who agrees to deliver them–most likely by the Minerva next time
she is down that way. Berande has been long enough on tinned milk.
And Dr. Welshmere has agreed to get me some orange and lime trees
from the mission station at Ulava. He will deliver them the next
trip of the Apostle. If the Sydney steamer arrives before I get
back, plant the sweet corn she will bring between the young trees
on the high bank of the Balesuna. The current is eating in against
that bank, and you should do something to save it.
I have ordered some fig-trees and loquats, too, from Sydney. Dr.
Welshmere will bring some mango-seeds. They are big trees and
require plenty of room.
The Martha is registered 110 tons. She is the biggest schooner in
the Solomons, and the best. I saw a little of her lines and guess
the rest. She will sail like a witch. If she hasn’t filled with
water, her engine will be all right. The reason she went ashore
was because it was not working. The engineer had disconnected the
feed-pipes to clean out the rust. Poor business, unless at anchor
or with plenty of sea room.
Plant all the trees in the compound, even if you have to clean out
the palms later on.
And don’t plant the sweet corn all at once. Let a few days elapse
between plantings.
JOAN LACKLAND.
He fingered the letter, lingering over it and scrutinizing the
writing in a way that was not his wont. How characteristic, was
his thought, as he studied the boyish scrawl–clear to read,
painfully, clear, but none the less boyish. The clearness of it
reminded him of her face, of her cleanly stencilled brows, her
straightly chiselled nose, the very clearness of the gaze of her
eyes, the firmly yet delicately moulded lips, and the throat,
neither fragile nor robust, but–but just right, he concluded, an
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adequate and beautiful pillar for so shapely a burden.
He looked long at the name. Joan Lackland–just an assemblage of
letters, of commonplace letters, but an assemblage that generated a
subtle and heady magic. It crept into his brain and twined and
twisted his mental processes until all that constituted him at that
moment went out in love to that scrawled signature. A few
commonplace letters–yet they caused him to know in himself a lack
that sweetly hurt and that expressed itself in vague spiritual
outpourings and delicious yearnings. Joan Lackland! Each time he
looked at it there arose visions of her in a myriad moods and
guises–coming in out of the flying smother of the gale that had
wrecked her schooner; launching a whale-boat to go a-fishing;
running dripping from the sea, with streaming hair and clinging
garments, to the fresh-water shower; frightening four-score
cannibals with an empty chlorodyne bottle; teaching Ornfiri how to
make bread; hanging her Stetson hat and revolver-belt on the hook
in the living-room; talking gravely about winning to hearth and
saddle of her own, or juvenilely rattling on about romance and
adventure, bright-eyed, her face flushed and eager with enthusiasm.
Joan Lackland! He mused over the cryptic wonder of it till the
secrets of love were made clear and he felt a keen sympathy for
lovers who carved their names on trees or wrote them on the beach-
sands of the sea.
Then he came back to reality, and his face hardened. Even then she
was on the wild coast of Malaita, and at Poonga-Poonga, of all
villainous and dangerous portions the worst, peopled with a teeming
population of head-hunters, robbers, and murderers. For the
instant he entertained the rash thought of calling his boat’s-crew
and starting immediately in a whale-boat for Poonga-Poonga. But
the next instant the idea was dismissed. What could he do if he
did go? First, she would resent it. Next, she would laugh at him
and call him a silly; and after all he would count for only one
rifle more, and she had many rifles with her. Three things only
could he do if he went. He could command her to return; he could
take the Flibberty-Gibbet away from her; he could dissolve their
partnership;–any and all of which he knew would be foolish and
futile, and he could hear her explain in terse set terms that she
was legally of age and that nobody could say come or go to her.
No, his pride would never permit him to start for Poonga-Poonga,
though his heart whispered that nothing could be more welcome than
a message from her asking him to come and lend a hand. Her very
words–“lend a hand”; and in his fancy, he could see and hear her
saying them.
There was much in her wilful conduct that caused him to wince in
the heart of him. He was appalled by the thought of her shoulder
to shoulder with the drunken rabble of traders and beachcombers at
Guvutu. It was bad enough for a clean, fastidious man; but for a
young woman, a girl at that, it was awful. The theft of the
Flibberty-Gibbet was merely amusing, though the means by which the
theft had been effected gave him hurt. Yet he found consolation in
the fact that the task of making Oleson drunk had been turned over
to the three scoundrels. And next, and swiftly, came the vision of
her, alone with those same three scoundrels, on the Emily, sailing
out to sea from Guvutu in the twilight with darkness coming on.
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Then came visions of Adamu Adam and Noa Noah and all her brawny
Tahitian following, and his anxiety faded away, being replaced by
irritation that she should have been capable of such wildness of
conduct.
And the irritation was still on him as he got up and went inside to
stare at the hook on the wall and to wish that her Stetson hat and
revolver-belt were hanging from it.
CHAPTER XVIII–MAKING THE BOOKS COME TRUE
Several quiet weeks slipped by. Berande, after such an unusual run
of visiting vessels, drifted back into her old solitude. Sheldon
went on with the daily round, clearing bush, planting cocoanuts,
smoking copra, building bridges, and riding about his work on the
horses Joan had bought. News of her he had none. Recruiting
vessels on Malaita left the Poonga-Poonga coast severely alone; and
the Clansman, a Samoan recruiter, dropping anchor one sunset for
billiards and gossip, reported rumours amongst the Sio natives that
there had been fighting at Poonga-Poonga. As this news would have
had to travel right across the big island, little dependence was to
be placed on it.
The steamer from Sydney, the Kammambo, broke the quietude of
Berande for an hour, while landing mail, supplies, and the trees
and seeds Joan had ordered. The Minerva, bound for Cape Marsh,
brought the two cows from Nogi. And the Apostle, hurrying back to
Tulagi to connect with the Sydney steamer, sent a boat ashore with
the orange and lime trees from Ulava. And these several weeks
marked a period of perfect weather. There were days on end when
sleek calms ruled the breathless sea, and days when vagrant wisps
of air fanned for several hours from one direction or another. The
land-breezes at night alone proved regular, and it was at night
that the occasional cutters and ketches slipped by, too eager to
take advantage of the light winds to drop anchor for an hour.
Then came the long-expected nor’wester. For eight days it raged,
lulling at times to short durations of calm, then shifting a point
or two and raging with renewed violence. Sheldon kept a
precautionary eye on the buildings, while the Balesuna, in flood,
so savagely attacked the high bank Joan had warned him about, that
he told off all the gangs to battle with the river.
It was in the good weather that followed, that he left the blacks
at work, one morning, and with a shot-gun across his pommel rode
off after pigeons. Two hours later, one of the house-boys,
breathless and scratched ran him down with the news that the
Martha, the Flibberty-Gibbet, and the Emily were heading in for the
anchorage.
Coming into the compound from the rear, Sheldon could see nothing
until he rode around the corner of the bungalow. Then he saw
everything at once–first, a glimpse at the sea, where the Martha
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floated huge alongside the cutter and the ketch which had rescued
her; and, next, the ground in front of the veranda steps, where a
great crowd of fresh-caught cannibals stood at attention. From the
fact that each was attired in a new, snow-white lava-lava, Sheldon
knew that they were recruits. Part way up the steps, one of them
was just backing down into the crowd, while another, called out by
name, was coming up. It was Joan’s voice that had called him, and
Sheldon reined in his horse and watched. She sat at the head of
the steps, behind a table, between Munster and his white mate, the