CHAPTER XV—A DISCOURSE ON MANNERS

The days passed, and Tudor seemed loath to leave the hospitality of Berande.  Everything was ready for the start, but he lingered on, spending much time in Joan’s company and thereby increasing the dislike Sheldon had taken to him.  He went swimming with her, in point of rashness exceeding her; and dynamited fish with her, diving among the hungry ground-sharks and contesting with them for possession of the stunned prey, until he earned the approval of the whole Tahitian crew.  Arahu challenged him to tear a fish from a shark’s jaws, leaving half to the shark and bringing the other half himself to the surface; and Tudor performed the feat, a flip from the sandpaper hide of the astonished shark scraping several inches of skin from his shoulder.  And Joan was delighted, while Sheldon, looking on, realized that here was the hero of her adventure-dreams coming true.  She did not care for love, but he felt that if ever she did love it would be that sort of a man—“a man who exhibited,” was his way of putting it.

He felt himself handicapped in the presence of Tudor, who had the gift of making a show of all his qualities.  Sheldon knew himself for a brave man, wherefore he made no advertisement of the fact.  He knew that just as readily as the other would he dive among ground-sharks to save a life, but in that fact he could find no sanction for the foolhardy act of diving among sharks for the half of a fish.  The difference between them was that he kept the curtain of his shop window down.  Life pulsed steadily and deep in him, and it was not his nature needlessly to agitate the surface so that the world could see the splash he was making.  And the effect of the other’s amazing exhibitions was to make him retreat more deeply within himself and wrap himself more thickly than ever in the nerveless, stoical calm of his race.

“You are so stupid the last few days,” Joan complained to him.  “One would think you were sick, or bilious, or something.  You don’t seem to have an idea in your head above black labour and cocoanuts.  What is the matter?”

Sheldon smiled and beat a further retreat within himself, listening the while to Joan and Tudor propounding the theory of the strong arm by which the white man ordered life among the lesser breeds.  As he listened Sheldon realized, as by revelation, that that was precisely what he was doing.  While they philosophized about it he was living it, placing the strong hand of his race firmly on the shoulders of the lesser breeds that laboured on Berande or menaced it from afar.  But why talk about it? he asked himself.  It was sufficient to do it and be done with it.

He said as much, dryly and quietly, and found himself involved in a discussion, with Joan and Tudor siding against him, in which a more astounding charge than ever he had dreamed of was made against the very English control and reserve of which he was secretly proud.

“The Yankees talk a lot about what they do and have done,” Tudor said, “and are looked down upon by the English as braggarts.  But the Yankee is only a child.  He does not know effectually how to brag.  He talks about it, you see.  But the Englishman goes him one better by not talking about it.  The Englishman’s proverbial lack of bragging is a subtler form of brag after all.  It is really clever, as you will agree.”

“I never thought of it before,” Joan cried.  “Of course.  An Englishman performs some terrifically heroic exploit, and is very modest and reserved—refuses to talk about it at all—and the effect is that by his silence he as much as says, ‘I do things like this every day.  It is as easy as rolling off a log.  You ought to see the really heroic things I could do if they ever came my way.  But this little thing, this little episode—really, don’t you know, I fail to see anything in it remarkable or unusual.’  As for me, if I went up in a powder explosion, or saved a hundred lives, I’d want all my friends to hear about it, and their friends as well.  I’d be prouder than Lucifer over the affair.  Confess, Mr. Sheldon, don’t you feel proud down inside when you’ve done something daring or courageous?”

Sheldon nodded.

“Then,” she pressed home the point, “isn’t disguising that pride under a mask of careless indifference equivalent to telling a lie?”

“Yes, it is,” he admitted.  “But we tell similar lies every day.  It is a matter of training, and the English are better trained, that is all.  Your countrymen will be trained as well in time.  As Mr. Tudor said, the Yankees are young.”

“Thank goodness we haven’t begun to tell such lies yet!” was Joan’s ejaculation.

“Oh, but you have,” Sheldon said quickly.  “You were telling me a lie of that order only the other day.  You remember when you were going up the lantern-halyards hand over hand?  Your face was the personification of duplicity.”

“It was no such thing.”

“Pardon me a moment,” he went on.  “Your face was as calm and peaceful as though you were reclining in a steamer-chair.  To look at your face one would have inferred that carrying the weight of your body up a rope hand over hand was a very commonplace accomplishment—as easy as rolling off a log.  And you needn’t tell me, Miss Lackland, that you didn’t make faces the first time you tried to climb a rope.  But, like any circus athlete, you trained yourself out of the face-making period.  You trained your face to hide your feelings, to hide the exhausting effort your muscles were making.  It was, to quote Mr. Tudor, a subtler exhibition of physical prowess.  And that is all our English reserve is—a mere matter of training.  Certainly we are proud inside of the things we do and have done, proud as Lucifer—yes, and prouder.  But we have grown up, and no longer talk about such things.”

“I surrender,” Joan cried.  “You are not so stupid after all.”

“Yes, you have us there,” Tudor admitted.  “But you wouldn’t have had us if you hadn’t broken your training rules.”

“How do you mean?”

“By talking about it.”

Joan clapped her hands in approval.  Tudor lighted a fresh cigarette, while Sheldon sat on, imperturbably silent.

“He got you there,” Joan challenged.  “Why don’t you crush him?”

“Really, I can’t think of anything to say,” Sheldon said.  “I know my position is sound, and that is satisfactory enough.”

“You might retort,” she suggested, “that when an adult is with kindergarten children he must descend to kindergarten idioms in order to make himself intelligible.  That was why you broke training rules.  It was the only way to make us children understand.”

“You’ve deserted in the heat of the battle, Miss Lackland, and gone over to the enemy,” Tudor said plaintively.

But she was not listening.  Instead, she was looking intently across the compound and out to sea.  They followed her gaze, and saw a green light and the loom of a vessel’s sails.

“I wonder if it’s theMarthacome back,” Tudor hazarded.

“No, the sidelight is too low,” Joan answered.  “Besides, they’ve got the sweeps out.  Don’t you hear them?  They wouldn’t be sweeping a big vessel like theMartha.”

“Besides, theMarthahas a gasoline engine—twenty-five horse-power,” Tudor added.

“Just the sort of a craft for us,” Joan said wistfully to Sheldon.  “I really must see if I can’t get a schooner with an engine.  I might get a second-hand engine put in.”

“That would mean the additional expense of an engineer’s wages,” he objected.

“But it would pay for itself by quicker passages,” she argued; “and it would be as good as insurance.  I know.  I’ve knocked about amongst reefs myself.  Besides, if you weren’t so mediaeval, I could be skipper and save more than the engineer’s wages.”

He did not reply to her thrust, and she glanced at him.  He was looking out over the water, and in the lantern light she noted the lines of his face—strong, stern, dogged, the mouth almost chaste but firmer and thinner-lipped than Tudor’s.  For the first time she realized the quality of his strength, the calm and quiet of it, its simple integrity and reposeful determination.  She glanced quickly at Tudor on the other side of her.  It was a handsomer face, one that was more immediately pleasing.  But she did not like the mouth.  It was made for kissing, and she abhorred kisses.  This was not a deliberately achieved concept; it came to her in the form of a faint and vaguely intangible repulsion.  For the moment she knew a fleeting doubt of the man.  Perhaps Sheldon was right in his judgment of the other.  She did not know, and it concerned her little; for boats, and the sea, and the things and happenings of the sea were of far more vital interest to her than men, and the next moment she was staring through the warm tropic darkness at the loom of the sails and the steady green of the moving sidelight, and listening eagerly to the click of the sweeps in the rowlocks.  In her mind’s eye she could see the straining naked forms of black men bending rhythmically to the work, and somewhere on that strange deck she knew was the inevitable master-man, conning the vessel in to its anchorage, peering at the dim tree-line of the shore, judging the deceitful night-distances, feeling on his cheek the first fans of the land breeze that was even then beginning to blow, weighing, thinking, measuring, gauging the score or more of ever-shifting forces, through which, by which, and in spite of which he directed the steady equilibrium of his course.  She knew it because she loved it, and she was alive to it as only a sailor could be.

Twice she heard the splash of the lead, and listened intently for the cry that followed.  Once a man’s voice spoke, low, imperative, issuing an order, and she thrilled with the delight of it.  It was only a direction to the man at the wheel to port his helm.  She watched the slight altering of the course, and knew that it was for the purpose of enabling the flat-hauled sails to catch those first fans of the land breeze, and she waited for the same low voice to utter the one word “Steady!”  And again she thrilled when it did utter it.  Once more the lead splashed, and “Eleven fadom” was the resulting cry.  “Let go!” the low voice came to her through the darkness, followed by the surging rumble of the anchor-chain.  The clicking of the sheaves in the blocks as the sails ran down, head-sails first, was music to her; and she detected on the instant the jamming of a jib-downhaul, and almost saw the impatient jerk with which the sailor must have cleared it.  Nor did she take interest in the two men beside her till both lights, red and green, came into view as the anchor checked the onward way.

Sheldon was wondering as to the identity of the craft, while Tudor persisted in believing it might be theMartha.

“It’s theMinerva,” Joan said decidedly.

“How do you know?” Sheldon asked, sceptical of her certitude.

“It’s a ketch to begin with.  And besides, I could tell anywhere the rattle of her main peak-blocks—they’re too large for the halyard.”

A dark figure crossed the compound diagonally from the beach gate, where whoever it was had been watching the vessel.

“Is that you, Utami?” Joan called.

“No, Missie; me Matapuu,” was the answer.

“What vessel is it?”

“Me t’inkMinerva.”

Joan looked triumphantly at Sheldon, who bowed.

“If Matapuu says so it must be so,” he murmured.

“But when Joan Lackland says so, you doubt,” she cried, “just as you doubt her ability as a skipper.  But never mind, you’ll be sorry some day for all your unkindness.  There’s the boat lowering now, and in five minutes we’ll be shaking hands with Christian Young.”

Lalaperu brought out the glasses and cigarettes and the eternal whisky and soda, and before the five minutes were past the gate clicked and Christian Young, tawny and golden, gentle of voice and look and hand, came up the bungalow steps and joined them.

News, as usual, Christian Young brought—news of the drinking at Guvutu, where the men boasted that they drank between drinks; news of the new rifles adrift on Ysabel, of the latest murders on Malaita, of Tom Butler’s sickness on Santa Ana; and last and most important, news that theMatambohad gone on a reef in the Shortlands and would be laid off one run for repairs.

“That means five weeks more before you can sail for Sydney,” Sheldon said to Joan.

“And that we are losing precious time,” she added ruefully.

“If you want to go to Sydney, theUpolusails from Tulagi to-morrow afternoon,” Young said.

“But I thought she was running recruits for the Germans in Samoa,” she objected.  “At any rate, I could catch her to Samoa, and change at Apia to one of the Weir Line freighters.  It’s a long way around, but still it would save time.”

“This time theUpoluis going straight to Sydney,” Young explained.  “She’s going to dry-dock, you see; and you can catch her as late as five to-morrow afternoon—at least, so her first officer told me.”

“But I’ve got to go to Guvutu first.”  Joan looked at the men with a whimsical expression.  “I’ve some shopping to do.  I can’t wear these Berande curtains into Sydney.  I must buy cloth at Guvutu and make myself a dress during the voyage down.  I’ll start immediately—in an hour.  Lalaperu, you bring ’m one fella Adamu Adam along me.  Tell ’m that fella Ornfiri make ’mkai-kaitake along whale-boat.”  She rose to her feet, looking at Sheldon.  “And you, please, have the boys carry down the whale-boat—my boat, you know.  I’ll be off in an hour.”

Both Sheldon and Tudor looked at their watches.

“It’s an all-night row,” Sheldon said.  “You might wait till morning—”

“And miss my shopping?  No, thank you.  Besides, theUpoluis not a regular passenger steamer, and she is just as liable to sail ahead of time as on time.  And from what I hear about those Guvutu sybarites, the best time to shop will be in the morning.  And now you’ll have to excuse me, for I’ve got to pack.”

“I’ll go over with you,” Sheldon announced.

“Let me run you over in theMinerva,” said Young.

She shook her head laughingly.

“I’m going in the whale-boat.  One would think, from all your solicitude, that I’d never been away from home before.  You, Mr. Sheldon, as my partner, I cannot permit to desert Berande and your work out of a mistaken notion of courtesy.  If you won’t permit me to be skipper, I won’t permit your galivanting over the sea as protector of young women who don’t need protection.  And as for you, Captain Young, you know very well that you just left Guvutu this morning, that you are bound for Marau, and that you said yourself that in two hours you are getting under way again.”

“But may I not see you safely across?” Tudor asked, a pleading note in his voice that rasped on Sheldon’s nerves.

“No, no, and again no,” she cried.  “You’ve all got your work to do, and so have I.  I came to the Solomons to work, not to be escorted about like a doll.  For that matter, here’s my escort, and there are seven more like him.”

Adamu Adam stood beside her, towering above her, as he towered above the three white men.  The clinging cotton undershirt he wore could not hide the bulge of his tremendous muscles.

“Look at his fist,” said Tudor.  “I’d hate to receive a punch from it.”

“I don’t blame you.”  Joan laughed reminiscently.  “I saw him hit the captain of a Swedish bark on the beach at Levuka, in the Fijis.  It was the captain’s fault.  I saw it all myself, and it was splendid.  Adamu only hit him once, and he broke the man’s arm.  You remember, Adamu?”

The big Tahitian smiled and nodded, his black eyes, soft and deer-like, seeming to give the lie to so belligerent a nature.

“We start in an hour in the whale-boat for Guvutu, big brother,” Joan said to him.  “Tell your brothers, all of them, so that they can get ready.  We catch theUpolufor Sydney.  You will all come along, and sail back to the Solomons in the new schooner.  Take your extra shirts and dungarees along.  Plenty cold weather down there.  Now run along, and tell them to hurry.  Leave the guns behind.  Turn them over to Mr. Sheldon.  We won’t need them.”

“If you are really bent upon going—” Sheldon began.

“That’s settled long ago,” she answered shortly.  “I’m going to pack now.  But I’ll tell you what you can do for me—issue some tobacco and other stuff they want to my men.”

An hour later the three men had shaken hands with Joan down on the beach.  She gave the signal, and the boat shoved off, six men at the oars, the seventh man for’ard, and Adamu Adam at the steering-sweep.  Joan was standing up in the stern-sheets, reiterating her good-byes—a slim figure of a woman in the tight-fitting jacket she had worn ashore from the wreck, the long-barrelled Colt’s revolver hanging from the loose belt around her waist, her clear-cut face like a boy’s under the Stetson hat that failed to conceal the heavy masses of hair beneath.

“You’d better get into shelter,” she called to them.  “There’s a big squall coming.  And I hope you’ve got plenty of chain out, Captain Young.  Good-bye!  Good-bye, everybody!”

Her last words came out of the darkness, which wrapped itself solidly about the boat.  Yet they continued to stare into the blackness in the direction in which the boat had disappeared, listening to the steady click of the oars in the rowlocks until it faded away and ceased.

“She is only a girl,” Christian Young said with slow solemnity.  The discovery seemed to have been made on the spur of the moment.  “She is only a girl,” he repeated with greater solemnity.

“A dashed pretty one, and a good traveller,” Tudor laughed.  “She certainly has spunk, eh, Sheldon?”

“Yes, she is brave,” was the reluctant answer for Sheldon did not feel disposed to talk about her.

“That’s the American of it,” Tudor went on.  “Push, and go, and energy, and independence.  What do you think, skipper?”

“I think she is young, very young, only a girl,” replied the captain of theMinerva, continuing to stare into the blackness that hid the sea.

The blackness seemed suddenly to increase in density, and they stumbled up the beach, feeling their way to the gate.

“Watch out for nuts,” Sheldon warned, as the first blast of the squall shrieked through the palms.  They joined hands and staggered up the path, with the ripe cocoanuts thudding in a monstrous rain all around them.  They gained the veranda, where they sat in silence over their whisky, each man staring straight out to sea, where the wildly swinging riding-light of theMinervacould be seen in the lulls of the driving rain.

Somewhere out there, Sheldon reflected, was Joan Lackland, the girl who had not grown up, the woman good to look upon, with only a boy’s mind and a boy’s desires, leaving Berande amid storm and conflict in much the same manner that she had first arrived, in the stern-sheets of her whale-boat, Adamu Adam steering, her savage crew bending to the oars.  And she was taking her Stetson hat with her, along with the cartridge-belt and the long-barrelled revolver.  He suddenly discovered an immense affection for those fripperies of hers at which he had secretly laughed when first he saw them.  He became aware of the sentimental direction in which his fancy was leading him, and felt inclined to laugh.  But he did not laugh.  The next moment he was busy visioning the hat, and belt, and revolver.  Undoubtedly this was love, he thought, and he felt a tiny glow of pride in him in that the Solomons had not succeeded in killing all his sentiment.

An hour later, Christian Young stood up, knocked out his pipe, and prepared to go aboard and get under way.

“She’s all right,” he said, apropos of nothing spoken, and yet distinctly relevant to what was in each of their minds.  “She’s got a good boat’s-crew, and she’s a sailor herself.  Good-night, Mr. Sheldon.  Anything I can do for you down Marau-way?”  He turned and pointed to a widening space of starry sky.  “It’s going to be a fine night after all.  With this favouring bit of breeze she has sail on already, and she’ll make Guvutu by daylight.  Good-night.”

“I guess I’ll turn in, old man,” Tudor said, rising and placing his glass on the table.  “I’ll start the first thing in the morning.  It’s been disgraceful the way I’ve been hanging on here.  Good-night.”

Sheldon, sitting on alone, wondered if the other man would have decided to pull out in the morning had Joan not sailed away.  Well, there was one bit of consolation in it: Joan had certainly lingered at Berande for no man, not even Tudor.  “I start in an hour”—her words rang in his brain, and under his eyelids he could see her as she stood up and uttered them.  He smiled.  The instant she heard the news she had made up her mind to go.  It was not very flattering to man, but what could any man count in her eyes when a schooner waiting to be bought in Sydney was in the wind?  What a creature!  What a creature!

* * * * *

Berande was a lonely place to Sheldon in the days that followed.  In the morning after Joan’s departure, he had seen Tudor’s expedition off on its way up the Balesuna; in the late afternoon, through his telescope, he had seen the smoke of theUpoluthat was bearing Joan away to Sydney; and in the evening he sat down to dinner in solitary state, devoting more of his time to looking at her empty chair than to his food.  He never came out on the veranda without glancing first of all at her grass house in the corner of the compound; and one evening, idly knocking the balls about on the billiard table, he came to himself to find himself standing staring at the nail upon which from the first she had hung her Stetson hat and her revolver-belt.

Why should he care for her? he demanded of himself angrily.  She was certainly the last woman in the world he would have thought of choosing for himself.  Never had he encountered one who had so thoroughly irritated him, rasped his feelings, smashed his conventions, and violated nearly every attribute of what had been his ideal of woman.  Had he been too long away from the world?  Had he forgotten what the race of women was like?  Was it merely a case of propinquity?  And she wasn’t really a woman.  She was a masquerader.  Under all her seeming of woman, she was a boy, playing a boy’s pranks, diving for fish amongst sharks, sporting a revolver, longing for adventure, and, what was more, going out in search of it in her whale-boat, along with her savage islanders and her bag of sovereigns.  But he loved her—that was the point of it all, and he did not try to evade it.  He was not sorry that it was so.  He loved her—that was the overwhelming, astounding fact.

Once again he discovered a big enthusiasm for Berande.  All the bubble-illusions concerning the life of the tropical planter had been pricked by the stern facts of the Solomons.  Following the death of Hughie, he had resolved to muddle along somehow with the plantation; but this resolve had not been based upon desire.  Instead, it was based upon the inherent stubbornness of his nature and his dislike to give over an attempted task.

But now it was different.  Berande meant everything.  It must succeed—not merely because Joan was a partner in it, but because he wanted to make that partnership permanently binding.  Three more years and the plantation would be a splendid-paying investment.  They could then take yearly trips to Australia, and oftener; and an occasional run home to England—or Hawaii, would come as a matter of course.

He spent his evenings poring over accounts, or making endless calculations based on cheaper freights for copra and on the possible maximum and minimum market prices for that staple of commerce.  His days were spent out on the plantation.  He undertook more clearing of bush; and clearing and planting went on, under his personal supervision, at a faster pace than ever before.  He experimented with premiums for extra work performed by the black boys, and yearned continually for more of them to put to work.  Not until Joan could return on the schooner would this be possible, for the professional recruiters were all under long contracts to the Fulcrum Brothers, Morgan and Raff, and the Fires, Philp Company; while theFlibberty-Gibbetwas wholly occupied in running about among his widely scattered trading stations, which extended from the coast of New Georgia in one direction to Ulava and Sikiana in the other.  Blacks he must have, and, if Joan were fortunate in getting a schooner, three months at least must elapse before the first recruits could be landed on Berande.

A week after theUpolu’sdeparture, theMalakuladropped anchor and her skipper came ashore for a game of billiards and to gossip until the land breeze sprang up.  Besides, as he told his super-cargo, he simply had to come ashore, not merely to deliver the large package of seeds with full instructions for planting from Joan, but to shock Sheldon with the little surprise born of information he was bringing with him.

Captain Auckland played the billiards first, and it was not until he was comfortably seated in a steamer-chair, his second whisky securely in his hand, that he let off his bomb.

“A great piece, that Miss Lackland of yours,” he chuckled.  “Claims to be a part-owner of Berande.  Says she’s your partner.  Is that straight?”

Sheldon nodded coldly.

“You don’t say?  That is a surprise!  Well, she hasn’t convinced Guvutu or Tulagi of it.  They’re pretty used to irregular things over there, but—ha! ha!—” he stopped to have his laugh out and to mop his bald head with a trade handkerchief.  “But that partnership yarn of hers was too big to swallow, though it gave them the excuse for a few more drinks.”

“There is nothing irregular about it.  It is an ordinary business transaction.”  Sheldon strove to act as though such transactions were quite the commonplace thing on plantations in the Solomons.  “She invested something like fifteen hundred pounds in Berande—”

“So she said.”

“And she has gone to Sydney on business for the plantation.”

“Oh, no, she hasn’t.”

“I beg pardon?” Sheldon queried.

“I said she hasn’t, that’s all.”

“But didn’t theUpolusail?  I could have sworn I saw her smoke last Tuesday afternoon, late, as she passed Savo.”

“TheUpolusailed all right.”  Captain Auckland sipped his whisky with provoking slowness.  “Only Miss Lackland wasn’t a passenger.”

“Then where is she?”

“At Guvutu, last I saw of her.  She was going to Sydney to buy a schooner, wasn’t she?”

“Yes, yes.”

“That’s what she said.  Well, she’s bought one, though I wouldn’t give her ten shillings for it if a nor’wester blows up, and it’s about time we had one.  This has been too long a spell of good weather to last.”

“If you came here to excite my curiosity, old man,” Sheldon said, “you’ve certainly succeeded.  Now go ahead and tell me in a straightforward way what has happened.  What schooner?  Where is it?  How did she happen to buy it?”

“First, the schoonerMartha,” the skipper answered, checking his replies off on his fingers.  “Second, theMarthais on the outside reef at Poonga-Poonga, looted clean of everything portable, and ready to go to pieces with the first bit of lively sea.  And third, Miss Lackland bought her at auction.  She was knocked down to her for fifty-five quid by the third-assistant-resident-commissioner.  I ought to know.  I bid fifty myself, for Morgan and Raff.  My word, weren’t they hot!  I told them to go to the devil, and that it was their fault for limiting me to fifty quid when they thought the chance to salve theMarthawas worth more.  You see, they weren’t expecting competition.  Fulcrum Brothers had no representative present, neither had Fires, Philp Company, and the only man to be afraid of was Nielsen’s agent, Squires, and him they got drunk and sound asleep over in Guvutu.

“‘Twenty,’ says I, for my bid.  ‘Twenty-five,’ says the little girl.  ‘Thirty,’ says I.  ‘Forty,’ says she.  ‘Fifty,’ says I.  ‘Fifty-five,’ says she.  And there I was stuck.  ‘Hold on,’ says I; ‘wait till I see my owners.’  ‘No, you don’t,’ says she.  ‘It’s customary,’ says I.  ‘Not anywhere in the world,’ says she.  ‘Then it’s courtesy in the Solomons,’ says I.

“And d’ye know, on my faith I think Burnett’d have done it, only she pipes up, sweet and pert as you please: ‘Mr. Auctioneer, will you kindly proceed with the sale in the customary manner?  I’ve other business to attend to, and I can’t afford to wait all night on men who don’t know their own minds.’  And then she smiles at Burnett, as well—you know, one of those fetching smiles, and damme if Burnett doesn’t begin singing out: ‘Goin’, goin’, goin’—last bid—goin’, goin’ for fifty-five sovereigns—goin’, goin’, gone—to you, Miss—er—what name, please?’

“‘Joan Lackland,’ says she, with a smile to me; and that’s how she bought theMartha.”

Sheldon experienced a sudden thrill.  TheMartha!—a finer schooner than theMalakula, and, for that matter, the finest in the Solomons.  She was just the thing for recruits, and she was right on the spot.  Then he realized that for such a craft to sell at auction for fifty-five pounds meant that there was small chance for saving her.

“But how did it happen?” he asked.  “Weren’t they rather quick in selling theMartha?”

“Had to.  You know the reef at Poonga-Poonga.  She’s not worth tuppence on it if any kind of a sea kicks up, and it’s ripe for a nor’wester any moment now.  The crowd abandoned her completely.  Didn’t even dream of auctioning her.  Morgan and Raff persuaded them to put her up.  They’re a co-operative crowd, you know, an organized business corporation, fore and aft, all hands and the cook.  They held a meeting and voted to sell.”

“But why didn’t they stand by and try to save her?”

“Stand by!  You know Malaita.  And you know Poonga-Poonga.  That’s where they cut off theScottish Chiefsand killed all hands.  There was nothing to do but take to the boats.  TheMarthamissed stays going in, and inside five minutes she was on the reef and in possession.  The niggers swarmed over her, and they just threw the crew into the boats.  I talked with some of the men.  They swear there were two hundred war canoes around her inside half an hour, and five thousand bushmen on the beach.  Said you couldn’t see Malaita for the smoke of the signal fires.  Anyway, they cleared out for Tulagi.”

“But why didn’t they fight?” Sheldon asked.

“It was funny they didn’t, but they got separated.  You see, two-thirds of them were in the boats, without weapons, running anchors and never dreaming the natives would attack.  They found out their mistake too late.  The natives had charge.  That’s the trouble of new chums on the coast.  It would never have happened with you or me or any old-timer.”

“But what is Miss Lackland intending to do?” Captain Auckland grinned.

“She’s going to try to get theMarthaoff, I should say.  Or else why did she pay fifty-five quid for her?  And if she fails, she’ll try to get her money back by saving the gear—spars, you know, and patent steering-gear, and winches, and such things.  At least that’s what I’d do if I was in her place.  When I sailed, the little girl had chartered theEmily—‘I’m going recruiting,’ says Munster—he’s the skipper and owner now.  ‘And how much will you net on the cruise?’ asks she.  ‘Oh, fifty quid,’ says he.  ‘Good,’ says she; ‘you bring yourEmilyalong with me and you’ll get seventy-five.’  You know that big ship’s anchor and chain piled up behind the coal-sheds?  She was just buying that when I left.  She’s certainly a hustler, that little girl of yours.”

“She is my partner,” Sheldon corrected.

“Well, she’s a good one, that’s all, and a cool one.  My word! a white woman on Malaita, and at Poonga-Poonga of all places!  Oh, I forgot to tell you—she palavered Burnett into lending her eight rifles for her men, and three cases of dynamite.  You’d laugh to see the way she makes that Guvutu gang stand around.  And to see them being polite and trying to give advice!  Lord, Lord, man, that little girl’s a wonder, a marvel, a—a—a catastrophe.  That’s what she is, a catastrophe.  She’s gone through Guvutu and Tulagi like a hurricane; every last swine of them in love with her—except Raff.  He’s sore over the auction, and he sprang his recruiting contract with Munster on her.  And what does she do but thank him, and read it over, and point out that while Munster was pledged to deliver all recruits to Morgan and Raff, there was no clause in the document forbidding him from chartering theEmily.

“‘There’s your contract,’ says she, passing it back.  ‘And a very good contract it is.  The next time you draw one up, insert a clause that will fit emergencies like the present one.’  And, Lord, Lord, she had him, too.

“But there’s the breeze, and I’m off.  Good-bye, old man.  Hope the little girl succeeds.  TheMartha’sa whacking fine boat, and she’d take the place of theJessie.”

The next morning Sheldon came in from the plantation to breakfast, to find the mission ketch,Apostle, at anchor, her crew swimming two mares and a filly ashore.  Sheldon recognized the animals as belonging to the Resident Commissioner, and he immediately wondered if Joan had bought them.  She was certainly living up to her threat of rattling the dry bones of the Solomons, and he was prepared for anything.

“Miss Lackland sent them,” said Welshmere, the missionary doctor, stepping ashore and shaking hands with him.  “There’s also a box of saddles on board.  And this letter from her.  And the skipper of theFlibberty-Gibbet.”

The next moment, and before he could greet him, Oleson stepped from the boat and began.

“She’s stolen theFlibberty, Mr. Sheldon.  Run clean away with her.  She’s a wild one.  She gave me the fever.  Brought it on by shock.  And got me drunk, as well—rotten drunk.”

Dr. Welshmere laughed heartily.

“Nevertheless, she is not an unmitigated evil, your Miss Lackland.  She’s sworn three men off their drink, or, to the same purpose, shut off their whisky.  You know them—Brahms, Curtis, and Fowler.  She shipped them on theFlibberty-Gibbetalong with her.”

“She’s the skipper of theFlibbertynow,” Oleson broke in.  “And she’ll wreck her as sure as God didn’t make the Solomons.”

Dr. Welshmere tried to look shocked, but laughed again.

“She has quite a way with her,” he said.  “I tried to back out of bringing the horses over.  Said I couldn’t charge freight, that theApostlewas under a yacht license, that I was going around by Savo and the upper end of Guadalcanal.  But it was no use.  ‘Bother the charge,’ said she.  ‘You take the horses like a good man, and when I float theMarthaI’ll return the service some day.’”

“And ‘bother your orders,’ said she to me,” Oleson cried.  “‘I’m your boss now,’ said she, ‘and you take your orders from me.’  ‘Look at that load of ivory nuts,’ I said.  ‘Bother them,’ said she; ‘I’m playin’ for something bigger than ivory nuts.  We’ll dump them overside as soon as we get under way.’”

Sheldon put his hands to his ears.

“I don’t know what has happened, and you are trying to tell me the tale backwards.  Come up to the house and get in the shade and begin at the beginning.”

“What I want to know,” Oleson began, when they were seated, “isisshe your partner or ain’t she?  That’s what I want to know.”

“She is,” Sheldon assured him.

“Well, who’d have believed it!”  Oleson glanced appealingly at Dr. Welshmere, and back again at Sheldon.  “I’ve seen a few unlikely things in these Solomons—rats two feet long, butterflies the Commissioner hunts with a shot-gun, ear-ornaments that would shame the devil, and head-hunting devils that make the devil look like an angel.  I’ve seen them and got used to them, but this young woman of yours—”

“Miss Lackland is my partner and part-owner of Berande,” Sheldon interrupted.

“So she said,” the irate skipper dashed on.  “But she had no papers to show for it.  How was I to know?  And then there was that load of ivory nuts-eight tons of them.”

“For heaven’s sake begin at the—” Sheldon tried to interrupt.

“And then she’s hired them drunken loafers, three of the worst scoundrels that ever disgraced the Solomons—fifteen quid a month each—what d’ye think of that?  And sailed away with them, too!  Phew!—You might give me a drink.  The missionary won’t mind.  I’ve been on his teetotal hooker four days now, and I’m perishing.”

Dr. Welshmere nodded in reply to Sheldon’s look of inquiry, and Viaburi was dispatched for the whisky and siphons.

“It is evident, Captain Oleson,” Sheldon remarked to that refreshed mariner, “that Miss Lackland has run away with your boat.  Now please give a plain statement of what occurred.”

“Right O; here goes.  I’d just come in on theFlibberty.  She was on board before I dropped the hook—in that whale-boat of hers with her gang of Tahiti heathens—that big Adamu Adam and the rest.  ‘Don’t drop the anchor, Captain Oleson,’ she sang out.  ‘I want you to get under way for Poonga-Poonga.’  I looked to see if she’d been drinking.  What was I to think?  I was rounding up at the time, alongside the shoal—a ticklish place—head-sails running down and losing way, so I says, ‘Excuse me, Miss Lackland,’ and yells for’ard, ‘Let go!’

“‘You might have listened to me and saved yourself trouble,’ says she, climbing over the rail and squinting along for’ard and seeing the first shackle flip out and stop.  ‘There’s fifteen fathom,’ says she; ‘you may as well turn your men to and heave up.’

“And then we had it out.  I didn’t believe her.  I didn’t think you’d take her on as a partner, and I told her as much and wanted proof.  She got high and mighty, and I told her I was old enough to be her grandfather and that I wouldn’t take gammon from a chit like her.  And then I ordered her off theFlibberty.  ‘Captain Oleson,’ she says, sweet as you please, ‘I’ve a few minutes to spare on you, and I’ve got some good whisky over on theEmily.  Come on along.  Besides, I want your advice about this wrecking business.  Everybody says you’re a crackerjack sailor-man’—that’s what she said, ‘crackerjack.’  And I went, in her whale-boat, Adamu Adam steering and looking as solemn as a funeral.

“On the way she told me about theMartha, and how she’d bought her, and was going to float her.  She said she’d chartered theEmily, and was sailing as soon as I could get theFlibbertyunderway.  It struck me that her gammon was reasonable enough, and I agreed to pull out for Berande right O, and get your orders to go along to Poonga-Poonga.  But she said there wasn’t a second to be lost by any such foolishness, and that I was to sail direct for Poonga-Poonga, and that if I couldn’t take her word that she was your partner, she’d get along without me and theFlibberty.  And right there’s where she fooled me.

“Down in theEmily’scabin was them three soaks—you know them—Fowler and Curtis and that Brahms chap.  ‘Have a drink,’ says she.  I thought they looked surprised when she unlocked the whisky locker and sent a nigger for the glasses and water-monkey.  But she must have tipped them off unbeknownst to me, and they knew just what to do.  ‘Excuse me,’ she says, ‘I’m going on deck a minute.’  Now that minute was half an hour.  I hadn’t had a drink in ten days.  I’m an old man and the fever has weakened me.  Then I took it on an empty stomach, too, and there was them three soaks setting me an example, they arguing for me to take theFlibbertyto Poonga-Poonga, an’ me pointing out my duty to the contrary.  The trouble was, all the arguments were pointed with drinks, and me not being a drinking man, so to say, and weak from fever . . .

“Well, anyway, at the end of the half-hour down she came again and took a good squint at me.  ‘That’ll do nicely,’ I remember her saying; and with that she took the whisky bottles and hove them overside through the companionway.  ‘That’s the last, she said to the three soaks, ‘till theMarthafloats and you’re back in Guvutu.  It’ll be a long time between drinks.’  And then she laughed.

“She looked at me and said—not to me, mind you, but to the soaks: ‘It’s time this worthy man went ashore’—me! worthy man!  ‘Fowler,’ she said—you know, just like a straight order, and she didn’tmisterhim—it was plain Fowler—‘Fowler,’ she said, ‘just tell Adamu Adam to man the whale-boat, and while he’s taking Captain Oleson ashore have your boat put me on theFlibberty.  The three of you sail with me, so pack your dunnage.  And the one of you that shows up best will take the mate’s billet.  Captain Oleson doesn’t carry a mate, you know.’

“I don’t remember much after that.  All hands got me over the side, and it seems to me I went to sleep, sitting in the stern-sheets and watching that Adamu steer.  Then I saw theFlibberty’smainsail hoisting, and heard the clank of her chain coming in, and I woke up.  ‘Here, put me on theFlibberty,’ I said to Adamu.  ‘I put you on the beach,’ said he.  ‘Missie Lackalanna say beach plenty good for you.’  Well, I let out a yell and reached for the steering-sweep.  I was doing my best by my owners, you see.  Only that Adamu gives me a shove down on the bottom-boards, puts one foot on me to hold me down, and goes on steering.  And that’s all.  The shock of the whole thing brought on fever.  And now I’ve come to find out whether I’m skipper of theFlibberty, or that chit of yours with her pirating, heathen boat’s-crew.”

“Never mind, skipper.  You can take a vacation on pay.”  Sheldon spoke with more assurance than he felt.  “If Miss Lackland, who is my partner, has seen fit to take charge of theFlibberty-Gibbet, why, it is all right.  As you will agree, there was no time to be lost if theMarthawas to be got off.  It is a bad reef, and any considerable sea would knock her bottom out.  You settle down here, skipper, and rest up and get the fever out of your bones.  When theFlibberty-Gibbetcomes back, you’ll take charge again, of course.”

After Dr. Welshmere and theApostledeparted and Captain Oleson had turned in for a sleep in a veranda hammock, Sheldon opened Joan’s letter.

DEAR MR. SHELDON,—Please forgive me for stealing theFlibberty-Gibbet.  I simply had to.  TheMarthameans everything to us.  Think of it, only fifty-five pounds for her, two hundred and seventy-five dollars.  If I don’t save her, I know I shall be able to pay all expenses out of her gear, which the natives will not have carried off.  And if I do save her, it is the haul of a life-time.  And if I don’t save her, I’ll fill theEmilyand theFlibberty-Gibbetwith recruits.  Recruits are needed right now on Berande more than anything else.And please, please don’t be angry with me.  You said I shouldn’t go recruiting on theFlibberty, and I won’t.  I’ll go on theEmily.I bought two cows this afternoon.  That trader at Nogi died of fever, and I bought them from his partner, Sam Willis his name is, who agrees to deliver them—most likely by theMinervanext time she is down that way.  Berande has been long enough on tinned milk.And Dr. Welshmere has agreed to get me some orange and lime trees from the mission station at Ulava.  He will deliver them the next trip of theApostle.  If the Sydney steamer arrives before I get back, plant the sweet corn she will bring between the young trees on the high bank of the Balesuna.  The current is eating in against that bank, and you should do something to save it.I have ordered some fig-trees and loquats, too, from Sydney.  Dr. Welshmere will bring some mango-seeds.  They are big trees and require plenty of room.TheMarthais registered 110 tons.  She is the biggest schooner in the Solomons, and the best.  I saw a little of her lines and guess the rest.  She will sail like a witch.  If she hasn’t filled with water, her engine will be all right.  The reason she went ashore was because it was not working.  The engineer had disconnected the feed-pipes to clean out the rust.  Poor business, unless at anchor or with plenty of sea room.Plant all the trees in the compound, even if you have to clean out the palms later on.And don’t plant the sweet corn all at once.  Let a few days elapse between plantings.JOAN LACKLAND.

DEAR MR. SHELDON,—Please forgive me for stealing theFlibberty-Gibbet.  I simply had to.  TheMarthameans everything to us.  Think of it, only fifty-five pounds for her, two hundred and seventy-five dollars.  If I don’t save her, I know I shall be able to pay all expenses out of her gear, which the natives will not have carried off.  And if I do save her, it is the haul of a life-time.  And if I don’t save her, I’ll fill theEmilyand theFlibberty-Gibbetwith recruits.  Recruits are needed right now on Berande more than anything else.

And please, please don’t be angry with me.  You said I shouldn’t go recruiting on theFlibberty, and I won’t.  I’ll go on theEmily.

I bought two cows this afternoon.  That trader at Nogi died of fever, and I bought them from his partner, Sam Willis his name is, who agrees to deliver them—most likely by theMinervanext time she is down that way.  Berande has been long enough on tinned milk.

And Dr. Welshmere has agreed to get me some orange and lime trees from the mission station at Ulava.  He will deliver them the next trip of theApostle.  If the Sydney steamer arrives before I get back, plant the sweet corn she will bring between the young trees on the high bank of the Balesuna.  The current is eating in against that bank, and you should do something to save it.

I have ordered some fig-trees and loquats, too, from Sydney.  Dr. Welshmere will bring some mango-seeds.  They are big trees and require plenty of room.

TheMarthais registered 110 tons.  She is the biggest schooner in the Solomons, and the best.  I saw a little of her lines and guess the rest.  She will sail like a witch.  If she hasn’t filled with water, her engine will be all right.  The reason she went ashore was because it was not working.  The engineer had disconnected the feed-pipes to clean out the rust.  Poor business, unless at anchor or with plenty of sea room.

Plant all the trees in the compound, even if you have to clean out the palms later on.

And don’t plant the sweet corn all at once.  Let a few days elapse between plantings.

JOAN LACKLAND.

He fingered the letter, lingering over it and scrutinizing the writing in a way that was not his wont.  How characteristic, was his thought, as he studied the boyish scrawl—clear to read, painfully, clear, but none the less boyish.  The clearness of it reminded him of her face, of her cleanly stencilled brows, her straightly chiselled nose, the very clearness of the gaze of her eyes, the firmly yet delicately moulded lips, and the throat, neither fragile nor robust, but—but just right, he concluded, an adequate and beautiful pillar for so shapely a burden.

He looked long at the name.  Joan Lackland—just an assemblage of letters, of commonplace letters, but an assemblage that generated a subtle and heady magic.  It crept into his brain and twined and twisted his mental processes until all that constituted him at that moment went out in love to that scrawled signature.  A few commonplace letters—yet they caused him to know in himself a lack that sweetly hurt and that expressed itself in vague spiritual outpourings and delicious yearnings.  Joan Lackland!  Each time he looked at it there arose visions of her in a myriad moods and guises—coming in out of the flying smother of the gale that had wrecked her schooner; launching a whale-boat to go a-fishing; running dripping from the sea, with streaming hair and clinging garments, to the fresh-water shower; frightening four-score cannibals with an empty chlorodyne bottle; teaching Ornfiri how to make bread; hanging her Stetson hat and revolver-belt on the hook in the living-room; talking gravely about winning to hearth and saddle of her own, or juvenilely rattling on about romance and adventure, bright-eyed, her face flushed and eager with enthusiasm.  Joan Lackland!  He mused over the cryptic wonder of it till the secrets of love were made clear and he felt a keen sympathy for lovers who carved their names on trees or wrote them on the beach-sands of the sea.

Then he came back to reality, and his face hardened.  Even then she was on the wild coast of Malaita, and at Poonga-Poonga, of all villainous and dangerous portions the worst, peopled with a teeming population of head-hunters, robbers, and murderers.  For the instant he entertained the rash thought of calling his boat’s-crew and starting immediately in a whale-boat for Poonga-Poonga.  But the next instant the idea was dismissed.  What could he do if he did go?  First, she would resent it.  Next, she would laugh at him and call him a silly; and after all he would count for only one rifle more, and she had many rifles with her.  Three things only could he do if he went.  He could command her to return; he could take theFlibberty-Gibbetaway from her; he could dissolve their partnership;—any and all of which he knew would be foolish and futile, and he could hear her explain in terse set terms that she was legally of age and that nobody could say come or go to her.  No, his pride would never permit him to start for Poonga-Poonga, though his heart whispered that nothing could be more welcome than a message from her asking him to come and lend a hand.  Her very words—“lend a hand”; and in his fancy, he could see and hear her saying them.

There was much in her wilful conduct that caused him to wince in the heart of him.  He was appalled by the thought of her shoulder to shoulder with the drunken rabble of traders and beachcombers at Guvutu.  It was bad enough for a clean, fastidious man; but for a young woman, a girl at that, it was awful.  The theft of theFlibberty-Gibbetwas merely amusing, though the means by which the theft had been effected gave him hurt.  Yet he found consolation in the fact that the task of making Oleson drunk had been turned over to the three scoundrels.  And next, and swiftly, came the vision of her, alone with those same three scoundrels, on theEmily, sailing out to sea from Guvutu in the twilight with darkness coming on.  Then came visions of Adamu Adam and Noa Noah and all her brawny Tahitian following, and his anxiety faded away, being replaced by irritation that she should have been capable of such wildness of conduct.

And the irritation was still on him as he got up and went inside to stare at the hook on the wall and to wish that her Stetson hat and revolver-belt were hanging from it.

Several quiet weeks slipped by.  Berande, after such an unusual run of visiting vessels, drifted back into her old solitude.  Sheldon went on with the daily round, clearing bush, planting cocoanuts, smoking copra, building bridges, and riding about his work on the horses Joan had bought.  News of her he had none.  Recruiting vessels on Malaita left the Poonga-Poonga coast severely alone; and theClansman, a Samoan recruiter, dropping anchor one sunset for billiards and gossip, reported rumours amongst the Sio natives that there had been fighting at Poonga-Poonga.  As this news would have had to travel right across the big island, little dependence was to be placed on it.

The steamer from Sydney, theKammambo, broke the quietude of Berande for an hour, while landing mail, supplies, and the trees and seeds Joan had ordered.  TheMinerva, bound for Cape Marsh, brought the two cows from Nogi.  And theApostle, hurrying back to Tulagi to connect with the Sydney steamer, sent a boat ashore with the orange and lime trees from Ulava.  And these several weeks marked a period of perfect weather.  There were days on end when sleek calms ruled the breathless sea, and days when vagrant wisps of air fanned for several hours from one direction or another.  The land-breezes at night alone proved regular, and it was at night that the occasional cutters and ketches slipped by, too eager to take advantage of the light winds to drop anchor for an hour.

Then came the long-expected nor’wester.  For eight days it raged, lulling at times to short durations of calm, then shifting a point or two and raging with renewed violence.  Sheldon kept a precautionary eye on the buildings, while the Balesuna, in flood, so savagely attacked the high bank Joan had warned him about, that he told off all the gangs to battle with the river.

It was in the good weather that followed, that he left the blacks at work, one morning, and with a shot-gun across his pommel rode off after pigeons.  Two hours later, one of the house-boys, breathless and scratched ran him down with the news that theMartha, theFlibberty-Gibbet, and theEmilywere heading in for the anchorage.

Coming into the compound from the rear, Sheldon could see nothing until he rode around the corner of the bungalow.  Then he saw everything at once—first, a glimpse at the sea, where theMarthafloated huge alongside the cutter and the ketch which had rescued her; and, next, the ground in front of the veranda steps, where a great crowd of fresh-caught cannibals stood at attention.  From the fact that each was attired in a new, snow-white lava-lava, Sheldon knew that they were recruits.  Part way up the steps, one of them was just backing down into the crowd, while another, called out by name, was coming up.  It was Joan’s voice that had called him, and Sheldon reined in his horse and watched.  She sat at the head of the steps, behind a table, between Munster and his white mate, the three of them checking long lists, Joan asking the questions and writing the answers in the big, red-covered, Berande labour-journal.

“What name?” she demanded of the black man on the steps.

“Tagari,” came the answer, accompanied by a grin and a rolling of curious eyes; for it was the first white-man’s house the black had ever seen.

“What place b’long you?”

“Bangoora.”

No one had noticed Sheldon, and he continued to sit his horse and watch.  There was a discrepancy between the answer and the record in the recruiting books, and a consequent discussion, until Munster solved the difficulty.

“Bangoora?” he said.  “That’s the little beach at the head of the bay out of Latta.  He’s down as a Latta-man—see, there it is, ‘Tagari, Latta.’”

“What place you go you finish along white marster?” Joan asked.

“Bangoora,” the man replied; and Joan wrote it down.

“Ogu!” Joan called.

The black stepped down, and another mounted to take his place.  But Tagari, just before he reached the bottom step, caught sight of Sheldon.  It was the first horse the fellow had ever seen, and he let out a frightened screech and dashed madly up the steps.  At the same moment the great mass of blacks surged away panic-stricken from Sheldon’s vicinity.  The grinning house-boys shouted encouragement and explanation, and the stampede was checked, the new-caught head-hunters huddling closely together and staring dubiously at the fearful monster.

“Hello!” Joan called out.  “What do you mean by frightening all my boys?  Come on up.”

“What do you think of them?” she asked, when they had shaken hands.  “And what do you think of her?”—with a wave of the hand toward theMartha.  “I thought you’d deserted the plantation, and that I might as well go ahead and get the men into barracks.  Aren’t they beauties?  Do you see that one with the split nose?  He’s the only man who doesn’t hail from the Poonga-Poonga coast; and they said the Poonga-Poonga natives wouldn’t recruit.  Just look at them and congratulate me.  There are no kiddies and half-grown youths among them.  They’re men, every last one of them.  I have such a long story I don’t know where to begin, and I won’t begin anyway till we’re through with this and until you have told me that you are not angry with me.”

“Ogu—what place b’long you?” she went on with her catechism.

But Ogu was a bushman, lacking knowledge of the almost universal bêche-de-mer English, and half a dozen of his fellows wrangled to explain.

“There are only two or three more,” Joan said to Sheldon, “and then we’re done.  But you haven’t told me that you are not angry.”

Sheldon looked into her clear eyes as she favoured him with a direct, untroubled gaze that threatened, he knew from experience, to turn teasingly defiant on an instant’s notice.  And as he looked at her it came to him that he had never half-anticipated the gladness her return would bring to him.

“I was angry,” he said deliberately.  “I am still angry, very angry—” he noted the glint of defiance in her eyes and thrilled—“but I forgave, and I now forgive all over again.  Though I still insist—”

“That I should have a guardian,” she interrupted.  “But that day will never come.  Thank goodness I’m of legal age and able to transact business in my own right.  And speaking of business, how do you like my forceful American methods?”

“Mr. Raff, from what I hear, doesn’t take kindly to them,” he temporized, “and you’ve certainly set the dry bones rattling for many a day.  But what I want to know is if other American women are as successful in business ventures?”

“Luck, ’most all luck,” she disclaimed modestly, though her eyes lighted with sudden pleasure; and he knew her boy’s vanity had been touched by his trifle of tempered praise.

“Luck be blowed!” broke out the long mate, Sparrowhawk, his face shining with admiration.  “It was hard work, that’s what it was.  We earned our pay.  She worked us till we dropped.  And we were down with fever half the time.  So was she, for that matter, only she wouldn’t stay down, and she wouldn’t let us stay down.  My word, she’s a slave-driver—‘Just one more heave, Mr. Sparrowhawk, and then you can go to bed for a week’,—she to me, and me staggerin’ ‘round like a dead man, with bilious-green lights flashing inside my head, an’ my head just bustin’.  I was all in, but I gave that heave right O—and then it was, ‘Another heave now, Mr. Sparrowhawk, just another heave.’  An’ the Lord lumme, the way she made love to old Kina-Kina!”

He shook his head reproachfully, while the laughter died down in his throat to long-drawn chuckles.

“He was older than Telepasse and dirtier,” she assured Sheldon, “and I am sure much wickeder.  But this isn’t work.  Let us get through with these lists.”

She turned to the waiting black on the steps,—

“Ogu, you finish along big marster belong white man, you go Not-Not.—Here you, Tangari, you speak ’m along that fella Ogu.  He finish he walk about Not-Not.  Have you got that, Mr. Munster?”

“But you’ve broken the recruiting laws,” Sheldon said, when the new recruits had marched away to the barracks.  “The licenses for theFlibbertyand theEmilydon’t allow for one hundred and fifty.  What did Burnett say?”

“He passed them, all of them,” she answered.  “Captain Munster will tell you what he said—something about being blowed, or words to that effect.  Now I must run and wash up.  Did the Sydney orders arrive?”

“Yours are in your quarters,” Sheldon said.  “Hurry, for breakfast is waiting.  Let me have your hat and belt.  Do, please, allow me.  There’s only one hook for them, and I know where it is.”

She gave him a quick scrutiny that was almost woman-like, then sighed with relief as she unbuckled the heavy belt and passed it to him.

“I doubt if I ever want to see another revolver,” she complained.  “That one has worn a hole in me, I’m sure.  I never dreamed I could get so weary of one.”

Sheldon watched her to the foot of the steps, where she turned and called back,—

“My!  I can’t tell you how good it is to be home again.”

And as his gaze continued to follow her across the compound to the tiny grass house, the realization came to him crushingly that Berande and that little grass house was the only place in the world she could call “home.”

* * * * *

“And Burnett said, ‘Well, I’ll be damned—I beg your pardon, Miss Lackland, but you have wantonly broken the recruiting laws and you know it,’” Captain Munster narrated, as they sat over their whisky, waiting for Joan to come back.  “And says she to him, ‘Mr. Burnett, can you show me any law against taking the passengers off a vessel that’s on a reef?’  ‘That is not the point,’ says he.  ‘It’s the very, precise, particular point,’ says she and you bear it in mind and go ahead and pass my recruits.  You can report me to the Lord High Commissioner if you want, but I have three vessels here waiting on your convenience, and if you delay them much longer there’ll be another report go in to the Lord High Commissioner.’

“‘I’ll hold you responsible, Captain Munster,’ says he to me, mad enough to eat scrap-iron.  ‘No, you won’t,’ says she; ‘I’m the charterer of theEmily, and Captain Munster has acted under my orders.’

“What could Burnett do?  He passed the whole hundred and fifty, though theEmilywas only licensed for forty, and theFlibberty-Gibbetfor thirty-five.”

“But I don’t understand,” Sheldon said.

“This is the way she worked it.  When theMarthawas floated, we had to beach her right away at the head of the bay, and whilst repairs were going on, a new rudder being made, sails bent, gear recovered from the niggers, and so forth, Miss Lackland borrows Sparrowhawk to run theFlibbertyalong with Curtis, lends me Brahms to take Sparrowhawk’s place, and starts both craft off recruiting.  My word, the niggers came easy.  It was virgin ground.  Since theScottish Chiefs, no recruiter had ever even tried to work the coast; and we’d already put the fear of God into the niggers’ hearts till the whole coast was quiet as lambs.  When we filled up, we came back to see how theMarthawas progressing.”

“And thinking we was going home with our recruits,” Sparrowhawk slipped in.  “Lord lumme, that Miss Lackland ain’t never satisfied.  ‘I’ll take ’em on theMartha,’ says she, ‘and you can go back and fill up again.’”

“But I told her it couldn’t be done,” Munster went on.  “I told her theMarthahadn’t a license for recruiting.  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘it can’t be done, eh?’ and she stood and thought a few minutes.”

“And I’d seen her think before,” cried Sparrowhawk, “and I knew at wunst that the thing was as good as done.”

Munster lighted his cigarette and resumed.

“‘You see that spit,’ she says to me, ‘with the little ripple breaking around it?  There’s a current sets right across it and on it.  And you see them bafflin’ little cat’s-paws?  It’s good weather and a falling tide.  You just start to beat out, the two of you, and all you have to do is miss stays in the same baffling puff and the current will set you nicely aground.’”

“‘That little wash of sea won’t more than start a sheet or two of copper,’ says she, when Munster kicked,” Sparrowhawk explained.  “Oh, she’s no green un, that girl.”

“‘Then I’ll rescue your recruits and sail away—simple, ain’t it?’ says she,” Munster continued.  “‘You hang up one tide,’ says she; ‘the next is the big high water.  Then you kedge off and go after more recruits.  There’s no law against recruiting when you’re empty.’  ‘But there is against starving ’em,’ I said; ‘you know yourself there ain’t anykai-kaito speak of aboard of us, and there ain’t a crumb on theMartha.’”

“We’d all been pretty well on nativekai-kai, as it was,” said Sparrowhawk.

“‘Don’t let thekai-kaiworry you, Captain Munster,’ says she; ‘if I can find grub for eighty-four mouths on theMartha, the two of you can do as much by your two vessels.  Now go ahead and get aground before a steady breeze comes up and spoils the manoeuvre.  I’ll send my boats the moment you strike.  And now, good-day, gentlemen.’”

“And we went and did it,” Sparrowhawk said solemnly, and then emitted a series of chuckling noises.  “We laid over, starboard tack, and I pinched theEmilyagainst the spit.  ‘Go about,’ Captain Munster yells at me; ‘go about, or you’ll have me aground!’  He yelled other things, much worse.  But I didn’t mind.  I missed stays, pretty as you please, and theFlibbertydrifted down on him and fouled him, and we went ashore together in as nice a mess as you ever want to see.  Miss Lackland transferred the recruits, and the trick was done.”

“But where was she during the nor’wester?” Sheldon asked.

“At Langa-Langa.  Ran up there as it was coming on, and laid there the whole week and traded for grub with the niggers.  When we got to Tulagi, there she was waiting for us and scrapping with Burnett.  I tell you, Mr. Sheldon, she’s a wonder, that girl, a perfect wonder.”

Munster refilled his glass, and while Sheldon glanced across at Joan’s house, anxious for her coming, Sparrowhawk took up the tale.

“Gritty!  She’s the grittiest thing, man or woman, that ever blew into the Solomons.  You should have seen Poonga-Poonga the morning we arrived—Sniders popping on the beach and in the mangroves, war-drums booming in the bush, and signal-smokes raising everywhere.  ‘It’s all up,’ says Captain Munster.”

“Yes, that’s what I said,” declared that mariner.

“Of course it was all up.  You could see it with half an eye and hear it with one ear.”

“‘Up your granny,’ she says to him,” Sparrowhawk went on.  “‘Why, we haven’t arrived yet, much less got started.  Wait till the anchor’s down before you get afraid.’”

“That’s what she said to me,” Munster proclaimed.  “And of course it made me mad so that I didn’t care what happened.  We tried to send a boat ashore for a pow-wow, but it was fired upon.  And every once and a while some nigger’d take a long shot at us out of the mangroves.”

“They was only a quarter of a mile off,” Sparrowhawk explained, “and it was damned nasty.  ‘Don’t shoot unless they try to board,’ was Miss Lackland’s orders; but the dirty niggers wouldn’t board.  They just lay off in the bush and plugged away.  That night we held a council of war in theFlibberty’scabin.  ‘What we want,’ says Miss Lackland, ‘is a hostage.’”

“‘That’s what they do in books,’ I said, thinking to laugh her away from her folly,” Munster interrupted.  “‘True,’ says she, ‘and have you never seen the books come true?’  I shook my head.  ‘Then you’re not too old to learn,’ says she.  ‘I’ll tell you one thing right now,’ says I, ‘and that is I’ll be blowed if you catch me ashore in the night-time stealing niggers in a place like this.’”

“You didn’t say blowed,” Sparrowhawk corrected.  “You said you’d be damned.”

“That’s what I did, and I meant it, too.”

“‘Nobody asked you to go ashore,’ says she, quick as lightning,” Sparrowhawk grinned.  “And she said more.  She said, ‘And if I catch you going ashore without orders there’ll be trouble—understand, Captain Munster?’”

“Who in hell’s telling this, you or me?” the skipper demanded wrathfully.

“Well, she did, didn’t she?” insisted the mate.

“Yes, she did, if you want to make so sure of it.  And while you’re about it, you might as well repeat what she said to you when you said you wouldn’t recruit on the Poonga-Poonga coast for twice your screw.”

Sparrowhawk’s sun-reddened face flamed redder, though he tried to pass the situation off by divers laughings and chucklings and face-twistings.

“Go on, go on,” Sheldon urged; and Munster resumed the narrative.

“‘What we need,’ says she, ‘is the strong hand.  It’s the only way to handle them; and we’ve got to take hold firm right at the beginning.  I’m going ashore to-night to fetch Kina-Kina himself on board, and I’m not asking who’s game to go for I’ve got every man’s work arranged with me for him.  I’m taking my sailors with me, and one white man.’  ‘Of course, I’m that white man,’ I said; for by that time I was mad enough to go to hell and back again.  ‘Of course you’re not,’ says she.  ‘You’ll have charge of the covering boat.  Curtis stands by the landing boat.  Fowler goes with me.  Brahms takes charge of theFlibberty, and Sparrowhawk of theEmily.  And we start at one o’clock.’

“My word, it was a tough job lying there in the covering boat.  I never thought doing nothing could be such hard work.  We stopped about fifty fathoms off, and watched the other boat go in.  It was so dark under the mangroves we couldn’t see a thing of it.  D’ye know that little, monkey-looking nigger, Sheldon, on theFlibberty—the cook, I mean?  Well, he was cabin-boy twenty years ago on theScottish Chiefs, and after she was cut off he was a slave there at Poonga-Poonga.  And Miss Lackland had discovered the fact.  So he was the guide.  She gave him half a case of tobacco for that night’s work—”

“And scared him fit to die before she could get him to come along,” Sparrowhawk observed.

“Well, I never saw anything so black as the mangroves.  I stared at them till my eyes were ready to burst.  And then I’d look at the stars, and listen to the surf sighing along the reef.  And there was a dog that barked.  Remember that dog, Sparrowhawk?  The brute nearly gave me heart-failure when he first began.  After a while he stopped—wasn’t barking at the landing party at all; and then the silence was harder than ever, and the mangroves grew blacker, and it was all I could do to keep from calling out to Curtis in there in the landing boat, just to make sure that I wasn’t the only white man left alive.

“Of course there was a row.  It had to come, and I knew it; but it startled me just the same.  I never heard such screeching and yelling in my life.  The niggers must have just dived for the bush without looking to see what was up, while her Tahitians let loose, shooting in the air and yelling to hurry ’em on.  And then, just as sudden, came the silence again—all except for some small kiddie that had got dropped in the stampede and that kept crying in the bush for its mother.

“And then I heard them coming through the mangroves, and an oar strike on a gunwale, and Miss Lackland laugh, and I knew everything was all right.  We pulled on board without a shot being fired.  And, by God! she had made the books come true, for there was old Kina-Kina himself being hoisted over the rail, shivering and chattering like an ape.  The rest was easy.  Kina-Kina’s word was law, and he was scared to death.  And we kept him on board issuing proclamations all the time we were in Poonga-Poonga.


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