skins and savage countenances, their huge ear-plugs and carved and
glistening nose-rings. Sheldon tottered to his feet at last, and
half-fell into the steamer-chair. Oppressive as the heat had been,
it was now even more oppressive. It was difficult to breathe. He
panted for air. The faces and naked arms of the house-boys were
beaded with sweat.
“Marster,” one of them ventured, “big fella wind he come, strong
fella too much.”
Sheldon nodded his head but did not look. Much as he had loved
Hughie Drummond, his death, and the funeral it entailed, seemed an
intolerable burden to add to what he was already sinking under. He
had a feeling–nay, it was a certitude–that all he had to do was
to shut his eyes and let go, and that he would die, sink into
immensity of rest. He knew it; it was very simple. All he had to
do was close his eyes and let go; for he had reached the stage
where he lived by will alone. His weary body seemed torn by the
oncoming pangs of dissolution. He was a fool to hang on. He had
died a score of deaths already, and what was the use of prolonging
it to two-score deaths before he really died. Not only was he not
afraid to die, but he desired to die. His weary flesh and weary
spirit desired it, and why should the flame of him not go utterly
out?
But his mind that could will life or death, still pulsed on. He
saw the two whale-boats land on the beach, and the sick, on
stretchers or pick-a-back, groaning and wailing, go by in
lugubrious procession. He saw the wind making on the clouded
horizon, and thought of the sick in the hospital. Here was
something waiting his hand to be done, and it was not in his nature
to lie down and sleep, or die, when any task remained undone.
The boss-boys were called and given their orders to rope down the
hospital with its two additions. He remembered the spare anchor-
chain, new and black-painted, that hung under the house suspended
from the floor-beams, and ordered it to be used on the hospital as
well. Other boys brought the coffin, a grotesque patchwork of
packing-cases, and under his directions they laid Hughie Drummond
ADVENTURE
15
in it. Half a dozen boys carried it down the beach, while he rode
on the back of another, his arms around the black’s neck, one hand
clutching a prayer-book.
While he read the service, the blacks gazed apprehensively at the
dark line on the water, above which rolled and tumbled the racing
clouds. The first breath of the wind, faint and silken, tonic with
life, fanned through his dry-baked body as he finished reading.
Then came the second breath of the wind, an angry gust, as the
shovels worked rapidly, filling in the sand. So heavy was the gust
that Sheldon, still on his feet, seized hold of his man-horse to
escape being blown away. The Jessie was blotted out, and a strange
ominous sound arose as multitudinous wavelets struck foaming on the
beach. It was like the bubbling of some colossal cauldron. From
all about could be heard the dull thudding of falling cocoanuts.
The tall, delicate-trunked trees twisted and snapped about like
whip-lashes. The air seemed filled with their flying leaves, any
one of which, stem-on could brain a man. Then came the rain, a
deluge, a straight, horizontal sheet that poured along like a
river, defying gravitation. The black, with Sheldon mounted on
him, plunged ahead into the thick of it, stooping far forward and
low to the ground to avoid being toppled over backward.
“‘He’s sleeping out and far to-night,'” Sheldon quoted, as he
thought of the dead man in the sand and the rainwater trickling
down upon the cold clay.
So they fought their way back up the beach. The other blacks
caught hold of the man-horse and pulled and tugged. There were
among them those whose fondest desire was to drag the rider in the
sand and spring upon him and mash him into repulsive nothingness.
But the automatic pistol in his belt with its rattling, quick-
dealing death, and the automatic, death-defying spirit in the man
himself, made them refrain and buckle down to the task of hauling
him to safety through the storm.
Wet through and exhausted, he was nevertheless surprised at the
ease with which he got into a change of clothing. Though he was
fearfully weak, he found himself actually feeling better. The
disease had spent itself, and the mend had begun.
“Now if I don’t get the fever,” he said aloud, and at the same
moment resolved to go to taking quinine as soon as he was strong
enough to dare.
He crawled out on the veranda. The rain had ceased, but the wind,
which had dwindled to a half-gale, was increasing. A big sea had
sprung up, and the mile-long breakers, curling up to the over-fall
two hundred yards from shore, were crashing on the beach. The
Jessie was plunging madly to two anchors, and every second or third
sea broke clear over her bow. Two flags were stiffly undulating
from the halyards like squares of flexible sheet-iron. One was
blue, the other red. He knew their meaning in the Berande private
code–“What are your instructions? Shall I attempt to land boat?”
Tacked on the wall, between the signal locker and the billiard
rules, was the code itself, by which he verified the signal before
making answer. On the flagstaff gaff a boy hoisted a white flag
ADVENTURE
16
over a red, which stood for–“Run to Neal Island for shelter.”
That Captain Oleson had been expecting this signal was apparent by
the celerity with which the shackles were knocked out of both
anchor-chains. He slipped his anchors, leaving them buoyed to be
picked up in better weather. The Jessie swung off under her full
staysail, then the foresail, double-reefed, was run up. She was
away like a racehorse, clearing Balesuna Shoal with half a cable-
length to spare. Just before she rounded the point she was
swallowed up in a terrific squall that far out-blew the first.
All that night, while squall after squall smote Berande, uprooting
trees, overthrowing copra-sheds, and rocking the house on its tall
piles, Sheldon slept. He was unaware of the commotion. He never
wakened. Nor did he change his position or dream. He awoke, a new
man. Furthermore, he was hungry. It was over a week since food
had passed his lips. He drank a glass of condensed cream, thinned
with water, and by ten o’clock he dared to take a cup of beef-tea.
He was cheered, also, by the situation in the hospital. Despite
the storm there had been but one death, and there was only one
fresh case, while half a dozen boys crawled weakly away to the
barracks. He wondered if it was the wind that was blowing the
disease away and cleansing the pestilential land.
By eleven a messenger arrived from Balesuna village, dispatched by
Seelee. The Jessie had gone ashore half-way between the village
and Neal Island. It was not till nightfall that two of the crew
arrived, reporting the drowning of Captain Oleson and of the one
remaining boy. As for the Jessie, from what they told him Sheldon
could not but conclude that she was a total loss. Further to
hearten him, he was taken by a shivering fit. In half an hour he
was burning up. And he knew that at least another day must pass
before he could undertake even the smallest dose of quinine. He
crawled under a heap of blankets, and a little later found himself
laughing aloud. He had surely reached the limit of disaster.
Barring earthquake or tidal-wave, the worst had already befallen
him. The Flibberty-Gibbet was certainly safe in Mboli Pass. Since
nothing worse could happen, things simply had to mend. So it was,
shivering under his blankets, that he laughed, until the house-
boys, with heads together, marvelled at the devils that were in
him.
CHAPTER IV–JOAN LACKLAND
By the second day of the northwester, Sheldon was in collapse from
his fever. It had taken an unfair advantage of his weak state, and
though it was only ordinary malarial fever, in forty-eight hours it
had run him as low as ten days of fever would have done when he was
in condition. But the dysentery had been swept away from Berande.
A score of convalescents lingered in the hospital, but they were
improving hourly. There had been but one more death–that of the
man whose brother had wailed over him instead of brushing the flies
away.
ADVENTURE
17
On the morning of the fourth day of his fever, Sheldon lay on the
veranda, gazing dimly out over the raging ocean. The wind was
falling, but a mighty sea was still thundering in on Berande beach,
the flying spray reaching in as far as the flagstaff mounds, the