view of the talk, you are a man. The woman in you is only
incidental, accidental, and irrelevant. You’ve got to listen to
the bald statement of fact, strange though it is, that I love you.”
“And now I won’t bother you any more about love. We’ll go on the
same as before. You are better off and safer on Berande, in spite
of the fact that I love you, than anywhere else in the Solomons.
But I want you, as a final item of man-talk, to remember, from time
to time, that I love you, and that it will be the dearest day of my
life when you consent to marry me. I want you to think of it
sometimes. You can’t help but think of it sometimes. And now we
won’t talk about it any more. As between men, there’s my hand.”
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He held out his hand. She hesitated, then gripped it heartily, and
smiled through her tears.
“I wish–” she faltered, “I wish, instead of that black Mary, you’d
given me somebody to swear for me.”
And with this enigmatic utterance she turned away.
CHAPTER XXI–CONTRABAND
Sheldon did not mention the subject again, nor did his conduct
change from what it had always been. There was nothing of the
pining lover, nor of the lover at all, in his demeanour. Nor was
there any awkwardness between them. They were as frank and
friendly in their relations as ever. He had wondered if his
belligerent love declaration might have aroused some womanly self-
consciousness in Joan, but he looked in vain for any sign of it.
She appeared as unchanged as he; and while he knew that he hid his
real feelings, he was firm in his belief that she hid nothing. And
yet the germ he had implanted must be at work; he was confident of
that, though he was without confidence as to the result. There was
no forecasting this strange girl’s processes. She might awaken, it
was true; and on the other hand, and with equal chance, he might be
the wrong man for her, and his declaration of love might only more
firmly set her in her views on single blessedness.
While he devoted more and more of his time to the plantation
itself, she took over the house and its multitudinous affairs; and
she took hold firmly, in sailor fashion, revolutionizing the system
and discipline. The labour situation on Berande was improving.
The Martha had carried away fifty of the blacks whose time was up,
and they had been among the worst on the plantation–five-year men
recruited by Billy Be-blowed, men who had gone through the old days
of terrorism when the original owners of Berande had been driven
away. The new recruits, being broken in under the new regime, gave
better promise. Joan had joined with Sheldon from the start in the
programme that they must be gripped with the strong hand, and at
the same time be treated with absolute justice, if they were to
escape being contaminated by the older boys that still remained.
“I think it would be a good idea to put all the gangs at work close
to the house this afternoon,” she announced one day at breakfast.
“I’ve cleaned up the house, and you ought to clean up the barracks.
There is too much stealing going on.”
”
A good idea,” Sheldon agreed. “Their boxes should be searched.
I’ve just missed a couple of shirts, and my best toothbrush is
gone.”
“And two boxes of my cartridges,” she added, “to say nothing of
handkerchiefs, towels, sheets, and my best pair of slippers. But
what they want with your toothbrush is more than I can imagine.
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They’ll be stealing the billiard balls next.”
“One did disappear a few weeks before you came,” Sheldon laughed.
“We’ll search the boxes this afternoon.”
And a busy afternoon it was. Joan and Sheldon, both armed, went
through the barracks, house by house, the boss-boys assisting, and
half a dozen messengers, in relay, shouting along the line the
names of the boys wanted. Each boy brought the key to his
particular box, and was permitted to look on while the contents
were overhauled by the boss-boys.
A wealth of loot was recovered. There were fully a dozen cane-
knives–big hacking weapons with razor-edges, capable of
decapitating a man at a stroke. Towels, sheets, shirts, and
slippers, along with toothbrushes, wisp-brooms, soap, the missing
billiard ball, and all the lost and forgotten trifles of many
months, came to light. But most astonishing was the quantity of
ammunition-cartridges for Lee-Metfords, for Winchesters and
Marlins, for revolvers from thirty-two calibre to forty-five, shot-
gun cartridges, Joan’s two boxes of thirty-eight, cartridges of
prodigious bore for the ancient Sniders of Malaita, flasks of black
powder, sticks of dynamite, yards of fuse, and boxes of detonators.
But the great find was in the house occupied by Gogoomy and five
Port Adams recruits. The fact that the boxes yielded nothing
excited Sheldon’s suspicions, and he gave orders to dig up the
earthen floor. Wrapped in matting, well oiled, free from rust, and
brand new, two Winchesters were first unearthed. Sheldon did not
recognize them. They had not come from Berande; neither had the
forty flasks of black powder found under the corner-post of the
house; and while he could not be sure, he could remember no loss of
eight boxes of detonators. A big Colt’s revolver he recognized as
Hughie Drummond’s; while Joan identified a thirty-two Ivor and
Johnson as a loss reported by Matapuu the first week he landed at
Berande. The absence of any cartridges made Sheldon persist in the
digging up of the floor, and a fifty-pound flour tin was his
reward. With glowering eyes Gogoomy looked on while Sheldon took
from the tin a hundred rounds each for the two Winchesters and
fully as many rounds more of nondescript cartridges of all sorts
and makes and calibres.
The contraband and stolen property was piled in assorted heaps on
the back veranda of the bungalow. A few paces from the bottom of
the steps were grouped the forty-odd culprits, with behind them, in
solid array, the several hundred blacks of the plantation. At the
head of the steps Joan and Sheldon were seated, while on the steps
stood the gang-bosses. One by one the culprits were called up and
examined. Nothing definite could be extracted from them. They
lied transparently, but persistently, and when caught in one lie
explained it away with half a dozen others. One boy complacently
announced that he had found eleven sticks of dynamite on the beach.
Matapuu’s revolver, found in the box of one Kapu, was explained
away by that boy as having been given to him by Lervumie.
Lervumie, called forth to testify, said he had got it from Noni;
Noni had got it from Sulefatoi; Sulefatoi from Choka; Choka from
Ngava; and Ngava completed the circle by stating that it had been
given to him by Kapu. Kapu, thus doubly damned, calmly gave full
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details of how it had been given to him by Lervumie; and Lervumie,
with equal wealth of detail, told how he had received it from Noni;
and from Noni to Sulefatoi it went on around the circle again.
Divers articles were traced indubitably to the house-boys, each of
whom steadfastly proclaimed his own innocence and cast doubts on
his fellows. The boy with the billiard ball said that he had never
seen it in his life before, and hazarded the suggestion that it had
got into his box through some mysterious and occultly evil agency.
So far as he was concerned it might have dropped down from heaven
for all he knew how it got there. To the cooks and boats’-crews of
every vessel that had dropped anchor off Berande in the past
several years were ascribed the arrival of scores of the stolen
articles and of the major portion of the ammunition. There was no
tracing the truth in any of it, though it was without doubt that
the unidentified weapons and unfamiliar cartridges had come ashore
off visiting craft.
“Look at it,” Sheldon said to Joan. “We’ve been sleeping over a
volcano. They ought to be whipped–”
“No whip me,” Gogoomy cried out from below. “Father belong me big
fella chief. Me whip, too much trouble along you, close up, my
word.”
“What name you fella Gogoomy!” Sheldon shouted. “I knock seven
bells out of you. Here, you Kwaque, put ‘m irons along that fella
Gogoomy.”
Kwaque, a strapping gang-boss, plucked Gogoomy from out of his
following, and, helped by the other gang-bosses; twisted his arms
behind him and snapped on the heavy handcuffs.
“Me finish along you, close up, you die altogether,” Gogoomy, with
wrath-distorted face, threatened the boss-boy.
“Please, no whipping,” Joan said in a low voice. “If whipping IS
necessary, send them to Tulagi and let the Government do it. Give
them their choice between a fine or an official whipping.”