Adventure Page 7
Satan, having satisfied himself that the tree-perches were unassailable, was charging straight for the big Tahitian.
But Noah stood his ground, though somewhat irresolutely, and Satan, to every one's surprise, danced and frisked about him with laughing eyes and wagging tail.
«Now, that is what I might call a proper dog,» was Joan's comment. «He is at least wiser than you, Mr. Sheldon. He didn't require any teaching to recognize the difference between a Tahitian and a black boy. What do you think, Noah? Why don't he bite you? He savvee you Tahitian eh?»
Noa Noah shook his head and grinned.
«He no savvee me Tahitian,» he explained. «He savvee me wear pants all the same white man.»
«You'll have to give him a course in 'Sartor Resartus,'» Sheldon laughed, as he came down and began to make friends with Satan.
It chanced just then that Adamu Adam and Matauare, two of Joan's sailors, entered the compound from the far side-gate. They had been down to the Balesuna making an alligator trap, and, instead of trousers, were clad in lava-lavas that flapped gracefully about their stalwart limbs. Satan saw them, and advertised his find by breaking away from Sheldon's hands and charging.
«No got pants,» Noah announced with a grin that broadened as Adamu Adam took to flight.
He climbed up the platform that supported the galvanized iron tanks which held the water collected from the roof. Foiled here, Satan turned and charged back on Matauare.
«Run, Matauare! Run!» Joan called.
But he held his ground and waited the dog.
«He is the Fearless One-that is what his name means,» Joan explained to Sheldon.
The Tahitian watched Satan coolly, and when that sanguine-mouthed creature lifted into the air in the final leap, the man's hand shot out. It was a fair grip on the lower jaw, and Satan described a half circle and was flung to the rear, turning over in the air and falling heavily on his back. Three times he leaped, and three times that grip on his jaw flung him to defeat. Then he contented himself with trotting at Matauare's heels, eyeing him and sniffing him suspiciously.
«It's all right, Satan; it's all right,» Sheldon assured him. «That good fella belong along me.»
But Satan dogged the Tahitian's movements for a full hour before he made up his mind that the man was an appurtenance of the place. Then he turned his attention to the three house-boys, cornering Ornfiri in the kitchen and rushing him against the hot stove, stripping the lava-lava from Lalaperu when that excited youth climbed a veranda-post, and following Viaburi on top the billiard– table, where the battle raged until Joan managed a rescue.
CHAPTER IX-AS BETWEEN A MAN AND A WOMAN
It was Satan's inexhaustible energy and good spirits that most impressed them. His teeth seemed perpetually to ache with desire, and in lieu of black legs he husked the cocoanuts that fell from the trees in the compound, kept the enclosure clear of intruding hens, and made a hostile acquaintance with every boss-boy who came to report. He was unable to forget the torment of his puppyhood, wherein everlasting hatred of the black had been woven into the fibres of consciousness; and such a terror did he make himself that Sheldon was forced to shut him up in the living room when, for any reason, strange natives were permitted in the compound. This always hurt Satan's feelings and fanned his wrath, so that even the house-boys had to watch out for him when he was first released.
Christian Young sailed away in the Minerva, carrying an invitation (that would be delivered nobody knew when) to Tommy Jones to drop in at Berande the next time he was passing.
«What are your plans when you get to Sydney?» Sheldon asked, that night, at dinner.
«First I've heard that I'm going to Sydney,» Joan retorted. «I suppose you've received information, by bush-telegraph, that that third assistant understrapper and ex-sailorman at Tulagi is going to deport me as an undesirable immigrant.»
«Oh, no, nothing of the sort, I assure you,» Sheldon began with awkward haste, fearful of having offended, though he knew not how. «I was just wondering, that was all. You see, with the loss of the schooner and . . and all the rest . . . you understand . . I was thinking that if-a-if-hang it all, until you could communicate with your friends, my agents at Sydney could advance you a loan, temporary you see, why I'd be only too glad and all the rest, you know. The proper-«
But his jaw dropped and he regarded her irritably and with apprehension.
«What IS the matter?» he demanded, with a show of heat. «What HAVE I done now?»
Joan's eyes were bright with battle, the curve of her lips sharp with mockery.
«Certainly not the unexpected,» she said quietly. «Merely ignored me in your ordinary, every-day, man-god, superior fashion. Naturally it counted for nothing, my telling you that I had no idea of going to Sydney. Go to Sydney I must, because you, in your superior wisdom, have so decreed.»
She paused and looked at him curiously, as though he were some strange breed of animal.
«Of course I am grateful for your offer of assistance; but even that is no salve to wounded pride. For that matter, it is no more than one white man should expect from another. Shipwrecked mariners are always helped along their way. Only this particular mariner doesn't need any help. Furthermore, this mariner is not going to Sydney, thank you.»
«But what do you intend to do?»
«Find some spot where I shall escape the indignity of being patronized and bossed by the superior sex.»
«Come now, that is putting it a bit too strongly.» Sheldon laughed, but the strain in his voice destroyed the effect of spontaneity. «You know yourself how impossible the situation is.»
«I know nothing of the sort, sir. And if it is impossible, well, haven't I achieved it?»
«But it cannot continue. Really-«
«Oh, yes, it can. Having achieved it, I can go on achieving it. I intend to remain in the Solomons, but not on Berande. To-morrow I am going to take the whale-boat over to Pari-Sulay. I was talking with Captain Young about it. He says there are at least four hundred acres, and every foot of it good for planting. Being an island, he says I won't have to bother about wild pigs destroying the young trees. All I'll have to do is to keep the weeds hoed until the trees come into bearing. First, I'll buy the island; next, get forty or fifty recruits and start clearing and planting; and at the same time I'll run up a bungalow; and then you'll be relieved of my embarrassing presence-now don't say that it isn't.»
«It is embarrassing,» he said bluntly. «But you refuse to see my point of view, so there is no use in discussing it. Now please forget all about it, and consider me at your service concerning this . . . this project of yours. I know more about cocoanut– planting than you do. You speak like a capitalist. I don't know how much money you have, but I don't fancy you are rolling in wealth, as you Americans say. But I do know what it costs to clear land. Suppose the government sells you Pari-Sulay at a pound an acre; clearing will cost you at least four pounds more; that is, five pounds for four hundred acres, or, say, ten thousand dollars. Have you that much?»
She was keenly interested, and he could see that the previous clash between them was already forgotten. Her disappointment was plain as she confessed:
«No; I haven't quite eight thousand dollars.»
«Then here's another way of looking at it. You'll need, as you said, at least fifty boys. Not counting premiums, their wages are thirty dollars a year.»
«I pay my Tahitians fifteen a month,» she interpolated.
«They won't do on straight plantation work. But to return. The wages of fifty boys each year will come to three hundred pounds– that is, fifteen hundred dollars. Very well. It will be seven years before your trees begin to bear. Seven times fifteen hundred is ten thousand five hundred dollars-more than you possess, and all eaten up by the boys' wages, with nothing to pay for bungalow, building, tools, quinine, trips to Sydney, and so forth.»
Sheldon shook his head gravely. «You'll have to abandon the idea.»
«But I won't go to Sy
dney,» she cried. «I simply won't. I'll buy in to the extent of my money as a small partner in some other plantation. Let me buy in in Berande!»
«Heaven forbid!» he cried in such genuine dismay that she broke into hearty laughter.
«There, I won't tease you. Really, you know, I'm not accustomed to forcing my presence where it is not desired. Yes, yes; I know you're just aching to point out that I've forced myself upon you ever since I landed, only you are too polite to say so. Yet as you said yourself, it was impossible for me to go away, so I had to stay. You wouldn't let me go to Tulagi. You compelled me to force myself upon you. But I won't buy in as partner with any one. I'll buy Pari-Sulay, but I'll put only ten boys on it and clear slowly. Also, I'll invest in some old ketch and take out a trading license. For that matter, I'll go recruiting on Malaita.»
She looked for protest, and found it in Sheldon's clenched hand and in every line of his clean-cut face.
«Go ahead and say it,» she challenged. «Please don't mind me. I'm-I'm getting used to it, you know. Really I am.»
«I wish I were a woman so as to tell you how preposterously insane and impossible it is,» he blurted out.
She surveyed him with deliberation, and said:
«Better than that, you are a man. So there is nothing to prevent your telling me, for I demand to be considered as a man. I didn't come down here to trail my woman's skirts over the Solomons. Please forget that I am accidentally anything else than a man with a man's living to make.»
Inwardly Sheldon fumed and fretted. Was she making game of him? Or did there lurk in her the insidious unhealthfulness of unwomanliness? Or was it merely a case of blank, staring, sentimental, idiotic innocence?
«I have told you,» he began stiffly, «that recruiting on Malaita is impossible for a woman, and that is all I care to say-or dare.»
«And I tell you, in turn, that it is nothing of the sort. I've sailed the Miele here, master, if you please, all the way from Tahiti-even if I did lose her, which was the fault of your Admiralty charts. I am a navigator, and that is more than your Solomons captains are. Captain Young told me all about it. And I am a seaman-a better seaman than you, when it comes right down to it, and you know it. I can shoot. I am not a fool. I can take care of myself. And I shall most certainly buy a ketch, run her myself, and go recruiting on Malaita.»
Sheldon made a hopeless gesture.
«That's right,» she rattled on. «Wash your hands of me. But as Von used to say, 'You just watch my smoke!'»
«There's no use in discussing it. Let us have some music.»
He arose and went over to the big phonograph; but before the disc started, and while he was winding the machine, he heard her saying:
«I suppose you've been accustomed to Jane Eyres all your life. That's why you don't understand me. Come on, Satan; let's leave him to his old music.»
He watched her morosely and without intention of speaking, till he saw her take a rifle from the stand, examine the magazine, and start for the door.
«Where are you going?» he asked peremptorily.
«As between man and woman,» she answered, «it would be too terribly-er-indecent for you to tell me why I shouldn't go alligatoring. Good-night. Sleep well.»
He shut off the phonograph with a snap, started toward the door after her, then abruptly flung himself into a chair.
«You're hoping a 'gator catches me, aren't you?» she called from the veranda, and as she went down the steps her rippling laughter drifted tantalizingly back through the wide doorway.
CHAPTER X-A MESSAGE FROM BOUCHER
The next day Sheldon was left all alone. Joan had gone exploring Pari-Sulay, and was not to be expected back until the late afternoon. Sheldon was vaguely oppressed by his loneliness, and several heavy squalls during the afternoon brought him frequently on to the veranda, telescope in hand, to scan the sea anxiously for the whale-boat. Betweenwhiles he scowled over the plantation account-books, made rough estimates, added and balanced, and scowled the harder. The loss of the Jessie had hit Berande severely. Not alone was his capital depleted by the amount of her value, but her earnings were no longer to be reckoned on, and it was her earnings that largely paid the running expenses of the plantation.
«Poor old Hughie,» he muttered aloud, once. «I'm glad you didn't live to see it, old man. What a cropper, what a cropper!»
Between squalls the Flibberty-Gibbet ran in to anchorage, and her skipper, Pete Oleson (brother to the Oleson of the Jessie), ancient, grizzled, wild-eyed, emaciated by fever, dragged his weary frame up the veranda steps and collapsed in a steamer-chair. Whisky and soda kept him going while he made report and turned in his accounts.
«You're rotten with fever,» Sheldon said. «Why don't you run down to Sydney for a blow of decent climate?»
The old skipper shook his head.
«I can't. I've ben in the islands too long. I'd die. The fever comes out worse down there.»
«Kill or cure,» Sheldon counselled.
«It's straight kill for me. I tried it three years ago. The cool weather put me on my back before I landed. They carried me ashore and into hospital. I was unconscious one stretch for two weeks. After that the doctors sent me back to the islands-said it was the only thing that would save me. Well, I'm still alive; but I'm too soaked with fever. A month in Australia would finish me.»
«But what are you going to do?» Sheldon queried. «You can't stay here until you die.»
«That's all that's left to me. I'd like to go back to the old country, but I couldn't stand it. I'll last longer here, and here I'll stay until I peg out; but I wish to God I'd never seen the Solomons, that's all.»
He declined to sleep ashore, took his orders, and went back on board the cutter. A lurid sunset was blotted out by the heaviest squall of the day, and Sheldon watched the whale-boat arrive in the thick of it. As the spritsail was taken in and the boat headed on to the beach, he was aware of a distinct hurt at sight of Joan at the steering-oar, standing erect and swaying her strength to it as she resisted the pressures that tended to throw the craft broadside in the surf. Her Tahitians leaped out and rushed the boat high up the beach, and she led her bizarre following through the gate of the compound.
The first drops of rain were driving like hail-stones, the tall cocoanut palms were bending and writhing in the grip of the wind, while the thick cloud-mass of the squall turned the brief tropic twilight abruptly to night.
Quite unconsciously the brooding anxiety of the afternoon slipped from Sheldon, and he felt strangely cheered at the sight of her running up the steps laughing, face flushed, hair flying, her breast heaving from the violence of her late exertions.
«Lovely, perfectly lovely-Pari-Sulay,» she panted. «I shall buy it. I'll write to the Commissioner to-night. And the site for the bungalow-I've selected it already-is wonderful. You must come over some day and advise me. You won't mind my staying here until I can get settled? Wasn't that squall beautiful? And I suppose I'm late for dinner. I'll run and get clean, and be with you in a minute.»
And in the brief interval of her absence he found himself walking about the big living-room and impatiently and with anticipation awaiting her coming.
«Do you know, I'm never going to squabble with you again,» he announced when they were seated.
«Squabble!» was the retort. «It's such a sordid word. It sounds cheap and nasty. I think it's much nicer to quarrel.»
«Call it what you please, but we won't do it any more, will we?» He cleared his throat nervously, for her eyes advertised the immediate beginning of hostilities. «I beg your pardon,» he hurried on. «I should have spoken for myself. What I mean is that I refuse to quarrel. You have the most horrible way, without uttering a word, of making me play the fool. Why, I began with the kindest intentions, and here I am now-«
«Making nasty remarks,» she completed for him.
«It's the way you have of catching me up,» he complained.
«Why, I never said a word. I was merely sitting here,
being sweetly lured on by promises of peace on earth and all the rest of it, when suddenly you began to call me names.»
«Hardly that, I am sure.»
«Well, you said I was horrible, or that I had a horrible way about me, which is the same thing. I wish my bungalow were up. I'd move to-morrow.»
But her twitching lips belied her words, and the next moment the man was more uncomfortable than ever, being made so by her laughter.
«I was only teasing you. Honest Injun. And if you don't laugh I'll suspect you of being in a temper with me. That's right, laugh. But don't-« she added in alarm, «don't if it hurts you. You look as though you had a toothache. There, there-don't say it. You know you promised not to quarrel, while I have the privilege of going on being as hateful as I please. And to begin with, there's the Flibberty-Gibbet. I didn't know she was so large a cutter; but she's in disgraceful condition. Her rigging is something queer, and the next sharp squall will bring her head-gear all about the shop. I watched Noa Noah's face as we sailed past. He didn't say anything. He just sneered. And I don't blame him.»
«Her skipper's rotten bad with fever,» Sheldon explained. «And he had to drop his mate off to take hold of things at Ugi-that's where I lost Oscar, my trader. And you know what sort of sailors the niggers are.»
She nodded her head judicially, and while she seemed to debate a weighty judgment he asked for a second helping of tinned beef-not because he was hungry, but because he wanted to watch her slim, firm fingers, naked of jewels and banded metals, while his eyes pleasured in the swell of the forearm, appearing from under the sleeve and losing identity in the smooth, round wrist undisfigured by the netted veins that come to youth when youth is gone. The fingers were brown with tan and looked exceedingly boyish. Then, and without effort, the concept came to him. Yes, that was it. He had stumbled upon the clue to her tantalizing personality. Her fingers, sunburned and boyish, told the story. No wonder she had exasperated him so frequently. He had tried to treat with her as a woman, when she was not a woman. She was a mere girl-and a boyish girl at that-with sunburned fingers that delighted in doing what boys' fingers did; with a body and muscles that liked swimming and violent endeavour of all sorts; with a mind that was daring, but that dared no farther than boys' adventures, and that delighted in rifles and revolvers, Stetson hats, and a sexless camaraderie with men.