as he was half-way to his feet, while the five-score blacks surged
forward for the killing. Her revolver was out, and Carin-Jama let
go his grip, reeling backward with a bullet in his shoulder. In
that fleeting instant of action she had thought to shoot him in the
arm, which, at that short distance, might reasonably have been
achieved. But the wave of savages leaping forward had changed her
shot to the shoulder. It was a moment when not the slightest
chance could be taken.
The instant his throat was released, Sheldon struck out with his
fist, and Carin-Jama joined his brother on the ground. The mutiny
was quelled, and five minutes more saw the brothers being carried
to the hospital, and the mutineers, marshalled by the gang-bosses,
on the way to the fields.
When Sheldon came up on the veranda, he found Joan collapsed on the
steamer-chair and in tears. The sight unnerved him as the row just
over could not possibly have done. A woman in tears was to him an
embarrassing situation; and when that woman was Joan Lackland, from
whom he had grown to expect anything unexpected, he was really
frightened. He glanced down at her helplessly, and moistened his
lips.
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37
“I want to thank you,” he began. “There isn’t a doubt but what you
saved my life, and I must say–”
She abruptly removed her hands, showing a wrathful and tear-stained
face.
“You brute! You coward!” she cried. “You have made me shoot a
man, and I never shot a man in my life before.”
“It’s only a flesh-wound, and he isn’t going to die,” Sheldon
managed to interpolate.
“What of that? I shot him just the same. There was no need for
you to jump down there that way. It was brutal and cowardly.”
“Oh, now I say–” he began soothingly.
“Go away. Don’t you see I hate you! hate you! Oh, won’t you go
away!”
Sheldon was white with anger.
“Then why in the name of common sense did you shoot?” he demanded.
“Be-be-because you were a white man,” she sobbed. “And Dad would
never have left any white man in the lurch. But it was your fault.
You had no right to get yourself in such a position. Besides, it
wasn’t necessary.”
“I am afraid I don’t understand,” he said shortly, turning away.
“We will talk it over later on.”
“Look how I get on with the boys,” she said, while he paused in the
doorway, stiffly polite, to listen. “There’s those two sick boys I
am nursing. They will do anything for me when they get well, and I
won’t have to keep them in fear of their life all the time. It is
not necessary, I tell you, all this harshness and brutality. What
if they are cannibals? They are human beings, just like you and
me, and they are amenable to reason. That is what distinguishes
all of us from the lower animals.”
He nodded and went out.
“I suppose I’ve been unforgivably foolish,” was her greeting, when
he returned several hours later from a round of the plantation.
“I’ve been to the hospital, and the man is getting along all right.
It is not a serious hurt.”
Sheldon felt unaccountably pleased and happy at the changed aspect
of her mood.
“You see, you don’t understand the situation,” he began. “In the
first place, the blacks have to be ruled sternly. Kindness is all
very well, but you can’t rule them by kindness only. I accept all
that you say about the Hawaiians and the Tahitians. You say that
they can be handled that way, and I believe you. I have had no
experience with them. But you have had no experience with the
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38
blacks, and I ask you to believe me. They are different from your
natives. You are used to Polynesians. These boys are Melanesians.
They’re blacks. They’re niggers–look at their kinky hair. And
they’re a whole lot lower than the African niggers. Really, you
know, there is a vast difference.”
“They possess no gratitude, no sympathy, no kindliness. If you are
kind to them, they think you are a fool. If you are gentle with
them they think you are afraid. And when they think you are
afraid, watch out, for they will get you. Just to show you, let me
state the one invariable process in a black man’s brain when, on
his native heath, he encounters a stranger. His first thought is
one of fear. Will the stranger kill him? His next thought, seeing
that he is not killed, is: Can he kill the stranger? There was
Packard, a Colonial trader, some twelve miles down the coast. He
boasted that he ruled by kindness and never struck a blow. The
result was that he did not rule at all. He used to come down in
his whale-boat to visit Hughie and me. When his boat’s crew
decided to go home, he had to cut his visit short to accompany
them. I remember one Sunday afternoon when Packard had accepted
our invitation to stop to dinner. The soup was just served, when
Hughie saw a nigger peering in through the door. He went out to
him, for it was a violation of Berande custom. Any nigger has to
send in word by the house-boys, and to keep outside the compound.
This man, who was one of Packard’s boat’s-crew, was on the veranda.
And he knew better, too. ‘What name?’ said Hughie. ‘You tell ‘m
white man close up we fella boat’s-crew go along. He no come now,
we fella boy no wait. We go.’ And just then Hughie fetched him a
clout that knocked him clean down the stairs and off the veranda.”
”
But it was needlessly cruel,” Joan objected. “You wouldn’t treat
a white man that way.”
“And that’s just the point. He wasn’t a white man. He was a low
black nigger, and he was deliberately insulting, not alone his own
white master, but every white master in the Solomons. He insulted
me. He insulted Hughie. He insulted Berande.”
“Of course, according to your lights, to your formula of the rule
of the strong–”
“Yes,” Sheldon interrupted, “but it was according to the formula of
the rule of the weak that Packard ruled. And what was the result?
I am still alive. Packard is dead. He was unswervingly kind and
gentle to his boys, and his boys waited till one day he was down
with fever. His head is over on Malaita now. They carried away
two whale-boats as well, filled with the loot of the store. Then
there was Captain Mackenzie of the ketch Minota. He believed in
kindness. He also contended that better confidence was established
by carrying no weapons. On his second trip to Malaita, recruiting,
he ran into Bina, which is near Langa Langa. The rifles with which
the boat’s-crew should have been armed, were locked up in his
cabin. When the whale-boat went ashore after recruits, he paraded
around the deck without even a revolver on him. He was tomahawked.
His head remains in Malaita. It was suicide. So was Packard’s
finish suicide.”
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“I grant that precaution is necessary in dealing with them,” Joan
agreed; “but I believe that more satisfactory results can be
obtained by treating them with discreet kindness and gentleness.”
“And there I agree with YOU, but you must understand one thing.
Berande, bar none, is by far the worst plantation in the Solomons
so far as the labour is concerned. And how it came to be so proves
your point. The previous owners of Berande were not discreetly
kind. They were a pair of unadulterated brutes. One was a down-
east Yankee, as I believe they are called, and the other was a
guzzling German. They were slave-drivers. To begin with, they
bought their labour from Johnny Be-blowed, the most notorious
recruiter in the Solomons. He is working out a ten years’ sentence
in Fiji now, for the wanton killing of a black boy. During his
last days here he had made himself so obnoxious that the natives on
Malaita would have nothing to do with him. The only way he could
get recruits was by hurrying to the spot whenever a murder or
series of murders occurred. The murderers were usually only too
willing to sign on and get away to escape vengeance. Down here
they call such escapes, ‘pier-head jumps.’ There is suddenly a
roar from the beach, and a nigger runs down to the water pursued by
clouds of spears and arrows. Of course, Johnny Be-blowed’s whale-
boat is lying ready to pick him up. In his last days Johnny got
nothing but pier-head jumps.
“And the first owners of Berande bought his recruits–a hard-bitten
gang of murderers. They were all five-year boys. You see, the
recruiter has the advantage over a boy when he makes a pier-head
jump. He could sign him on for ten years did the law permit.