“What are we going to do?” Sydney asked after they had mounted their ponies and were riding slowly down the steep bush trail.
“I wish Avao had kept her secret,” Phil replied, annoyed. “Knowing this we must take our information to Commander Tazewell at once; but don’t say anything before Miss Alice. She is too thoroughly Kapuan to understand our reasons.”
Sydney readily agreed.
CHAPTER IX
O’NEIL’S OPINION
“Say, Jack,” Bill Marley exclaimed, as he and Boatswain’s Mate Jack O’Neil, both sailormen from the U. S. S. “Sitka,” ambled slowly along the beach road of Ukula, “where are we going to get off in this row everybody seems to think is going to start when Judge Lindsay tells Kataafa to climb down from his tinsel throne and take to the tall timbers?”
Jack O’Neil posed before his shipmates as an oracle upon Kapuan affairs. He had survived the wreck of an American war-ship in the great hurricane nearly ten years before, and had lived in Ukula many months until relief ships could come from the United States.
“I don’t just know, Bill,” he replied thoughtfully. “These Herzovinians always did mix things up so that it was only a guess what was going to happen next. You see,” he added confidentially, “the Kapuan firm has annexed about all the land along the coast, and in the valleys of this and other islands, and owning all this land they don’t like to ‘kowtow’[22] to a brown king with a topknot of false hair on his cranium, and a grass mat slung careless like about his waist line. Kapua for the Herzovinians is what they want, and they’ve had that idea stuck in their heads for a good many years.”
“Well,” replied Marley, “what do we care? Haven’t we got enough land on our hands? Look at all the bad lands out west there in the states which we haven’t got no use for, and then all the land in the Philippines that our little brown brother is fighting us to keep for himself. Ain’t we got enough trouble without stirring it up way down here south of the equator?”
“What do you know about politics?” O’Neil exclaimed severely. “Come on into Mary Hamilton’s shack, and we’ll get her to ‘buscar’[23] some nice green cocoanuts, and I’ll tell you a little Kapuan history that’ll put you wise to this intricate situation. I can only tell you, Bill,” O’Neil added playfully, “but I can’t give you the brains to understand.”
Marley smiled good-naturedly. “I don’t know as you’re so all fired smart,” he replied. “When I’ve wasted as many years as you have, I suppose I’ll know almost as much as you do.” Marley was nearly ten years O’Neil’s junior.