You're definitely right, I completely forgot that it won't handle anything longer than a u_short. I was using this code on a dictionary where words are not that long, but there are many words longer than 16 chars - therefore it didn't do what I intended it to do in "production"....
As for the unprettyness of the code - I ripped it out of a program, those "eureka" moments sure make me forget about style :-)