all there is. The bush tribes
behind have most probably got the other two hundred thousand. Return
in three months, and the salt-water crowd will have traded back for it;
also they will be out of tobacco by that time."

"It would be a sin to buy pennies," Albright grinned. "It goes against
the thrifty grain of my trader's soul."

"There's a whiff of land-breeze stirring," Grief said, looking at
Pankburn. "What do you say?"

Pankburn nodded.

"Very well." Grief measured the faintness and irregularity of the wind
against his cheek.

"Mr. Carlsen, heave short, and get off the gaskets. And stand by with
the whaleboats to tow. This breeze is not dependable."

He picked up a part case of tobacco, containing six or seven hundred
sticks, put it in One-Eye's hands, and helped that bewildered savage
over the rail. As the foresail went up the mast, a wail of consternation
arose from the canoes lying along the dead-line. And as the anchor
broke out and the _Kittiwake's_ head paid off in the light breeze, old
One-Eye, daring the rifles levelled on him, paddled alongside and
made frantic signs of his tribe's willingness to trade pennies for ten
sticks.

"Boy!--a drinking nut," Pankburn called.

"It's Sydney Heads for you," Grief said. "And then what?"

"I'm coming back with you for that two hundred thousand," Pankburn
answered. "In the meantime I'm going to build an island schooner. Also,
I'm going to call those guardians of mine before the court to show cause
why my father's money should not be turned over to me. Show cause? I'll
show them cause why it should."

He swelled his biceps proudly under the thin sleeve, reached for the two
black stewards, and put them above his head like a pair of dumbbells.

"Come on! Swing out on that fore-boom-tackle!" Carlsen shouted from aft,
where the mainsail was being winged out.

Pankburn dropped the stewards and raced for it, beating a Rapa sailor by
two jumps to the hauling part.

Chapter Three--THE DEVILS OF FUATINO

I

Of his many schooners, ketches and cutters that nosed about among the
coral isles of the South Seas, David Grief loved most the _Rattler_--a
yacht-like schooner of ninety tons with so swift a pair of heels that
she had made herself famous, in the old days, opium-smuggling from San
Diego to Puget Sound, raiding the seal-rookeries of Bering Sea, and
running arms in the Far East. A stench and an abomination to government
officials, she had been the