"Afraid?" asked Bobby, teasingly, flashing a smile over her shoulder.
"I don"t think," said Percival, and, immediately was chagrined at having indulged in such a vulgar expression.
"I love it!" cried Bobby. "It"s more fun than a bucking bronco. Is this our wave? All right! Let her go!"
The Kanaka in the prow gave the signal, and the boat backed into the monster wave just as it was about to break. Simultaneously the paddles were plunged into the water, and a vigorous pull was made for the sh.o.r.e.
There was a merry whiz of rushing waters, a breathless suspension in midair, then a gigantic upheaval as the boat plunged over the crest of the wave and shot like an arrow two miles in two minutes to the beach.
Percival, as has been stated, rather prided himself on having exhausted life"s thrills. When one has made a reputation for luging at Caux and has raced on skis with the professionals at St. Moritz, not to boast of a daring flight in a French aeroplane, one is apt to be rather superior to minor sports. But the present thrilling diversion, shared with a girl as irresistibly pretty and as utterly abandoned to the joy of the moment as Bobby Boynton, proved quite the most exhilarating pastime in which he had ever indulged.
Again and again the boat went out, and again and again Mrs. Weston beckoned frantically and imperatively from the pier. The last time she looked at her watch, she seemed to give up the hope of getting the delinquents back to sh.o.r.e. Gathering up scarfs and parasols, she and Elise hurried back to the steamer.
For the two young people in the boat the steamer had ceased to exist.
Everything had ceased to exist except a narrow sh.e.l.l of wood, three brown-backed natives, and one towering wave after another that shot them through delicious realms of s.p.a.ce and left them, with every nerve a-tingle, laughing into each other"s eyes.
"Ripping, isn"t it?" cried Percival on the third return. "Shall we have one more go?"
"I expect we ought to be going," said Bobby, shaking the salt spray out of her hair. "I don"t see anything of Mrs. Weston and Elise."
"I don"t want to see anything of them," cried Percival, recklessly.
"Right ho! once more!"
She was nothing loath, and they went blithely forth to meet the next big wave.
"Mrs. Weston _has_ gone!" said Bobby when they again touched sh.o.r.e.
"Wouldn"t it be a lark if we were left?"
No bullet ever brought a soaring bird to ground more promptly than this remark brought the Honorable Percival to his senses.
"Gad!" he cried, "but it"s impossible! My luggage is all on board!"
He scrambled frantically out of the boat and rushed to his bath-house.
The prospect of being stranded, on even a fairy island, with a dangerously beguiling maiden of the middle cla.s.s was even more appalling than being divorced from his luggage. He struggled frantically into his clothes, losing three precious minutes over a broken shoe-lace. When he came out he found Bobby, very cool and collected, sipping an iced drink at the pavilion. Not waiting for her to finish, he rushed her into the waiting motor and implored the chauffeur to get them to the dock with all possible speed.
He was aghast at his own folly. It was incredible that he should have allowed himself to drift into such an awkward situation. They might not be missed until after the steamer sailed, in which case it was quite possible that the erratic captain would refuse to put back. The man might even make capital of the incident and claim that his daughter was compromised. What if he should demand satisfaction? What satisfaction would be due in the circ.u.mstances? Percival felt the hot blood rush to his head.
"Can"t you speed her up a bit?" he urged, his elbows on the front seat and his eyes on the small watch encased in the leather strap about his wrist.
"Yes, do!" cried Bobby, excitedly. "I love to go fast!"
"Do you realize," asked Percival, a.s.suming his sternest manner in order to impress her with the gravity of the situation, "that we stand a very good chance of being left?"
"I can"t imagine a nicer place to be left in," said Bobby, adding between bounces, "besides, you needn"t--look so cross--at me. It is all your--own fault."
The chauffeur at this point felt it inc.u.mbent upon him to avert a quarrel, so he offered the cheering a.s.surance that it was only four forty-five, and he could get most anywhere in fifteen minutes. But even as he spoke there was an ominous report, followed by the unmistakable sound of escaping air.
"Oh, I say!" cried Percival in tones of horror, "not a puncture?"
"That"s whut!" said the chauffeur, who had jammed on the brakes, and was now ruefully inspecting a back wheel.
"Can"t stop for that!" cried Percival, impatiently. "Every second counts, my man. Doesn"t matter how much we bounce so long as we get there."
"But I ain"t goin" to ruin my tire."
"What the deuce do I care about your confounded old tire? I"ll pay for it. I"ll pay you anything you ask if you get me to the dock on time."
But after b.u.mping furiously from cobblestone to cobblestone, the chauffeur rebelled and positively declined to go farther until the tire was changed.
"Then it"s up to us to catch a streetcar!" cried Bobby, "What luck! Here comes one now. They only run once a week."
"Street-car? Oh, you mean a tram. To be sure! Hadn"t thought of it.
Shall we run for it?"
Thrusting a gold piece into the hand of the chauffeur, he made a fifty-yard dash for the corner that did credit to his early training.
But the imperious signal with which he hailed the car was not heeded.
Instead, a fat conductor leaned from the rear platform and obligingly volunteered the information that he was on the wrong corner.
"Intolerable insolence!" muttered Percival to Bobby, who had just come up. "What are you laughing at?"
"At your face when the car went by. Here comes a wagon. Quick! Ask the man if he can"t take us the rest of the way."
"But we can"t ride in a--"
"Yes, we can. We can ride on a broom-stick if we have to. Hurry!"
Percival plunged obediently into the street and made his request. He was meeting with little encouragement from the driver, who evidently thought he was mentally unsound, when Bobby came to his rescue. It was only by resorting to some of those feminine tricks of persuasion which the suffragists a.s.sure us are quite immoral that she succeeded in carrying her point.
Ten minutes later the curiosity of the main thoroughfare of Honolulu was raised to fever-heat by the singular spectacle of an austere and distinguished-looking Englishman and a pretty, if somewhat disheveled, young girl dangling their feet from the end of a dilapidated wagon that was being driven at a breakneck speed toward the wharf.
[Ill.u.s.tration: At a breakneck speed towards the wharf]
For once in his life Percival was indifferent to appearances. Everything else sank into insignificance beside the one supreme necessity of catching that steamer. There would not be another sailing for the Orient for ten days. The prospect of ten days in this lotus-land alone with a perilously pretty girl who had evidently taken an enormous fancy to him filled him with alarm. What possible explanation could he offer to Sister Cordelia, that august representative of the family waiting in Hong-Kong to minister to his broken and bleeding heart?
A violent lurch of the wagon caused him to grasp Bobby"s arm to steady her, and as he did so she got a glimpse of his rueful countenance.
"Cheer up!" she cried. "There"s no use looking like that even if we _are_ left."
"Like what?"
"Like a trout on a hook."
He shot a glance at her. Was it possible that she had divined his state of mind? Woman"s intuition was a thing of which he stood in deadly awe.
But they were arriving at the dock, and there was no time to indulge in subtleties. He sprang from the wagon before it came to a halt.
"The _Saluria!_" he demanded wildly of a man in uniform. "Has she sailed?"
"The _Saluria?_" repeated the man with maddening deliberation.