“And I’d seen her think before,” cried Sparrowhawk, “and I knew at
wunst that the thing was as good as done.”
Munster lighted his cigarette and resumed.
“‘You see that spit,’ she says to me, ‘with the little ripple
breaking around it? There’s a current sets right across it and on
it. And you see them bafflin’ little cat’s-paws? It’s good
weather and a falling tide. You just start to beat out, the two of
you, and all you have to do is miss stays in the same baffling puff
and the current will set you nicely aground.'”
“‘That little wash of sea won’t more than start a sheet or two of
copper,’ says she, when Munster kicked,” Sparrowhawk explained.
“Oh, she’s no green un, that girl.”
“‘Then I’ll rescue your recruits and sail away–simple, ain’t it?’
says she,” Munster continued. “‘You hang up one tide,’ says she;
‘the next is the big high water. Then you kedge off and go after
more recruits. There’s no law against recruiting when you’re
empty.’ ‘But there is against starving ’em,’ I said; ‘you know
yourself there ain’t any kai-kai to speak of aboard of us, and
there ain’t a crumb on the Martha.'”
“We’d all been pretty well on native kai-kai, as it was,” said
Sparrowhawk.
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“‘Don’t let the kai-kai worry you, Captain Munster,’ says she; ‘if
I can find grub for eighty-four mouths on the Martha, the two of
you can do as much by your two vessels. Now go ahead and get
aground before a steady breeze comes up and spoils the manoeuvre.
I’ll send my boats the moment you strike. And now, good-day,
gentlemen.'”
“And we went and did it,” Sparrowhawk said solemnly, and then
emitted a series of chuckling noises. “We laid over, starboard
tack, and I pinched the Emily against the spit. ‘Go about,’
Captain Munster yells at me; ‘go about, or you’ll have me aground!’
He yelled other things, much worse. But I didn’t mind. I missed
stays, pretty as you please, and the Flibberty drifted down on him
and fouled him, and we went ashore together in as nice a mess as
you ever want to see. Miss Lackland transferred the recruits, and
the trick was done.”
“But where was she during the nor’wester?” Sheldon asked.
“At Langa-Langa. Ran up there as it was coming on, and laid there
the whole week and traded for grub with the niggers. When we got
to Tulagi, there she was waiting for us and scrapping with Burnett.
I tell you, Mr. Sheldon, she’s a wonder, that girl, a perfect
wonder.”
Munster refilled his glass, and while Sheldon glanced across at
Joan’s house, anxious for her coming, Sparrowhawk took up the tale.
“Gritty! She’s the grittiest thing, man or woman, that ever blew
into the Solomons. You should have seen Poonga-Poonga the morning
we arrived–Sniders popping on the beach and in the mangroves, war-
drums booming in the bush, and signal-smokes raising everywhere.
‘It’s all up,’ says Captain Munster.”
“Yes, that’s what I said,” declared that mariner.
“Of course it was all up. You could see it with half an eye and
hear it with one ear.”
“‘Up your granny,’ she says to him,” Sparrowhawk went on. “‘Why,
we haven’t arrived yet, much less got started. Wait till the
anchor’s down before you get afraid.'”
“That’s what she said to me,” Munster proclaimed. “And of course
it made me mad so that I didn’t care what happened. We tried to
send a boat ashore for a pow-wow, but it was fired upon. And every
once and a while some nigger’d take a long shot at us out of the
mangroves.”
“They was only a quarter of a mile off,” Sparrowhawk explained,
“and it was damned nasty. ‘Don’t shoot unless they try to board,’
was Miss Lackland’s orders; but the dirty niggers wouldn’t board.
They just lay off in the bush and plugged away. That night we held
a council of war in the Flibberty’s cabin. ‘What we want,’ says
Miss Lackland, ‘is a hostage.'”
“‘That’s what they do in books,’ I said, thinking to laugh her away
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from her folly,” Munster interrupted. “‘True,’ says she, ‘and have
you never seen the books come true?’ I shook my head. ‘Then
you’re not too old to learn,’ says she. ‘I’ll tell you one thing
right now,’ says I, ‘and that is I’ll be blowed if you catch me
ashore in the night-time stealing niggers in a place like this.'”
“You didn’t say blowed,” Sparrowhawk corrected. “You said you’d be
damned.”
“That’s what I did, and I meant it, too.”
“‘Nobody asked you to go ashore,’ says she, quick as lightning,”
Sparrowhawk grinned. “And she said more. She said, ‘And if I
catch you going ashore without orders there’ll be trouble–
understand, Captain Munster?'”
“Who in hell’s telling this, you or me?” the skipper demanded
wrathfully.
“Well, she did, didn’t she?” insisted the mate.
“Yes, she did, if you want to make so sure of it. And while you’re
about it, you might as well repeat what she said to you when you
said you wouldn’t recruit on the Poonga-Poonga coast for twice your
screw.”
Sparrowhawk’s sun-reddened face flamed redder, though he tried to
pass the situation off by divers laughings and chucklings and face-
twistings.
“Go on, go on,” Sheldon urged; and Munster resumed the narrative.
“‘What we need,’ says she, ‘is the strong hand. It’s the only way
to handle them; and we’ve got to take hold firm right at the
beginning. I’m going ashore to-night to fetch Kina-Kina himself on
board, and I’m not asking who’s game to go for I’ve got every man’s
work arranged with me for him. I’m taking my sailors with me, and
one white man.’ ‘Of course, I’m that white man,’ I said; for by
that time I was mad enough to go to hell and back again. ‘Of
course you’re not,’ says she. ‘You’ll have charge of the covering
boat. Curtis stands by the landing boat. Fowler goes with me.
Brahms takes charge of the Flibberty, and Sparrowhawk of the Emily.
And we start at one o’clock.’
“My word, it was a tough job lying there in the covering boat. I
never thought doing nothing could be such hard work. We stopped
about fifty fathoms off, and watched the other boat go in. It was
so dark under the mangroves we couldn’t see a thing of it. D’ye
know that little, monkey-looking nigger, Sheldon, on the Flibberty-
-the cook, I mean? Well, he was cabin-boy twenty years ago on the
Scottish Chiefs, and after she was cut off he was a slave there at
Poonga-Poonga. And Miss Lackland had discovered the fact. So he
was the guide. She gave him half a case of tobacco for that
night’s work–”
“And scared him fit to die before she could get him to come along,”
Sparrowhawk observed.
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“Well, I never saw anything so black as the mangroves. I stared at
them till my eyes were ready to burst. And then I’d look at the
stars, and listen to the surf sighing along the reef. And there
was a dog that barked. Remember that dog, Sparrowhawk? The brute
nearly gave me heart-failure when he first began. After a while he
stopped–wasn’t barking at the landing party at all; and then the
silence was harder than ever, and the mangroves grew blacker, and
it was all I could do to keep from calling out to Curtis in there
in the landing boat, just to make sure that I wasn’t the only white
man left alive.
“Of course there was a row. It had to come, and I knew it; but it
startled me just the same. I never heard such screeching and
yelling in my life. The niggers must have just dived for the bush
without looking to see what was up, while her Tahitians let loose,
shooting in the air and yelling to hurry ’em on. And then, just as
sudden, came the silence again–all except for some small kiddie
that had got dropped in the stampede and that kept crying in the
bush for its mother.
“And then I heard them coming through the mangroves, and an oar
strike on a gunwale, and Miss Lackland laugh, and I knew everything
was all right. We pulled on board without a shot being fired.
And, by God! she had made the books come true, for there was old
Kina-Kina himself being hoisted over the rail, shivering and
chattering like an ape. The rest was easy. Kina-Kina’s word was
law, and he was scared to death. And we kept him on board issuing
proclamations all the time we were in Poonga-Poonga.
“It was a good move, too, in other ways. She made Kina-Kina order
his people to return all the gear they’d stripped from the Martha.
And back it came, day after day, steering compasses, blocks and
tackles, sails, coils of rope, medicine chests, ensigns, signal