again, busy with plans and preparations from morning till night.
He used to sit up half the night talking things over with me. That
was after I had shown him that I was really resolved to go along.
“He had made his start, you know, in the South Seas–pearls and
pearl shell–and he was sure that more fortunes, in trove of one
sort and another, were to be picked up. Cocoanut-planting was his
particular idea, with trading, and maybe pearling, along with other
things, until the plantation should come into bearing. He traded
off his yacht for a schooner, the Miele, and away we went. I took
care of him and studied navigation. He was his own skipper. We
had a Danish mate, Mr. Ericson, and a mixed crew of Japanese and
Hawaiians. We went up and down the Line Islands, first, until Dad
was heartsick. Everything was changed. They had been annexed and
divided by one power or another, while big companies had stepped in
and gobbled land, trading rights, fishing rights, everything.
“Next we sailed for the Marquesas. They were beautiful, but the
natives were nearly extinct. Dad was cut up when he learned that
the French charged an export duty on copra–he called it medieval–
but he liked the land. There was a valley of fifteen thousand
acres on Nuka-hiva, half inclosing a perfect anchorage, which he
fell in love with and bought for twelve hundred Chili dollars. But
the French taxation was outrageous (that was why the land was so
cheap), and, worst of all, we could obtain no labour. What kanakas
there were wouldn’t work, and the officials seemed to sit up nights
thinking out new obstacles to put in our way.
“Six months was enough for Dad. The situation was hopeless.
‘We’ll go to the Solomons,’ he said, ‘and get a whiff of English
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rule. And if there are no openings there we’ll go on to the
Bismarck Archipelago. I’ll wager the Admiraltys are not yet
civilized.’ All preparations were made, things packed on board,
and a new crew of Marquesans and Tahitians shipped. We were just
ready to start to Tahiti, where a lot of repairs and refitting for
the Miele were necessary, when poor Dad came down sick and died.”
“And you were left all alone?”
Joan nodded.
“Very much alone. I had no brothers nor sisters, and all Dad’s
people were drowned in a Kansas cloud-burst. That happened when he
was a little boy. Of course, I could go back to Von. There’s
always a home there waiting for me. But why should I go? Besides,
there were Dad’s plans, and I felt that it devolved upon me to
carry them out. It seemed a fine thing to do. Also, I wanted to
carry them out. And . . . here I am.
“Take my advice and never go to Tahiti. It is a lovely place, and
so are the natives. But the white people! Now Barabbas lived in
Tahiti. Thieves, robbers, and lairs–that is what they are. The
honest men wouldn’t require the fingers of one hand to count. The
fact that I was a woman only simplified matters with them. They
robbed me on every pretext, and they lied without pretext or need.
Poor Mr. Ericson was corrupted. He joined the robbers, and O.K.’d
all their demands even up to a thousand per cent. If they robbed
me of ten francs, his share was three. One bill of fifteen hundred
francs I paid, netted him five hundred francs. All this, of
course, I learned afterward. But the Miele was old, the repairs
had to be made, and I was charged, not three prices, but seven
prices.
“I never shall know how much Ericson got out of it. He lived
ashore in a nicely furnished house. The shipwrights were giving it
to him rent-free. Fruit, vegetables, fish, meat, and ice came to
this house every day, and he paid for none of it. It was part of
his graft from the various merchants. And all the while, with
tears in his eyes, he bemoaned the vile treatment I was receiving
from the gang. No, I did not fall among thieves. I went to
Tahiti.
“But when the robbers fell to cheating one another, I got my first
clues to the state of affairs. One of the robbed robbers came to
me after dark, with facts, figures, and assertions. I knew I was
ruined if I went to law. The judges were corrupt like everything
else. But I did do one thing. In the dead of night I went to
Ericson’s house. I had the same revolver I’ve got now, and I made
him stay in bed while I overhauled things. Nineteen hundred and
odd francs was what I carried away with me. He never complained to
the police, and he never came back on board. As for the rest of
the gang, they laughed and snapped their fingers at me. There were
two Americans in the place, and they warned me to leave the law
alone unless I wanted to leave the Miele behind as well.
“Then I sent to New Zealand and got a German mate. He had a
master’s certificate, and was on the ship’s papers as captain, but
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29
I was a better navigator than he, and I was really captain myself.
I lost her, too, but it’s no reflection on my seamanship. We were
drifting four days outside there in dead calms. Then the
nor’wester caught us and drove us on the lee shore. We made sail
and tried to clew off, when the rotten work of the Tahiti
shipwrights became manifest. Our jib-boom and all our head-stays
carried away. Our only chance was to turn and run through the
passage between Florida and Ysabel. And when we were safely
through, in the twilight, where the chart shows fourteen fathoms as
the shoalest water, we smashed on a coral patch. The poor old
Miele struck only once, and then went clear; but it was too much
for her, and we just had time to clear away in the boat when she
went down. The German mate was drowned. We lay all night to a
sea-drag, and next morning sighted your place here.”
“I suppose you will go back to Von, now?” Sheldon queried.
“Nothing of the sort. Dad planned to go to the Solomons. I shall
look about for some land and start a small plantation. Do you know
any good land around here? Cheap?”
“By George, you Yankees are remarkable, really remarkable,” said
Sheldon. “I should never have dreamed of such a venture.”
“Adventure,” Joan corrected him.
“That’s right–adventure it is. And if you’d gone ashore on
Malaita instead of Guadalcanar you’d have been kai-kai’d long ago,
along with your noble Tahitian sailors.”
Joan shuddered.
“To tell the truth,” she confessed, “we were very much afraid to
land on Guadalcanar. I read in the ‘Sailing Directions’ that the
natives were treacherous and hostile. Some day I should like to go
to Malaita. Are there any plantations there?”
“Not one. Not a white trader even.”
“Then I shall go over on a recruiting vessel some time.”
“Impossible!” Sheldon cried. “It is no place for a woman.”
“I shall go just the same,” she repeated.
“But no self-respecting woman–”
“Be careful,” she warned him. “I shall go some day, and then you
may be sorry for the names you have called me.”
CHAPTER VI–TEMPEST
It was the first time Sheldon had been at close quarters with an
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30
American girl, and he would have wondered if all American girls
were like Joan Lackland had he not had wit enough to realize that
she was not at all typical. Her quick mind and changing moods
bewildered him, while her outlook on life was so different from
what he conceived a woman’s outlook should be, that he was more
often than not at sixes and sevens with her. He could never
anticipate what she would say or do next. Of only one thing was he
sure, and that was that whatever she said or did was bound to be
unexpected and unsuspected. There seemed, too, something almost
hysterical in her make-up. Her temper was quick and stormy, and
she relied too much on herself and too little on him, which did not
approximate at all to his ideal of woman’s conduct when a man was
around. Her assumption of equality with him was disconcerting, and
at times he half-consciously resented the impudence and bizarreness
of her intrusion upon him–rising out of the sea in a howling
nor’wester, fresh from poking her revolver under Ericson’s nose,
protected by her gang of huge Polynesian sailors, and settling down
in Berande like any shipwrecked sailor. It was all on a par with
her Baden-Powell and the long 38 Colt’s.
At any rate, she did not look the part. And that was what he could
not forgive. Had she been short-haired, heavy-jawed, large-