“You had a passenger, Captain,” said Dan. “A Mademoiselle Tamea Larrieau.”
The master of the Pelorus eyed him gravely and nodded. “You are Mr. Pritchard, I take it, sir,” he said.
“I am, Captain. Where is Tamea?”
“I wanted her to wait, Mr. Pritchard. I told her you’d be following on the first steamer, but she wouldn’t listen to me. And I one of her father’s oldest and closest friends, Mr. Pritchard. But she was what you might call broken-hearted. Nothing would do but she must get back to Riva and lose herself. The day we got in she booked a passage on the auxiliary schooner Doris Crane that was just leaving. The Crane has a passenger license and very excellent passenger accommodations, and Tamea will get as far as Tamakuku on her. Riva lies about eighty miles due west and the girl will charter a gasoline launch for the remainder of the journey.”
“I doubt if she has sufficient money, Captain.”
“She has. I charged her nothing for her passage. By the way,” he continued with a sly smile, “the Doris Crane can be reached by wireless—maybe. Why not have the operator on the Aorangi try to get your message to Tamea?”
“Tamea told you about me, Captain?” asked Dan.
The skipper nodded, smiling. “When you know her better, sir, you’ll make allowances for her native blood and her primitive way of reasoning.”
“Thank you,” Dan replied, and departed overside, to be pulled back to the Aorangi, where he filed a message to Tamea informing her that he would meet her in Riva, asking her to await him there, telling her that he loved her and begging her to wireless him in reply.
Just before the Aorangi pulled out that night the wireless operator telephoned him at his hotel to report that he had been unable to get in touch with the Doris Crane. Dan was cruelly disappointed and Sooey Wan, observing this, trotted out to the hotel bar and returned with two Gibson cocktails which he had prevailed upon the barkeeper to mix according to a time-honored formula. One of these cocktails Sooey Wan drank, in silent sympathy and understanding, while Dan partook of the other.