sweat from the exertion streamed down his face and showed through
the undershirt across his shoulders. He managed to get into the
chair, where he panted in a state of collapse. In a few minutes he
roused himself. The boy held the end of the telescope against one
of the veranda scantlings, while the man gazed through it at the
sea. At last he picked up the white sails of the schooner and
studied them.
“No Jessie,” he said very quietly. “That’s the Malakula.”
He changed his seat for a steamer reclining-chair. Three hundred
feet away the sea broke in a small surf upon the beach. To the
left he could see the white line of breakers that marked the bar of
the Balesuna River, and, beyond, the rugged outline of Savo Island.
Directly before him, across the twelve-mile channel, lay Florida
Island; and, farther to the right, dim in the distance, he could
make out portions of Malaita–the savage island, the abode of
murder, and robbery, and man-eating–the place from which his own
two hundred plantation hands had been recruited. Between him and
the beach was the cane-grass fence of the compound. The gate was
ajar, and he sent the house-boy to close it. Within the fence grew
a number of lofty cocoanut palms. On either side the path that led
to the gate stood two tall flagstaffs. They were reared on
artificial mounds of earth that were ten feet high. The base of
each staff was surrounded by short posts, painted white and
connected by heavy chains. The staffs themselves were like ships’
masts, with topmasts spliced on in true nautical fashion, with
shrouds, ratlines, gaffs, and flag-halyards. From the gaff of one,
two gay flags hung limply, one a checkerboard of blue and white
squares, the other a white pennant centred with a red disc. It was
the international code signal of distress.
On the far corner of the compound fence a hawk brooded. The man
watched it, and knew that it was sick. He wondered idly if it felt
as bad as he felt, and was feebly amused at the thought of kinship
that somehow penetrated his fancy. He roused himself to order the
great bell to be rung as a signal for the plantation hands to cease
work and go to their barracks. Then he mounted his man-horse and
made the last round of the day.
In the hospital were two new cases. To these he gave castor-oil.
He congratulated himself. It had been an easy day. Only three had
died. He inspected the copra-drying that had been going on, and
went through the barracks to see if there were any sick lying
hidden and defying his rule of segregation. Returned to the house,
he received the reports of the boss-boys and gave instructions for
next day’s work. The boat’s crew boss also he had in, to give
assurance, as was the custom nightly, that the whale-boats were
hauled up and padlocked. This was a most necessary precaution, for
the blacks were in a funk, and a whale-boat left lying on the beach
in the evening meant a loss of twenty blacks by morning. Since the
blacks were worth thirty dollars apiece, or less, according to how
much of their time had been worked out, Berande plantation could
ill afford the loss. Besides, whale-boats were not cheap in the
ADVENTURE
6
Solomons; and, also, the deaths were daily reducing the working
capital. Seven blacks had fled into the bush the week before, and
four had dragged themselves back, helpless from fever, with the
report that two more had been killed and kai-kai’d {1} by the
hospitable bushmen. The seventh man was still at large, and was
said to be working along the coast on the lookout to steal a canoe
and get away to his own island.
Viaburi brought two lighted lanterns to the white man for
inspection. He glanced at them and saw that they were burning
brightly with clear, broad flames, and nodded his head. One was
hoisted up to the gaff of the flagstaff, and the other was placed
on the wide veranda. They were the leading lights to the Berande
anchorage, and every night in the year they were so inspected and
hung out.
He rolled back on his couch with a sigh of relief. The day’s work
was done. A rifle lay on the couch beside him. His revolver was
within reach of his hand. An hour passed, during which he did not
move. He lay in a state of half-slumber, half-coma. He became
suddenly alert. A creak on the back veranda was the cause. The
room was L-shaped; the corner in which stood his couch was dim, but
the hanging lamp in the main part of the room, over the billiard
table and just around the corner, so that it did not shine on him,
was burning brightly. Likewise the verandas were well lighted. He
waited without movement. The creaks were repeated, and he knew
several men lurked outside.
“What name?” he cried sharply.
The house, raised a dozen feet above the ground, shook on its pile
foundations to the rush of retreating footsteps.
“They’re getting bold,” he muttered. “Something will have to be
done.”
The full moon rose over Malaita and shone down on Berande. Nothing
stirred in the windless air. From the hospital still proceeded the
moaning of the sick. In the grass-thatched barracks nearly two
hundred woolly-headed man-eaters slept off the weariness of the
day’s toil, though several lifted their heads to listen to the
curses of one who cursed the white man who never slept. On the
four verandas of the house the lanterns burned. Inside, between
rifle and revolver, the man himself moaned and tossed in intervals
of troubled sleep.
CHAPTER II–SOMETHING IS DONE
In the morning David Sheldon decided that he was worse. That he
was appreciably weaker there was no doubt, and there were other
symptoms that were unfavourable. He began his rounds looking for
trouble. He wanted trouble. In full health, the strained
situation would have been serious enough; but as it was, himself
ADVENTURE
7
growing helpless, something had to be done. The blacks were
getting more sullen and defiant, and the appearance of the men the
previous night on his veranda–one of the gravest of offences on
Berande–was ominous. Sooner or later they would get him, if he
did not get them first, if he did not once again sear on their dark
souls the flaming mastery of the white man.
He returned to the house disappointed. No opportunity had
presented itself of making an example of insolence or
insubordination–such as had occurred on every other day since the
sickness smote Berande. The fact that none had offended was in
itself suspicious. They were growing crafty. He regretted that he
had not waited the night before until the prowlers had entered.
Then he might have shot one or two and given the rest a new lesson,
writ in red, for them to con. It was one man against two hundred,
and he was horribly afraid of his sickness overpowering him and
leaving him at their mercy. He saw visions of the blacks taking
charge of the plantation, looting the store, burning the buildings,
and escaping to Malaita. Also, one gruesome vision he caught of
his own head, sun-dried and smoke-cured, ornamenting the canoe
house of a cannibal village. Either the Jessie would have to
arrive, or he would have to do something.
The bell had hardly rung, sending the labourers into the fields,
when Sheldon had a visitor. He had had the couch taken out on the
veranda, and he was lying on it when the canoes paddled in and
hauled out on the beach. Forty men, armed with spears, bows and
arrows, and war-clubs, gathered outside the gate of the compound,
but only one entered. They knew the law of Berande, as every
native knew the law of every white man’s compound in all the
thousand miles of the far-flung Solomons. The one man who came up
the path, Sheldon recognized as Seelee, the chief of Balesuna
village. The savage did not mount the steps, but stood beneath and
talked to the white lord above.
Seelee was more intelligent than the average of his kind, but his
intelligence only emphasized the lowness of that kind. His eyes,
close together and small, advertised cruelty and craftiness. A
gee-string and a cartridge-belt were all the clothes he wore. The
carved pearl-shell ornament that hung from nose to chin and impeded
speech was purely ornamental, as were the holes in his ears mere
utilities for carrying pipe and tobacco. His broken-fanged teeth
were stained black by betel-nut, the juice of which he spat upon
the ground.
As he talked or listened, he made grimaces like a monkey. He said
yes by dropping his eyelids and thrusting his chin forward. He
spoke with childish arrogance strangely at variance with the
subservient position he occupied beneath the veranda. He, with his