The trail bent to the right as though the runaways had changed
their mind and headed for the Balesuna. But the trail still
continued to bend to the right till it promised to make a loop, and
the point of intersection seemed to be the edge of the plantation
where the horses had been left. Crossing one of the quiet jungle
spaces, where naught moved but a velvety, twelve-inch butterfly,
they heard the sound of shots.
“Eight,” Joan counted. “It was only one gun. It must be
Papehara.”
They hurried on, but when they reached the spot they were in doubt.
The two horses stood quietly tethered, and Papehara, squatted on
his hams, was having a peaceful smoke. Advancing toward him,
Sheldon tripped on a body that lay in the grass, and as he saved
himself from falling his eyes lighted on a second. Joan recognized
this one. It was Cosse, one of Gogoomy’s tribesmen, the one who
had promised to catch at sunset the pig that was to have baited the
hook for Satan.
“No luck, Missie,” was Papehara’s greeting, accompanied by a
disconsolate shake of the head. “Catch only two boy. I have good
shot at Gogoomy, only I miss.”
“But you killed them,” Joan chided. “You must catch them alive.”
The Tahitian smiled.
“How?” he queried. “I am have a smoke. I think about Tahiti, and
breadfruit, and jolly good time at Bora Bora. Quick, just like
that, ten boy he run out of bush for me. Each boy have long knife.
Gogoomy have long knife one hand, and Kwaque’s head in other hand.
I no stop to catch ‘m alive. I shoot like hell. How you catch ‘m
alive, ten boy, ten long knife, and Kwaque’s head?”
The scattered paths of the different boys, where they broke back
after the disastrous attempt to rush the Tahitian, soon led
together. They traced it to the Berande, which the runaways had
crossed with the clear intention of burying themselves in the huge
mangrove swamp that lay beyond.
“There is no use our going any farther,” Sheldon said. “Seelee
will turn out his village and hunt them out of that. They’ll never
ADVENTURE
120
get past him. All we can do is to guard the coast and keep them
from breaking back on the plantation and running amuck. Ah, I
thought so.”
Against the jungle gloom of the farther shore, coming from down
stream, a small canoe glided. So silently did it move that it was
more like an apparition. Three naked blacks dipped with noiseless
paddles. Long-hafted, slender, bone-barbed throwing-spears lay
along the gunwale of the canoe, while a quiverful of arrows hung on
each man’s back. The eyes of the man-hunters missed nothing. They
had seen Sheldon and Joan first, but they gave no sign. Where
Gogoomy and his followers had emerged from the river, the canoe
abruptly stopped, then turned and disappeared into the deeper
mangrove gloom. A second and a third canoe came around the bend
from below, glided ghostlike to the crossing of the runaways, and
vanished in the mangroves.
“I hope there won’t be any more killing,” Joan said, as they turned
their horses homeward.
“I don’t think so,” Sheldon assured her. “My understanding with
old Seelee is that he is paid only for live boys; so he is very
careful.”
CHAPTER XXIII–A MESSAGE FROM THE BUSH
Never had runaways from Berande been more zealously hunted. The
deeds of Gogoomy and his fellows had been a bad example for the one
hundred and fifty new recruits. Murder had been planned, a gang-
boss had been killed, and the murderers had broken their contracts
by fleeing to the bush. Sheldon saw how imperative it was to teach
his new-caught cannibals that bad examples were disastrous things
to pattern after, and he urged Seelee on night and day, while with
the Tahitians he practically lived in the bush, leaving Joan in
charge of the plantation. To the north Boucher did good work,
twice turning the fugitives back when they attempted to gain the
coast.
One by one the boys were captured. In the first man-drive through
the mangrove swamp Seelee caught two. Circling around to the
north, a third was wounded in the thigh by Boucher, and this one,
dragging behind in the chase, was later gathered in by Seelee’s
hunters. The three captives, heavily ironed, were exposed each day
in the compound, as good examples of what happened to bad examples,
all for the edification of the seven score and ten half-wild
Poonga-Poonga men. Then the Minerva, running past for Tulagi, was
signalled to send a boat, and the three prisoners were carried away
to prison to await trial.
Five were still at large, but escape was impossible. They could
not get down to the coast, nor dared they venture too far inland
for fear of the wild bushmen. Then one of the five came in
voluntarily and gave himself up, and Sheldon learned that Gogoomy
ADVENTURE
121
and two others were all that were at large. There should have been
a fourth, but according to the man who had given himself up, the
fourth man had been killed and eaten. It had been fear of a
similar fate that had driven him in. He was a Malu man, from
north-western Malaita, as likewise had been the one that was eaten.
Gogoomy’s two other companions were from Port Adams. As for
himself, the black declared his preference for government trial and
punishment to being eaten by his companions in the bush.
“Close up Gogoomy kai-kai me,” he said. “My word, me no like boy
kai-kai me.”
Three days later Sheldon caught one of the boys, helpless from
swamp fever, and unable to fight or run away. On the same day
Seelee caught the second boy in similar condition. Gogoomy alone
remained at large; and, as the pursuit closed in on him, he
conquered his fear of the bushmen and headed straight in for the
mountainous backbone of the island. Sheldon with four Tahitians,
and Seelee with thirty of his hunters, followed Gogoomy’s trail a
dozen miles into the open grass-lands, and then Seelee and his
people lost heart. He confessed that neither he nor any of his
tribe had ever ventured so far inland before, and he narrated, for
Sheldon’s benefit, most horrible tales of the horrible bushmen. In
the old days, he said, they had crossed the grasslands and attacked
the salt-water natives; but since the coming of the white men to
the coast they had remained in their interior fastnesses, and no
salt-water native had ever seen them again.
“Gogoomy he finish along them fella bushmen,” he assured Sheldon.
“My word, he finish close up, kai-kai altogether.”
So the expedition turned back. Nothing could persuade the coast
natives to venture farther, and Sheldon, with his four Tahitians,
knew that it was madness to go on alone. So he stood waist-deep in
the grass and looked regretfully across the rolling savannah and
the soft-swelling foothills to the Lion’s Head, a massive peak of
rock that upreared into the azure from the midmost centre of
Guadalcanar, a landmark used for bearings by every coasting
mariner, a mountain as yet untrod by the foot of a white man.
That night, after dinner, Sheldon and Joan were playing billiards,
when Satan barked in the compound, and Lalaperu, sent to see,
brought back a tired and travel-stained native, who wanted to talk
with the “big fella white marster.” It was only the man’s
insistence that procured him admittance at such an hour. Sheldon
went out on the veranda to see him, and at first glance at the
gaunt features and wasted body of the man knew that his errand was
likely to prove important. Nevertheless, Sheldon demanded roughly,
–
“What name you come along house belong me sun he go down?”
“Me Charley,” the man muttered apologetically and wearily. “Me
stop along Binu.”
“Ah, Binu Charley, eh? Well, what name you talk along me? What
place big fella marster along white man he stop?”
ADVENTURE
122
Joan and Sheldon together listened to the tale Binu Charley had
brought. He described Tudor’s expedition up the Balesuna; the
dragging of the boats up the rapids; the passage up the river where
it threaded the grass-lands; the innumerable washings of gravel by
the white men in search of gold; the first rolling foothills; the
man-traps of spear-staked pits in the jungle trails; the first
meeting with the bushmen, who had never seen tobacco, and knew not
the virtues of smoking; their friendliness; the deeper penetration
of the interior around the flanks of the Lion’s Head; the bush-
sores and the fevers of the white men, and their madness in
trusting the bushmen.
“Allee time I talk along white fella marster,” he said. “Me talk,
‘That fella bushman he look ‘m eye belong him. He savvee too much.
S’pose musket he stop along you, that fella bushman he too much
good friend along you. Allee time he look sharp eye belong him.