Page:Oriental Stories Volume 02 Number 01 (Winter 1932).djvu/112

Rh were yet men along this coast "who would as soon cut your throat as look at you."

"There are no arms on board," he answered. "This is—or was intended to be—a pleasure cruise. My daughter is accompanying me. Why do you ask?"

"Merely to know if you have means of defense. As you haven't, I advise you to be as unobtrusive as possible and certainly to make no attempt to come ashore."

"And what would be the consequences of failing to attend to your advice?" There was a thinly veiled sneer in the question.

"I might not be able to answer for it," replied the other. "Any move on your part the least suspicious or provocative would be seized on by the people ashore as ample justification for killing every one on board and setting fire to the yacht."

"And may I ask what you are doing in such estimable company?" asked the Governor with a sneer that was no longer veiled.

"It may be well for you that I am in their company," answered Tuan Jim. "The writ of Port Koloa does not run to these waters, and if it did they are too shoal for a gunboat to endorse it."

He left the Governor and had taken a few paces toward the gangway when he turned back suddenly.

"Keep a bright light burning at night," he said, "in case it is necessary for me to come aboard secretly. It may not be discreet to hail you in the dark."

The girl, who was still standing by the rails, smiled at him as he passed. There was something very likable about that child, he decided.

"I'm not the least bit afraid of you, you know!” her expression suggested.

"Is that little girl the owner's daughter?” he whispered to the quartermaster at the gangway.

"Yes. Though no one would think" The man stopped short, with thoughts of kidnapping and ransoms flashing to his mind.

But Tuan Jim betrayed no further interest. He swung down the ladder into the dinghy and began to pull toward the brig. Above the yacht's rail a white handkerchief fluttered in the girl's hand. He shipped an oar for a second and waved back.

As the quartermaster had let slip: "No one would think" And she was the daughter of the man who had made his name an offense in the ears of decent men

Tuan Jim smiled, but the source of his smile was not a bitter humor. He was wondering how life would have turned out for that child by the yacht's rail if he had not been made a scapegoat.

"What a devilish queer crisscross of a job life is!" he muttered.

Ashore the seamen adventurers of Telua watched the return of the man they called Tuan Jim, who had come in his brig Wanderer, an outcast of white men, finished with them for ever.

night a lantern slung from low on the yacht's forestay burned brightly. There had been no need for Tuan Jim to board her again. It became more and more plain from the way men looked at him that the less interest he displayed in her the safer it would be for the people on board. He was glad that they were following his advice to keep a light burning. It was evidence that the ship of white men remained a prisoner of the shallows, and within the power of those ashore. But how it would be possible to get her away when the spring tides came round again was a problem