CHAPTER XVI--THE GIRL WHO HAD NOT GROWN UP
News, as usual, Christian Young brought--news of the drinking at Guvutu, where the men boasted that they drank between drinks; news of the new rifles adrift on Ysabel, of the latest murders on Malaita, of Tom Butler"s sickness on Santa Ana; and last and most important, news that the _Matambo_ had gone on a reef in the Shortlands and would be laid off one run for repairs.
"That means five weeks more before you can sail for Sydney," Sheldon said to Joan.
"And that we are losing precious time," she added ruefully.
"If you want to go to Sydney, the _Upolu_ sails from Tulagi to-morrow afternoon," Young said.
"But I thought she was running recruits for the Germans in Samoa," she objected. "At any rate, I could catch her to Samoa, and change at Apia to one of the Weir Line freighters. It"s a long way around, but still it would save time."
"This time the _Upolu_ is going straight to Sydney," Young explained.
"She"s going to dry-dock, you see; and you can catch her as late as five to-morrow afternoon--at least, so her first officer told me."
"But I"ve got to go to Guvutu first." Joan looked at the men with a whimsical expression. "I"ve some shopping to do. I can"t wear these Berande curtains into Sydney. I must buy cloth at Guvutu and make myself a dress during the voyage down. I"ll start immediately--in an hour.
Lalaperu, you bring "m one fella Adamu Adam along me. Tell "m that fella Ornfiri make "m _kai-kai_ take along whale-boat." She rose to her feet, looking at Sheldon. "And you, please, have the boys carry down the whale- boat--my boat, you know. I"ll be off in an hour."
Both Sheldon and Tudor looked at their watches.
"It"s an all-night row," Sheldon said. "You might wait till morning--"
"And miss my shopping? No, thank you. Besides, the _Upolu_ is not a regular pa.s.senger steamer, and she is just as liable to sail ahead of time as on time. And from what I hear about those Guvutu sybarites, the best time to shop will be in the morning. And now you"ll have to excuse me, for I"ve got to pack."
"I"ll go over with you," Sheldon announced.
"Let me run you over in the _Minerva_," said Young.
She shook her head laughingly.
"I"m going in the whale-boat. One would think, from all your solicitude, that I"d never been away from home before. You, Mr. Sheldon, as my partner, I cannot permit to desert Berande and your work out of a mistaken notion of courtesy. If you won"t permit me to be skipper, I won"t permit your galivanting over the sea as protector of young women who don"t need protection. And as for you, Captain Young, you know very well that you just left Guvutu this morning, that you are bound for Marau, and that you said yourself that in two hours you are getting under way again."
"But may I not see you safely across?" Tudor asked, a pleading note in his voice that rasped on Sheldon"s nerves.
"No, no, and again no," she cried. "You"ve all got your work to do, and so have I. I came to the Solomons to work, not to be escorted about like a doll. For that matter, here"s my escort, and there are seven more like him."
Adamu Adam stood beside her, towering above her, as he towered above the three white men. The clinging cotton undershirt he wore could not hide the bulge of his tremendous muscles.
"Look at his fist," said Tudor. "I"d hate to receive a punch from it."
"I don"t blame you." Joan laughed reminiscently. "I saw him hit the captain of a Swedish bark on the beach at Levuka, in the Fijis. It was the captain"s fault. I saw it all myself, and it was splendid. Adamu only hit him once, and he broke the man"s arm. You remember, Adamu?"
The big Tahitian smiled and nodded, his black eyes, soft and deer-like, seeming to give the lie to so belligerent a nature.
"We start in an hour in the whale-boat for Guvutu, big brother," Joan said to him. "Tell your brothers, all of them, so that they can get ready. We catch the _Upolu_ for Sydney. You will all come along, and sail back to the Solomons in the new schooner. Take your extra shirts and dungarees along. Plenty cold weather down there. Now run along, and tell them to hurry. Leave the guns behind. Turn them over to Mr.
Sheldon. We won"t need them."
"If you are really bent upon going--" Sheldon began.
"That"s settled long ago," she answered shortly. "I"m going to pack now.
But I"ll tell you what you can do for me--issue some tobacco and other stuff they want to my men."
An hour later the three men had shaken hands with Joan down on the beach.
She gave the signal, and the boat shoved off, six men at the oars, the seventh man for"ard, and Adamu Adam at the steering-sweep. Joan was standing up in the stern-sheets, reiterating her good-byes--a slim figure of a woman in the tight-fitting jacket she had worn ash.o.r.e from the wreck, the long-barrelled Colt"s revolver hanging from the loose belt around her waist, her clear-cut face like a boy"s under the Stetson hat that failed to conceal the heavy ma.s.ses of hair beneath.
"You"d better get into shelter," she called to them. "There"s a big squall coming. And I hope you"ve got plenty of chain out, Captain Young.
Good-bye! Good-bye, everybody!"
Her last words came out of the darkness, which wrapped itself solidly about the boat. Yet they continued to stare into the blackness in the direction in which the boat had disappeared, listening to the steady click of the oars in the rowlocks until it faded away and ceased.
"She is only a girl," Christian Young said with slow solemnity. The discovery seemed to have been made on the spur of the moment. "She is only a girl," he repeated with greater solemnity.
"A dashed pretty one, and a good traveller," Tudor laughed. "She certainly has s.p.u.n.k, eh, Sheldon?"
"Yes, she is brave," was the reluctant answer for Sheldon did not feel disposed to talk about her.
"That"s the American of it," Tudor went on. "Push, and go, and energy, and independence. What do you think, skipper?"
"I think she is young, very young, only a girl," replied the captain of the _Minerva_, continuing to stare into the blackness that hid the sea.
The blackness seemed suddenly to increase in density, and they stumbled up the beach, feeling their way to the gate.
"Watch out for nuts," Sheldon warned, as the first blast of the squall shrieked through the palms. They joined hands and staggered up the path, with the ripe cocoanuts thudding in a monstrous rain all around them.
They gained the veranda, where they sat in silence over their whisky, each man staring straight out to sea, where the wildly swinging riding- light of the _Minerva_ could be seen in the lulls of the driving rain.
Somewhere out there, Sheldon reflected, was Joan Lackland, the girl who had not grown up, the woman good to look upon, with only a boy"s mind and a boy"s desires, leaving Berande amid storm and conflict in much the same manner that she had first arrived, in the stern-sheets of her whale-boat, Adamu Adam steering, her savage crew bending to the oars. And she was taking her Stetson hat with her, along with the cartridge-belt and the long-barrelled revolver. He suddenly discovered an immense affection for those fripperies of hers at which he had secretly laughed when first he saw them. He became aware of the sentimental direction in which his fancy was leading him, and felt inclined to laugh. But he did not laugh.
The next moment he was busy visioning the hat, and belt, and revolver.
Undoubtedly this was love, he thought, and he felt a tiny glow of pride in him in that the Solomons had not succeeded in killing all his sentiment.
An hour later, Christian Young stood up, knocked out his pipe, and prepared to go aboard and get under way.
"She"s all right," he said, apropos of nothing spoken, and yet distinctly relevant to what was in each of their minds. "She"s got a good boat"s- crew, and she"s a sailor herself. Good-night, Mr. Sheldon. Anything I can do for you down Marau-way?" He turned and pointed to a widening s.p.a.ce of starry sky. "It"s going to be a fine night after all. With this favouring bit of breeze she has sail on already, and she"ll make Guvutu by daylight. Good-night."
"I guess I"ll turn in, old man," Tudor said, rising and placing his gla.s.s on the table. "I"ll start the first thing in the morning. It"s been disgraceful the way I"ve been hanging on here. Good-night."
Sheldon, sitting on alone, wondered if the other man would have decided to pull out in the morning had Joan not sailed away. Well, there was one bit of consolation in it: Joan had certainly lingered at Berande for no man, not even Tudor. "I start in an hour"--her words rang in his brain, and under his eyelids he could see her as she stood up and uttered them.
He smiled. The instant she heard the news she had made up her mind to go. It was not very flattering to man, but what could any man count in her eyes when a schooner waiting to be bought in Sydney was in the wind?
What a creature! What a creature!
Berande was a lonely place to Sheldon in the days that followed. In the morning after Joan"s departure, he had seen Tudor"s expedition off on its way up the Balesuna; in the late afternoon, through his telescope, he had seen the smoke of the _Upolu_ that was bearing Joan away to Sydney; and in the evening he sat down to dinner in solitary state, devoting more of his time to looking at her empty chair than to his food. He never came out on the veranda without glancing first of all at her gra.s.s house in the corner of the compound; and one evening, idly knocking the b.a.l.l.s about on the billiard table, he came to himself to find himself standing staring at the nail upon which from the first she had hung her Stetson hat and her revolver-belt.
Why should he care for her? he demanded of himself angrily. She was certainly the last woman in the world he would have thought of choosing for himself. Never had he encountered one who had so thoroughly irritated him, rasped his feelings, smashed his conventions, and violated nearly every attribute of what had been his ideal of woman. Had he been too long away from the world? Had he forgotten what the race of women was like? Was it merely a case of propinquity? And she wasn"t really a woman. She was a masquerader. Under all her seeming of woman, she was a boy, playing a boy"s pranks, diving for fish amongst sharks, sporting a revolver, longing for adventure, and, what was more, going out in search of it in her whale-boat, along with her savage islanders and her bag of sovereigns. But he loved her--that was the point of it all, and he did not try to evade it. He was not sorry that it was so. He loved her--that was the overwhelming, astounding fact.
Once again he discovered a big enthusiasm for Berande. All the bubble- illusions concerning the life of the tropical planter had been p.r.i.c.ked by the stern facts of the Solomons. Following the death of Hughie, he had resolved to muddle along somehow with the plantation; but this resolve had not been based upon desire. Instead, it was based upon the inherent stubbornness of his nature and his dislike to give over an attempted task.