Well, that’s the gang of murderers we’ve got on our hands now. Of
course some are dead, some have been killed, and there are others
serving sentences at Tulagi. Very little clearing did those first
owners do, and less planting. It was war all the time. They had
one manager killed. One of the partners had his shoulder slashed
nearly off by a cane-knife. The other was speared on two different
occasions. Both were bullies, wherefore there was a streak of
cowardice in them, and in the end they had to give up. They were
chased away–literally chased away–by their own niggers. And
along came poor Hughie and me, two new chums, to take hold of that
hard-bitten gang. We did not know the situation, and we had bought
Berande, and there was nothing to do but hang on and muddle through
somehow.
“At first we made the mistake of indiscreet kindness. We tried to
rule by persuasion and fair treatment. The niggers concluded that
we were afraid. I blush to think of what fools we were in those
first days. We were imposed on, and threatened and insulted; and
we put up with it, hoping our square-dealing would soon mend
things. Instead of which everything went from bad to worse. Then
came the day when Hughie reprimanded one of the boys and was nearly
killed by the gang. The only thing that saved him was the number
on top of him, which enabled me to reach the spot in time.
“Then began the rule of the strong hand. It was either that or
quit, and we had sunk about all our money into the venture, and we
could not quit. And besides, our pride was involved. We had
started out to do something, and we were so made that we just had
ADVENTURE
40
to go on with it. It has been a hard fight, for we were, and are
to this day, considered the worst plantation in the Solomons from
the standpoint of labour. Do you know, we have been unable to get
white men in. We’ve offered the managership to half a dozen. I
won’t say they were afraid, for they were not. But they did not
consider it healthy–at least that is the way it was put by the
last one who declined our offer. So Hughie and I did the managing
ourselves.”
“And when he died you were prepared to go on all alone!” Joan
cried, with shining eyes.
“I thought I’d muddle through. And now, Miss Lackland, please be
charitable when I seem harsh, and remember that the situation is
unparalleled down here. We’ve got a bad crowd, and we’re making
them work. You’ve been over the plantation and you ought to know.
And I assure you that there are no better three-and-four-years-old
trees on any other plantation in the Solomons. We have worked
steadily to change matters for the better. We’ve been slowly
getting in new labour. That is why we bought the Jessie. We
wanted to select our own labour. In another year the time will be
up for most of the original gang. You see, they were recruited
during the first year of Berande, and their contracts expire on
different months. Naturally, they have contaminated the new boys
to a certain extent; but that can soon be remedied, and then
Berande will be a respectable plantation.”
Joan nodded but remained silent. She was too occupied in glimpsing
the vision of the one lone white man as she had first seen him,
helpless from fever, a collapsed wraith in a steamer-chair, who, up
to the last heart-beat, by some strange alchemy of race, was
pledged to mastery.
“It is a pity,” she said. “But the white man has to rule, I
suppose.”
“I don’t like it,” Sheldon assured her. “To save my life I can’t
imagine how I ever came here. But here I am, and I can’t run
away.”
“Blind destiny of race,” she said, faintly smiling. “We whites
have been land robbers and sea robbers from remotest time. It is
in our blood, I guess, and we can’t get away from it.”
“I never thought about it so abstractly,” he confessed. “I’ve been
too busy puzzling over why I came here.”
CHAPTER VIII–LOCAL COLOUR
At sunset a small ketch fanned in to anchorage, and a little later
the skipper came ashore. He was a soft-spoken, gentle-voiced young
fellow of twenty, but he won Joan’s admiration in advance when
Sheldon told her that he ran the ketch all alone with a black crew
ADVENTURE
41
from Malaita. And Romance lured and beckoned before Joan’s eyes
when she learned he was Christian Young, a Norfolk Islander, but a
direct descendant of John Young, one of the original Bounty
mutineers. The blended Tahitian and English blood showed in his
soft eyes and tawny skin; but the English hardness seemed to have
disappeared. Yet the hardness was there, and it was what enabled
him to run his ketch single-handed and to wring a livelihood out of
the fighting Solomons.
Joan’s unexpected presence embarrassed him, until she herself put
him at his ease by a frank, comradely manner that offended
Sheldon’s sense of the fitness of things feminine. News from the
world Young had not, but he was filled with news of the Solomons.
Fifteen boys had stolen rifles and run away into the bush from
Lunga plantation, which was farther east on the Guadalcanar coast.
And from the bush they had sent word that they were coming back to
wipe out the three white men in charge, while two of the three
white men, in turn, were hunting them through the bush. There was
a strong possibility, Young volunteered, that if they were not
caught they might circle around and tap the coast at Berande in
order to steal or capture a whale-boat.
“I forgot to tell you that your trader at Ugi has been murdered,”
he said to Sheldon. “Five big canoes came down from Port Adams.
They landed in the night-time, and caught Oscar asleep. What they
didn’t steal they burned. The Flibberty-Gibbet got the news at
Mboli Pass, and ran down to Ugi. I was at Mboli when the news
came.”
“I think I’ll have to abandon Ugi,” Sheldon remarked.
“It’s the second trader you’ve lost there in a year,” Young
concurred. “To make it safe there ought to be two white men at
least. Those Malaita canoes are always raiding down that way, and
you know what that Port Adams lot is. I’ve got a dog for you.
Tommy Jones sent it up from Neal Island. He said he’d promised it
to you. It’s a first-class nigger-chaser. Hadn’t been on board
two minutes when he had my whole boat’s-crew in the rigging. Tommy
calls him Satan.”
“I’ve wondered several times why you had no dogs here,” Joan said.
“The trouble is to keep them. They’re always eaten by the
crocodiles.”
“Jack Hanley was killed at Marovo Lagoon two months ago,” Young
announced in his mild voice. “The news just came down on the
Apostle.”
“Where is Marovo Lagoon?” Joan asked.
“New Georgia, a couple of hundred miles to the westward,” Sheldon
answered. “Bougainville lies just beyond.”
“His own house-boys did it,” Young went on; “but they were put up
to it by the Marovo natives. His Santa Cruz boat’s-crew escaped in
the whale-boat to Choiseul, and Mather, in the Lily, sailed over to
ADVENTURE
42
Marovo. He burned a village, and got Hanley’s head back. He found
it in one of the houses, where the niggers had it drying. And
that’s all the news I’ve got, except that there’s a lot of new Lee-
Enfields loose on the eastern end of Ysabel. Nobody knows how the
natives got them. The government ought to investigate. And–oh
yes, a war vessel’s in the group, the Cambrian. She burned three
villages at Bina–on account of the Minota, you know–and shelled
the bush. Then she went to Sio to straighten out things there.”
The conversation became general, and just before Young left to go
on board Joan asked, –
“How can you manage all alone, Mr. Young?”
His large, almost girlish eyes rested on her for a moment before he
replied, and then it was in the softest and gentlest of voices.
“Oh, I get along pretty well with them. Of course, there is a bit
of trouble once in a while, but that must be expected. You must
never let them think you are afraid. I’ve been afraid plenty of
times, but they never knew it.”
“You would think he wouldn’t strike a mosquito that was biting
him,” Sheldon said when Young had gone on board. “All the Norfolk
Islanders that have descended from the Bounty crowd are that way.
But look at Young. Only three years ago, when he first got the
Minerva, he was lying in Suu, on Malaita. There are a lot of
returned Queenslanders there–a rough crowd. They planned to get