flags–everything, in fact, except the trade goods and supplies
which had already been kai-kai’d. Of course, she gave them a few
sticks of tobacco to keep them in good humour.”
“Sure she did,” Sparrowhawk broke forth. “She gave the beggars
five fathoms of calico for the big mainsail, two sticks of tobacco
for the chronometer, and a sheath-knife worth elevenpence ha’penny
for a hundred fathoms of brand new five-inch manila. She got old
Kina-Kina with that strong hand on the go off, and she kept him
going all the time. She–here she comes now.”
It was with a shock of surprise that Sheldon greeted her
appearance. All the time, while the tale of happening at Poonga-
Poonga had been going on, he had pictured her as the woman he had
always known, clad roughly, skirt made out of window-curtain stuff,
an undersized man’s shirt for a blouse, straw sandals for foot
covering, with the Stetson hat and the eternal revolver completing
her costume. The ready-made clothes from Sydney had transformed
her. A simple skirt and shirt-waist of some sort of wash-goods set
off her trim figure with a hint of elegant womanhood that was new
to him. Brown slippers peeped out as she crossed the compound, and
he once caught a glimpse to the ankle of brown open-work stockings.
Somehow, she had been made many times the woman by these mere
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extraneous trappings; and in his mind these wild Arabian Nights
adventures of hers seemed thrice as wonderful.
As they went in to breakfast he became aware that Munster and
Sparrowhawk had received a similar shock. All their air of
camaraderie was dissipated, and they had become abruptly and
immensely respectful.
“I’ve opened up a new field,” she said, as she began pouring the
coffee. “Old Kina-Kina will never forget me, I’m sure, and I can
recruit there whenever I want. I saw Morgan at Guvutu. He’s
willing to contract for a thousand boys at forty shillings per
head. Did I tell you that I’d taken out a recruiting license for
the Martha? I did, and the Martha can sign eighty boys every trip.
Sheldon smiled a trifle bitterly to himself. The wonderful woman
who had tripped across the compound in her Sydney clothes was gone,
and he was listening to the boy come back again.
CHAPTER XIX–THE LOST TOY
“Well,” Joan said with a sigh, “I’ve shown you hustling American
methods that succeed and get somewhere, and here you are beginning
your muddling again.”
Five days had passed, and she and Sheldon were standing on the
veranda watching the Martha, close-hauled on the wind, laying a
tack off shore. During those five days Joan had never once
broached the desire of her heart, though Sheldon, in this
particular instance reading her like a book, had watched her lead
up to the question a score of times in the hope that he would
himself suggest her taking charge of the Martha. She had wanted
him to say the word, and she had steeled herself not to say it
herself. The matter of finding a skipper had been a hard one. She
was jealous of the Martha, and no suggested man had satisfied her.
“Oleson?” she had demanded. “He does very well on the Flibberty,
with me and my men to overhaul her whenever she’s ready to fall to
pieces through his slackness. But skipper of the Martha?
Impossible!”
“Munster? Yes, he’s the only man I know in the Solomons I’d care
to see in charge. And yet, there’s his record. He lost the
Umbawa–one hundred and forty drowned. He was first officer on the
bridge. Deliberate disobedience to instructions. No wonder they
broke him.
“Christian Young has never had any experience with large boats.
Besides, we can’t afford to pay him what he’s clearing on the
Minerva. Sparrowhawk is a good man–to take orders. He has no
initiative. He’s an able sailor, but he can’t command. I tell you
I was nervous all the time he had charge of the Flibberty at
Poonga-Poonga when I had to stay by the Martha.”
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And so it had gone. No name proposed was satisfactory, and,
moreover, Sheldon had been surprised by the accuracy of her
judgments. A dozen times she almost drove him to the statement
that from the showing she made of Solomon Islands sailors, she was
the only person fitted to command the Martha. But each time he
restrained himself, while her pride prevented her from making the
suggestion.
“Good whale-boat sailors do not necessarily make good schooner-
handlers,” she replied to one of his arguments. “Besides, the
captain of a boat like the Martha must have a large mind, see
things in a large way; he must have capacity and enterprise.”
“But with your Tahitians on board–” Sheldon had begun another
argument.
“There won’t be any Tahitians on board,” she had returned promptly.
“My men stay with me. I never know when I may need them. When I
sail, they sail; when I remain ashore, they remain ashore. I’ll
find plenty for them to do right here on the plantation. You’ve
seen them clearing bush, each of them worth half a dozen of your
cannibals.”
So it was that Joan stood beside Sheldon and sighed as she watched
the Martha beating out to sea, old Kinross, brought over from Savo,
in command.
“Kinross is an old fossil,” she said, with a touch of bitterness in
her voice. “Oh, he’ll never wreck her through rashness, rest
assured of that; but he’s timid to childishness, and timid skippers
lose just as many vessels as rash ones. Some day, Kinross will
lose the Martha because there’ll be only one chance and he’ll be
afraid to take it. I know his sort. Afraid to take advantage of a
proper breeze of wind that will fetch him in in twenty hours, he’ll
get caught out in the calm that follows and spend a whole week in
getting in. The Martha will make money with him, there’s no doubt
of it; but she won’t make near the money that she would under a
competent master.”
She paused, and with heightened colour and sparkling eyes gazed
seaward at the schooner.
“My! but she is a witch! Look at her eating up the water, and
there’s no wind to speak of. She’s not got ordinary white metal
either. It’s man-of-war copper, every inch of it. I had them
polish it with cocoanut husks when she was careened at Poonga-
Poonga. She was a seal-hunter before this gold expedition got her.
And seal-hunters had to sail. They’ve run away from second class
Russian cruisers more than once up there off Siberia.
“Honestly, if I’d dreamed of the chance waiting for me at Guvutu
when I bought her for less than three hundred dollars, I’d never
have gone partners with you. And in that case I’d be sailing her
right now.
The justice of her contention came abruptly home to Sheldon. What
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she had done she would have done just the same if she had not been
his partner. And in the saving of the Martha he had played no
part. Single-handed, unadvised, in the teeth of the laughter of
Guvutu and of the competition of men like Morgan and Raff, she had
gone into the adventure and brought it through to success.
“You make me feel like a big man who has robbed a small child of a
lolly,” he said with sudden contrition.
“And the small child is crying for it.” She looked at him, and he
noted that her lip was slightly trembling and that her eyes were
moist. It was the boy all over, he thought; the boy crying for the
wee bit boat with which to play. And yet it was a woman, too.
What a maze of contradiction she was! And he wondered, had she
been all woman and no boy, if he would have loved her in just the
same way. Then it rushed in upon his consciousness that he really
loved her for what she was, for all the boy in her and all the rest
of her–for the total of her that would have been a different total
in direct proportion to any differing of the parts of her.
“But the small child won’t cry any more for it,” she was saying.
“This is the last sob. Some day, if Kinross doesn’t lose her,
you’ll turn her over to your partner, I know. And I won’t nag you
any more. Only I do hope you know how I feel. It isn’t as if I’d
merely bought the Martha, or merely built her. I saved her. I
took her off the reef. I saved her from the grave of the sea when
fifty-five pounds was considered a big risk. She is mine,
peculiarly mine. Without me she wouldn’t exist. That big
nor’wester would have finished her the first three hours it blew.
And then I’ve sailed her, too; and she is a witch, a perfect witch.