The Bluffton news. [volume] (Bluffton, Ohio) 1875-current, 1941-12-18

Lying full length on deck chair,
Karen drank a pre-lunch Martini,
and watched the stunning blue and
white of the sea stream past the
low foredeck of Richard Wayne's
schooner. Here, out upon the slowly
breathing Pacific, John Colt HIM
self seemed as far away as San
Francisco had seemed from the Ia
mai of the Royal Hawaiian.
At first, sheering away from Bar
ber's Point, Karen had experienced
sharp sinking of spirits. She was
unable to believe that Dick had not
found out who she was. She had
fingered with her elbows on the rail
watching the opalescent, flame
bright bands of green along the
shoreline recede behind surf rapidly
fiattening into a white line, thin and
steady.
''It always picks me up to get off
shore, onto black water" Dick said.
Karen shivered family. "It's a
little awful to think how deep it
is" she said.
But during the morning hours on
the sea a new vitality had come
into her, as if from the long swells
of the open sea itself; and after
lunch she sought a way to push
ahead with her self-elected task of
studying Tonga Dick. The Holokai
was a two-masted schooner of ITO
feet; Dick Wayne called her trad
ing schooner, with auxiliary power,
but very definitely she was some
thing else. Her racing-schooner hull,
astonishingly loaded by her great
Diesel, had hardly any cargo space
at all, other than that needed for
her own stores. Karen put out a
tentative feeler.
81 was wondering how your
schooner came by her name"
''Holokai means 'sea-rider,'" he
told her.
''That's peculiarly poetic"
"Oh, I didn't name her myself.
She was named by the man from
whom she came to me-"
"Who?" Karen asked innocently.
Tonga Dick shrugged. "There are
all manner of boats knocking about
the Pacific. You can always get
hold of a boat"
Karen wondered if he had sensed
the probe. Very obviously, she spec
ulated, the Holokai could be no trad
er; she was either a rich mans
plaything, or some swift, hard-run-
ming thing whose purpose Karen
Waterson could not imagine. She
tried again.
you're a very young man to own
such a ship. But I suppose your
income from Alakoa-"
Tonga Dick Wayne looked at her
with expressionless eyes. "Not one
penny has come to me from Ala
koa."
"But what on earth do you do
with herr"
He met her gaze directly; but he
was unable to keep a hint of twin
kle out of his eyes. ''I use her to
get around in" he said; ''you know
Ito different places"
AILeT moment Sne IedllZeu lHdt
she had steered among uneasy cur
rents. She put aside her questions,
waiting. 1t was easy to wait,
stretched full length under the fore
deck awning.
She studied Tonga Dick Wayne,
covertly. In the bright reflected
light of the cloudless sea he still
seemed young, even younger than
she had believed the night before.
AS no other man she had known, he
combined a humorous and boyish
air of responsibility with an eff
feet of singular competence.
Watching him sidelong, it was
hard to remember that this man was
an enemy from whom she had set
out to learn certain things.
She thought now that she detected
something family ironic in his gaze.
1t was as if the darkness that was
under the blue of the sea had come
nearer behind his eyes.
ITO be continued)