He turned to Lieutenant Morrison, standing expectantly waiting to hear what would be the next move. “You may secure the boats for the night,” he said. CHAPTER VII THE KAPUAN FIRM Carl Klinger had been sitting in his office at the Kapuan firm’s store when a loud knocking aroused him from his reveries. He rose quickly to open the door. “What do you want?” he inquired roughly in Kapuan as he threw open the door. A native, much out of breath from running, confronted him. Klinger saw it was one of the pilot’s boat-crew from the pilot station on Matautu Point at the entrance to the harbor. “The ‘Talofa’ coming in through the entrance,” the man replied. “Captain Svenson send me to tell you quick.” “How do you know it’s the ‘Talofa’?” Klinger asked incredulously. He could not believe that Captain Scott would be so foolhardy as to enter Ukula harbor with his cargo. Twenty Solomon Island natives to work on the plantations, actually kidnapped from their homes, beside several thousand Snyder rifles with millions of rounds of ammunition constituted the greatest part of the “Talofa’s” cargo. Had “Bully” Scott gone mad? “No other but Captain Scott could find the entrance to the harbor on a night like this,” the man replied positively. Klinger noted the utter blackness of the night. He was enough of a sailorman himself to understand the dangers attending the navigation of a vessel so large as the “Talofa.” Even the pilots preferred to wait until daylight before bringing a vessel through the treacherous coral reefs. “Wait,” he ordered. Then returning to his desk he wrote several pages of a letter, sealed and addressed it, then gave it to the native messenger. “Take this to the Tivoli Hotel,” he instructed. “Find Count Rosen and give it into no other hands.” From the porch of the store he gazed upon the harbor, but the darkness shrouded the vessel for which his anxious eyes were searching. His mind was sorely troubled. “Bully” Scott was not a character to pin one’s faith to. That hardened pirate went where either his fancy led him or where the greatest amount of coin awaited him. The guns had already been paid for with Klinger’s money; only the freight charges were due. The Solomon Islanders were Scott’s own venture. The one balanced the other. If he should betray the Kapuan firm by permitting the war-ships to confiscate them as contraband, then the presence of the blacks would be known and must convict the pirate in any court of the South Seas. Nationality could not protect slave trading, although it might the importation of arms. The “Talofa” was sailing illegally under Herzovinian protection. Count Rosen, while in Fiji, had arranged for that with Scott. A word from Klinger would cause Scott to be arrested straightway and taken before the chief justice. The penalty for slave trading was at least ten years in a penal colony.