“Call me silly and a rebel all you please,” she added turning upon her sister, who at once denied even the thought of any such accusation, “but I am and always will be suspicious of a Herzovinian in Kapua. Anywhere else he may be honest and mean what he says, but here, no!” She shook her head vigorously. While the two midshipmen with Commander Tazewell were returning in the captain’s gig to the “Sitka,” Phil spoke of the sailing vessel they had seen from Alice’s “lookout.” “Probably it isn’t Captain Scott’s ‘Talofa,’” he added deprecatingly. “It was too far away to see anything but the tops of her sails.” Commander Tazewell listened earnestly. “‘Bully’ Scott is usually on hand where there is a chance for his nefarious trade in guns,” he replied. “Miss Alice Lee may have no real grounds for her belief that it is the ‘Talofa,’ but that young girl is more than usually clever for one of her age, and her father tells me she is worshiped by the native women, to whom she is a veritable administering angel. Tuamana’s daughter, Avao, is her particular friend. You know,” he added, “in Kapua, the women are the tale bearers; no bit of interesting news escapes them.” CHAPTER IV CAPTAIN “BULLY” SCOTT AND HIS MATE Captain “Bully” Scott sat comfortably on the combing of the after deck house and gazed toward the high mountain ranges of the islands of Kapua. The land had been in sight all day, but the fitful breeze was hardly enough to hold the “Talofa’s” great expanse of canvas out taut against the sheets. Yet even the light breeze drove the schooner faster than the captain wished to travel. “Bring her up another point,” he directed, in a well modulated, almost cultivated voice. The helmsman, a Fiji Islander, a strapping bronze skinned native, naked except for the loin cloth of tapa, eased down his helm until the great sails flapped idly. “Mr. Stump,” the captain called down the hatch. A middle-sized, wizened man stuck his head up above the deck in answer. “Mr. Stump, I’ll thank you to invite our passengers down to their staterooms and put the hatch cover on and lock it,” Captain Scott said politely. “It’ll be dark in another half hour, and then we’ll ‘bear up’ and run in to close with the land.” Benjamin Stump nodded his head in reply and turned on his heel to go forward. This was a daily occurrence. Captain Scott had learned to secure his human cargo at night. A mutiny that came near ending fatally to him had taught him this lesson. “Oh, Stump!” Captain Scott raised his voice to be heard above the lapping of the water and the noise of shaking canvas. “I hope our disagreement at Suva[11] is all forgotten by now. You can’t afford to fall out with me, Stump,” he added menacingly after the man had returned and lolled against the shrouds of the main rigging. “There’s that little affair at the Ellice Islands and the deal in Tahiti; and besides, Stump, you know that black boy on our last manifest didn’t really fall overboard.”