Whisky and soda kept him going while he made report and turned in
his accounts.
“You’re rotten with fever,” Sheldon said. “Why don’t you run down
to Sydney for a blow of decent climate?”
The old skipper shook his head.
“I can’t. I’ve ben in the islands too long. I’d die. The fever
comes out worse down there.”
“Kill or cure,” Sheldon counselled.
“It’s straight kill for me. I tried it three years ago. The cool
weather put me on my back before I landed. They carried me ashore
and into hospital. I was unconscious one stretch for two weeks.
After that the doctors sent me back to the islands–said it was the
only thing that would save me. Well, I’m still alive; but I’m too
soaked with fever. A month in Australia would finish me.”
“But what are you going to do?” Sheldon queried. “You can’t stay
here until you die.”
“That’s all that’s left to me. I’d like to go back to the old
country, but I couldn’t stand it. I’ll last longer here, and here
I’ll stay until I peg out; but I wish to God I’d never seen the
Solomons, that’s all.”
He declined to sleep ashore, took his orders, and went back on
board the cutter. A lurid sunset was blotted out by the heaviest
squall of the day, and Sheldon watched the whale-boat arrive in the
thick of it. As the spritsail was taken in and the boat headed on
to the beach, he was aware of a distinct hurt at sight of Joan at
the steering-oar, standing erect and swaying her strength to it as
she resisted the pressures that tended to throw the craft broadside
in the surf. Her Tahitians leaped out and rushed the boat high up
the beach, and she led her bizarre following through the gate of
the compound.
The first drops of rain were driving like hail-stones, the tall
cocoanut palms were bending and writhing in the grip of the wind,
while the thick cloud-mass of the squall turned the brief tropic
twilight abruptly to night.
Quite unconsciously the brooding anxiety of the afternoon slipped
ADVENTURE
50
from Sheldon, and he felt strangely cheered at the sight of her
running up the steps laughing, face flushed, hair flying, her
breast heaving from the violence of her late exertions.
“Lovely, perfectly lovely–Pari-Sulay,” she panted. “I shall buy
it. I’ll write to the Commissioner to-night. And the site for the
bungalow–I’ve selected it already–is wonderful. You must come
over some day and advise me. You won’t mind my staying here until
I can get settled? Wasn’t that squall beautiful? And I suppose
I’m late for dinner. I’ll run and get clean, and be with you in a
minute.”
And in the brief interval of her absence he found himself walking
about the big living-room and impatiently and with anticipation
awaiting her coming.
“Do you know, I’m never going to squabble with you again,” he
announced when they were seated.
“Squabble!” was the retort. “It’s such a sordid word. It sounds
cheap and nasty. I think it’s much nicer to quarrel.”
“Call it what you please, but we won’t do it any more, will we?”
He cleared his throat nervously, for her eyes advertised the
immediate beginning of hostilities. “I beg your pardon,” he
hurried on. “I should have spoken for myself. What I mean is that
I refuse to quarrel. You have the most horrible way, without
uttering a word, of making me play the fool. Why, I began with the
kindest intentions, and here I am now–”
“Making nasty remarks,” she completed for him.
“It’s the way you have of catching me up,” he complained.
“Why, I never said a word. I was merely sitting here, being
sweetly lured on by promises of peace on earth and all the rest of
it, when suddenly you began to call me names.”
“Hardly that, I am sure.”
“Well, you said I was horrible, or that I had a horrible way about
me, which is the same thing. I wish my bungalow were up. I’d move
to-morrow.”
But her twitching lips belied her words, and the next moment the
man was more uncomfortable than ever, being made so by her
laughter.
“I was only teasing you. Honest Injun. And if you don’t laugh
I’ll suspect you of being in a temper with me. That’s right,
laugh. But don’t–” she added in alarm, “don’t if it hurts you.
You look as though you had a toothache. There, there–don’t say
it. You know you promised not to quarrel, while I have the
privilege of going on being as hateful as I please. And to begin
with, there’s the Flibberty-Gibbet. I didn’t know she was so large
a cutter; but she’s in disgraceful condition. Her rigging is
something queer, and the next sharp squall will bring her head-gear
ADVENTURE
51
all about the shop. I watched Noa Noah’s face as we sailed past.
He didn’t say anything. He just sneered. And I don’t blame him.”
“Her skipper’s rotten bad with fever,” Sheldon explained. “And he
had to drop his mate off to take hold of things at Ugi–that’s
where I lost Oscar, my trader. And you know what sort of sailors
the niggers are.”
She nodded her head judicially, and while she seemed to debate a
weighty judgment he asked for a second helping of tinned beef–not
because he was hungry, but because he wanted to watch her slim,
firm fingers, naked of jewels and banded metals, while his eyes
pleasured in the swell of the forearm, appearing from under the
sleeve and losing identity in the smooth, round wrist undisfigured
by the netted veins that come to youth when youth is gone. The
fingers were brown with tan and looked exceedingly boyish. Then,
and without effort, the concept came to him. Yes, that was it. He
had stumbled upon the clue to her tantalizing personality. Her
fingers, sunburned and boyish, told the story. No wonder she had
exasperated him so frequently. He had tried to treat with her as a
woman, when she was not a woman. She was a mere girl–and a boyish
girl at that–with sunburned fingers that delighted in doing what
boys’ fingers did; with a body and muscles that liked swimming and
violent endeavour of all sorts; with a mind that was daring, but
that dared no farther than boys’ adventures, and that delighted in
rifles and revolvers, Stetson hats, and a sexless camaraderie with
men.
Somehow, as he pondered and watched her, it seemed as if he sat in
church at home listening to the choir-boys chanting. She reminded
him of those boys, or their voices, rather. The same sexless
quality was there. In the body of her she was woman; in the mind
of her she had not grown up. She had not been exposed to ripening
influences of that sort. She had had no mother. Von, her father,
native servants, and rough island life had constituted her
training. Horses and rifles had been her toys, camp and trail her
nursery. From what she had told him, her seminary days had been an
exile, devoted to study and to ceaseless longing for the wild
riding and swimming of Hawaii. A boy’s training, and a boy’s point
of view! That explained her chafe at petticoats, her revolt at
what was only decently conventional. Some day she would grow up,
but as yet she was only in the process.
Well, there was only one thing for him to do. He must meet her on
her own basis of boyhood, and not make the mistake of treating her
as a woman. He wondered if he could love the woman she would be
when her nature awoke; and he wondered if he could love her just as
she was and himself wake her up. After all, whatever it was, she
had come to fill quite a large place in his life, as he had
discovered that afternoon while scanning the sea between the
squalls. Then he remembered the accounts of Berande, and the
cropper that was coming, and scowled.
He became aware that she was speaking.
“I beg pardon,” he said. “What’s that you were saying?”
ADVENTURE
52
“You weren’t listening to a word–I knew it,” she chided. “I was
saying that the condition of the Flibberty-Gibbet was disgraceful,
and that to-morrow, when you’ve told the skipper and not hurt his
feelings, I am going to take my men out and give her an
overhauling. We’ll scrub her bottom, too. Why, there’s whiskers
on her copper four inches long. I saw it when she rolled. Don’t
forget, I’m going cruising on the Flibberty some day, even if I
have to run away with her.”
While at their coffee on the veranda, Satan raised a commotion in
the compound near the beach gate, and Sheldon finally rescued a
mauled and frightened black and dragged him on the porch for
interrogation.
“What fella marster you belong?” he demanded. “What name you come