his head. The son of their chief, old One-Eyed Billy, had
recruited on Lunga and died of dysentery. That meant that a white
man’s head was owing to Suu–any white man, it didn’t matter who so
long as they got the head. And Young was only a lad, and they made
sure to get his easily. They decoyed his whale-boat ashore with a
promise of recruits, and killed all hands. At the same instant,
the Suu gang that was on board the Minerva jumped Young. He was
just preparing a dynamite stick for fish, and he lighted it and
tossed it in amongst them. One can’t get him to talk about it, but
the fuse was short, the survivors leaped overboard, while he
slipped his anchor and got away. They’ve got one hundred fathoms
of shell money on his head now, which is worth one hundred pounds
sterling. Yet he goes into Suu regularly. He was there a short
time ago, returning thirty boys from Cape Marsh–that’s the Fulcrum
Brothers’ plantation.”
“At any rate, his news to-night has given me a better insight into
the life down here,” Joan said. “And it is colourful life, to say
the least. The Solomons ought to be printed red on the charts–and
yellow, too, for the diseases.”
“The Solomons are not always like this,” Sheldon answered. “Of
course, Berande is the worst plantation, and everything it gets is
the worst. I doubt if ever there was a worse run of sickness than
we were just getting over when you arrived. Just as luck would
have it, the Jessie caught the contagion as well. Berande has been
very unfortunate. All the old-timers shake their heads at it.
They say it has what you Americans call a hoodoo on it.”
ADVENTURE
43
“Berande will succeed,” Joan said stoutly. “I like to laugh at
superstition. You’ll pull through and come out the big end of the
horn. The ill luck can’t last for ever. I am afraid, though, the
Solomons is not a white man’s climate.”
“It will be, though. Give us fifty years, and when all the bush is
cleared off back to the mountains, fever will be stamped out;
everything will be far healthier. There will be cities and towns
here, for there’s an immense amount of good land going to waste.”
“But it will never become a white man’s climate, in spite of all
that,” Joan reiterated. “The white man will always be unable to
perform the manual labour.”
“That is true.”
“It will mean slavery,” she dashed on.
“Yes, like all the tropics. The black, the brown, and the yellow
will have to do the work, managed by the white men. The black
labour is too wasteful, however, and in time Chinese or Indian
coolies will be imported. The planters are already considering the
matter. I, for one, am heartily sick of black labour.”
“Then the blacks will die off?”
Sheldon shrugged his shoulders, and retorted, –
“Yes, like the North American Indian, who was a far nobler type
than the Melanesian. The world is only so large, you know, and it
is filling up–”
“And the unfit must perish?”
“Precisely so. The unfit must perish.”
In the morning Joan was roused by a great row and hullabaloo. Her
first act was to reach for her revolver, but when she heard Noa
Noah, who was on guard, laughing outside, she knew there was no
danger, and went out to see the fun. Captain Young had landed
Satan at the moment when the bridge-building gang had started along
the beach. Satan was big and black, short-haired and muscular, and
weighed fully seventy pounds. He did not love the blacks. Tommy
Jones had trained him well, tying him up daily for several hours
and telling off one or two black boys at a time to tease him. So
Satan had it in for the whole black race, and the second after he
landed on the beach the bridge-building gang was stampeding over
the compound fence and swarming up the cocoanut palms.
“Good morning,” Sheldon called from the veranda. “And what do you
think of the nigger-chaser?”
“I’m thinking we have a task before us to train him in to the
house-boys,” she called back.
“And to your Tahitians, too. Look out, Noah! Run for it!”
ADVENTURE
44
Satan, having satisfied himself that the tree-perches were
unassailable, was charging straight for the big Tahitian.
But Noah stood his ground, though somewhat irresolutely, and Satan,
to every one’s surprise, danced and frisked about him with laughing
eyes and wagging tail.
“Now, that is what I might call a proper dog,” was Joan’s comment.
“He is at least wiser than you, Mr. Sheldon. He didn’t require any
teaching to recognize the difference between a Tahitian and a black
boy. What do you think, Noah? Why don’t he bite you? He savvee
you Tahitian eh?”
Noa Noah shook his head and grinned.
“He no savvee me Tahitian,” he explained. “He savvee me wear pants
all the same white man.”
“You’ll have to give him a course in ‘Sartor Resartus,'” Sheldon
laughed, as he came down and began to make friends with Satan.
It chanced just then that Adamu Adam and Matauare, two of Joan’s
sailors, entered the compound from the far side-gate. They had
been down to the Balesuna making an alligator trap, and, instead of
trousers, were clad in lava-lavas that flapped gracefully about
their stalwart limbs. Satan saw them, and advertised his find by
breaking away from Sheldon’s hands and charging.
“No got pants,” Noah announced with a grin that broadened as Adamu
Adam took to flight.
He climbed up the platform that supported the galvanized iron tanks
which held the water collected from the roof. Foiled here, Satan
turned and charged back on Matauare.
“Run, Matauare! Run!” Joan called.
But he held his ground and waited the dog.
“He is the Fearless One–that is what his name means,” Joan
explained to Sheldon.
The Tahitian watched Satan coolly, and when that sanguine-mouthed
creature lifted into the air in the final leap, the man’s hand shot
out. It was a fair grip on the lower jaw, and Satan described a
half circle and was flung to the rear, turning over in the air and
falling heavily on his back. Three times he leaped, and three
times that grip on his jaw flung him to defeat. Then he contented
himself with trotting at Matauare’s heels, eyeing him and sniffing
him suspiciously.
“It’s all right, Satan; it’s all right,” Sheldon assured him.
“That good fella belong along me.”
But Satan dogged the Tahitian’s movements for a full hour before he
made up his mind that the man was an appurtenance of the place.
Then he turned his attention to the three house-boys, cornering
ADVENTURE
45
Ornfiri in the kitchen and rushing him against the hot stove,
stripping the lava-lava from Lalaperu when that excited youth
climbed a veranda-post, and following Viaburi on top the billiard-
table, where the battle raged until Joan managed a rescue.
CHAPTER IX–AS BETWEEN A MAN AND A WOMAN
It was Satan’s inexhaustible energy and good spirits that most
impressed them. His teeth seemed perpetually to ache with desire,
and in lieu of black legs he husked the cocoanuts that fell from
the trees in the compound, kept the enclosure clear of intruding
hens, and made a hostile acquaintance with every boss-boy who came
to report. He was unable to forget the torment of his puppyhood,
wherein everlasting hatred of the black had been woven into the
fibres of consciousness; and such a terror did he make himself that
Sheldon was forced to shut him up in the living room when, for any
reason, strange natives were permitted in the compound. This
always hurt Satan’s feelings and fanned his wrath, so that even the
house-boys had to watch out for him when he was first released.
Christian Young sailed away in the Minerva, carrying an invitation
(that would be delivered nobody knew when) to Tommy Jones to drop
in at Berande the next time he was passing.
“What are your plans when you get to Sydney?” Sheldon asked, that
night, at dinner.
“First I’ve heard that I’m going to Sydney,” Joan retorted. “I
suppose you’ve received information, by bush-telegraph, that that
third assistant understrapper and ex-sailorman at Tulagi is going
to deport me as an undesirable immigrant.”
“Oh, no, nothing of the sort, I assure you,” Sheldon began with
awkward haste, fearful of having offended, though he knew not how.
“I was just wondering, that was all. You see, with the loss of the
schooner and . . and all the rest . . . you understand . . I was
thinking that if–a–if–hang it all, until you could communicate
with your friends, my agents at Sydney could advance you a loan,
temporary you see, why I’d be only too glad and all the rest, you
know. The proper–”
But his jaw dropped and he regarded her irritably and with