"Oh—er—I don't know; maybe you don't care so much for the heathen. Brotherly love and kindness—fine theory, all right, but we're not just ready to put it in practice—willing to wait, you know, until it comes our way—perhaps a bit afraid——"
"You are very much mistaken, sir," she broke in. "You will find out your error, too, I think, before we get through. I am firmly convinced that your own actions with that poor heathen are as much at fault as his, and that if you had not treated him so roughly he would never have done what he did."
I grinned. I couldn't help it. Slade was winking at me from the door of the forward house. Oh, well, here was a good woman gone wrong in her theories, and I would not be insolent enough to disagree with her. I let it go at that. I was willing to wait until she had finished the voyage—for Slade's sake. He was a sly dog, that Slade.
We found about two thousand dollars of the money taken among the men captured. The rest was a total loss, and Gantline bemoaned his fate, as it fell upon him to a certain extent.
We cleared, leaving the big Chinaman to stand trial with two others as accessories, and the police absolved me absolutely from all blame in the matter.
PART II
"No loafing around the ship," I called to the little yellow chap who was sitting near the spring line which held the schooner Tanner to the wharf at Honolulu. The man paid not the slightest attention to me.
"Hey, there, sonny! Move out! Beat it; make a getaway, you savvy?" I bawled in a louder tone.
Then he arose, and instead of a young fellow I was amazed to find him at least ten years older than myself—and I had been a ship's officer some years. He walked slowly to the vessel's side, and gazed up at me where I stood near the break of the poop, holding to a backstay.
She was a modern, short-poop schooner. The sallow little man was not a Chinaman, nor of Kanaka breed, but a full-blooded Japanese. He was stout, strong, yellow of skin, and his black hair was too long for his country's custom, sticking out from under the rim of a brown derby that had seen its best days. His eyes were slitlike, keen little eyes, but there was nothing repulsive in them. They attracted me. For one thing, he had an open frankness, an honest and fearless look, and his face was sad.