all there might be something in the other’s wild adventures over
the earth. It required a man of that calibre, a man capable of
obtruding a duel into orderly twentieth century life, to find such
wild adventures.
“There’s only one way to stop me,” Tudor went on. “I can’t insult
you directly, I know. You are too easy-going, or cowardly, or
both, for that. But I can narrate for you the talk of the beach–
ah, that grinds you, doesn’t it? I can tell you what the beach has
to say about you and this young girl running a plantation under a
business partnership.”
“Stop!” Sheldon cried, for the other was beginning to vibrate and
oscillate before his eyes. “You want a duel. I’ll give it to
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you.” Then his common-sense and dislike for the ridiculous
asserted themselves, and he added, “But it’s absurd, impossible.”
“Joan and David–partners, eh? Joan and David–partners,” Tudor
began to iterate and reiterate in a malicious and scornful chant.
“For heaven’s sake keep quiet, and I’ll let you have your way,”
Sheldon cried. “I never saw a fool so bent on his folly. What
kind of a duel shall it be? There are no seconds. What weapons
shall we use?”
Immediately Tudor’s monkey-like impishness left him, and he was
once more the cool, self-possessed man of the world.
“I’ve often thought that the ideal duel should be somewhat
different from the conventional one,” he said. “I’ve fought
several of that sort, you know–”
“French ones,” Sheldon interrupted.
“Call them that. But speaking of this ideal duel, here it is. No
seconds, of course, and no onlookers. The two principals alone are
necessary. They may use any weapons they please, from revolvers
and rifles to machine guns and pompoms. They start a mile apart,
and advance on each other, taking advantage of cover, retreating,
circling, feinting–anything and everything permissible. In short,
the principals shall hunt each other–”
“Like a couple of wild Indians?”
“Precisely,” cried Tudor, delighted. “You’ve got the idea. And
Berande is just the place, and this is just the right time. Miss
Lackland will be taking her siesta, and she’ll think we are. We’ve
got two hours for it before she wakes. So hurry up and come on.
You start out from the Balesuna and I start from the Berande.
Those two rivers are the boundaries of the plantation, aren’t they?
Very well. The field of the duel will be the plantation. Neither
principal must go outside its boundaries. Are you satisfied?”
“Quite. But have you any objections if I leave some orders?”
“Not at all,” Tudor acquiesced, the pink of courtesy now that his
wish had been granted.
Sheldon clapped his hands, and the running house-boy hurried away
to bring back Adamu Adam and Noa Noah.
“Listen,” Sheldon said to them. “This man and me, we have one big
fight to-day. Maybe he die. Maybe I die. If he die, all right.
If I die, you two look after Missie Lackalanna. You take rifles,
and you look after her daytime and night-time. If she want to talk
with Mr. Tudor, all right. If she not want to talk, you make him
keep away. Savvee?”
They grunted and nodded. They had had much to do with white men,
and had learned never to question the strange ways of the strange
breed. If these two saw fit to go out and kill each other, that
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was their business and not the business of the islanders, who took
orders from them. They stepped to the gun-rack, and each picked a
rifle.
“Better all Tahitian men have rifles,” suggested Adamu Adam.
“Maybe big trouble come.”
“All right, you take them,” Sheldon answered, busy with issuing the
ammunition.
They went to the door and down the steps, carrying the eight rifles
to their quarters. Tudor, with cartridge-belts for rifle and
pistol strapped around him, rifle in hand, stood impatiently
waiting.
“Come on, hurry up; we’re burning daylight,” he urged, as Sheldon
searched after extra clips for his automatic pistol.
Together they passed down the steps and out of the compound to the
beach, where they turned their backs to each other, and each
proceeded toward his destination, their rifles in the hollows of
their arms, Tudor walking toward the Berande and Sheldon toward the
Balesuna.
CHAPTER XXVII–MODERN DUELLING
Barely had Sheldon reached the Balesuna, when he heard the faint
report of a distant rifle and knew it was the signal of Tudor,
giving notice that he had reached the Berande, turned about, and
was coming back. Sheldon fired his rifle into the air in answer,
and in turn proceeded to advance. He moved as in a dream, absent-
mindedly keeping to the open beach. The thing was so preposterous
that he had to struggle to realize it, and he reviewed in his mind
the conversation with Tudor, trying to find some clue to the
common-sense of what he was doing. He did not want to kill Tudor.
Because that man had blundered in his love-making was no reason
that he, Sheldon, should take his life. Then what was it all
about? True, the fellow had insulted Joan by his subsequent
remarks and been knocked down for it, but because he had knocked
him down was no reason that he should now try to kill him.
In this fashion he covered a quarter of the distance between the
two rivers, when it dawned upon him that Tudor was not on the beach
at all. Of course not. He was advancing, according to the terms
of the agreement, in the shelter of the cocoanut trees. Sheldon
promptly swerved to the left to seek similar shelter, when the
faint crack of a rifle came to his ears, and almost immediately the
bullet, striking the hard sand a hundred feet beyond him,
ricochetted and whined onward on a second flight, convincing him
that, preposterous and unreal as it was, it was nevertheless sober
fact. It had been intended for him. Yet even then it was hard to
believe. He glanced over the familiar landscape and at the sea
dimpling in the light but steady breeze. From the direction of
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Tulagi he could see the white sails of a schooner laying a tack
across toward Berande. Down the beach a horse was grazing, and he
idly wondered where the others were. The smoke rising from the
copra-drying caught his eyes, which roved on over the barracks, the
tool-houses, the boat- sheds, and the bungalow, and came to rest on
Joan’s little grass house in the corner of the compound.
Keeping now to the shelter of the trees, he went forward another
quarter of a mile. If Tudor had advanced with equal speed they
should have come together at that point, and Sheldon concluded that
the other was circling. The difficulty was to locate him. The
rows of trees, running at right angles, enabled him to see along
only one narrow avenue at a time. His enemy might be coming along
the next avenue, or the next, to right or left. He might be a
hundred feet away or half a mile. Sheldon plodded on, and decided
that the old stereotyped duel was far simpler and easier than this
protracted hide-and-seek affair. He, too, tried circling, in the
hope of cutting the other’s circle; but, without catching a glimpse
of him, he finally emerged upon a fresh clearing where the young
trees, waist-high, afforded little shelter and less hiding. Just
as he emerged, stepping out a pace, a rifle cracked to his right,
and though he did not hear the bullet in passing, the thud of it
came to his ears when it struck a palm-trunk farther on.
He sprang back into the protection of the larger trees. Twice he
had exposed himself and been fired at, while he had failed to catch
a single glimpse of his antagonist. A slow anger began to burn in
him. It was deucedly unpleasant, he decided, this being peppered
at; and nonsensical as it really was, it was none the less deadly
serious. There was no avoiding the issue, no firing in the air and
getting over with it as in the old-fashioned duel. This mutual
man-hunt must keep up until one got the other. And if one
neglected a chance to get the other, that increased the other’s
chance to get him. There could be no false sentiment about it.
Tudor had been a cunning devil when he proposed this sort of duel,
Sheldon concluded, as he began to work along cautiously in the
direction of the last shot.
When he arrived at the spot, Tudor was gone, and only his foot-
prints remained, pointing out the course he had taken into the
depths of the plantation. Once, ten minutes later, he caught a
glimpse of Tudor, a hundred yards away, crossing the same avenue as
himself but going in the opposite direction. His rifle half-leaped
to his shoulder, but the other was gone. More in whim than in hope