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_ It was the first time Sheldon had been at close quarters with an
American girl, and he would have wondered if all American girls
were like Joan Lackland had he not had wit enough to realize that
she was not at all typical. Her quick mind and changing moods
bewildered him, while her outlook on life was so different from
what he conceived a woman's outlook should be, that he was more
often than not at sixes and sevens with her. He could never
anticipate what she would say or do next. Of only one thing was he
sure, and that was that whatever she said or did was bound to be
unexpected and unsuspected. There seemed, too, something almost
hysterical in her make-up. Her temper was quick and stormy, and
she relied too much on herself and too little on him, which did not
approximate at all to his ideal of woman's conduct when a man was
around. Her assumption of equality with him was disconcerting, and
at times he half-consciously resented the impudence and bizarreness
of her intrusion upon him--rising out of the sea in a howling
nor'wester, fresh from poking her revolver under Ericson's nose,
protected by her gang of huge Polynesian sailors, and settling down
in Berande like any shipwrecked sailor. It was all on a par with
her Baden-Powell and the long 38 Colt's.
At any rate, she did not look the part. And that was what he could
not forgive. Had she been short-haired, heavy-jawed, large-
muscled, hard-bitten, and utterly unlovely in every way, all would
have been well. Instead of which she was hopelessly and
deliciously feminine. Her hair worried him, it was so generously
beautiful. And she was so slenderly and prettily the woman--the
girl, rather--that it cut him like a knife to see her, with quick,
comprehensive eyes and sharply imperative voice, superintend the
launching of the whale-boat through the surf. In imagination he
could see her roping a horse, and it always made him shudder.
Then, too, she was so many-sided. Her knowledge of literature and
art surprised him, while deep down was the feeling that a girl who
knew such things had no right to know how to rig tackles, heave up
anchors, and sail schooners around the South Seas. Such things in
her brain were like so many oaths on her lips. While for such a
girl to insist that she was going on a recruiting cruise around
Malaita was positive self-sacrilege.
He always perturbedly harked back to her feminineness. She could
play the piano far better than his sisters at home, and with far
finer appreciation--the piano that poor Hughie had so heroically
laboured over to keep in condition. And when she strummed the
guitar and sang liquid, velvety Hawaiian hulas, he sat entranced.
Then she was all woman, and the magic of sex kidnapped the
irritations of the day and made him forget the big revolver, the
Baden-Powell, and all the rest. But what right, the next thought
in his brain would whisper, had such a girl to swagger around like
a man and exult that adventure was not dead? Woman that adventured
were adventuresses, and the connotation was not nice. Besides, he
was not enamoured of adventure. Not since he was a boy had it
appealed to him--though it would have driven him hard to explain
what had brought him from England to the Solomons if it had not
been adventure.
Sheldon certainly was not happy. The unconventional state of
affairs was too much for his conservative disposition and training.
Berande, inhabited by one lone white man, was no place for Joan
Lackland. Yet he racked his brain for a way out, and even talked
it over with her. In the first place, the steamer from Australia
was not due for three weeks.
"One thing is evident: you don't want me here," she said. "I'll
man the whale-boat to-morrow and go over to Tulagi."
"But as I told you before, that is impossible," he cried. "There
is no one there. The Resident Commissioner is away in Australia.
Them is only one white man, a third assistant understrapper and ex-
sailor--a common sailor. He is in charge of the government of the
Solomons, to say nothing of a hundred or so niggers--prisoners.
Besides, he is such a fool that he would fine you five pounds for
not having entered at Tulagi, which is the port of entry, you know.
He is not a nice man, and, I repeat, it is impossible."
"There is Guvutu," she suggested.
He shook his head.
"There's nothing there but fever and five white men who are
drinking themselves to death. I couldn't permit it."
"Oh thank you," she said quietly. "I guess I'll start to-day.--
Viaburi! You go along Noa Noah, speak 'm come along me."
Noa Noah was her head sailor, who had been boatswain of the Miele.
"Where are you going?" Sheldon asked in surprise.--"Vlaburi! You
stop."
"To Guvutu--immediately," was her reply.
"But I won't permit it."
"That is why I am going. You said it once before, and it is
something I cannot brook."
"What?" He was bewildered by her sudden anger. "If I have
offended in any way--"
"Viaburi, you fetch 'm one fella Noa Noah along me," she commanded.
The black boy started to obey.
"Viaburi! You no stop I break 'm head belong you. And now, Miss
Lackland, I insist--you must explain. What have I said or done to
merit this?"
"You have presumed, you have dared--"
She choked and swallowed, and could not go on.
Sheldon looked the picture of despair.
"I confess my head is going around with it all," he said. "If you
could only be explicit."
"As explicit as you were when you told me that you would not permit
me to go to Guvutu?"
"But what's wrong with that?"
"But you have no right--no man has the right--to tell me what he
will permit or not permit. I'm too old to have a guardian, nor did
I sail all the way to the Solomons to find one."
"A gentleman is every woman's guardian."
"Well, I'm not every woman--that's all. Will you kindly allow me
to send your boy for Noa Noah? I wish him to launch the whale-
boat. Or shall I go myself for him?"
Both were now on their feet, she with flushed cheeks and angry
eyes, he, puzzled, vexed, and alarmed. The black boy stood like a
statue--a plum-black statue--taking no interest in the transactions
of these incomprehensible whites, but dreaming with calm eyes of a
certain bush village high on the jungle slopes of Malaita, with
blue smoke curling up from the grass houses against the gray
background of an oncoming mountain-squall.
"But you won't do anything so foolish--" he began.
"There you go again," she cried.
"I didn't mean it that way, and you know I didn't." He was
speaking slowly and gravely. "And that other thing, that not
permitting--it is only a manner of speaking. Of course I am not
your guardian. You know you can go to Guvutu if you want to"--"or
to the devil," he was almost tempted to add. "Only, I should
deeply regret it, that is all. And I am very sorry that I should
have said anything that hurt you. Remember, I am an Englishman."
Joan smiled and sat down again.
"Perhaps I have been hasty," she admitted. "You see, I am
intolerant of restraint. If you only knew how I have been
compelled to fight for my freedom. It is a sore point with me,
this being told what I am to do or not do by you self-constituted
lords of creation.-Viaburi I You stop along kitchen. No bring 'm
Noa Noah.--And now, Mr. Sheldon, what am I to do? You don't want
me here, and there doesn't seem to be any place for me to go."
"That is unfair. Your being wrecked here has been a godsend to me.
I was very lonely and very sick. I really am not certain whether
or not I should have pulled through had you not happened along.
But that is not the point. Personally, purely selfishly
personally, I should be sorry to see you go. But I am not
considering myself. I am considering you. It--it is hardly the
proper thing, you know. If I were married--if there were some
woman of your own race here--but as it is--"
She threw up her hands in mock despair.
"I cannot follow you," she said. "In one breath you tell me I must
go, and in the next breath you tell me there is no place to go and
that you will not permit me to go. What is a poor girl to do?"
"That's the trouble," he said helplessly.
"And the situation annoys you."
"Only for your sake."
"Then let me save your feelings by telling you that it does not
annoy me at all--except for the row you are making about it. I
never allow what can't be changed to annoy me. There is no use in
fighting the inevitable. Here is the situation. You are here. I
am here. I can't go elsewhere, by your own account. You certainly
can't go elsewhere and leave me here alone with a whole plantation
and two hundred woolly cannibals on my hands. Therefore you stay,
and I stay. It is very simple. Also, it is adventure. And
furthermore, you needn't worry for yourself. I am not
matrimonially inclined. I came to the Solomons for a plantation,
not a husband."
Sheldon flushed, but remained silent.
"I know what you are thinking," she laughed gaily. "That if I were
a man you'd wring my neck for me. And I deserve it, too. I'm so
sorry. I ought not to keep on hurting your feelings."
"I'm afraid I rather invite it," he said, relieved by the signs of
the tempest subsiding.
"I have it," she announced. "Lend me a gang of your boys for to-
day. I'll build a grass house for myself over in the far corner of
the compound--on piles, of course. I can move in to-night. I'll
be comfortable and safe. The Tahitians can keep an anchor watch
just as aboard ship. And then I'll study cocoanut planting. In
return, I'll run the kitchen end of your household and give you
some decent food to eat. And finally, I won't listen to any of
your protests. I know all that you are going to say and offer--
your giving the bungalow up to me and building a grass house for
yourself. And I won't have it. You may as well consider
everything settled. On the other hand, if you don't agree, I will
go across the river, beyond your jurisdiction, and build a village
for myself and my sailors, whom I shall send in the whale-boat to
Guvutu for provisions. And now I want you to teach me billiards." _
Read next: CHAPTER VII - A HARD-BITTEN GANG
Read previous: CHAPTER V - SHE WOULD A PLANTER BE
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