apprehension.
“What IS the matter?” he demanded, with a show of heat. “What HAVE
I done now?”
Joan’s eyes were bright with battle, the curve of her lips sharp
with mockery.
“Certainly not the unexpected,” she said quietly. “Merely ignored
me in your ordinary, every-day, man-god, superior fashion.
Naturally it counted for nothing, my telling you that I had no idea
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of going to Sydney. Go to Sydney I must, because you, in your
superior wisdom, have so decreed.”
She paused and looked at him curiously, as though he were some
strange breed of animal.
“Of course I am grateful for your offer of assistance; but even
that is no salve to wounded pride. For that matter, it is no more
than one white man should expect from another. Shipwrecked
mariners are always helped along their way. Only this particular
mariner doesn’t need any help. Furthermore, this mariner is not
going to Sydney, thank you.”
“But what do you intend to do?”
“Find some spot where I shall escape the indignity of being
patronized and bossed by the superior sex.”
“Come now, that is putting it a bit too strongly.” Sheldon
laughed, but the strain in his voice destroyed the effect of
spontaneity. “You know yourself how impossible the situation is.”
“I know nothing of the sort, sir. And if it is impossible, well,
haven’t I achieved it?”
“But it cannot continue. Really–”
“Oh, yes, it can. Having achieved it, I can go on achieving it. I
intend to remain in the Solomons, but not on Berande. To-morrow I
am going to take the whale-boat over to Pari-Sulay. I was talking
with Captain Young about it. He says there are at least four
hundred acres, and every foot of it good for planting. Being an
island, he says I won’t have to bother about wild pigs destroying
the young trees. All I’ll have to do is to keep the weeds hoed
until the trees come into bearing. First, I’ll buy the island;
next, get forty or fifty recruits and start clearing and planting;
and at the same time I’ll run up a bungalow; and then you’ll be
relieved of my embarrassing presence–now don’t say that it isn’t.”
“It is embarrassing,” he said bluntly. “But you refuse to see my
point of view, so there is no use in discussing it. Now please
forget all about it, and consider me at your service concerning
this . . . this project of yours. I know more about cocoanut-
planting than you do. You speak like a capitalist. I don’t know
how much money you have, but I don’t fancy you are rolling in
wealth, as you Americans say. But I do know what it costs to clear
land. Suppose the government sells you Pari-Sulay at a pound an
acre; clearing will cost you at least four pounds more; that is,
five pounds for four hundred acres, or, say, ten thousand dollars.
Have you that much?”
She was keenly interested, and he could see that the previous clash
between them was already forgotten. Her disappointment was plain
as she confessed:
“No; I haven’t quite eight thousand dollars.”
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“Then here’s another way of looking at it. You’ll need, as you
said, at least fifty boys. Not counting premiums, their wages are
thirty dollars a year.”
“I pay my Tahitians fifteen a month,” she interpolated.
“They won’t do on straight plantation work. But to return. The
wages of fifty boys each year will come to three hundred pounds–
that is, fifteen hundred dollars. Very well. It will be seven
years before your trees begin to bear. Seven times fifteen hundred
is ten thousand five hundred dollars–more than you possess, and
all eaten up by the boys’ wages, with nothing to pay for bungalow,
building, tools, quinine, trips to Sydney, and so forth.”
Sheldon shook his head gravely. “You’ll have to abandon the idea.”
“But I won’t go to Sydney,” she cried. “I simply won’t. I’ll buy
in to the extent of my money as a small partner in some other
plantation. Let me buy in in Berande!”
“Heaven forbid!” he cried in such genuine dismay that she broke
into hearty laughter.
“There, I won’t tease you. Really, you know, I’m not accustomed to
forcing my presence where it is not desired. Yes, yes; I know
you’re just aching to point out that I’ve forced myself upon you
ever since I landed, only you are too polite to say so. Yet as you
said yourself, it was impossible for me to go away, so I had to
stay. You wouldn’t let me go to Tulagi. You compelled me to force
myself upon you. But I won’t buy in as partner with any one. I’ll
buy Pari-Sulay, but I’ll put only ten boys on it and clear slowly.
Also, I’ll invest in some old ketch and take out a trading license.
For that matter, I’ll go recruiting on Malaita.”
She looked for protest, and found it in Sheldon’s clenched hand and
in every line of his clean-cut face.
“Go ahead and say it,” she challenged. “Please don’t mind me.
I’m–I’m getting used to it, you know. Really I am.”
“I wish I were a woman so as to tell you how preposterously insane
and impossible it is,” he blurted out.
She surveyed him with deliberation, and said:
“Better than that, you are a man. So there is nothing to prevent
your telling me, for I demand to be considered as a man. I didn’t
come down here to trail my woman’s skirts over the Solomons.
Please forget that I am accidentally anything else than a man with
a man’s living to make.”
Inwardly Sheldon fumed and fretted. Was she making game of him?
Or did there lurk in her the insidious unhealthfulness of
unwomanliness? Or was it merely a case of blank, staring,
sentimental, idiotic innocence?
“I have told you,” he began stiffly, “that recruiting on Malaita is
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impossible for a woman, and that is all I care to say–or dare.”
“And I tell you, in turn, that it is nothing of the sort. I’ve
sailed the Miele here, master, if you please, all the way from
Tahiti–even if I did lose her, which was the fault of your
Admiralty charts. I am a navigator, and that is more than your
Solomons captains are. Captain Young told me all about it. And I
am a seaman–a better seaman than you, when it comes right down to
it, and you know it. I can shoot. I am not a fool. I can take
care of myself. And I shall most certainly buy a ketch, run her
myself, and go recruiting on Malaita.”
Sheldon made a hopeless gesture.
“That’s right,” she rattled on. “Wash your hands of me. But as
Von used to say, ‘You just watch my smoke!'”
“There’s no use in discussing it. Let us have some music.”
He arose and went over to the big phonograph; but before the disc
started, and while he was winding the machine, he heard her saying:
“I suppose you’ve been accustomed to Jane Eyres all your life.
That’s why you don’t understand me. Come on, Satan; let’s leave
him to his old music.”
He watched her morosely and without intention of speaking, till he
saw her take a rifle from the stand, examine the magazine, and
start for the door.
“Where are you going?” he asked peremptorily.
“As between man and woman,” she answered, “it would be too
terribly–er–indecent for you to tell me why I shouldn’t go
alligatoring. Good-night. Sleep well.”
He shut off the phonograph with a snap, started toward the door
after her, then abruptly flung himself into a chair.
“You’re hoping a ‘gator catches me, aren’t you?” she called from
the veranda, and as she went down the steps her rippling laughter
drifted tantalizingly back through the wide doorway.
CHAPTER X–A MESSAGE FROM BOUCHER
The next day Sheldon was left all alone. Joan had gone exploring
Pari-Sulay, and was not to be expected back until the late
afternoon. Sheldon was vaguely oppressed by his loneliness, and
several heavy squalls during the afternoon brought him frequently
on to the veranda, telescope in hand, to scan the sea anxiously for
the whale-boat. Betweenwhiles he scowled over the plantation
account-books, made rough estimates, added and balanced, and
scowled the harder. The loss of the Jessie had hit Berande
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severely. Not alone was his capital depleted by the amount of her
value, but her earnings were no longer to be reckoned on, and it
was her earnings that largely paid the running expenses of the
plantation.
“Poor old Hughie,” he muttered aloud, once. “I’m glad you didn’t
live to see it, old man. What a cropper, what a cropper!”
Between squalls the Flibberty-Gibbet ran in to anchorage, and her
skipper, Pete Oleson (brother to the Oleson of the Jessie),
ancient, grizzled, wild-eyed, emaciated by fever, dragged his weary
frame up the veranda steps and collapsed in a steamer-chair.