“She is only a girl,” he repeated with greater solemnity.
“A dashed pretty one, and a good traveller,” Tudor laughed. “She
certainly has spunk, eh, Sheldon?”
“Yes, she is brave,” was the reluctant answer for Sheldon did not
feel disposed to talk about her.
“That’s the American of it,” Tudor went on. “Push, and go, and
energy, and independence. What do you think, skipper?”
“I think she is young, very young, only a girl,” replied the
captain of the Minerva, continuing to stare into the blackness that
hid the sea.
The blackness seemed suddenly to increase in density, and they
stumbled up the beach, feeling their way to the gate.
“Watch out for nuts,” Sheldon warned, as the first blast of the
squall shrieked through the palms. They joined hands and staggered
up the path, with the ripe cocoanuts thudding in a monstrous rain
all around them. They gained the veranda, where they sat in
silence over their whisky, each man staring straight out to sea,
where the wildly swinging riding-light of the Minerva could be seen
in the lulls of the driving rain.
Somewhere out there, Sheldon reflected, was Joan Lackland, the girl
who had not grown up, the woman good to look upon, with only a
boy’s mind and a boy’s desires, leaving Berande amid storm and
conflict in much the same manner that she had first arrived, in the
stern-sheets of her whale-boat, Adamu Adam steering, her savage
crew bending to the oars. And she was taking her Stetson hat with
her, along with the cartridge-belt and the long-barrelled revolver.
He suddenly discovered an immense affection for those fripperies of
hers at which he had secretly laughed when first he saw them. He
became aware of the sentimental direction in which his fancy was
leading him, and felt inclined to laugh. But he did not laugh.
The next moment he was busy visioning the hat, and belt, and
revolver. Undoubtedly this was love, he thought, and he felt a
tiny glow of pride in him in that the Solomons had not succeeded in
killing all his sentiment.
An hour later, Christian Young stood up, knocked out his pipe, and
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prepared to go aboard and get under way.
“She’s all right,” he said, apropos of nothing spoken, and yet
distinctly relevant to what was in each of their minds. “She’s got
a good boat’s-crew, and she’s a sailor herself. Good-night, Mr.
Sheldon. Anything I can do for you down Marau-way?” He turned and
pointed to a widening space of starry sky. “It’s going to be a
fine night after all. With this favouring bit of breeze she has
sail on already, and she’ll make Guvutu by daylight. Good-night.”
“I guess I’ll turn in, old man,” Tudor said, rising and placing his
glass on the table. “I’ll start the first thing in the morning.
It’s been disgraceful the way I’ve been hanging on here. Good-
night.”
Sheldon, sitting on alone, wondered if the other man would have
decided to pull out in the morning had Joan not sailed away. Well,
there was one bit of consolation in it: Joan had certainly
lingered at Berande for no man, not even Tudor. “I start in an
hour”–her words rang in his brain, and under his eyelids he could
see her as she stood up and uttered them. He smiled. The instant
she heard the news she had made up her mind to go. It was not very
flattering to man, but what could any man count in her eyes when a
schooner waiting to be bought in Sydney was in the wind? What a
creature! What a creature!
B
erande was a lonely place to Sheldon in the days that followed.
In the morning after Joan’s departure, he had seen Tudor’s
expedition off on its way up the Balesuna; in the late afternoon,
through his telescope, he had seen the smoke of the Upolu that was
bearing Joan away to Sydney; and in the evening he sat down to
dinner in solitary state, devoting more of his time to looking at
her empty chair than to his food. He never came out on the veranda
without glancing first of all at her grass house in the corner of
the compound; and one evening, idly knocking the balls about on the
billiard table, he came to himself to find himself standing staring
at the nail upon which from the first she had hung her Stetson hat
and her revolver-belt.
Why should he care for her? he demanded of himself angrily. She
was certainly the last woman in the world he would have thought of
choosing for himself. Never had he encountered one who had so
thoroughly irritated him, rasped his feelings, smashed his
conventions, and violated nearly every attribute of what had been
his ideal of woman. Had he been too long away from the world? Had
he forgotten what the race of women was like? Was it merely a case
of propinquity? And she wasn’t really a woman. She was a
masquerader. Under all her seeming of woman, she was a boy,
playing a boy’s pranks, diving for fish amongst sharks, sporting a
revolver, longing for adventure, and, what was more, going out in
search of it in her whale-boat, along with her savage islanders and
her bag of sovereigns. But he loved her–that was the point of it
all, and he did not try to evade it. He was not sorry that it was
so. He loved her–that was the overwhelming, astounding fact.
Once again he discovered a big enthusiasm for Berande. All the
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bubble-illusions concerning the life of the tropical planter had
been pricked by the stern facts of the Solomons. Following the
death of Hughie, he had resolved to muddle along somehow with the
plantation; but this resolve had not been based upon desire.
Instead, it was based upon the inherent stubbornness of his nature
and his dislike to give over an attempted task.
But now it was different. Berande meant everything. It must
succeed–not merely because Joan was a partner in it, but because
he wanted to make that partnership permanently binding. Three more
years and the plantation would be a splendid-paying investment.
They could then take yearly trips to Australia, and oftener; and an
occasional run home to England–or Hawaii, would come as a matter
of course.
He spent his evenings poring over accounts, or making endless
calculations based on cheaper freights for copra and on the
possible maximum and minimum market prices for that staple of
commerce. His days were spent out on the plantation. He undertook
more clearing of bush; and clearing and planting went on, under his
personal supervision, at a faster pace than ever before. He
experimented with premiums for extra work performed by the black
boys, and yearned continually for more of them to put to work. Not
until Joan could return on the schooner would this be possible, for
the professional recruiters were all under long contracts to the
Fulcrum Brothers, Morgan and Raff, and the Fires, Philp Company;
while the Flibberty-Gibbet was wholly occupied in running about
among his widely scattered trading stations, which extended from
the coast of New Georgia in one direction to Ulava and Sikiana in
the other. Blacks he must have, and, if Joan were fortunate in
getting a schooner, three months at least must elapse before the
first recruits could be landed on Berande.
A week after the Upolu’s departure, the Malakula dropped anchor and
her skipper came ashore for a game of billiards and to gossip until
the land breeze sprang up. Besides, as he told his super-cargo, he
simply had to come ashore, not merely to deliver the large package
of seeds with full instructions for planting from Joan, but to
shock Sheldon with the little surprise born of information he was
bringing with him.
Captain Auckland played the billiards first, and it was not until
he was comfortably seated in a steamer-chair, his second whisky
securely in his hand, that he let off his bomb.
“A great piece, that Miss Lackland of yours,” he chuckled. “Claims
to be a part-owner of Berande. Says she’s your partner. Is that
straight?”
Sheldon nodded coldly.
“You don’t say? That is a surprise! Well, she hasn’t convinced
Guvutu or Tulagi of it. They’re pretty used to irregular things
over there, but–ha! ha!- ” he stopped to have his laugh out and to
mop his bald head with a trade handkerchief. “But that partnership
yarn of hers was too big to swallow, though it gave them the excuse
for a few more drinks.”
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“There is nothing irregular about it. It is an ordinary business
transaction.” Sheldon strove to act as though such transactions
were quite the commonplace thing on plantations in the Solomons.
“She invested something like fifteen hundred pounds in Berande–”
“So she said.”
“And she has gone to Sydney on business for the plantation.”
“Oh, no, she hasn’t.”
“I beg pardon?” Sheldon queried.