Джек Лондон
Adventure
CHAPTER XVII – “YOUR” MISS LACKLAND
The next morning Sheldon came in from the plantation to breakfast, to find the mission ketch, Apostle, at anchor, her crew swimming two mares and a filly ashore. Sheldon recognized the animals as belonging to the Resident Commissioner, and he immediately wondered if Joan had bought them. She was certainly living up to her threat of rattling the dry bones of the Solomons, and he was prepared for anything.
“Miss Lackland sent them,” said Welshmere, the missionary doctor, stepping ashore and shaking hands with him. “There’s also a box of saddles on board. And this letter from her. And the skipper of the Flibberty-Gibbet.”
The next moment, and before he could greet him, Oleson stepped from the boat and began.
“She’s stolen the Flibberty, Mr. Sheldon. Run clean away with her. She’s a wild one. She gave me the fever. Brought it on by shock. And got me drunk, as well – rotten drunk.”
Dr. Welshmere laughed heartily.
“Nevertheless, she is not an unmitigated evil, your Miss Lackland. She’s sworn three men off their drink, or, to the same purpose, shut off their whisky. You know them – Brahms, Curtis, and Fowler. She shipped them on the Flibberty-Gibbet along with her.”
“She’s the skipper of the Flibberty now,” Oleson broke in. “And she’ll wreck her as sure as God didn’t make the Solomons.”
Dr. Welshmere tried to look shocked, but laughed again.
“She has quite a way with her,” he said. “I tried to back out of bringing the horses over. Said I couldn’t charge freight, that the Apostle was under a yacht license, that I was going around by Savo and the upper end of Guadalcanal. But it was no use. ‘Bother the charge,’ said she. ‘You take the horses like a good man, and when I float the Martha I’ll return the service some day.’”
“And ‘bother your orders,’ said she to me,” Oleson cried. “‘I’m your boss now,’ said she, ‘and you take your orders from me.’ ‘Look at that load of ivory nuts,’ I said. ‘Bother them,’ said she; ‘I’m playin’ for something bigger than ivory nuts. We’ll dump them overside as soon as we get under way.’”
Sheldon put his hands to his ears.
“I don’t know what has happened, and you are trying to tell me the tale backwards. Come up to the house and get in the shade and begin at the beginning.”
“What I want to know,” Oleson began, when they were seated, “is is she your partner or ain’t she? That’s what I want to know.”
“She is,” Sheldon assured him.
“Well, who’d have believed it!” Oleson glanced appealingly at Dr. Welshmere, and back again at Sheldon. “I’ve seen a few unlikely things in these Solomons – rats two feet long, butterflies the Commissioner hunts with a shot-gun, ear-ornaments that would shame the devil, and head-hunting devils that make the devil look like an angel. I’ve seen them and got used to them, but this young woman of yours – ”
“Miss Lackland is my partner and part-owner of Berande,” Sheldon interrupted.
“So she said,” the irate skipper dashed on. “But she had no papers to show for it. How was I to know? And then there was that load of ivory nuts-eight tons of them.”
“For heaven’s sake begin at the – ” Sheldon tried to interrupt.
“And then she’s hired them drunken loafers, three of the worst scoundrels that ever disgraced the Solomons – fifteen quid a month each – what d’ye think of that? And sailed away with them, too! Phew! – You might give me a drink. The missionary won’t mind. I’ve been on his teetotal hooker four days now, and I’m perishing.”
Dr. Welshmere nodded in reply to Sheldon’s look of inquiry, and Viaburi was dispatched for the whisky and siphons.
“It is evident, Captain Oleson,” Sheldon remarked to that refreshed mariner, “that Miss Lackland has run away with your boat. Now please give a plain statement of what occurred.”
“Right O; here goes. I’d just come in on the Flibberty. She was on board before I dropped the hook – in that whale-boat of hers with her gang of Tahiti heathens – that big Adamu Adam and the rest. ‘Don’t drop the anchor, Captain Oleson,’ she sang out. ‘I want you to get under way for Poonga-Poonga.’ I looked to see if she’d been drinking. What was I to think? I was rounding up at the time, alongside the shoal – a ticklish place – head-sails running down and losing way, so I says, ‘Excuse me, Miss Lackland,’ and yells for’ard, ‘Let go!’
“‘You might have listened to me and saved yourself trouble,’ says she, climbing over the rail and squinting along for’ard and seeing the first shackle flip out and stop. ‘There’s fifteen fathom,’ says she; ‘you may as well turn your men to and heave up.’
“And then we had it out. I didn’t believe her. I didn’t think you’d take her on as a partner, and I told her as much and wanted proof. She got high and mighty, and I told her I was old enough to be her grandfather and that I wouldn’t take gammon from a chit like her. And then I ordered her off the Flibberty. ‘Captain Oleson,’ she says, sweet as you please, ‘I’ve a few minutes to spare on you, and I’ve got some good whisky over on the Emily. Come on along. Besides, I want your advice about this wrecking business. Everybody says you’re a crackerjack sailor-man’ – that’s what she said, ‘crackerjack.’ And I went, in her whale-boat, Adamu Adam steering and looking as solemn as a funeral.
“On the way she told me about the Martha, and how she’d bought her, and was going to float her. She said she’d chartered the Emily, and was sailing as soon as I could get the Flibberty underway. It struck me that her gammon was reasonable enough, and I agreed to pull out for Berande right O, and get your orders to go along to Poonga-Poonga. But she said there wasn’t a second to be lost by any such foolishness, and that I was to sail direct for Poonga-Poonga, and that if I couldn’t take her word that she was your partner, she’d get along without me and the Flibberty. And right there’s where she fooled me.
“Down in the Emily’s cabin was them three soaks – you know them – Fowler and Curtis and that Brahms chap. ‘Have a drink,’ says she. I thought they looked surprised when she unlocked the whisky locker and sent a nigger for the glasses and water-monkey. But she must have tipped them off unbeknownst to me, and they knew just what to do. ‘Excuse me,’ she says, ‘I’m going on deck a minute.’ Now that minute was half an hour. I hadn’t had a drink in ten days. I’m an old man and the fever has weakened me. Then I took it on an empty stomach, too, and there was them three soaks setting me an example, they arguing for me to take the Flibberty to Poonga-Poonga, an’ me pointing out my duty to the contrary. The trouble was, all the arguments were pointed with drinks, and me not being a drinking man, so to say, and weak from fever.
“Well, anyway, at the end of the half-hour down she came again and took a good squint at me. ‘That’ll do nicely,’ I remember her saying; and with that she took the whisky bottles and hove them overside through the companionway. ‘That’s the last, she said to the three soaks, ‘till the Martha floats and you’re back in Guvutu. It’ll be a long time between drinks.’ And then she laughed.
“She looked at me and said – not to me, mind you, but to the soaks: ‘It’s time this worthy man went ashore’ – me! worthy man! ‘Fowler,’ she said – you know, just like a straight order, and she didn’t mister him – it was plain Fowler – ‘Fowler,’ she said, ‘just tell Adamu Adam to man the whale-boat, and while he’s taking Captain Oleson ashore have your boat put me on the Flibberty. The three of you sail with me, so pack your dunnage. And the one of you that shows up best will take the mate’s billet. Captain Oleson doesn’t carry a mate, you know.’
“I don’t remember much after that. All hands got me over the side, and it seems to me I went to sleep, sitting in the stern-sheets and watching that Adamu steer. Then I saw the Flibberty’s mainsail hoisting, and heard the clank of her chain coming in, and I woke up. ‘Here, put me on the Flibberty,’ I said to Adamu. ‘I put you on the beach,’ said he. ‘Missie Lackalanna say beach plenty good for you.’ Well, I let out a yell and reached for the steering-sweep. I was doing my best by my owners, you see. Only that Adamu gives me a shove down on the bottom-boards, puts one foot on me to hold me down, and goes on steering. And that’s all. The shock of the whole thing brought on fever. And now I’ve come to find out whether I’m skipper of the Flibberty, or that chit of yours with her pirating, heathen boat’s-crew.”
“Never mind, skipper. You can take a vacation on pay.” Sheldon spoke with more assurance than he felt. “If Miss Lackland, who is my partner, has seen fit to take charge of the Flibberty-Gibbet, why, it is all right. As you will agree, there was no time to be lost if the Martha was to be got off. It is a bad reef, and any considerable sea would knock her bottom out. You settle down here, skipper, and rest up and get the fever out of your bones. When the Flibberty-Gibbet comes back, you’ll take charge again, of course.”
After Dr. Welshmere and the Apostle departed and Captain Oleson had turned in for a sleep in a veranda hammock, Sheldon opened Joan’s letter.
DEAR MR. SHELDON, – Please forgive me for stealing the Flibberty-Gibbet. I simply had to. The Martha means everything to us. Think of it, only fifty-five pounds for her, two hundred and seventy-five dollars. If I don’t save her, I know I shall be able to pay all expenses out of her gear, which the natives will not have carried off. And if I do save her, it is the haul of a life-time. And if I don’t save her, I’ll fill the Emily and the Flibberty-Gibbet with recruits. Recruits are needed right now on Berande more than anything else.
And please, please don’t be angry with me. You said I shouldn’t go recruiting on the Flibberty, and I won’t. I’ll go on the Emily.
I bought two cows this afternoon. That trader at Nogi died of fever, and I bought them from his partner, Sam Willis his name is, who agrees to deliver them – most likely by the Minerva next time she is down that way. Berande has been long enough on tinned milk.
And Dr. Welshmere has agreed to get me some orange and lime trees from the mission station at Ulava. He will deliver them the next trip of the Apostle. If the Sydney steamer arrives before I get back, plant the sweet corn she will bring between the young trees on the high bank of the Balesuna. The current is eating in against that bank, and you should do something to save it.
I have ordered some fig-trees and loquats, too, from Sydney. Dr. Welshmere will bring some mango-seeds. They are big trees and require plenty of room.
The Martha is registered 110 tons. She is the biggest schooner in the Solomons, and the best. I saw a little of her lines and guess the rest. She will sail like a witch. If she hasn’t filled with water, her engine will be all right. The reason she went ashore was because it was not working. The engineer had disconnected the feed-pipes to clean out the rust. Poor business, unless at anchor or with plenty of sea room.
Plant all the trees in the compound, even if you have to clean out the palms later on.
And don’t plant the sweet corn all at once. Let a few days elapse between plantings.
JOAN LACKLAND.
He fingered the letter, lingering over it and scrutinizing the writing in a way that was not his wont. How characteristic, was his thought, as he studied the boyish scrawl – clear to read, painfully, clear, but none the less boyish. The clearness of it reminded him of her face, of her cleanly stencilled brows, her straightly chiselled nose, the very clearness of the gaze of her eyes, the firmly yet delicately moulded lips, and the throat, neither fragile nor robust, but – but just right, he concluded, an adequate and beautiful pillar for so shapely a burden.
He looked long at the name. Joan Lackland – just an assemblage of letters, of commonplace letters, but an assemblage that generated a subtle and heady magic. It crept into his brain and twined and twisted his mental processes until all that constituted him at that moment went out in love to that scrawled signature. A few commonplace letters – yet they caused him to know in himself a lack that sweetly hurt and that expressed itself in vague spiritual outpourings and delicious yearnings. Joan Lackland! Each time he looked at it there arose visions of her in a myriad moods and guises – coming in out of the flying smother of the gale that had wrecked her schooner; launching a whale-boat to go a-fishing; running dripping from the sea, with streaming hair and clinging garments, to the fresh-water shower; frightening four-score cannibals with an empty chlorodyne bottle; teaching Ornfiri how to make bread; hanging her Stetson hat and revolver-belt on the hook in the living-room; talking gravely about winning to hearth and saddle of her own, or juvenilely rattling on about romance and adventure, bright-eyed, her face flushed and eager with enthusiasm. Joan Lackland! He mused over the cryptic wonder of it till the secrets of love were made clear and he felt a keen sympathy for lovers who carved their names on trees or wrote them on the beach-sands of the sea.
Then he came back to reality, and his face hardened. Even then she was on the wild coast of Malaita, and at Poonga-Poonga, of all villainous and dangerous portions the worst, peopled with a teeming population of head-hunters, robbers, and murderers. For the instant he entertained the rash thought of calling his boat’s-crew and starting immediately in a whale-boat for Poonga-Poonga. But the next instant the idea was dismissed. What could he do if he did go? First, she would resent it. Next, she would laugh at him and call him a silly; and after all he would count for only one rifle more, and she had many rifles with her. Three things only could he do if he went. He could command her to return; he could take the Flibberty-Gibbet away from her; he could dissolve their partnership; – any and all of which he knew would be foolish and futile, and he could hear her explain in terse set terms that she was legally of age and that nobody could say come or go to her. No, his pride would never permit him to start for Poonga-Poonga, though his heart whispered that nothing could be more welcome than a message from her asking him to come and lend a hand. Her very words – “lend a hand”; and in his fancy, he could see and hear her saying them.
There was much in her wilful conduct that caused him to wince in the heart of him. He was appalled by the thought of her shoulder to shoulder with the drunken rabble of traders and beachcombers at Guvutu. It was bad enough for a clean, fastidious man; but for a young woman, a girl at that, it was awful. The theft of the Flibberty-Gibbet was merely amusing, though the means by which the theft had been effected gave him hurt. Yet he found consolation in the fact that the task of making Oleson drunk had been turned over to the three scoundrels. And next, and swiftly, came the vision of her, alone with those same three scoundrels, on the Emily, sailing out to sea from Guvutu in the twilight with darkness coming on. Then came visions of Adamu Adam and Noa Noah and all her brawny Tahitian following, and his anxiety faded away, being replaced by irritation that she should have been capable of such wildness of conduct.
And the irritation was still on him as he got up and went inside to stare at the hook on the wall and to wish that her Stetson hat and revolver-belt were hanging from it.
CHAPTER XVIII – MAKING THE BOOKS COME TRUE
Several quiet weeks slipped by. Berande, after such an unusual run of visiting vessels, drifted back into her old solitude. Sheldon went on with the daily round, clearing bush, planting cocoanuts, smoking copra, building bridges, and riding about his work on the horses Joan had bought. News of her he had none. Recruiting vessels on Malaita left the Poonga-Poonga coast severely alone; and the Clansman, a Samoan recruiter, dropping anchor one sunset for billiards and gossip, reported rumours amongst the Sio natives that there had been fighting at Poonga-Poonga. As this news would have had to travel right across the big island, little dependence was to be placed on it.
The steamer from Sydney, the Kammambo, broke the quietude of Berande for an hour, while landing mail, supplies, and the trees and seeds Joan had ordered. The Minerva, bound for Cape Marsh, brought the two cows from Nogi. And the Apostle, hurrying back to Tulagi to connect with the Sydney steamer, sent a boat ashore with the orange and lime trees from Ulava. And these several weeks marked a period of perfect weather. There were days on end when sleek calms ruled the breathless sea, and days when vagrant wisps of air fanned for several hours from one direction or another. The land-breezes at night alone proved regular, and it was at night that the occasional cutters and ketches slipped by, too eager to take advantage of the light winds to drop anchor for an hour.
Then came the long-expected nor’wester. For eight days it raged, lulling at times to short durations of calm, then shifting a point or two and raging with renewed violence. Sheldon kept a precautionary eye on the buildings, while the Balesuna, in flood, so savagely attacked the high bank Joan had warned him about, that he told off all the gangs to battle with the river.
It was in the good weather that followed, that he left the blacks at work, one morning, and with a shot-gun across his pommel rode off after pigeons. Two hours later, one of the house-boys, breathless and scratched ran him down with the news that the Martha, the Flibberty-Gibbet, and the Emily were heading in for the anchorage.
Coming into the compound from the rear, Sheldon could see nothing until he rode around the corner of the bungalow. Then he saw everything at once – first, a glimpse at the sea, where the Martha floated huge alongside the cutter and the ketch which had rescued her; and, next, the ground in front of the veranda steps, where a great crowd of fresh-caught cannibals stood at attention. From the fact that each was attired in a new, snow-white lava-lava, Sheldon knew that they were recruits. Part way up the steps, one of them was just backing down into the crowd, while another, called out by name, was coming up. It was Joan’s voice that had called him, and Sheldon reined in his horse and watched. She sat at the head of the steps, behind a table, between Munster and his white mate, the three of them checking long lists, Joan asking the questions and writing the answers in the big, red-covered, Berande labour-journal.
“What name?” she demanded of the black man on the steps.
“Tagari,” came the answer, accompanied by a grin and a rolling of curious eyes; for it was the first white-man’s house the black had ever seen.
“What place b’long you?”
“Bangoora.”
No one had noticed Sheldon, and he continued to sit his horse and watch. There was a discrepancy between the answer and the record in the recruiting books, and a consequent discussion, until Munster solved the difficulty.
“Bangoora?” he said. “That’s the little beach at the head of the bay out of Latta. He’s down as a Latta-man – see, there it is, ‘Tagari, Latta.’”
“What place you go you finish along white marster?” Joan asked.
“Bangoora,” the man replied; and Joan wrote it down.
“Ogu!” Joan called.
The black stepped down, and another mounted to take his place. But Tagari, just before he reached the bottom step, caught sight of Sheldon. It was the first horse the fellow had ever seen, and he let out a frightened screech and dashed madly up the steps. At the same moment the great mass of blacks surged away panic-stricken from Sheldon’s vicinity. The grinning house-boys shouted encouragement and explanation, and the stampede was checked, the new-caught head-hunters huddling closely together and staring dubiously at the fearful monster.
“Hello!” Joan called out. “What do you mean by frightening all my boys? Come on up.”
“What do you think of them?” she asked, when they had shaken hands. “And what do you think of her?” – with a wave of the hand toward the Martha. “I thought you’d deserted the plantation, and that I might as well go ahead and get the men into barracks. Aren’t they beauties? Do you see that one with the split nose? He’s the only man who doesn’t hail from the Poonga-Poonga coast; and they said the Poonga-Poonga natives wouldn’t recruit. Just look at them and congratulate me. There are no kiddies and half-grown youths among them. They’re men, every last one of them. I have such a long story I don’t know where to begin, and I won’t begin anyway till we’re through with this and until you have told me that you are not angry with me.”
“Ogu – what place b’long you?” she went on with her catechism.
But Ogu was a bushman, lacking knowledge of the almost universal bêche-de-mer English, and half a dozen of his fellows wrangled to explain.
“There are only two or three more,” Joan said to Sheldon, “and then we’re done. But you haven’t told me that you are not angry.”
Sheldon looked into her clear eyes as she favoured him with a direct, untroubled gaze that threatened, he knew from experience, to turn teasingly defiant on an instant’s notice. And as he looked at her it came to him that he had never half-anticipated the gladness her return would bring to him.
“I was angry,” he said deliberately. “I am still angry, very angry – ” he noted the glint of defiance in her eyes and thrilled – “but I forgave, and I now forgive all over again. Though I still insist – ”
“That I should have a guardian,” she interrupted. “But that day will never come. Thank goodness I’m of legal age and able to transact business in my own right. And speaking of business, how do you like my forceful American methods?”
“Mr. Raff, from what I hear, doesn’t take kindly to them,” he temporized, “and you’ve certainly set the dry bones rattling for many a day. But what I want to know is if other American women are as successful in business ventures?”
“Luck, ’most all luck,” she disclaimed modestly, though her eyes lighted with sudden pleasure; and he knew her boy’s vanity had been touched by his trifle of tempered praise.
“Luck be blowed!” broke out the long mate, Sparrowhawk, his face shining with admiration. “It was hard work, that’s what it was. We earned our pay. She worked us till we dropped. And we were down with fever half the time. So was she, for that matter, only she wouldn’t stay down, and she wouldn’t let us stay down. My word, she’s a slave-driver – ‘Just one more heave, Mr. Sparrowhawk, and then you can go to bed for a week’, – she to me, and me staggerin’ ‘round like a dead man, with bilious-green lights flashing inside my head, an’ my head just bustin’. I was all in, but I gave that heave right O – and then it was, ‘Another heave now, Mr. Sparrowhawk, just another heave.’ An’ the Lord lumme, the way she made love to old Kina-Kina!”
He shook his head reproachfully, while the laughter died down in his throat to long-drawn chuckles.
“He was older than Telepasse and dirtier,” she assured Sheldon, “and I am sure much wickeder. But this isn’t work. Let us get through with these lists.”
She turned to the waiting black on the steps, —
“Ogu, you finish along big marster belong white man, you go Not-Not. – Here you, Tangari, you speak ’m along that fella Ogu. He finish he walk about Not-Not. Have you got that, Mr. Munster?”
“But you’ve broken the recruiting laws,” Sheldon said, when the new recruits had marched away to the barracks. “The licenses for the Flibberty and the Emily don’t allow for one hundred and fifty. What did Burnett say?”
“He passed them, all of them,” she answered. “Captain Munster will tell you what he said – something about being blowed, or words to that effect. Now I must run and wash up. Did the Sydney orders arrive?”
“Yours are in your quarters,” Sheldon said. “Hurry, for breakfast is waiting. Let me have your hat and belt. Do, please, allow me. There’s only one hook for them, and I know where it is.”
She gave him a quick scrutiny that was almost woman-like, then sighed with relief as she unbuckled the heavy belt and passed it to him.
“I doubt if I ever want to see another revolver,” she complained. “That one has worn a hole in me, I’m sure. I never dreamed I could get so weary of one.”
Sheldon watched her to the foot of the steps, where she turned and called back, —
“My! I can’t tell you how good it is to be home again.”
And as his gaze continued to follow her across the compound to the tiny grass house, the realization came to him crushingly that Berande and that little grass house was the only place in the world she could call “home.”
* * * * *
“And Burnett said, ‘Well, I’ll be damned – I beg your pardon, Miss Lackland, but you have wantonly broken the recruiting laws and you know it,’” Captain Munster narrated, as they sat over their whisky, waiting for Joan to come back. “And says she to him, ‘Mr. Burnett, can you show me any law against taking the passengers off a vessel that’s on a reef?’ ‘That is not the point,’ says he. ‘It’s the very, precise, particular point,’ says she and you bear it in mind and go ahead and pass my recruits. You can report me to the Lord High Commissioner if you want, but I have three vessels here waiting on your convenience, and if you delay them much longer there’ll be another report go in to the Lord High Commissioner.’
“‘I’ll hold you responsible, Captain Munster,’ says he to me, mad enough to eat scrap-iron. ‘No, you won’t,’ says she; ‘I’m the charterer of the Emily, and Captain Munster has acted under my orders.’
“What could Burnett do? He passed the whole hundred and fifty, though the Emily was only licensed for forty, and the Flibberty-Gibbet for thirty-five.”
“But I don’t understand,” Sheldon said.
“This is the way she worked it. When the Martha was floated, we had to beach her right away at the head of the bay, and whilst repairs were going on, a new rudder being made, sails bent, gear recovered from the niggers, and so forth, Miss Lackland borrows Sparrowhawk to run the Flibberty along with Curtis, lends me Brahms to take Sparrowhawk’s place, and starts both craft off recruiting. My word, the niggers came easy. It was virgin ground. Since the Scottish Chiefs, no recruiter had ever even tried to work the coast; and we’d already put the fear of God into the niggers’ hearts till the whole coast was quiet as lambs. When we filled up, we came back to see how the Martha was progressing.”
“And thinking we was going home with our recruits,” Sparrowhawk slipped in. “Lord lumme, that Miss Lackland ain’t never satisfied. ‘I’ll take ’em on the Martha,’ says she, ‘and you can go back and fill up again.’”
“But I told her it couldn’t be done,” Munster went on. “I told her the Martha hadn’t a license for recruiting. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘it can’t be done, eh?’ and she stood and thought a few minutes.”
“And I’d seen her think before,” cried Sparrowhawk, “and I knew at wunst that the thing was as good as done.”
Munster lighted his cigarette and resumed.
“‘You see that spit,’ she says to me, ‘with the little ripple breaking around it? There’s a current sets right across it and on it. And you see them bafflin’ little cat’s-paws? It’s good weather and a falling tide. You just start to beat out, the two of you, and all you have to do is miss stays in the same baffling puff and the current will set you nicely aground.’”
“‘That little wash of sea won’t more than start a sheet or two of copper,’ says she, when Munster kicked,” Sparrowhawk explained. “Oh, she’s no green un, that girl.”
“‘Then I’ll rescue your recruits and sail away – simple, ain’t it?’ says she,” Munster continued. “‘You hang up one tide,’ says she; ‘the next is the big high water. Then you kedge off and go after more recruits. There’s no law against recruiting when you’re empty.’ ‘But there is against starving ’em,’ I said; ‘you know yourself there ain’t any kai-kai to speak of aboard of us, and there ain’t a crumb on the Martha.’”
“We’d all been pretty well on native kai-kai, as it was,” said Sparrowhawk.
“‘Don’t let the kai-kai worry you, Captain Munster,’ says she; ‘if I can find grub for eighty-four mouths on the Martha, the two of you can do as much by your two vessels. Now go ahead and get aground before a steady breeze comes up and spoils the manoeuvre. I’ll send my boats the moment you strike. And now, good-day, gentlemen.’”
“And we went and did it,” Sparrowhawk said solemnly, and then emitted a series of chuckling noises. “We laid over, starboard tack, and I pinched the Emily against the spit. ‘Go about,’ Captain Munster yells at me; ‘go about, or you’ll have me aground!’ He yelled other things, much worse. But I didn’t mind. I missed stays, pretty as you please, and the Flibberty drifted down on him and fouled him, and we went ashore together in as nice a mess as you ever want to see. Miss Lackland transferred the recruits, and the trick was done.”
“But where was she during the nor’wester?” Sheldon asked.
“At Langa-Langa. Ran up there as it was coming on, and laid there the whole week and traded for grub with the niggers. When we got to Tulagi, there she was waiting for us and scrapping with Burnett. I tell you, Mr. Sheldon, she’s a wonder, that girl, a perfect wonder.”
Munster refilled his glass, and while Sheldon glanced across at Joan’s house, anxious for her coming, Sparrowhawk took up the tale.
“Gritty! She’s the grittiest thing, man or woman, that ever blew into the Solomons. You should have seen Poonga-Poonga the morning we arrived – Sniders popping on the beach and in the mangroves, war-drums booming in the bush, and signal-smokes raising everywhere. ‘It’s all up,’ says Captain Munster.”
“Yes, that’s what I said,” declared that mariner.
“Of course it was all up. You could see it with half an eye and hear it with one ear.”
“‘Up your granny,’ she says to him,” Sparrowhawk went on. “‘Why, we haven’t arrived yet, much less got started. Wait till the anchor’s down before you get afraid.’”
“That’s what she said to me,” Munster proclaimed. “And of course it made me mad so that I didn’t care what happened. We tried to send a boat ashore for a pow-wow, but it was fired upon. And every once and a while some nigger’d take a long shot at us out of the mangroves.”
