Rajah of Hell Island/Chapter 7

HE Penang’s boat was dancing merrily to the south, Stone at the tiller. Beside him was Agnes Bretton, freshly wakened from her nap on the pillows, and now engaged in pinning up her hair against the breeze.

Just abaft the mast sat Sultan Lumpur, the greenish hue that mottled his brown face making him look very much like the great jade Hanuman that sits in the Meilmun shrine. He had never been abroad in an open ship’s boat before, and felt extremely uncomfortable.

Off to the right was the line of coast mountains, purple as royal amethyst under the setting sun that was lowering itself behind their crests. The rest was wind and sea—sea that slavered blood-scarlet under the sunset skies, the white-tipped waves combing up at the flying boat like the water-fingers of an Hiroshige print.

Stone looked into the girl eyes and laughed.

“Going home! Feeling better, eh? This wind is whipping color into your cheeks, and no mistake! Where ’ll I drop you—New York, Boston, Chicago, Frisco—”

“Nowhere at all!” cried the girl gaily. “This is wonderful, wonderful! Oh, that lagoon seems like an evil dream—”

“Look here!” Stone’s left hand crept over the tiller and caught hers, compelling her eyes to lift to his. “Look here, Agnes! I don’t know anything about you—except you; and that’s enough. The past two days have been like a thousand years to me, girl—but tell me one thing, please. Is—is there any one waiting for you at home, or out here?”

“Any one waiting?” She gazed into his eyes for a moment, uncomprehending; then her eyes widened suddenly. “Oh! You mean like that—no, no!” In her gray eyes was alarm, yet she did not try to free herself from Stone’s grip.

“Then I can tell you that I want you—that I love you!” he said almost fiercely. “Will you marry me? After we get out of all this, after we get back to civilization and the prosaic ways of our own kind—after all this, will you marry me? God knows I love you with all my heart, little woman! I believe I’ve loved you from that first moment I stepped into your cabin on the Penang and looked into your eyes! Can you give up the missionary work and all that—can you go home with me, Dick Stone? Or can’t you?”

She gazed into his eyes, paling. She seemed unable to speak. Then suddenly her eyes flitted forward, and color surged again into her cheeks.

“Not—not with him—there!” She nodded toward the drooping figure of Sultan Lumpur. “If he were out of sight—it would be so different—”

“Oh—him!” In contempt Stone swung his voice forward. “You—Sultan! Crawl back here. I want to speak with you. Move lively, you swine! Crawl!”

Lumpur crawled, in terrible fright. Stone reached forward a moment later and with one hand perked the man partially upright on the thwart.

“Now listen well, Sultan Lumpur! We’ll be in Kuala Trengore before dawn to-morrow—with the British resident, savvy? Your cursed barge will call for you there to-morrow, and the best thing you can do is to wait for it and go away from there in a confounded hurry, keeping your mouth shut. Understand? You’d better! Once let the story get out about how Miss Bretton came at your urging, and what happened betwixt you and her—and the British would put a new Sultan at Kuala Gajah. Eh? You’re darned right they would!

“Well, no British are handling this. You keep your mouth shut and you’ll get out scot free. This time, my bucko, you’ve tried to dance a jig with the American eagle, haven’t you?” Stone shook the little man savagely. “Huh! Well, you’ve learned something about Americans that ’ll hold you for some while, I guess. You’d better be blamed grateful that I, the Raja of Hell Island, don’t sling you overboard and let you swim to perdition. I ought to do it, by the Lord Harry!”

Sultan Lumpur looked at the cresting waves and uttered a prayer to Allah.

“Now get for’ard and stay there—plumb up in the bow!” commanded Stone, releasing him. “When I get ready I’ll pass you up some biscuit and water. Stay up there, and stay shut up, and if you dare make any complaint when we get to Kuala Trengore I’ll take the hide off your measly body and make it into a snare-drum. Hike!”

Sultan Lumpur limply made his way forward of the mast. Once in the bows, he collapsed, and stayed collapsed. His ancestors had been pirates, but the active motion of a small boat in a brisk sea will cause even piratical blood to become squeamish. Sultan Lumpur was decidedly squeamish—very seasick indeed, to put it bluntly. He was also very sick of mind, because he knew that this infidel spoke the truth; there would be a new Sultan in Kuala Gajah if the British heard the story of Miss Bretton.

“Now,” said Stone briefly, “he’s out of sight.”

“You’re exceedingly ferocious—sometimes!” observed Miss Bretton. “Wouldn’t you hate to have a wife who would be so terribly afraid of you all the time—as I am?”

The words drove fear into Stone’s heart.

“No,” he responded thickly. “No. That was the Raja of Hell Island speaking to the Sultan. The raja’s dead, Miss Bretton—Dick Stone isn’t that sort at all, not with—with you—”

He turned then and looked into her laughing, flushed face, and finally understood.

Then the boat almost jibed, and rushed on into the tropic night with the happiness of souls at her tiller; and with Kama, the god of love, watching over her as she fled into the south.

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