Klinger was a man who had all his life governed with the overseer’s whip. During his fifteen years in the South Seas his strong will had never been seriously thwarted. What he wanted he took, using force if necessary. He was a big man, somewhat inclined to stoutness, but the outdoor life he had lived, in the saddle for days at a time, riding over the plantations, had given a hardness to his added flesh. The person confronting him, who declined to give back his own property, was a mere youth. In his white flannels he sized up of much slighter build if a trifle taller than the angry manager. Personal violence was far removed from Phil’s thoughts. Klinger, with a snarl of rage, was upon the midshipman before he could evade the rush. One of the manager’s great hands reached for the lad’s throat, while his other arm endeavored to draw in and crush the slight boy against his massive chest. Sydney and Alice could only cry out in their surprise and alarm. The next moment Klinger appeared to plunge head first into the roadway beyond, as if sprung from a catapult. The manager lay unconscious, a huddled heap of brawn and muscle, while Phil, very pale and trembling violently in apprehension, gazed upon his stricken foe. “Jujitsu,” Sydney exclaimed admiringly, yet in alarm, as he surveyed the inert form of Klinger in the roadway. CHAPTER XIV COUNT ROSEN TAKES CHARGE The signal victory won by Kataafa and his warriors and the acknowledgment from the Powers increased many-fold his trust in the two papalangi, who had so ably advised him and supplied the necessary weapons for success. As the old chief surveyed the work of destruction, however, his heart sank within him. The fear of the war-ships and their thunderbolts, and a vivid recollection of the last war against the papalangi spurred him to consult that man of few words, Count Rosen, whom Klinger had said was vested with high powers from that great nation beyond the seas, more powerful than both England and America. The English and Americans, he knew, would soon be crying aloud for retribution. Their property had been destroyed by his warriors. The life of the chief justice, an American, had even been endangered, and his valuable house unlawfully burned. To Kataafa, the papalangi were terrible people. Those in Kapua he did not fear; he had seen that they could be killed and beheaded as easily as men of his own race; but the intangible nations that protected them, sending war-ships “bursting through the clouds,” as the Kapuans express the slow approach of a ship coming up over the sea horizon--of these Kataafa stood in mortal fear. As the blood lust subsided among his warriors, already gossip bared its disquieting head. Some said many war-ships of England and America would come and destroy, as if by a volcano, their beautiful islands.