Page:Off For Hawaii.djvu/191

Rh "Perhaps," returned Oliver. "But I don't think it will pay us to wait for him. You must remember that, so far, Caleb Merkin is ahead in this game."

I turned to Mrs. Lola. "Where is your husband?" I demanded. But she spoke very little English, and all I could make out was that he had run away.

"He won't show himself until we have gone," said Dan. "The best thing we can do, in my opinion, is to get back to Hilo just as fast as we can."

"I must have something to eat first," I answered, and going again to the woman I motioned for her to prepare us some dinner.

At first she wanted to do nothing, but when urged by Dan and Oliver she set about the task, and prepared a very respectable meal, setting the food on a cloth spread out on the hut floor. As we fell to eating she stepped outside, motioning that she would get us something to drink. We did not know it then, nor suspect it, but she had seen her husband motioning to her from the brush and had hastened to join him.

"Why doesn't that woman come back?" demanded Dan, after fully ten minutes had passed. "Do you suppose she has gone off for good?"

"Perhaps she got scared and is hunting for her husband," answered Oliver. "But never