three of them checking long lists, Joan asking the questions and
writing the answers in the big, red-covered, Berande labour-
journal.
“What name?” she demanded of the black man on the steps.
“Tagari,” came the answer, accompanied by a grin and a rolling of
curious eyes; for it was the first white-man’s house the black had
ever seen.
“What place b’long you?”
“Bangoora.”
No one had noticed Sheldon, and he continued to sit his horse and
watch. There was a discrepancy between the answer and the record
in the recruiting books, and a consequent discussion, until Munster
solved the difficulty.
“Bangoora?” he said. “That’s the little beach at the head of the
bay out of Latta. He’s down as a Latta-man–see, there it is,
‘Tagari, Latta.'”
“What place you go you finish along white marster?” Joan asked.
“Bangoora,” the man replied; and Joan wrote it down.
“Ogu!” Joan called.
The black stepped down, and another mounted to take his place. But
Tagari, just before he reached the bottom step, caught sight of
Sheldon. It was the first horse the fellow had ever seen, and he
let out a frightened screech and dashed madly up the steps. At the
same moment the great mass of blacks surged away panic-stricken
from Sheldon’s vicinity. The grinning house-boys shouted
encouragement and explanation, and the stampede was checked, the
new-caught head-hunters huddling closely together and staring
dubiously at the fearful monster.
“Hello!” Joan called out. “What do you mean by frightening all my
boys? Come on up.”
“What do you think of them?” she asked, when they had shaken hands.
“And what do you think of her?”–with a wave of the hand toward the
Martha. “I thought you’d deserted the plantation, and that I might
as well go ahead and get the men into barracks. Aren’t they
beauties? Do you see that one with the split nose? He’s the only
man who doesn’t hail from the Poonga-Poonga coast; and they said
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the Poonga-Poonga natives wouldn’t recruit. Just look at them and
congratulate me. There are no kiddies and half-grown youths among
them. They’re men, every last one of them. I have such a long
story I don’t know where to begin, and I won’t begin anyway till
we’re through with this and until you have told me that you are not
angry with me.”
“Ogu–what place b’long you?” she went on with her catechism.
But Ogu was a bushman, lacking knowledge of the almost universal
beche-de-mer English, and half a dozen of his fellows wrangled to
explain.
“There are only two or three more,” Joan said to Sheldon, “and then
we’re done. But you haven’t told me that you are not angry.”
Sheldon looked into her clear eyes as she favoured him with a
direct, untroubled gaze that threatened, he knew from experience,
to turn teasingly defiant on an instant’s notice. And as he looked
at her it came to him that he had never half-anticipated the
gladness her return would bring to him.
“I was angry,” he said deliberately. “I am still angry, very
angry–” he noted the glint of defiance in her eyes and thrilled–
“but I forgave, and I now forgive all over again. Though I still
insist–”
“That I should have a guardian,” she interrupted. “But that day
will never come. Thank goodness I’m of legal age and able to
transact business in my own right. And speaking of business, how
do you like my forceful American methods?”
“Mr. Raff, from what I hear, doesn’t take kindly to them,” he
temporized, “and you’ve certainly set the dry bones rattling for
many a day. But what I want to know is if other American women are
as successful in business ventures?”
“Luck, ‘most all luck,” she disclaimed modestly, though her eyes
lighted with sudden pleasure; and he knew her boy’s vanity had been
touched by his trifle of tempered praise.
“Luck be blowed!” broke out the long mate, Sparrowhawk, his face
shining with admiration. “It was hard work, that’s what it was.
We earned our pay. She worked us till we dropped. And we were
down with fever half the time. So was she, for that matter, only
she wouldn’t stay down, and she wouldn’t let us stay down. My
word, she’s a slave-driver–‘Just one more heave, Mr. Sparrowhawk,
and then you can go to bed for a week’,–she to me, and me
staggerin’ ’round like a dead man, with bilious-green lights
flashing inside my head, an’ my head just bustin’. I was all in,
but I gave that heave right O–and then it was, ‘Another heave now,
Mr. Sparrowhawk, just another heave.’ An’ the Lord lumme, the way
she made love to old Kina-Kina!”
He shook his head reproachfully, while the laughter died down in
his throat to long-drawn chuckles.
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96
“He was older than Telepasse and dirtier,” she assured Sheldon,
“and I am sure much wickeder. But this isn’t work. Let us get
through with these lists.”
She turned to the waiting black on the steps, –
“Ogu, you finish along big marster belong white man, you go Not-
Not.–Here you, Tangari, you speak ‘m along that fella Ogu. He
finish he walk about Not-Not. Have you got that, Mr. Munster?”
“But you’ve broken the recruiting laws,” Sheldon said, when the new
recruits had marched away to the barracks. “The licenses for the
Flibberty and the Emily don’t allow for one hundred and fifty.
What did Burnett say?”
“He passed them, all of them,” she answered. “Captain Munster will
tell you what he said–something about being blowed, or words to
that effect. Now I must run and wash up. Did the Sydney orders
arrive?”
“Yours are in your quarters,” Sheldon said. “Hurry, for breakfast
is waiting. Let me have your hat and belt. Do, please, allow me.
There’s only one hook for them, and I know where it is.”
She gave him a quick scrutiny that was almost woman-like, then
sighed with relief as she unbuckled the heavy belt and passed it to
him.
“I doubt if I ever want to see another revolver,” she complained.
“That one has worn a hole in me, I’m sure. I never dreamed I could
get so weary of one.”
Sheldon watched her to the foot of the steps, where she turned and
called back, –
“My! I can’t tell you how good it is to be home again.”
And as his gaze continued to follow her across the compound to the
tiny grass house, the realization came to him crushingly that
Berande and that little grass house was the only place in the world
she could call “home.”
“And Burnett said, ‘Well, I’ll be damned–I beg your pardon, Miss
Lackland, but you have wantonly broken the recruiting laws and you
know it,'” Captain Munster narrated, as they sat over their whisky,
waiting for Joan to come back. “And says she to him, ‘Mr. Burnett,
can you show me any law against taking the passengers off a vessel
that’s on a reef?’ ‘That is not the point,’ says he. ‘It’s the
very, precise, particular point,’ says she and you bear it in mind
and go ahead and pass my recruits. You can report me to the Lord
High Commissioner if you want, but I have three vessels here
waiting on your convenience, and if you delay them much longer
there’ll be another report go in to the Lord High Commissioner.’
“‘I’ll hold you responsible, Captain Munster,’ says he to me, mad
enough to eat scrap-iron. ‘No, you won’t,’ says she; ‘I’m the
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charterer of the Emily, and Captain Munster has acted under my
orders.’
“What could Burnett do? He passed the whole hundred and fifty,
though the Emily was only licensed for forty, and the Flibberty-
Gibbet for thirty-five.”
“But I don’t understand,” Sheldon said.
“This is the way she worked it. When the Martha was floated, we
had to beach her right away at the head of the bay, and whilst
repairs were going on, a new rudder being made, sails bent, gear
recovered from the niggers, and so forth, Miss Lackland borrows
Sparrowhawk to run the Flibberty along with Curtis, lends me Brahms
to take Sparrowhawk’s place, and starts both craft off recruiting.
My word, the niggers came easy. It was virgin ground. Since the
Scottish Chiefs, no recruiter had ever even tried to work the
coast; and we’d already put the fear of God into the niggers’
hearts till the whole coast was quiet as lambs. When we filled up,
we came back to see how the Martha was progressing.”
“And thinking we was going home with our recruits,” Sparrowhawk
slipped in. “Lord lumme, that Miss Lackland ain’t never satisfied.
‘I’ll take ’em on the Martha,’ says she, ‘and you can go back and
fill up again.'”
“But I told her it couldn’t be done,” Munster went on. “I told her
the Martha hadn’t a license for recruiting. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘it
can’t be done, eh?’ and she stood and thought a few minutes.”