“We were getting worried about you,” he called, waving a greeting. “You see we’ve acted upon the information you secured.”
Phil stopped and told the Englishmen briefly what they had seen, and then continued toward the landing.
Alice Lee spied the horsemen and ran out joyfully to meet them.
“I began to be frightened,” she owned. “I am deathly afraid of a Kapuan when he blackens his face.”
Phil could now smile easily, but he acknowledged that the sensation of being surrounded by a swarm of excited warriors, bent upon war, had not been a pleasant one.
The midshipmen were brought into the consulate, while O’Neil continued to the landing. He had caught sight of the American sailors marching up the road, and as he was in the landing detail, he feared some one might replace him unless he returned to claim his rights.
Commander Tazewell and the consul were on the porch, and the consul’s daughters, looking slightly pale over the exciting news brought by the steam launch, which had arrived an hour earlier, led the newcomers forward to tell their story.
“The chief justice gave his decision a very short time after you left town,” Alice told them breathlessly. “The news was taken to Kataafa by a fast canoe. I watched it from my ‘lookout’ until it went inside the reef off Vaileli.”
“Kataafa and Klinger must have known it when we saw them, then,” Phil said to Sydney. “Klinger thought we knew it, too; that’s why he gave us the message.”
“What was it?” Alice asked eagerly, overhearing Phil’s aside.