Exile-and Glory Read Online Free PDF

of the waves. They'd come in at the same altitude.
    The boat wallowed heavily in the rising seas. Prince Toki stood in the stern and spoke quietly to the sea people. Except for a half dozen technicians and company police, Adams, King, and Martinez were the only westerners. Adams hadn't objected to the prince coming himself; he understood why. It would not have been in a warrior aristocrat's character to send men on something like this and not go himself, even if the Tongan royal families hadn't led men in battle for a hundred years . . . .
    The prince's teeth flashed white as Toki spoke carefully in musical tones, his voice carrying easily over rising wind and crashing waves. When he sat again, they cheered.
    "What did you tell them?" Adams asked, but the prince had gone forward to see to the sails. The outrigger gathered way under sail, flashing across steadily rising seas. When they left the lee of the island, breakers crashed around them, but no water came aboard. Adams estimated their speed at twenty knots.
    Toki came back finally after inspecting sails and rigging. "I told them of their ancestors and mine," he said. "I was named for one, Toki Ukamea means 'iron axe.' We once sailed these waters in revenge against raiders. I could have told them in English but—it sounded better in Tongan!" There was amusement in the clipped accents. "If my professors at Magdalene College should see me now!"
    The boat was pitching wildly, and the Americans found it hard to pay attention to anything. The storm rose, wind howling until the Tongans reefed, reefed again until the sail was a tiny patch in the night, but the boat tore on at high speed, leaving a great creamy wake behind, actually outrunning the seas, carried along by the screaming wind.
    "Quite a blow," Michael King said. His voice was strained, artificially calm.
    "Not really," Toki answered. "You will know it when the storm really hits. There will be rain then. I warned you . . . ."
    "Yeah." Adams grimly held the bulwarks. He looked behind, saw an enormous wave building up astern, flinched, but they ran away from it so that it broke harmlessly aft of them. Another monster sea came up, with the same result, but it was unnerving to watch them. He tried to close his eyes, but his stomach heaved and he quickly opened them again, grimly took a deep breath, and held it.
    "At night, with this storm, there shouldn't be anyone very alert," Adams told the prince. "I hope."
    Toki shrugged. "Fijians might, but I do not believe their Asian masters will let them out in boats." Mike King looked up in surprise, and Prince Toki grimaced. "Malays, Indians, Chinese—they outnumbered the Fijians as far back as the late fifties. We would have gone the same way if we ever let the Europeans control us. The Indians came to Fiji as workers, so did the Chinese. Soon there was no room for the sea people. Our King George Tupuo I kept Tonga for the Tongans. A wise policy, I think."
    Adams looked at the enigmatic face and wondered if there were a message addressed to him. His wits weren't sharp, not in this wild sea and screaming wind.
    Prince Toki read the expression and smiled thinly. "No, I don't mean your Company, Mr. Adams. I was worried at first, but you have kept your agreement, brought in only enough westerners to run the Station, kept them on short-term contracts. If you had encouraged your people to settle permanently . . . but do you know why I agreed to help you tonight?"
    Adams shook his head warily.
    "The whales. The sea people have always respected the whales, Mr. Adams. It will be a sad world for us when they're gone. But there's nothing we can do to keep the powers from killing them all off. Your Company is at least trying."
    "Be damned," Adams muttered to himself. Had Mr. Lewis seen that coming, or did he really just want to save the beasts for sentimental reasons? No matter, the books balanced nicely now.
    "Understand me," the prince was saying. "We can help each other, and