered the diver in his estimation.

Edwards came on deck at this point and approached the rail, calling out a greeting in native.

“Do you talk Melanesian?” asked Manning.

“I know something of the dialect, sir.”

Manning was conscious of annoyance at this fresh proof of Edwards’ ability. The man was too clever to be a steward, he decided. And for the first time he wondered why the man had shipped. A real distrust of him began to evolve. And then he realized he might be biased.

“Wants to come aboard, doesn’t he?” he asked the steward.

“He says he brings gifts, one big gift,” said Edwards. “He’ll be wanting something in return, sir. Including gin. Shall we let him up?”

“With five men only. And call the captain.”

“Very good, sir.”

Edwards spoke a few words and spread the fingers of one hand. Instantly Tiburi and five natives came over the side, grinning amiably. The chief had a bundle in his hand tied up in tapa cloth. The canoe was piled up with fruit, fish and two young, freshly slaughtered pigs. These were handed up and deposited on deck showily while Edwards called Hooper, who came on deck in his pajamas.

Edwards followed with a gin-bottle, at the sight of which Tiburi drooled. At a gesture from the skipper the steward poured out a generous measure in a glass. Tiburi reached for it with one hand and preempted the bottle with his other capacious paw. His men watched him with envious eyes as he swallowed the fiery stuff, ignoring the glass after he had emptied it and applying himself to the bottle. The package in tapa cloth he had put between his feet.

“Tzhah! Evah!”

He smacked his lips with supreme content then broke into a babble of Melanesian. Edwards, standing by Manning, translated for the latter’s benefit.

“He says he brings one very big gift, to show his friendship. He has never before made such a gift. And he hopes the skipper will bear that in mind when he makes gifts in return.”

Tiburi finished his oration and then did the same thing to the bottle of squareface. Apparently it had no other effect upon him than to make him genial and warm his potbelly, which he rubbed appreciatively. Then he squatted on his haunches and unrolled the tapa-cloth bundle.

SEVEN hideous, gruesome things rolled out clumsily on the deck. They were the heads of men, not skulls, but heads smoked for preservation. The curing-process had apparently not been completed. The dried flesh looked like gutta-percha; the twisted lips were set in sardonic smiles. Three of them bore wisps of yellow mustaches. The others were clean shaven. None of them had beards.

Up to the time of Tiburi’s successful coup against Steiner’s camp, they had evidently possessed a razor but no shears. The hair was long, save for one head, which was bald. And from one of these had come the gold-filled teeth that decorated Tiburi’s necklace. He picked up one of the heads by its tow-colored locks and. proffered it to Hooper with a smile that showed his filed teeth, and another flow of words.

“To give away heads,” he says, “is to do what no other chief has done. Now he has delivered all the skipper’s enemies, so far as he is able.”

Hooper stood his ground, surveying the relics gravely. Manning had harder work to control his feelings. Hooper turned to Edwards.

“Bring up some trade,” he said. “Not too much. And one of the trade axes for the chief. Bring something to put these in.”

He appeared to Manning to be thanking Tiburi with sufficient emphasis to suit the chief, who replaced the heads in their pack age and stood up, expectant of the return gifts. Edwards appeared with handkerchiefs and beads and with a cheap hatchet which Hooper presented in person. Tiburi took the ax and felt its edge, wheeled and brandished it suddenly above the heads of his men, delighted as a child with a new toy.

“We’ll have to give those heads decent burial,” said Hooper to Manning. “They prove that he is properly impressed with us, at any rate.”

“We’ll have to keep him away from the schooner while we are diving,” said Manning. “If he sees Fong or myself with our helmets off, or even being rowed over to the pontoon fully dressed, he’ll smell a rat. He seems smart enough. Gods wouldn’t use a boat, not water-gods, anyway. If he ever tumbles to the fact that we are just men, recognizes the fact that the god is me, dressed up, there’ll be trouble.”

“I’ve thought of that,” said Hooper. “It’s easily fixed. I’ll tell him the Hims are going to get something for us out of the wreck. He knows about the wreck, of course. And I’ll tell him they are going to establish a tabu. We’ll set up stakes on the reef with red cloth on ’em and put out buoys with red flags. They’ll keep outside them and we’ll make them far enough way from the pontoon to keep them guessing. We can rig up a screen on the pontoon like we did on deck.”

He spoke to Tiburi authoritatively and the savage listened with awe creeping into his features. Then he smiled, answered, went to the rail and shouted an order, gathered up his gifts, looked longingly and suggestively at the empty bottle and with his men departed overside; paddling away through the inner reef toward the crater. The other canoes followed him. Two canoes had darted away at his command, going fast in the direction of the cone.

“He will respect the tabu,” said Hooper. “He has sent for two canoes for your pontoon and his men will furnish green timber for the under platform. Also all the provisions we want to take. They are going to camp on that little beach just inside, where the water all comes down, so as to be handy. Partly fear, partly hope of more gifts, and mostly curiosity.

“What’s the engine running for?” he asked Edwards as he caught the sound of the exhaust.

“I ordered it connected up with the ice-machine, sir,” said Edwards. “We need some and I thought a cake of ice might surprize the chief. Nothing like a little magic to keep them impressed, sir.”

“Humph! All right.” The ice-machine was part of the original equipment of the Mary L. and its product was very acceptable. “Look here, Edwards.” Hooper went on. “Have you been talking with the men about what we are after in the wreck? They seem to have got some exaggerated ideas about it. I’m going to have a talk with the whole ship’s company later.”

“They’ve been wondering about it, naturally, sir,” replied Edwards frankly. “The idea of a wreck and divers would be sure to stir up talk. They mentioned it to me, some of them, and I told them I didn’t know. Suggested they’d all know for themselves before long. But you can’t keep sailors from gamming, sir. They’ve got an idea it’s gold, I think.” His face was incurious, his manner usual.

“All right, Edwards. I’ll attend to it. I’m holding you responsible for the stores, from now on, with Mr. Thompson on guard-duty. And the gin.”

“Yes, sir. I shall be careful, sir.”

Late in the afternoon, when White, Holabird and the two other guards returned from the terrace, Hooper assembled all the crew. Thompson was to talk to the two sailors with him and Andersen. The mate, Hooper had talked to in the cabin.

“See here, men,” he said. “There’s been talk among you of not being satisfied with what has been promised you. What of it? Out with it, one of you. Talk up!”

His voice was brisk with authority. It was the first time he had shown sternness and the men stiffened to the deep tone and the flash of the skipper’s eyes. They shuffled but said nothing. Back of them Fong stood impassive.

“Come now,” warned Hooper. “I’ll have no behind-the-hand grumbling aboard. You, Holabird, step out.”

“Me, sir. I——”

“You were gamming with the rest of them. Talking about shares. We’ll settle this right here and now.”

Holabird hemmed and hawed as the men looked at each other in confusion, wondering how the skipper had known of their talk. And they shoved Holabird to the front.

“We—we wanted to know just where our bonus was coming from, skipper,” he said hesitatingly. “An’ when we was to get it. That’s natural, ain’t it? You might turn us off at Honolulu, an’ a pore man’s word is no good against a rich man’s.” A muttered “aye” from the rest encouraged him.

“There’s a law for treasure-trove, ain’t they? Or they ought to be. Shares for all on the job.”

Hooper’s eyes blazed and he advanced a step. Holabird quailed a little but faced him, his eyes shifting, inclined to be belligerent.

“Treasure-trove!” thundered the skipper. “Who said anything about treasure-trove? I told you there were valuables aboard that wreck. Mine, as the ship was mine. This is a legitimate. enterprise to recover my property. You’re talking close to mutiny, my man, and I know how to deal with that.”

“And if you don’t get it, what about the bonus?” asked Holabird. “Nothing signed as to us gettin’ it one way or the other.”

Some one prodded or pushed Holabird as Hooper strode forward. He lurched, stumbling, one arm out, against Hooper. As the latter held him off, Holabird, in a sudden frenzy struck out. Instantly Hooper countered, side-stepped and hit him on the side of the jaw. The man slumped like a meal sack. For a second it looked as if there would be a rush. Manning’s hand dropped to the holster of his automatic. Rifles lay on the hatchway in accordance with trading-vessel regulations.

“Get forward, all of you,” roared Hooper.

They obeyed. Holabird began to stir.

“A —— bad thing to have to do,” said Hooper to Manning. “But, if I hadn’t, they would have misinterpreted it.”

He stood over Holabird, who opened his eyes and gazed up at him vacantly, then with an ugly gleam.

“Your own fault, Holabird,” said Hooper. “Some one pushed you into me. I wasn’t going to strike you till you hit out. Now get down to your bunk. You’ll get your bonuses at Honolulu if we carry this through. Tell the rest of them that and warn them to stop their silly jabbering.”

Holabird got up slowly, nursing his bruised jaw. Manning thought he threw a look of appeal toward Edwards but the latter was not looking at him. Holabird sullenly saluted and went forward. Suddenly the atmosphere had changed aboard. There was a rift between forecastle and afterguard.

IX

NEXT morning the rift had closed to all appearances. Tiburi was on hand with his men at dawn, bringing the two big canoes for the hull of the pontoon and saplings for the under deck. Every one worked with a will and the atmosphere seemed cleared. Holabird and the other three of the relief guard went away in the whale-boat cheerfully, Edwards with them, carrying to the terrace some of the fresh fruits and fish Tiburi’s followers supplied.

There was a surplusage of labor, willing, but in the mass unintelligent. The natives in their canoes got in the way. Tiburi was prodigal enough with his orders and, if Hooper had not put a stop to it, they would have brought enough island provender to stock a battle-cruiser. He was forced to establish the tabu lines early in the morning, as soon as there was enough lumber in sight for Manning to complete his pontoon.

Although he made no protests, plainly in awe of the Hims, it was evident that Tiburi did not relish the tabu. Hitherto that had been his supreme privilege on the island and his obedience to the restrictions of another made him feel as if he had lost face to some extent. The schooner was a powerful magnet for the savage chieftain. It was the treasure-box that held many gifts, that furnished the gin he craved. He had strong liquors enough of his own but this brew the white man supplied was different. More pungent and with a speedy stimulus to his stomach that the native ferments no longer held.

Hooper was quick to see this mood and to meet it.

“The schooner is tabu between the time the sun goes down and comes up again, Tiburi,” he said. “It is tabu everywhere within the red cloths while the Hims are helping us. There will be many gods below the waters and they do not wish to be spied upon. If they become angry I can not stop them from visiting their wrath upon those who have displeased them. So long as the red cloths fly you and your men must keep outside the marks. But the water-gods do not work all day and, when it is safe, I will take down the cloths and you are free to visit the ship. But only your canoe must come alongside and only five of your men must board with you.”

Tiburi looked his surprize at the five fingers and promptly held up ten. But Hooper frowned and shook his head.

“Five, I tell you.”

“No sense in taking any chances at this end of the game,” he told Manning when he returned from setting up the tabu stakes in the reef and putting out the floating markers. “No sense, either, in getting Tiburi peeved so long as he serves us. But his kind is always treacherous and they have memories only a little better than apes. As long as the object-lesson is in front of them, they respect it, but they hold only one idea at a time, whether it is a matter of gifts, of supplying their stomachs or making war. I learned that in the New Hebrides.

“They’ll take a notion to ‘make their village strong,’ as they call it, which is just showing-off, or a chief’s son will die, or a crop will fail. Then they will swoop down upon some friendly trader with whom they have been chumming for months and murder him, seizing the excuse to raid his store.

“His goods have been tickling the back of their minds right along. Tiburi has no one to show off to but his own following, and this Him Who Walks business has to some extent set him down in their opinion. But they’ll keep the tabu so long as we don’t maintain it all the time.”

Manning glanced at the fluttering strips of red cloth. Hooper had drawn a wide circle about the pontoon and the yacht. With the canvas screen, opening seaward, and the natural confusion of several figures on the raft, together with the bulk of the pump and other equipment, it would be hard for the savages, keeping the distance, to distinguish much of what was going on. The canvas screen would act as dressing-room for the divers. Manning nodded his approval.

“We’ll change on the pontoon,” he said, “and carry the suits back to the schooner every night. They’ll need overhauling. Working in sand is liable to wear the rubber. Pontoon’s ready to anchor. A bit to shore of the wreck with enough cable to allow for rise and fall of the tide. The currents will set us up and down a bit.”

Hooper nodded in turn. Such matters of adjustment he knew to be necessary as well as Manning, but this was the diver’s job and he was content to let him carry it through without suggestion. Manning knew his work. So did his assistants. They were all competent and they labored to the point, Fong with them, like men who were used to each other and respected each other’s capabilities. The under deck had been laid in place, lashed and spiked. On this spare planks and gratings made a smooth surface, well supported by the two buoyant hulls of built-up planks, sewn with sinnet, calked with native gums. The outriggers had been left on the canoes and the contrivance was a complete success.

“I’ll make two descents a day, with Fong,” said Manning. “An hour under water each time. Perhaps more, but it’s exhausting work. It’s the sand that bothers me. Could you warp in the schooner closer to the reef without much risk, Hooper?”

“So long as the weather holds, yes. Why?”

“That schooner yacht of ours has some fancy quipment that will be useful, like the ice-machine. I mean the fire-hose. The best way to handle sand is by hydraulic force, the same as they wash gravel banks for gold. If we couple up both those hoses they will reach across the reef and down to bottom, I think. If not, we can sew up some canvas, I suppose, for an extension.”

“I see,” said Hooper. “Attach to the engine and the pump and give you a strong stream at the nozzle. That’s a new idea to me. Fighting water with water.”

“It works,” said Manning. “Tricks to all trades. The hose is a mean thing to handle down there but there will be two of us. Will you tackle that end of it while I anchor the pontoon? We ought to get everything ready today for a descent to morrow morning, if we’ve any luck.”

Tiburi got no chance to board the schooner that day. The tabu flags did not come down. All hands labored hard to complete the preliminaries and the sun was close to the horizon before Manning announced it satisfactory. The canoe flotilla, between twenty and thirty craft, drawn up as if about to witness a regatta, remained well beyond the bounds all day, some of them fishing as the afternoon wore on, but all eager to watch what the white men were about, half-fearful of some demonstration from the Hims.

Tubiri left with his big canoe in mid-afternoon. Hooper guessed him sulky and, as soon as it could be spared, sent Edwards in a whale-boat over to the little beach where the chief had settled himself. He both a propitiation in the shape of a few trinkets and two bottles of gin.

“He was a bit peevish,” the steward reported on his return, “but the gin mellowed him, sir. I showed him a few little tricks and got him amused.”

The sailors who had rowed Edwards snickered at this as they held on to the anchored pontoon and Hooper looked at them sharply.

“What kind of tricks, Edwards?” he demanded.

“Nothing much, sir. Just parlor conjuring. I used to do it sometimes for the passengers aboard the Moana at a concert. Like this, sir.”

He held up a dollar and palmed it, showed it vanished, produced it from the nose of one of the sailors. Then he took out a bandanna handkerchief from his coat pocket, spread it on the pontoon deck, folded in the corners, spread another one over it and, when he raised this again, the first cloth was piled with strings of beads, small mirrors and brass curtain-rings.

“I buried one of the bottles in the sand, sir,” said the steward with a deprecating manner. “Then I showed him the mango trick, only I used some scrub pandanus of different heights. A Jap showed me how to do that and it made a big hit with Tiburi, especially when I told him to dig under the roots and he found the bottle. I’ve done quite a bit in that way down in the Fijis, sir, where I learned my dialects, and it always impressed the natives. Tiburi and his men have never seen anything of that sort, sir. I promised him to show him how to make water boil without fire—the Seidlitz-powder trick, sir.”

“Humph!” Hooper exchanged a glance with Manning and narrowed his eyes. “That’s all right for this once, Edwards, but, after this, Mr. Manning or myself will do the wonder-working. Too many wizards spoil the show.”

“Yes, sir. Very well, sir. Sorry if I overstepped, sir.”

Edwards, with Fong transferred to the pontoon, had volunteered to cook, and he went off to the schooner to get supper ready.

“That chap’s too clever and too fond of showing it,” Hooper said to Manning in a low tone. “Yet he never does anything without a plausible excuse tacked on to it. But I’ll have to offset his tricks or Tiburi will be thinking him the whole show, next to the Hims.”

“I agree with you,” answered Manning. “Fong said it long ago. Too —— slick.”

THE next afternoon, after the second descent, with the tabu temporarily removed, Hooper received Tiburi and ushered him into the cabin, where he fearfully took a seat upon the red-plush transom where Him Who Walks had been throned, glancing about him as if he expected punishment for his temerity.

Hooper, like all trading captains, had a stock of simple tricks on hand for the diversion and amazement of unsophisticated natives. Most tribes were familiar with them. Their own wizards used them, mixed in with devices of their own. But Tiburi appeared to brook no conjuror in his tribe and he himself was ripe for wonderment. Steiner had shown him certain things and Edwards had gone further. Hooper prepared to cap the climax.

He served the gin himself, taking the bottle from Edwards and dismissing the steward in a manner that showed plainly who was the supreme authority aboard. He winked at Manning as he set down by the chief a second tumbler which he stated contained water, knowing Tiburi would ignore it. He himself had a third glass. This he sipped as Tiburi gulped down his gin. Manning had also helped himself to water, which he drank.

As Tiburi poured himself another quantum, Hooper reached out for his extra glass and set it close to his own. He had placed on one of his fingers one of those paste diamonds made famous in minstrel shows and the chief’s eyes had never left the sparkling bauble. Hooper set the fingers of the ring-bearing hand about one glass and lifted it.

“Can you make fire come out of water, Tiburi?” he asked. “Can you make water boil without fire?”

“Only the gods can do that,” answered the chief a little uneasily. He was alone in the cabin with the two white men who held authority on the schooner and he did not like it. “Talu did that when he brought up the smoking islands from the bottom of the sea,” he said.

“It is easy,” went on Hooper, and poured one dissolved Seidlitz powder into another.

Tiburi’s eyes goggled as the mixture sizzled and apparently boiled over. He gasped when Hooper quaffed half the hissing draught and handed the rest to Manning to finish. He hastily lifted the half-empty squareface to his lips and let the stuff run down his throat to restore his equanimity. But Hooper was not through. Another gin-bottle stood in a rack, uncorked, He took this and a tin cup beside it and poured out a little liquid into the latter.

“Now stand away,” he ordered.

Tiburi watched him fascinatedly as he struck a match and tossed it into the ounce of gasoline. It flared up with a vicious roar toward the open skylight and Tiburi incontinently bolted for the deck. The sight of his men checked him and he turned his back on them, his face gray with fright that he strove to fight down. If this white man could do this with water what might not the Hims accomplish?

Hooper and Manning had followed him and Hooper drew from his finger the mock diamond.

“Because you are my friend,” he said to Tiburi, placing the fake in the chief’s hollowed, slightly trembling palm.

Tiburi straightened. Delight banished fear for the time.

“Eyah!” he exclaimed, and exhibited the glittering thing to his five men. “Here is a gift from a friend to a friend!”

And, while his followers jabbered, Tiburi strung the diamond on a sennit plait that had held a disk of pearly shell roughly carved into the semblance of a frigate-bird. He swelled his chest so that the jewel broke out into little rainbows in the sunshine, and offered the pearl ornament to Hooper.

The skipper took it and handed it on to Manning, who examined and returned it.

“Beware of a cannibal offering gifts,” he said with a smile.

“True enough,” said Hooper. “But we’ve got his goat for the time being.”

“And put Edwards’ nose out of joint,” muttered Manning.

Hooper pointed to the west.

“The sun sinks,” he said to the chief. “The ship will soon be tabu.” Tiburi seemed glad enough to take the hint and his canoe was soon racing for the crater.

“How did you get along today, Manning?” asked Hooper. “First chance I’ve had to ask you.”

“Good progress. The hose works well. Some sand will drift back with the tide but we’ve got the bulk of it shifted. It’s mainly shifted in between decks and packed pretty solidly. But the floor of your traderoom seems still solid. The hull will be filled up underneath, clear into the frame of that hatchway, but I wouldn’t be surprized but what we got to the pearls the first trip down the day after tomorrow. I shan’t need Fong for that. He can go back in the galley again.”

“Don’t you like Edwards’ chow?” asked Hooper quizzically.

“I’m not stuck on anything he does,” said Manning.

X

MANNING had been down for an hour and a half. It was the morning on which he expected to retrieve the pearls and Hooper was anxious, not for the gems, but for the man he had come to know as his friend, to give some of that whole-souled affection peculiar between man and man, a bond, that, once given, out lasts all wear and tear.

He crouched at the head of the ladder inside the canvas screen, peering down at the wreck. He could see nothing of Manning, hidden by the ragged upper deck, but a stream of bubbles came up constantly from the azure transparency and showed the pump was working.

Beside him were two of the diver’s assistants. One held the signal-cord, the other tended life-line and air-tube, careful that the latter should not kink or chafe against the side of the pontoon. Outside the screen, in plain view of the wondering ring of natives in their canoes beyond the tabu flags, the third man toiled steadily at the compressing-wheel of the pump.

The hose had been disconnected. Manning had declared the way clear but he seemed to have struck trouble.

Hooper fidgeted with his watch. Fong had come on deck on the schooner and was standing by the rail, watching the pontoon.

“An hour and thirty-eight minutes,” said Hooper. “Pretty long spell, isn’t it?”

“I’ve known him stay down two hours when he wanted to finish something,” answered the man with the signal-cord. “That’s Manning’s way. He’s all right. He’ll be done up when he comes out but I’ll bet my bonus he’s got what he’s after. If it’s there.”

“I guess it’s there all right,” answered Hooper, a little nervously.

“Tides play strange tricks,” said the man.

“Hey, Bill, you got a bite,” cried the second helper.

The signal-cord jerked.

“He’s coming up,” said the man excitedly.

Hooper lent a hand to the stout life-line. Leaning over, they could see Manning coming into view through the broken planks. There was a swirl of water about him and his figure was distorted. If he carried anything they could not see it. He clung to the life-line and swayed up through the ten fathoms, Bill coiling the signal-line as it slacked, the third man doing the same with the air-pipe.

Manning caught the ladder, got his feet on the lower rounds and rested to adjust the pressure. Then he came up heavily as the pontoon tilted slightly. His helmeted head appeared and Hooper and one of the men got hands under his shoulders and hoisted him on to the float, where he sat limply. His hands were chafed raw, the ends of his fingers bloody. And he carried no package.

But Hooper did not think of that as he helped to unscrew the helmet and held to Manning’s lips a tot of gin. The diver swallowed the stuff and smiled.

“Got ’em,” he said. “Touch and go. Another month and we’d never have found ’em.

“In my kit-bag,” he continued as one man unlaced his heavy shoes and the third helped him wriggle out of his suit. Belt and its knife, pendent crowbar and water-proof pocket were already off. Hooper picked them up and felt in the bag. His eyes brightened as he touched several cylindrical objects and drew one out, the wax paper broken but the foil intact.

“Tarpaulin washed away, rubber rotted,” said Manning, getting to his feet a trifle groggily, sweat matting his thick crop of hair and streaming down his face. “The sand had packed up from below, as I thought it would. Worked in through the chinks in the hatchway framing. But the pearls were there. Found one or two packages as I clawed the stuff out. Regular sandstone. Count ’em, Hooper, I think I got them all.”

“They’re all here, Manning,” said Hooper, clapping the other on the shoulder and gripping in affectionately. “We’ll start back tomorrow. Edwards says Steiner’s crowd has livened up considerably. Not that I’m considering them.” He weighed the little packages in both his hands, his face aglow. “That third divvy doesn’t go between us, Manning,” he went on. “It’s halves, partner.”

The two shook hands.

“A third was the agreement,” said Manning. Then, as he read the other’s eyes, “Except on one condition.”

“Granted.”

“We go shares in everything from now on. I’m sick of diving. Let’s get a schooner and go into something together. Cruising or trading. Unless you’re tied up?”

The thought of some woman in connection with Hooper crossed his mind for the first time.

“Not me,” replied Hooper. “No strings, petticoat or otherwise, if that’s what you’re thinking, old man. So, let’s go aboard, boys. We’ll break the prohibition rules for once. Outside the three-mile limit, any way.”

They all laughed at the light quip, exhilarated at the ending to the trip. Manning put on his clothes, they set the suit in the boat and rowed off to the schooner where Fong was waiting them.

“Heap sabby you get all same,” he said, his yellow face beaming.

The men crowded up, scenting the excitement. Hooper sent Edwards for the liquor.

“A drink for success, men,” he said. “Home tomorrow.”

They gave three hearty cheers, led by the steward.

It was Andersen’s shift aboard, his relief almost up. He came on deck at the cheering, followed by Thompson. Manning took Hooper aside.

“Where does Thompson come in?” he asked. “Just on the bonus?”

“I’m looking out for him,” said Hooper.

“You mean we are, partner,” answered Manning.

As they started for the cabin, the packages still unbroken, Andersen asked about the tabu flags.

“They heard the cheering, sir,” he said. “Getting worked up.”

“Keep them flying until after chow,” said Hooper. “Then you can chuck the things away. We’re through. Come on, Manning. I’ve got something to open your eyes.”

And he hooked his arm familiarly through that of the diver.

Manning had seen pearls before but never so many, so symmetrical, so full of fire. The foil had preserved their luster, kept them from the grinding grit of the sand. They were fuzzy with delicate bloom. Hooper separated them and placed some in pairs.

“Worth fifty per cent. more when they match up,” he said. “I’ve worked hard to get this bunch together.” He fondled them, holding them in the cup of his hand, but there was no greed in his voice.

“Miracles to come out of a sick shellfish, aren’t they?” he said. “Look at those two pairs, Manning. Worth ten thousand dollars in Tahiti this minute. We’ll take ’em to better markets.

“Hang it, man,” he broke off, “we haven’t fixed your fingers. They are raw.”

“Feel as if they’d been sandpapered,” admitted Manning as Hooper gathered up the pearls and put them away in a chamois poke. “But my main trouble is my stomach. It’s buckling. Two hours down uses up all your fuel. What are you going to do with them?”

“Split ’em,” said Hooper. “I bought two belts. You’ll wear half and so will I. Come into my cabin and we’ll fix them while Fong’s bringing chow.”

Edwards had come in and started to lay the table. He glanced at the leather bag but said nothing.

“As soon as I’ve stowed away my outfit,” said Manning. “Got any adhesive in the medicine kit?”

“I’ll get it, sir,” said Edwards and disappeared. Manning and Hooper put away the suit, which had been carried down earlier by Fong. The steward came back with tape and scissors and Hooper cut out the pieces with which Manning patched his torn fingers. Then, in Hooper’s cabin, they put away the pearls and adjusted the belts. The meal was ready when they came out. Andersen and Thompson joined them.

“You can tell Steiner to get ready to move tomorrow,” Hooper said to the mate. “On the ebb, about noon. We’ll come for them at six bells. And, as you go off, take up those tabu buoys and stakes.”

“What are you going to do this afternoon, Manning?” he asked when the mate and Thompson had left, after discussing the find a little. “Turn in?”

“Got to dismantle the pontoon and get the pump aboard.”

“Your men can do that. I imagine you’re tired out.”

“But not sleepy. And I usually am, after a long spell under. Why?”

“I feel like a holiday. Let’s go out and get a mess of mullet. We’ll give Tiburi another exhibition of fire and water. And it’s a heap of fun.”

He spoke like a boy and Manning entered into his mood. The job was done, the reaction strong.

“I’ll go with you,” he said, “if it’s only to see you don’t blow off an arm. I’ve seen several cripples in the islands from that game.”

“No danger, if you’re careful. Cut the fuse right, ruffle it up a bit, stick a match in it, light the match, count two and heave the half a stick. Toss it fairly high. Better to have it explode too soon than wet the primer and sink. Don’t take much to stun the fish if we find a school. Tiburi hasn’t ever brought us any mullet. They’re rare eating.”

AS THEY rowed off, with two sailors at the oars, a box of the dynamite in the stern, they passed Manning’s assistants working on the pontoon. The pump had already been sent off to the schooner and the men were taking apart the decks preparatory to turning over the canoes to the natives. A dozen canoes drifted at a respectful distance, the savages looking on at the white men or gazing into the water.

“There’ll be twenty of them diving down presently to see what they can in the wreck,” said Hooper. “Soon as they feel sure the Hims are gone. They know we’ve got something worth while out of it.”

“How about Tiburi?” asked Manning. “If he comes off to the schooner? I don’t see his canoe.”

“There it is.” Hooper pointed to the crater-entrance with the big canoe coming out of it. “I left strict orders with Edwards. No men to come aboard but the chief and only one bottle of gin. We’ll gift him up tomorrow before we leave. He can have everything that’s in the traderoom.”

“Fong’ll keep an eye on him,” said Manning. “I don’t trust that steward, Hooper. He happened along too handily in Honolulu with his four men.”

“They’ve behaved themselves all right, except Holabird, and he took his lesson well enough. And we’ve got the pearls,” he added as he slapped his belt, hidden beneath his clothes. “That looks like a school of mullet.”

They rowed down the lagoon inside the reef in the direction of a ripple that showed just above the surface. But the fish broke water before they reached throwing-distance. And they were not mullet.

Manning helped Hooper prepare their grenades and they rowed about the reef. But luck, with them in the big adventure, was niggardly with smaller gifts.

“Fish-sharks inside,” said Hooper at length. “Won’t go out till the tide turns. Mullet are all inside the crater lagoon. Get some tomorrow before we leave. Better go back and see what Tiburi is up to. His canoe is still alongside.”

The pontoon was broken up by the time they reached the schooner. Hooper gave an order for hoisting the boat to the falls and climbed the gangway ladder, followed by Manning. Tiburi was not on deck. Fong came out of his galley and pointed to the cabin. Hooper frowned and moved quickly to the open skylight, looking down, Manning beside him.

Tiburi sat on the red-plush seat with Edwards beside him. They seemed to have been deep in conversation and the steward gazed up suddenly with a startled air, duplicated by Tiburi, who rose uneasily. An empty gin-bottle was on the table. The two partners hurried down the ladder and faced them. Hooper’s brow was dark with a frown.

“Who gave you the idea of entertaining Tiburi in the cabin?” he demanded sharply.

For once Edwards seemed nonplussed. He licked his lips before he answered.

“I didn’t suppose there was any harm in it, sir. I didn’t mean it as a liberty. No men came aboard and there’s only been the one bottle. The chief is crazy about the furnishings, sir. He wants this settee as a gift.”

“Did you give it to him?” Manning’s voice was sarcastic and the steward gave him an ugly glance.

“I did not, sir.”

“All right, Edwards,” said Hooper dryly. “You may go for’ard.”

The steward left with a quick look passing between him and the chief. Tiburi had gathered himself together. It was plain to both the white men that Edwards had lied about the liquor, though there was only the one bottle in evidence. Tiburi was inclined to swagger. His eyes met Hooper’s almost defiantly.

“I am a big chief! A great chief,” he said, pounding his chest so that the mock jewel danced. “Many men obey me.” He worked his fingers rapidly. “Edduadi, he big chief, too.”

“Not so big as I am. Not so big as my friend here,” said Hooper quietly but with meaning emphasis. “Suppose you are so big a chief, do you want to drink some of that firewater?”

Tiburi winced but recovered, swaying a little as the fumes of the gin vapored in his brain.

“Not so big as Him Who Walks Under the Water, Tiburi,” went on Hooper, observing him carefully.

He fiddled in his pocket for a gasoline cigar-lighter he had filled and carried along to ignite the dynamite-fuses. Suddenly he brought it out and snapped it under Tiburi’s nose. The flame sprang up, almost singeing the chief’s skin, upsetting his drunken show of belligerency.

“Eyah!” he cried, jumping back and retreating backward up the companionway. “I am great chief! With many men. You give me many gifts for me, for my men. I am not afraid!”

His effect was spoiled a trifle by the haste with which he mounted, still facing them, got into his canoe and paddled swiftly off, calling to the other canoes and gathering them in his trail as he sped for the crater.

“Now what’s got into his fool head?” said Hooper. “Just gin?”

“Edwards,” said Manning.

“I agree with you. He’s gone a bit far this trip. But what is he up to?”

“We may find out tomorrow when we go into the crater,” suggested Manning.

“I don’t think Tiburi’ll make trouble,” said Hooper slowly. “He’s drunk. Aside from the Hims, who won’t appear again, he knows we’ve got fire-sticks. Just as well we didn’t find any mullet. If he starts anything we’ll make him think the island’s going up. We’ll take along the dynamite when we go for Steiner. And we’ll go in with the relief tonight, you and I, ready for pranks. He’ll cool down when he’s sober. It wouldn’t do any good to cross-examine Edwards.”

“He’d lie, anyway,” said Manning.

“Probably. I think with him it’s a case of swelled head. Good thing all round we’re through.”

But Tiburi made no demonstration, hostile or otherwise, when they changed the guard that night. Coming and going, they saw the natives seated peaceably round two fires on the little beach, the low sound of chanting sounding across the water.

“Peace meles (chants),” said Hooper. “Better than a drum, and dancing. Tiburi will be aboard tomorrow before we sail, for his gifts. May as well leave him happy. He’s served his turn.”

“Going to give him the plush settee?” asked Manning.

“I’ve a good mind to. And make Edwards pay for a new one,” laughed Hooper.

XI

THE early hours of the next morning slipped by without a sign from Tiburi, without sight of canoe or native. A lookout had reported to Manning, acting as officer of the watch, that he thought he had seen canoes passing through the reefs and had heard the sound of paddling.

This was close to dawn but before the sky had begun to lighten. Manning could see nothing and could hear nothing other than the soft booming of the surf and he fancied the man mistaken, for he had used his eyes enough at sea to be sure of them.

The relief, going in at nine o’clock with Hooper in charge, keenly on the lookout for possible trouble, saw canoes hauled out on the small beach, among them Tiburi’s own easily recognizable craft. A number of natives stood at the water’s edge watching the whale-boat pass and repass with Andersen, Thompson and the two sailors of the relieved watch. Everything seemed as usual.

“Steiner and his crowd are starting already to pack their dunnage,” Hooper told Manning. “Rest and food have done them a world of good already and I think the shaving and hair-cutting did as much as anything. Steiner is a bullet-headed junker once again and his men jump to his authority. Told them we’d come off for them about eleven. He seems to have made up his mind to take it philosophically. It being a case of Hobson’s choice.”

“How about Tiburi?” asked Manning.

“I’ve a notion he’s just sulking. Wants to get his farewell gifts and hates to come aboard after the way he acted yesterday. He has sent some of his canoes away. So the lookout was right last night. They’ve probably gone back to the cone and their wives and families. I imagine they are the ones of least rank and will not share in the trade split if Tiburi gets over his sulks and tries to come aboard.”

“Edwards has hurt his leg pretty badly, according to his own account,” said Manning. “I saw him slip half-way down the companion and he claims to have sprained his ankle. He’s got it painted with iodine and bandaged up now. He couldn’t do more than hobble so I sent him to his bunk.”

“Exit Edwards, for the time being. We won’t get much more out of him this trip. Fong’ll have to do double duty, but we can make it easier for him aft.”

“He may be malingering,” suggested Manning. “Or sulking, like Tiburi, after the call-down you gave him.”

“We can get along without him,” said Hooper. “We’ve got plenty to do between now and sailing-time. Neither Andersen nor Thompson is going to turn in until we get well away.”

For two hours there was the bustle of departure, stowage of provisions, general overhauling, arrangement of a space on deck for Steiner and his fifteen men. The Mary L. would run back under her own power as long as the gasoline-supply lasted and Hooper, for humanitarian reasons as well as those of general comfort, decided to keep his quasi prisoners where they would get the full benefit of sun and air. A canvas awning was rigged from foremast to forestay for their convenience.

Hooper had expected some last gifts of fresh fruit and fish from Tiburi, but as eleven o’clock came and the chief still remained within the crater, sequestered on his little beach, he resolved to do without them. The dynamite, with several of the sticks halved, primed and fused, was still in the stern of one of the two whale-boats and there was a chance of getting mullet at the last moment.

On the terrace Steiner and his fifteen men were under guard of Holabird, White, Ryder and Smith. The boats would be full coming back and Hooper did not want to make two trips of the job. Andersen was left in charge of the schooner, with Thompson and Manning’s three assistants under him. There were also Fong and Ling and the invalided Edwards with his sprained ankle. It was a strong outfit. Four sailors went in each boat as rowers, Manning, who could handle a steering-sweep, in the stern of one, Hooper in that of the other.

Again they passed Tiburi’s canoes drawn up on the beach and again the savages came down to the water’s edge and watched them. But Tiburi was not visible. His wounded dignity seemed to demand that he keep in seclusion.

“He’ll come round at the last minute,” said Hooper. “He’ll guess we are going out on the ebb, once he sees us transporting Steiner and his crowd. We haven’t seen the last of Tiburi. Not while there is any trade left aboard the schooner.”

It was about three-quarters of a mile from the crater-gap across the inner lagoon to the landing below the terrace. Usually the guards came to the bottom of the stairways to meet the incoming boats. Two guarded each trail. They were not visible and Hooper, in the leading boat, gave the order to hold water until Manning drew up.

“Funny,” he said, screwing his eyes up at the terrace. “There’s no one in sight.”

“Back in the caves,” suggested Manning. “Or maybe Steiner balked at the last minute and our men are rounding them up.”

“Soon find out,” replied Hooper. “Give way, men.”

They bent to the oars and the boats glided into a narrow channel that led right through the strip of beach to the largest of the water-caves. This channel bore evidence of having been man-made and the landing-ledges inside the caves were too handy to have been entirely accidental. One man was left in each boat, still afloat inside the cave, and the party divided, Manning going to the left with his three men and Hooper to the right with his.

Nothing was said, action preempting words, but the impression that something had gone askew in the arrangements, that the terrace was deserted, manifested itself, not only to Hooper and Manning, but in the sailors. The whole party was armed, as usual, with rifles and automatics. At the last moment, Manning, on impulse prompted by the strange silence of the place, carried up with him the box of dynamite.

He thought it possible that Steiner and his men had retreated to some position in the caves back of the images where they could make a resistance. Or better terms. They might have overpowered their guards. He had never underestimated Steiner and the men had been warned to be careful.

The two parties reached the level of the terrace simultaneously. Manning, peering about the pedestal of a god, pistol ready, saw Hooper’s face rising from the trail at the other end. The terrace was deserted. The cooking-utensils that Steiner had been given for his party were in orderly array, ready for transshipment. So were the blankets and a bundle or two of general dunnage. But no sign of Steiner, his men or of the four guards. Only silence, broken by the low plashing of the lagoon surf on the landing-beach and the steady dripping of water from the main cave. The grass-thatched shelters were empty.

There were five caves, but four of these were only gas-blow fissures in the lava rock, two of them too narrow for a man easily to squeeze through. All these they probed and examined after a preliminary search of the big cave. That was a bewildering labyrinth in its interior. It seemed foolish to think that Steiner had hidden in its depths. He would have but the smallest supply of food and water, if any, and two men could effectually prevent any exit. Unless he figured that the schooner would sail away after Hooper and Manning had grown tired of waiting, leaving their four men. Which was equally ridiculous. And would leave Steiner within a short time at the mercy of Tiburi once again.

They gathered on the terrace, uncertain, perplexed.

“Do you suppose they have discovered some passage leading up and out on the slopes?” Hooper asked Manning. “That would only take them out of our frying-pan into Tiburi’s fire.”

“If there was one, Tiburi would have known of it and attacked them that way long ago, when you first came here,” objected the diver.

“Perhaps he did. We don’t know the details of how he finally did get Steiner. I don’t like it. And I don’t quite see what to do. We can’t leave the men. We can’t leave Steiner to be put in that stockade again. Confound the man, what’s he up to?”

His glance ranged seaward to where they could see the schooner between the reefs, through the gap in the crater walls.

“Something doing on the beach with Tiburi,” he said. “They’re launching the canoes. And they’ve got all their weapons with them. They’ve been leaving most of them behind of late. Manning, there’s something stirring that looks fishy to me.”

“Steiner and Tiburi in together. That wouldn’t——”

“It’s Tiburi anyway,” said Hooper. “Look at them come. Not for the schooner, but after us. They saw us go in and they are not going to let us out.”

The canoes were forming in line across the inner lagoon. As they gazed from the terrace they saw them take order and the spray flash from the paddles and surge before the prows as they came on at top speed. The canoes fairly bristled with weapons.

“Better tackle ’em here than try to break through them in the boats,” said Hooper.

Manning looked at him from a new angle of respect. Only once had he seen Hooper in the offensive, when he knocked down Holabird. And the conviction was borne in upon him that Holabird was mixed up in this somehow, with Edwards, for all the latter’s lame ankle. Treachery!

NOW Hooper’s face was a fighting-mask, set, lips firm, jaws clenched, the lower jutting out in determination, his nostrils wide and his eyes ablaze. Manning did not realize that his own features were a replica of his friend’s.

He saw the folly of trying to run the gantlet against so many canoes, able to move three times as easily, as swiftly; crowded with men who could quill them with arrows in one discharge.

The two sailors left in charge of the boats came hurrying up the trail, their faces showing their alarm.

“There are the rest of Tiburi’s canoes, out to sea,” cried Hooper. “Going to tackle the schooner. They’ll have a tough time of it.”

“Tiburi seems to have got over his fear of the Hims all right,” said Manning grimly as he examined the breech of his rifle and the clip of his automatic, half fearful that they had been in some way tampered with. “But we’ll put the fear of Us into him before he gets through.”

Hooper nodded.

“Steady, men,” he rallied the sailors. “We can hold them off from the heads of the trails. Manning, you take the left, will you? Don’t waste a shot, any one of you.”

Two of the men suddenly shrank back to the wall of the cliff, pointing upward, their faces gray under the tan. Savage yells broke out from above. Arrows rained down, glancing and shivering on the stone flags. Leaping through the bush down the steep sides of the crater came two score or more tribesmen, brandishing spears and clubs, disappearing behind the leafy screen to discharge more arrows.

Their deafening, triumphant din was echoed from the lagoon, where Tiburi and his men, the chief’s war-canoe in the center of the cannibal armada, were closing in for the beach at terrific speed. The whites were caught between two attacks. A third was closing on the schooner. White puffs of smoke showed on her decks; the reports of rifles came floating back to the terrace.

Then, from the water-cave beneath, out darted the two whale-boats, filled with Steiner and his men, rowing fast toward Tiburi. Holabird and the three other guards were with them, not as prisoners, but free, a part of the crowd, with their weapons. They turned and yelled defiance at the terrace. Tiburi’s flotilla parted to let them through and they sped on toward the schooner, the oars pulled by the German sailors. Tiburi’s savages yelled greetings to them as they passed. The whole attack had been deliberately planned and timed. Steiner, Tiburi and the four guards were in collusion for common advantages. Edwards too, in all probability, but he had funked the fight at the last minute.

“Why doesn’t Andersen put to sea?” cried Hooper. “He can come back for us.”

And then the men from the cliffs were upon them, leaping down on the terrace, yelling like so many demons from the pit; stark naked, save for ornaments, their filed teeth showing between their thick lips, drawn back in eagerness; their eyeballs flashing as they rushed wildly to hand-grips with the whites.

Some of them fell before the first fire. The fight became a mêlée in which the savages had an advantage with their weapons made for hand-to-hand combat, clubs of hardwood beaked with stone and shell; their skill and strength in handling them. The sailors were beaten back, Hooper and Manning in the front rank, making every shot of their pistols count in the desperate fight. They had none too many bullets. In a few moments the main attack would land from the canoes, rushing up at their backs, hewing, stabbing, spearing.

Manning flung his empty automatic into the open mouth of a warrior, breaking his teeth and spoiling the blow he was whirling down. He clubbed his rifle and used it as a flail, smashing furiously with Hooper beside him. The attack was so furious that the cannibals blocked themselves by their packed formation but sheer weight told and several of the men were bleeding.

A warrior sprang out and clung to Hooper’s uplifted arms, swinging his rifle. Another thrust at him with a spear that bristled with sharks’ teeth and was tipped with shell. Manning’s rifle-butt came down upon the skull of the second and shattered it like a pumpkin, spattering blood and brains. As the blow landed a savage sprang on him with a war-club and Manning kicked him in the knee, bringing him down with a howl of rage, clasping at Manning’s legs, dragging the white man down asprawl.

Manning still clutched his rifle in one hand; the warrior was beneath him,-striving to twist uppermost while Manning sought his throat with his left hand. Then weight sagged him, twining limbs imprisoned his. He was helpless, waiting for the final blow like a trussed ox—unless they were after him alive!

That thought shot through him in a lightning-flash. Then the strenuous pressure above and about relaxed. He heaved up. A hand caught him by the elbow and he stood erect. Three of the sailors were down. Hooper, bloody but smiling, was beside him. Manning’s first opponent lay with his face formless, bashed in by the butt of Hooper’s gun—another swung an arm broken at the elbow.

“Even,” said Hooper, panting.

“Rush ’em—dynamite! Rush ’em a bit!” gasped Manning.

Hooper gave him a look that swiftly lightened as he took in the meaning.

With a yell that outtopped any native whoop, that carried terror in its deep-throated heartiness, Hooper jumped at the massed ranks of the savages, embarrassed by their own numbers, amazed at the resistance of these hard-fighting whites. The sailors still on their feet, desperate, maddened by the trap that they were in, followed their leader and the mob gave sullenly back, a foot—a yard—two more, past the base of the biggest statue that leaned on its pedestal out above the cliff.

Beside it Manning had set down his precious box of explosives. As the natives stiffened, taking fresh heart at the yells that came up from below, as the canoes made a dash for the last fifty yards between them and the beach, he snatched out some of the half-sticks that were ready-primed. He found his matches, lighted the ruffled fuses, blowing at them.

“Back!” he roared. “Come back!”

Facing the savages, Hooper pressed back his sailors, stumbling over the dead and wounded.

“Take cover!” shouted Manning, and they leaped aside behind the pedestals, into the main cave, while Manning flung two grenades into the thick of the astounded savages and crouched back of the base of the great god, hurriedly stuffing into a crevice more of the prepared dynamite.

With a roar and a burst of flame the explosive detonated. The wail of the stricken cannibals, blown up, crisped, torn apart, those unharmed flung flat while the noise of the blast resounded from the cliff, was merged in a second storm of thundering noise and darting lightnings. Manning, racing for cover, was flung down, stunned as the terrace shook, the base of the great god rocked, the statue toppled and went hurtling down.

It crashed fairly into the clutter of landing canoes, half in the water, half on the beach, splintering Tiburi’s own craft, the crown one missile, the body and the pedestal two thunderbolts that crushed bodies to pulp and turned the peaceful tide crimson.

XII

LL}}AND, sea and air still shook under the tremendous force of the exploding gases. The savages who had attacked the terrace and had survived the explosion were scrambling frantically back up the cliffs to safety, leaving their broken dead and writhing wounded behind them. Tiburi was dead, with a score of his followers. The survivors were swimming frantically off or had crowded into a few canoes that had not been badly damaged, many clinging to the gunwales and out riggers as the paddlers strove to get away from this place of utter disaster and the outbreak of the wrath of the gods.

For surely this was a thing of the gods, the gods of the white men! The tribe had long worshiped those enormous images, especially the central figure. It had meant nothing to them of actual creed, it held no actual place in their polytheistic pantheon but they knew it to be the likeness of a god and of a great god. Now it had been overthrown in fire and flame, involving them in its destruction, coming to the rescue of the whites. For they could see the whites still moving on the terrace; and had not one of them flung thundering, fiery death among them?

They held no desire but to flee. Never again on that island would the magic of the white man be questioned or his purposes thwarted. Yet Steiner had been white and he had been their ally. But he had also been their prisoner, therefore there were white men who were at odds with the gods and others high in favor. But it would behoove them for the future to hold all white strangers in awe.

Out at sea the savages had heard the roar and seen the flame; the fragments of tossed rock and masses of toppling cliff and statues. And their canoes had vanished toward the safety of their cone and the deep bush.

Hooper rushed out before the dust had settled, bounding from the cave where he had Sought cover at Manning’s shout, hurrying to pick up his comrade and partner, fearing that he had sacrificed himself to save the rest.

Manning had seized a handful of dynamite-sticks at the last moment, stuffing fuse and primers in his pocket. The bulk of the explosive, still in its box, he had kicked over the cliff before he sought safety, after lighting the fuses. From the frightful force of the discharge it seemed certain that this too had detonated. The blocks on the terrace were displaced as if by an earthquake, the cliff below was rent and fissured; every god had fallen from its pedestal, though only the one had toppled over the cliff. A great wave formed, rolling in and then retreating in a surge that bore the whole and broken canoes away with their riding, clinging freight, in confusion.

Manning, in falling, or perhaps before he fell, had rolled the dozen sticks of dynamite along the terrace ahead of him. The force of the explosion, expending itself in the direction of the greatest resistance, had, with the freakishness of nitro-glycerine, sent out lateral blasts of gas and air that had floored Manning but had left the scattered sticks immune, saving his life and also leaving a weapon of deadly offense if any were still needed. For, with the exception of a few shells in the magazines of their rifles, they had used all their ammunition.

Manning, with his swift purpose and action, doing the only thing that could have saved them from the horde, risking his own life without thought or fear, had not been killed. The explosion had stunned him, flinging him headlong. The stone flags had met his head violently, his face was a bloody mask, the clothes had been torn from his back; but Hooper, as he raised him, saw that he was still breathing, heard him groan, and thanked God.

A sailor ran with water from the cave and tossed it on the face of the unconscious man, racing back for more with which Hooper, taking his friend’s head upon his lap, bathed the bruised features and at last saw Manning’s eyes open intelligent, still indomitable with purpose. He smiled up at Hooper.

“Close call—touch and go,” he said faintly. “You’re safe. How about——?”

“We’re all safe,” said Hooper huskily. “Thanks to you and your confounded foolhardiness. You might have blown yourself to atoms!”

His chiding was full of deep affection, of admiration, and it acted like a tonic on Manning.

“You’ve scattered them to the four winds,” said Hooper. “Those who have legs left and arms to swim or paddle with are using them. It’s the end of Tiburi.”

“The schooner?” asked Manning.

He got up with anxious aid of Hooper, bathing his face, which still bled freely.

“I’m sound,” he said. “No bones broken. Feel as if I’d been pounded by a hundred war-dubs at once. Ah, they’re holding them off. Good men!”

Rifles were spitting from the deck of the Mary L. answered from the two whaleboats in less measure. Steiner had only the guns and pistols of the four treacherous guards and, deserted by his savage allies, his attack was failing. One or two of his men in each boat seemed to have been badly wounded, if not killed, to judge by their postures.

“Got to get out there,” said Hooper. “It’s a problem. Three of our chaps are pretty badly slashed and clubbed. Dragged them into the cave when you started the fire works. That was quick thinking, Manning.

“We’d have hard work getting around the crater-slopes,” he said, “and we’d have to swim for it at the last. There seems something wrong with the schooner’s engine. Otherwise I believe Andersen would have put out to sea to shake off that attack. Anyway they can’t come in through the second reef. Steiner’s got both our boats. Don’t imagine there’s anything left in the shape of a canoe. But there might be.”

He sent a sailor down to the beach to look and the man came hurrying back with a shout. The big wave had washed two canoes fairly inside the cave and they were in fair shape. The dazed savages had been too literally swept off their feet to think of such a happening. They were still paddling off to the shore at a safe distance from these white men and their gods, who might again blast them. The lagoon was dotted with the heads of swimmers.

In the two canoes they took up the paddles, Hooper and Manning assisting to take the place of the three wounded sailors. Manning protested that he was whole and did not want to get stiff and Hooper’s heart lightened as he saw the diver stroking lustily. Salt water had proved an astringent for the abrasions of his face though the superficial wounds gave him a grim and ghastly appearance.

As they neared the reef two men in each canoe paddled while the others took up the rifles and the two partners prepared their dynamite grenades in case Steiner might come to close quarters. But Steiner had seen that he was beaten. To be left behind was now his great fear, or that of his men. The savages, recovering from their shock, would take vengeance. Before they got within true hailing-distance his followers were shouting and waving their hands to announce their surrender.

“Hear that?” called Hooper from his canoe across to Manning in the other. “Kamerad! Wouldn’t wonder if they got that out of the papers!”

Manning nodded back. He saw Steiner, still sullen, but overborne by his men. He saw two of the guards protesting and then silenced.

White and Smith? The two names took on sudden illumination. Weiss and Schmidt, undoubtedly. Ryder too sounded Germanic.

As for Holabird, he had been won over by the talk of Edwards, the thought of gain. It was exceedingly plain that these four men had been shipped by the too slick Edwards for a previously understood purpose.

The attempt to cozen the sailors to mutiny having failed, Edwards, with his tricks of magic, his knowledge of dialects, had seen his chance to win over Tiburi, to effect a junction with Steiner; a partnership to be variously apportioned its rewards. And they had accorded him full facility. He had taken off provisions to the terrace, his four men were in daily contact with Steiner, Edwards had had ample opportunities to cement the alliance with Tiburi. And he had overcome Tiburi’s fear of the Hims. How, was not yet plain.

Edwards had faked his ankle to remain on board and put the engine out of commission. It was not cowardice that kept him there. Perhaps—Manning remembered the wireless incident—perhaps the chapter was not yet quite closed.

HOOPER steered straight for the schooner and Manning followed. All firing had ceased from the whale-boats. The men in them hung on their oars, looking anxiously toward the Mary L., debating their fate, dreading to be left behind.

Andersen and Thompson met them at the gangway. Manning’s assistants carried the wounded men below. They had been temporarily patched up and none of them appeared seriously wounded beyond ultimate recovery.

“We held them off, sir,” said Andersen. “One or two flesh-wounds, but we potted some of them. And now they’ve quit. Afraid you were blown up till we made you out in the canoes. Goin’ to leave them here where they belong, on No Man’s Island?”

He jerked a thumb toward the two boats.

“No,” said Hooper. “They’ll come along. We need the boats, for one thing. Were you trying to stand by, Andersen, or is the engine out of commission?”

“That sly devil, Edwards, did something to it,” put in Thompson. “Ling’s overhauling it now to find out the trouble. And Edwards was monkeying with the wireless.”

“I thought so,” said Manning.

Hooper glanced at his partner with raised eyebrows that bore a mute apology.

“Fong had the right dope, Manning,” he said. Then to Thompson, “Where is he?”

“In his bunk. Fong sliced him up pretty badly and now he’s trying to keep him alive till you talk with him.”

“I’ll go see him,” said Hooper. “Coming, Manning? Andersen, let those chaps in the boats stew for a while. If they start to show fight, settle it. They won’t run away, I fancy. And the natives won’t bother us any more. Soon as Ling gets the engine fixed, let me know. Want to come along, Thompson?”

They found Edwards in his bunk. It was plain to see that he was dying. His eyes were closed and his-face waxen. Fong sat beside him, sphinx-like. Hooper felt the faint pulse.

“Almost gone,” he said. “What happened, Fong?”

“After you go,” said Fong, “Ling, he find him at wi’less. Lang think that funny. Edwa’d he speak his foot plenty betteh. Ling speak why fo’ he touch wi’less? Edwa’d say that none of Ling business. He speak maybe we want use wi’less. Ling, he come to my galley.

“Bimeby native come in canoe, two boat come with Steineh. Big fight look like begin. Andersen, he speak staht engine. Engine no good. I sabby plenty that Edwa’d he fixee. On deck, plenty gun go off. Same from boat. I find Edwa’d sneakee along in cabin. He open po’t, makee signal. He try shoot me. This time he not so —— slick. He had gun, I have knife. All right, gun no good. Knife plenty good. So!”

He drew his forefinger across his abdomen with an eloquent gesture.

“Pretty soon he die,” he said.

“Fong, go and get my medicine-chest,” said Hooper. “I’ll try and bring him back,” he went on to Manning and Thompson when the Chinaman had gone. “We’ve got to get to the bottom of this.”

He gave Edwards a hypodermic and presently the lax figure stirred wearily and the eyes opened. Manning gave the steward a sip of gin. Luster came into the dull eyes.

“You’ve done your worst, Edwards,” said Hooper, “and you’ve lost out. You’re going yourself. I don’t want to torture you. I can’t save you. Do you want to carry this thing on with you—to wherever you are going—or do you want to try and square things a bit?”

The dying man lay motionless except for the slight movement of his eyes.

“I’ll tell you some things, while I last,” he said finally. His voice was low, his speech jerky but intelligent and he was evidently striving to conserve his strength.

Nor could there be doubt of his final earnestness or the truth of what he said.

“Butler. Had me—where he wanted me. Knew you had something, perhaps guano, perhaps pearls. Got me to ship with four lunas—all work for Butler. He got them jobs as lunas That schooner Seamew—not Huddersleigh’s. Belongs to Butler. Has wireless. Butler aboard her. Soon as you started engine and set straight course, I sent message. She followed. Now two hundred miles away I sent another message—today, telling what happened. I thought we’d win for sure.”

He paused for a while and they thought he had passed but he rallied again.

“I think—at first—when find out what you were after—get crew to join with my four men—take possession, send message for Sewmew to come. Crew did not join. You were too strong. I talk with Steiner and Tiburi. Tiburi to have everything in traderoom, many things from this ship. Steiner and men to take Mary L. for their share. Butler to take me and my men along—with pearls. Big money for us—pearls for Butler—and he destroy evidence against me he holds.”

“And us, if we were not killed? What of us?”

“Butler would say.”

“How did you manage to make Tiburi not afraid of the Hims?” asked Manning.

Edwards’ eyelids were, fluttering; he was at the last ebb of life. He opened his eyes again and there was the ghost of a twinkle in them as they bent to hear the whisper that was his last breath.

“Showed—him diving-suit—empty—in your cabin,” he said.

THE Mary L., her engine working again, stood north and west to meet the summoned Seamew. Edwards had not tried permanently to destroy the engine, by agreement doubtless with Steiner. He had broken ignition wires in the insulation which, once located, were easily replaced.

Behind the schooner towed the two whale-boats with Steiner and his followers. The dead had been buried at sea. Among them were Holabird and White—or Weiss—shot from the deck of the Mary L. Edwards went with them to their deep-sea graves.

At nightfall the prisoners were brought aboard and put in the forecastle, with the hatch secured. Dawn should show them the Seamew with Butler aboard, coming up for his triumph. That he had not calculated upon such a fighting termination of the trip was no excuse for his planning of it, yet it was doubtful if he could be found responsible. He was wealthy and powerful. He could easily disclaim any knowledge of the German prisoners; he could throw the blame upon Edwards and discredit what Ryder and Smith, who had received their orders direct from Edwards, might testify.

Edwards’ confession was only oral. It would not hold for much in any court. Clever lawyers could bar its admission without trouble.

But Hooper and Manning, talking these things over, were not disposed to let the matter end in such fashion. To get Butler aboard the Mary L. was the big problem. He would expect communication by wireless and none of them could operate. Edwards might have agreed upon some signal which he had failed to communicate on his death-bed. Butler would probably scrutinize closely the decks of the Mary L. when the two vessels got close, certain as he might be from Edwards’ message when the fight was on that everything had gone well for his side. Yet he would be careful.

In mid-morning they sighted the Seamew, coming up under power. The combined speed of the two vessels swiftly reduced the distance. And then Hooper displayed a signal. He had decided to take the chance that Edwards had not sent a detailed message and had not mentioned the fact that the crew had failed to join the conspiracy. At the time of sending the combined attack appeared invincible. Hooper, Manning and the sailors were cooped up on the terrace, the canoes were closing in. And Edwards had counted his chickens before the shells were fairly cracked. But Butler would be cautious.

Only three sailors showed on deck of the Mary L. One at the wheel. Her ensign was at half-mast; the signal-halyards showed this fluttering appeal—

“Send medical assistance.”

“I figure there’s no doctor aboard the Seamew,” said Hooper. “Butler will think there are badly wounded aboard. He will imagine Edwards himself hurt. And it may bring him off. It may not. If he doesn’t bite, we’ll make for Honolulu and wait his return.”

The Seamew came up, slowed down within speaking-distance. An officer appeared with a megaphone.

“What’s the trouble?” he shouted. A sailor, coached for the occasion by Hooper, who, with Thompson and Manning, stood under the hood of the companionway unseen, answered:

“Seamew ahoy! Send some one to dress wounds.”

Another figure appeared beside the first on the after deck of the Seamew. He did not turn his full face toward the Mary L. but they recognized Butler, in blue serge with the peak of his cap well down. The two consulted.

“Who’s in charge?” called the officer.

“Mr. Edwards, sir. He was badly hurt. Wants to see Mr. Butler. Think he’s dying.

There was another consulation and then, with the Mary L.’s way stopped, the two schooners drifting slowly closer, a boat put out from the Seamew and the trio on the companion ladder rejoiced.

Manning and Hooper received the astounded Butler in the after cabin, emerging from the staterooms after he was seated. The interview was short and to the point.

“I know nothing of all this,” declared Butler. “Edwards had no instructions from me. I was going to Fanning’s Island on my own business. That can be shown. I picked up a wireless message that interested me. Cruising farther south, I got another. It was evidently a part of some infernal conspiracy hatched up by you men to attempt to implicate me. You tried to get me interested in some wild scheme in Honolulu, Hooper, if you are Hooper! I didn’t fall for it and you cooked this up. Edwards was doubtless in it.”

The man’s cool effrontery was matchless. But Hooper only laughed.

“We fancied you’d deny it all, Mr. Butler. But we could put a pretty good case together, I think. Let’s talk business.”

Butler considered a moment with frowning brows.

“What is your proposition?” he asked.

“We’ve talked it over, Mr. Manning and myself. I want to make you a sleeping partner in this enterprise of ours, which was to recover the pearls of of my own schooner. We’ve got the pearls—got them all. But the schooner is a loss. And the expenses were heavy.”

“Where are your pearls?”

“As a sleeping partner, you will not awaken sufficiently to partake of the profits,” said Hooper smoothly. “We may show them to you. But we feel that you should reimburse us for the costs of this voyage and for the loss of the schooner.”

“You are a lot of —— pirates!” burst out Butler. “I’ll see you hanged first.”

“As you like,” said Hooper. “But, if you will give us a check for ten thousand dollars, release the bonds against the Mary L. and turn over to Mr. Manning and myself the Seamew as a testimonial of your esteem, we will consider the incident closed. We have no especial desire to be tied up in Honolulu, as you might be able to do. We are not pirates or we might maroon you. Edwards has paid the penalty. As things turned out he went farther than you intended. But—we are prepared to spend half of what we have recovered in pinning this thing to you—and we think we can do it. We have witnesses and a good deal of evidence when it is summed up. It is up to you. You may have to pay Ryder and Smith to hold their tongues. No one of us is seriously injured or we would not compound.”

There was silence in the cabin for several minutes.

“You’ll supplement that check with a note promising not to have it estopped,” said Hooper. “I am beginning to doubt whether the amount is large enough, after all. And include a bill of sale tor the Seamew.

“It’s plain blackmail,” said Butler, “but I’ll submit to it.”

“Thought you would,” answered Hooper. “Fong, bring some refreshments.”

“Piracy,” said Butler once more, later, when the deal had been completed in the cabin of the Seamew.

“Finance,” said Manning. “Never could see much difference between the two myself.”

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