Adventure
Page 10
But that was the trouble. She was not a man, and where would she go, and what would happen to her?
He got to his feet, lighted a cigarette, and her Stetson hat, hanging on the wall over her revolver-belt, caught his eye. That was the devil of it, too. He did not want her to go. After all, she had not grown up yet. That was why her logic hurt. It was only the logic of youth, but it could hurt damnably at times. At any rate, he would resolve upon one thing: never again would he lose his temper with her. She was a child; he must remember that. He sighed heavily. But why in reasonableness had such a child been incorporated in such a woman's form?
And as he continued to stare at her hat and think, the hurt he had received passed away, and he found himself cudgelling his brains for some way out of the muddle-for some method by which she could remain on Berande. A chaperone! Why not? He could send to Sydney on the first steamer for one. He could –
Her trilling laughter smote upon his reverie, and he stepped to the screen-door, through which he could see her running down the path to the beach. At her heels ran two of her sailors, Papehara and Mahameme, in scarlet lava-lavas, with naked sheath-knives gleaming in their belts. It was another sample of her wilfulness. Despite entreaties and commands, and warnings of the danger from sharks, she persisted in swimming at any and all times, and by special preference, it seemed to him, immediately after eating.
He watched her take the water, diving cleanly, like a boy, from the end of the little pier; and he watched her strike out with single overhand stroke, her henchmen swimming a dozen feet on either side. He did not have much faith in their ability to beat off a hungry man-eater, though he did believe, implicitly, that their lives would go bravely before hers in case of an attack.
Straight out they swam, their heads growing smaller and smaller. There was a slight, restless heave to the sea, and soon the three heads were disappearing behind it with greater frequency. He strained his eyes to keep them in sight, and finally fetched the telescope on to the veranda. A squall was making over from the direction of Florida; but then, she and her men laughed at squalls and the white choppy sea at such times. She certainly could swim, he had long since concluded. That came of her training in Hawaii. But sharks were sharks, and he had known of more than one good swimmer drowned in a tide-rip.
The squall blackened the sky, beat the ocean white where he had last seen the three heads, and then blotted out sea and sky and everything with its deluge of rain. It passed on, and Berande emerged in the bright sunshine as the three swimmers emerged from the sea. Sheldon slipped inside with the telescope, and through the screen-door watched her run up the path, shaking down her hair as she ran, to the fresh-water shower under the house.
On the veranda that afternoon he broached the proposition of a chaperone as delicately as he could, explaining the necessity at Berande for such a body, a housekeeper to run the boys and the storeroom, and perform divers other useful functions. When he had finished, he waited anxiously for what Joan would say.
«Then you don't like the way I've been managing the house?» was her first objection. And next, brushing his attempted explanations aside, «One of two things would happen. Either I should cancel our partnership agreement and go away, leaving you to get another chaperone to chaperone your chaperone; or else I'd take the old hen out in the whale-boat and drown her. Do you imagine for one moment that I sailed my schooner down here to this raw edge of the earth in order to put myself under a chaperone?»
«But really . . . er . . . you know a chaperone is a necessary evil,» he objected.
«We've got along very nicely so far without one. Did I have one on the Miele? And yet I was the only woman on board. There are only three things I am afraid of-bumble-bees, scarlet fever, and chaperones. Ugh! the clucking, evil-minded monsters, finding wrong in everything, seeing sin in the most innocent actions, and suggesting sin-yes, causing sin-by their diseased imaginings.»
«Phew!» Sheldon leaned back from the table in mock fear.
«You needn't worry about your bread and butter,» he ventured. «If you fail at planting, you would be sure to succeed as a writer– novels with a purpose, you know.»
«I didn't think there were persons in the Solomons who needed such books,» she retaliated. «But you are certainly one-you and your custodians of virtue.»
He winced, but Joan rattled on with the platitudinous originality of youth.
«As if anything good were worth while when it has to be guarded and put in leg-irons and handcuffs in order to keep it good. Your desire for a chaperone as much as implies that I am that sort of creature. I prefer to be good because it is good to be good, rather than because I can't be bad because some argus-eyed old frump won't let me have a chance to be bad.»
«But it-it is not that,» he put in. «It is what others will think.»
«Let them think, the nasty-minded wretches! It is because men like you are afraid of the nasty-minded that you allow their opinions to rule you.»
«I am afraid you are a female Shelley,» he replied; «and as such, you really drive me to become your partner in order to protect you.»
«If you take me as a partner in order to protect me . . . I . . . I shan't be your partner, that's all. You'll drive me into buying Pari-Sulay yet.»
«All the more reason-« he attempted.
«Do you know what I'll do?» she demanded. «I'll find some man in the Solomons who won't want to protect me.»
Sheldon could not conceal the shock her words gave him.
«You don't mean that, you know,» he pleaded.
«I do; I really do. I am sick and tired of this protection dodge. Don't forget for a moment that I am perfectly able to take care of myself. Besides, I have eight of the best protectors in the world-
–my sailors.»
«You should have lived a thousand years ago,» he laughed, «or a thousand years hence. You are very primitive, and equally super– modern. The twentieth century is no place for you.»
«But the Solomon Islands are. You were living like a savage when I came along and found you-eating nothing but tinned meat and scones that would have ruined the digestion of a camel. Anyway, I've remedied that; and since we are to be partners, it will stay remedied. You won't die of malnutrition, be sure of that.»
«If we enter into partnership,» he announced, «it must be thoroughly understood that you are not allowed to run the schooner. You can go down to Sydney and buy her, but a skipper we must have– »
«At so much additional expense, and most likely a whisky-drinking, irresponsible, and incapable man to boot. Besides, I'd have the business more at heart than any man we could hire. As for capability, I tell you I can sail all around the average broken captain or promoted able seaman you find in the South Seas. And you know I am a navigator.»
«But being my partner,» he said coolly, «makes you none the less a lady.»
«Thank you for telling me that my contemplated conduct is unladylike.»
She arose, tears of anger and mortification in her eyes, and went over to the phonograph.
«I wonder if all men are as ridiculous as you?» she said.
He shrugged his shoulders and smiled. Discussion was useless-he had learned that; and he was resolved to keep his temper. And before the day was out she capitulated. She was to go to Sydney on the first steamer, purchase the schooner, and sail back with an island skipper on board. And then she inveigled Sheldon into agreeing that she could take occasional cruises in the islands, though he was adamant when it came to a recruiting trip on Malaita. That was the one thing barred.
And after it was all over, and a terse and business-like agreement (by her urging) drawn up and signed, Sheldon paced up and down for a full hour, meditating upon how many different kinds of a fool he had made of himself. It was an impossible situation, and yet no more impossible than the previous one, and no more impossible than the one that would have obtained had she gone off on her own and bought Pari-Sulay. He had never seen a more independent woman who stood mor
e in need of a protector than this boy-minded girl who had landed on his beach with eight picturesque savages, a long– barrelled revolver, a bag of gold, and a gaudy merchandise of imagined romance and adventure.
He had never read of anything to compare with it. The fictionists, as usual, were exceeded by fact. The whole thing was too preposterous to be true. He gnawed his moustache and smoked cigarette after cigarette. Satan, back from a prowl around the compound, ran up to him and touched his hand with a cold, damp nose. Sheldon caressed the animal's ears, then threw himself into a chair and laughed heartily. What would the Commissioner of the Solomons think? What would his people at home think? And in the one breath he was glad that the partnership had been effected and sorry that Joan Lackland had ever come to the Solomons. Then he went inside and looked at himself in a hand-mirror. He studied the reflection long and thoughtfully and wonderingly.
CHAPTER XIV-THE MARTHA
They were deep in a game of billiards the next morning, after the eleven o'clock breakfast, when Viaburi entered and announced, –
«Big fella schooner close up.»
Even as he spoke, they heard the rumble of chain through hawse– pipe, and from the veranda saw a big black-painted schooner, swinging to her just-caught anchor.
«It's a Yankee,» Joan cried. «See that bow! Look at that elliptical stern! Ah, I thought so-« as the Stars and Stripes fluttered to the mast-head.
Noa Noah, at Sheldon's direction, ran the Union Jack up the flag– staff.
«Now what is an American vessel doing down here?» Joan asked. «It's not a yacht, though I'll wager she can sail. Look! Her name! What is it?»
«Martha, San Francisco,» Sheldon read, looking through the telescope. «It's the first Yankee I ever heard of in the Solomons. They are coming ashore, whoever they are. And, by Jove, look at those men at the oars. It's an all-white crew. Now what reason brings them here?»
«They're not proper sailors,» Joan commented. «I'd be ashamed of a crew of black-boys that pulled in such fashion. Look at that fellow in the bow-the one just jumping out; he'd be more at home on a cow-pony.»
The boat's-crew scattered up and down the beach, ranging about with eager curiosity, while the two men who had sat in the stern-sheets opened the gate and came up the path to the bungalow. One of them, a tall and slender man, was clad in white ducks that fitted him like a semi-military uniform. The other man, in nondescript garments that were both of the sea and shore, and that must have been uncomfortably hot, slouched and shambled like an overgrown ape. To complete the illusion, his face seemed to sprout in all directions with a dense, bushy mass of red whiskers, while his eyes were small and sharp and restless.
Sheldon, who had gone to the head of the steps, introduced them to Joan. The bewhiskered individual, who looked like a Scotsman, had the Teutonic name of Von Blix, and spoke with a strong American accent. The tall man in the well-fitting ducks, who gave the English name of Tudor-John Tudor-talked purely-enunciated English such as any cultured American would talk, save for the fact that it was most delicately and subtly touched by a faint German accent. Joan decided that she had been helped to identify the accent by the short German-looking moustache that did not conceal the mouth and its full red lips, which would have formed a Cupid's bow but for some harshness or severity of spirit that had moulded them masculinely.
Von Blix was rough and boorish, but Tudor was gracefully easy in everything he did, or looked, or said. His blue eyes sparkled and flashed, his clean-cut mobile features were an index to his slightest shades of feeling and expression. He bubbled with enthusiasms, and his faintest smile or lightest laugh seemed spontaneous and genuine. But it was only occasionally at first that he spoke, for Von Blix told their story and stated their errand.
They were on a gold-hunting expedition. He was the leader, and Tudor was his lieutenant. All hands-and there were twenty-eight– were shareholders, in varying proportions, in the adventure. Several were sailors, but the large majority were miners, culled from all the camps from Mexico to the Arctic Ocean. It was the old and ever-untiring pursuit of gold, and they had come to the Solomons to get it. Part of them, under the leadership of Tudor, were to go up the Balesuna and penetrate the mountainous heart of Guadalcanar, while the Martha, under Von Blix, sailed away for Malaita to put through similar exploration.
«And so,» said Von Blix, «for Mr. Tudor's expedition we must have some black-boys. Can we get them from you?»
«Of course we will pay,» Tudor broke in. «You have only to charge what you consider them worth. You pay them six pounds a year, don't you?»
«In the first place we can't spare them,» Sheldon answered. «We are short of them on the plantation as it is.»
«WE?» Tudor asked quickly. «Then you are a firm or a partnership? I understood at Guvutu that you were alone, that you had lost your partner.»
Sheldon inclined his head toward Joan, and as he spoke she felt that he had become a trifle stiff.
«Miss Lackland has become interested in the plantation since then. But to return to the boys. We can't spare them, and besides, they would be of little use. You couldn't get them to accompany you beyond Binu, which is a short day's work with the boats from here. They are Malaita-men, and they are afraid of being eaten. They would desert you at the first opportunity. You could get the Binu men to accompany you another day's journey, through the grass– lands, but at the first roll of the foothills look for them to turn back. They likewise are disinclined to being eaten.»
«Is it as bad as that?» asked Von Blix.
«The interior of Guadalcanar has never been explored,» Sheldon explained. «The bushmen are as wild men as are to be found anywhere in the world to-day. I have never seen one. I have never seen a man who has seen one. They never come down to the coast, though their scouting parties occasionally eat a coast native who has wandered too far inland. Nobody knows anything about them. They don't even use tobacco-have never learned its use. The Austrian expedition-scientists, you know-got part way in before it was cut to pieces. The monument is up the beach there several miles. Only one man got back to the coast to tell the tale. And now you have all I or any other man knows of the inside of Guadalcanar.»
«But gold-have you heard of gold?» Tudor asked impatiently. «Do you know anything about gold?»
Sheldon smiled, while the two visitors hung eagerly upon his words.
«You can go two miles up the Balesuna and wash colours from the gravel. I've done it often. There is gold undoubtedly back in the mountains.»
Tudor and Von Blix looked triumphantly at each other.
«Old Wheatsheaf's yarn was true, then,» Tudor said, and Von Blix nodded. «And if Malaita turns out as well-«
Tudor broke off and looked at Joan.
«It was the tale of this old beachcomber that brought us here,» he explained. «Von Blix befriended him and was told the secret.» He turned and addressed Sheldon. «I think we shall prove that white men have been through the heart of Guadalcanar long before the time of the Austrian expedition.»
Sheldon shrugged his shoulders.
«We have never heard of it down here,» he said simply. Then he addressed Von Blix. «As to the boys, you couldn't use them farther than Binu, and I'll lend you as many as you want as far as that. How many of your party are going, and how soon will you start?»
«Ten,» said Tudor; «nine men and myself.»
«And you should be able to start day after to-morrow,» Von Blix said to him. «The boats should practically be knocked together this afternoon. To-morrow should see the outfit portioned and packed. As for the Martha, Mr. Sheldon, we'll rush the stuff ashore this afternoon and sail by sundown.»
As the two men returned down the path to their boat, Sheldon regarded Joan quizzically.
«There's romance for you,» he said, «and adventure-gold-hunting among the cannibals.»
«A title for a book,» she cried. «Or, better yet, 'Gold-Hunting Among the Head-Hunters.' My! wouldn't it sell!»
«A
nd now aren't you sorry you became a cocoanut planter?» he teased. «Think of investing in such an adventure.»
«If I did,» she retorted, «Von Blix wouldn't be finicky about my joining in the cruise to Malaita.»
«I don't doubt but what he would jump at it.»
«What do you think of them?» she asked.
«Oh, old Von Blix is all right, a solid sort of chap in his fashion; but Tudor is fly-away-too much on the surface, you know. If it came to being wrecked on a desert island, I'd prefer Von Blix.»
«I don't quite understand,» Joan objected. «What have you against Tudor?»
«You remember Browning's 'Last Duchess'?»
She nodded.
«Well, Tudor reminds me of her-«
«But she was delightful.»
«So she was. But she was a woman. One expects something different from a man-more control, you know, more restraint, more deliberation. A man must be more solid, more solid and steady– going and less effervescent. A man of Tudor's type gets on my nerves. One demands more repose from a man.»
Joan felt that she did not quite agree with his judgment; and, somehow, Sheldon caught her feeling and was disturbed. He remembered noting how her eyes had brightened as she talked with the newcomer-confound it all, was he getting jealous? he asked himself. Why shouldn't her eyes brighten? What concern was it of his?
A second boat had been lowered, and the outfit of the shore party was landed rapidly. A dozen of the crew put the knocked-down boats together on the beach. There were five of these craft-lean and narrow, with flaring sides, and remarkably long. Each was equipped with three paddles and several iron-shod poles.
«You chaps certainly seem to know river-work,» Sheldon told one of the carpenters.
The man spat a mouthful of tobacco-juice into the white sand, and answered, –
«We use 'em in Alaska. They're modelled after the Yukon poling– boats, and you can bet your life they're crackerjacks. This creek'll be a snap alongside some of them Northern streams. Five hundred pounds in one of them boats, an' two men can snake it along in a way that'd surprise you.»