This much Joan heard of the plan to murder, and then her rising
wrath proved too much for her discretion. She spurred her horse
into the grass, crying, –
“What name you fella boy, eh? What name?”
They arose, scrambling and scattering, and to her surprise she saw
there were a dozen of them. As she looked in their glowering faces
and noted the heavy, two-foot, hacking cane-knives in their hands,
she became suddenly aware of the rashness of her act. If only she
had had her revolver or a rifle, all would have been well. But she
had carelessly ventured out unarmed, and she followed the glance of
Gogoomy to her waist and saw the pleased flash in his eyes as he
perceived the absence of the dreadful man-killing revolver.
The first article in the Solomon Islands code for white men was
never to show fear before a native, and Joan tried to carry off the
situation in cavalier fashion.
“Too much talk along you fella boy,” she said severely. “Too much
talk, too little work. Savvee?”
Gogoomy made no reply, but, apparently shifting weight, he slid one
foot forward. The other boys, spread fan-wise about her, were also
sliding forward, the cruel cane-knives in their hands advertising
their intention.
“You cut ‘m grass!” she commanded imperatively.
But Gogoomy slid his other foot forward. She measured the distance
with her eye. It would be impossible to whirl her horse around and
get away. She would be chopped down from behind.
And in that tense moment the faces of all of them were imprinted on
her mind in an unforgettable picture–one of them, an old man, with
torn and distended ear-lobes that fell to his chest; another, with
the broad flattened nose of Africa, and with withered eyes so
buried under frowning brows that nothing but the sickly, yellowish-
looking whites could be seen; a third, thick-lipped and bearded
with kinky whiskers; and Gogoomy–she had never realized before how
handsome Gogoomy was in his mutinous and obstinate wild-animal way.
There was a primitive aristocraticness about him that his fellows
lacked. The lines of his figure were more rounded than theirs, the
skin smooth, well oiled, and free from disease. On his chest,
suspended from a single string of porpoise-teeth around his throat,
hung a big crescent carved out of opalescent pearl-shell. A row of
pure white cowrie shells banded his brow. From his hair drooped a
long, lone feather. Above the swelling calf of one leg he wore, as
a garter, a single string of white beads. The effect was dandyish
in the extreme. A narrow gee-string completed his costume.
Another man she saw, old and shrivelled, with puckered forehead and
a puckered face that trembled and worked with animal passion as in
the past she had noticed the faces of monkeys tremble and work.
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117
“Gogoomy,” she said sharply, “you no cut ‘m grass, my word, I bang
‘m head belong you.”
His expression became a trifle more disdainful, but he did not
answer. Instead, he stole a glance to right and left to mark how
his fellows were closing about her. At the same moment he casually
slipped his foot forward through the grass for a matter of several
inches.
Joan was keenly aware of the desperateness of the situation. The
only way out was through. She lifted her riding-whip
threateningly, and at the same moment drove in both spurs with her
heels, rushing the startled horse straight at Gogoomy. It all
happened in an instant. Every cane-knife was lifted, and every boy
save Gogoomy leaped for her. He swerved aside to avoid the horse,
at the same time swinging his cane-knife in a slicing blow that
would have cut her in twain. She leaned forward under the flying
steel, which cut through her riding-skirt, through the edge of the
saddle, through the saddle cloth, and even slightly into the horse
itself. Her right hand, still raised, came down, the thin whip
whishing through the air. She saw the white, cooked mark of the
weal clear across the sullen, handsome face, and still what was
practically in the same instant she saw the man with the puckered
face, overridden, go down before her, and she heard his snarling
and grimacing chatter-for all the world like an angry monkey. Then
she was free and away, heading the horse at top speed for the
house.
Out of her sea-training she was able to appreciate Sheldon’s
executiveness when she burst in on him with her news. Springing
from the steamer-chair in which he had been lounging while waiting
for breakfast, he clapped his hands for the house-boys; and, while
listening to her, he was buckling on his cartridge-belt and running
the mechanism of his automatic pistol.
“Ornfiri,” he snapped out his orders, “you fella ring big fella
bell strong fella plenty. You finish ‘m bell, you put ‘m saddle on
horse. Viaburi, you go quick house belong Seelee he stop, tell ‘m
plenty black fella run away–ten fella two fella black fella boy.”
He scribbled a note and handed it to Lalaperu. “Lalaperu, you go
quick house belong white fella Marster Boucher.”
“That will head them back from the coast on both sides,” he
explained to Joan. “And old Seelee will turn his whole village
loose on their track as well.”
In response to the summons of the big bell, Joan’s Tahitians were
the first to arrive, by their glistening bodies and panting chests
showing that they had run all the way. Some of the farthest-placed
gangs would be nearly an hour in arriving.
Sheldon proceeded to arm Joan’s sailors and deal out ammunition and
handcuffs. Adamu Adam, with loaded rifle, he placed on guard over
the whale-boats. Noa Noah, aided by Matapuu, were instructed to
take charge of the working-gangs as fast as they came in, to keep
them amused, and to guard against their being stampeded into making
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118
a break themselves. The five other Tahitians were to follow Joan
and Sheldon on foot.
“I’m glad we unearthed that arsenal the other day,” Sheldon
remarked as they rode out of the compound gate.
A hundred yards away they encountered one of the clearing gangs
coming in. It was Kwaque’s gang, but Sheldon looked in vain for
him.
“What name that fella Kwaque he no stop along you?” he demanded.
A babel of excited voices attempted an answer.
“Shut ‘m mouth belong you altogether,” Sheldon commanded.
He spoke roughly, living up to the role of the white man who must
always be strong and dominant.
“Here, you fella Babatani, you talk ‘m mouth belong you.”
Babatani stepped forward in all the pride of one singled out from
among his fellows.
“Gogoomy he finish along Kwaque altogether,” was Babatani’s
explanation. “He take ‘m head b’long him run like hell.”
In brief words, and with paucity of imagination, he described the
murder, and Sheldon and Joan rode on. In the grass, where Joan had
been attacked, they found the little shrivelled man, still
chattering and grimacing, whom Joan had ridden down. The mare had
plunged on his ankle, completely crushing it, and a hundred yards’
crawl had convinced him of the futility of escape. To the last
clearing-gang, from the farthest edge of the plantation, was given
the task of carrying him in to the house.
A mile farther on, where the runaways’ trail led straight toward
the bush, they encountered the body of Kwaque. The head had been
hacked off and was missing, and Sheldon took it on faith that the
body was Kwaque’s. He had evidently put up a fight, for a bloody
trail led away from the body.
Once they were well into the thick bush the horses had to be
abandoned. Papehara was left in charge of them, while Joan and
Sheldon and the remaining Tahitians pushed ahead on foot. The way
led down through a swampy hollow, which was overflowed by the
Berande River on occasion, and where the red trail of the murderers
was crossed by a crocodile’s trail. They had apparently caught the
creature asleep in the sun and desisted long enough from their
flight to hack him to pieces. Here the wounded man had sat down
and waited until they were ready to go on.
An hour later, following along a wild-pig trail, Sheldon suddenly
halted. The bloody tracks had ceased. The Tahitians cast out in
the bush on either side, and a cry from Utami apprised them of a
find. Joan waited till Sheldon came back.
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“It’s Mauko,” he said. “Kwaque did for him, and he crawled in
there and died. That’s two accounted for. There are ten more.
Don’t you think you’ve got enough of it?”
She nodded.
“It isn’t nice,” she said. “I’ll go back and wait for you with the
horses.”
“But you can’t go alone. Take two of the men.”
“Then I’ll go on,” she said. “It would be foolish to weaken the
pursuit, and I am certainly not tired.”