"'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 ash.o.r.e 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 n.i.g.g.e.rs. When we got to Tulagi, there she was waiting for us and sc.r.a.pping with Burnett. I tell you, Mr.

Sheldon, she's a wonder, that girl, a perfect wonder."

Munster refilled his gla.s.s, 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 ash.o.r.e for a pow-wow, but it was fired upon. And every once and a while some n.i.g.g.e.r'd take a long shot at us out of the mangroves."

"They was only a quarter of a mile off," Sparrowhawk explained, "and it was d.a.m.ned nasty. 'Don't shoot unless they try to board,' was Miss Lackland's orders; but the dirty n.i.g.g.e.rs wouldn't board. They just lay off in the bush and plugged away. That night we held a council of war in the _Flibberty's_ cabin. 'What we want,' says Miss Lackland, 'is a hostage.'"

"'That's what they do in books,' I said, thinking to laugh her away from her folly," Munster interrupted. "'True,' says she, 'and have you never seen the books come true?' I shook my head. 'Then you're not too old to learn,' says she. 'I'll tell you one thing right now,' says I, 'and that is I'll be blowed if you catch me ash.o.r.e in the night-time stealing n.i.g.g.e.rs in a place like this.'"

"You didn't say blowed," Sparrowhawk corrected. "You said you'd be d.a.m.ned."

"That's what I did, and I meant it, too."

"'n.o.body asked you to go ash.o.r.e,' says she, quick as lightning,"

Sparrowhawk grinned. "And she said more. She said, 'And if I catch you going ash.o.r.e without orders there'll be trouble--understand, Captain Munster?'"

"Who in h.e.l.l's telling this, you or me?" the skipper demanded wrathfully.

"Well, she did, didn't she?" insisted the mate.

"Yes, she did, if you want to make so sure of it. And while you're about it, you might as well repeat what she said to you when you said you wouldn't recruit on the Poonga-Poonga coast for twice your screw."

Sparrowhawk's sun-reddened face flamed redder, though he tried to pa.s.s the situation off by divers laughings and chucklings and face-twistings.

"Go on, go on," Sheldon urged; and Munster resumed the narrative.

"'What we need,' says she, 'is the strong hand. It's the only way to handle them; and we've got to take hold firm right at the beginning. I'm going ash.o.r.e to-night to fetch Kina-Kina himself on board, and I'm not asking who's game to go for I've got every man's work arranged with me for him. I'm taking my sailors with me, and one white man.' 'Of course, I'm that white man,' I said; for by that time I was mad enough to go to h.e.l.l and back again. 'Of course you're not,' says she. 'You'll have charge of the covering boat. Curtis stands by the landing boat. Fowler goes with me. Brahms takes charge of the _Flibberty_, and Sparrowhawk of the _Emily_. And we start at one o'clock.'

"My word, it was a tough job lying there in the covering boat. I never thought doing nothing could be such hard work. We stopped about fifty fathoms off, and watched the other boat go in. It was so dark under the mangroves we couldn't see a thing of it. D'ye know that little, monkey- looking n.i.g.g.e.r, Sheldon, on the _Flibberty_--the cook, I mean? Well, he was cabin-boy twenty years ago on the _Scottish Chiefs_, and after she was cut off he was a slave there at Poonga-Poonga. And Miss Lackland had discovered the fact. So he was the guide. She gave him half a case of tobacco for that night's work--"

"And scared him fit to die before she could get him to come along,"

Sparrowhawk observed.

"Well, I never saw anything so black as the mangroves. I stared at them till my eyes were ready to burst. And then I'd look at the stars, and listen to the surf sighing along the reef. And there was a dog that barked. Remember that dog, Sparrowhawk? The brute nearly gave me heart- failure when he first began. After a while he stopped--wasn't barking at the landing party at all; and then the silence was harder than ever, and the mangroves grew blacker, and it was all I could do to keep from calling out to Curtis in there in the landing boat, just to make sure that I wasn't the only white man left alive.

"Of course there was a row. It had to come, and I knew it; but it startled me just the same. I never heard such screeching and yelling in my life. The n.i.g.g.e.rs must have just dived for the bush without looking to see what was up, while her Tahitians let loose, shooting in the air and yelling to hurry 'em on. And then, just as sudden, came the silence again--all except for some small kiddie that had got dropped in the stampede and that kept crying in the bush for its mother.

"And then I heard them coming through the mangroves, and an oar strike on a gunwale, and Miss Lackland laugh, and I knew everything was all right.

We pulled on board without a shot being fired. And, by G.o.d! she had made the books come true, for there was old Kina-Kina himself being hoisted over the rail, shivering and chattering like an ape. The rest was easy.

Kina-Kina's word was law, and he was scared to death. And we kept him on board issuing proclamations all the time we were in Poonga-Poonga.

"It was a good move, too, in other ways. She made Kina-Kina order his people to return all the gear they'd stripped from the _Martha_. And back it came, day after day, steering compa.s.ses, blocks and tackles, sails, coils of rope, medicine chests, ensigns, signal flags--everything, in fact, except the trade goods and supplies which had already been _kai- kai'd_. Of course, she gave them a few sticks of tobacco to keep them in good humour."

"Sure she did," Sparrowhawk broke forth. "She gave the beggars five fathoms of calico for the big mainsail, two sticks of tobacco for the chronometer, and a sheath-knife worth elevenpence ha'penny for a hundred fathoms of brand new five-inch manila. She got old Kina-Kina with that strong hand on the go off, and she kept him going all the time. She--here she comes now."

It was with a shock of surprise that Sheldon greeted her appearance. All the time, while the tale of happening at Poonga-Poonga had been going on, he had pictured her as the woman he had always known, clad roughly, skirt made out of window-curtain stuff, an undersized man's shirt for a blouse, straw sandals for foot covering, with the Stetson hat and the eternal revolver completing her costume. The ready-made clothes from Sydney had transformed her. A simple skirt and shirt-waist of some sort of wash- goods set off her trim figure with a hint of elegant womanhood that was new to him. Brown slippers peeped out as she crossed the compound, and he once caught a glimpse to the ankle of brown open-work stockings.

Somehow, she had been made many times the woman by these mere extraneous trappings; and in his mind these wild Arabian Nights adventures of hers seemed thrice as wonderful.

As they went in to breakfast he became aware that Munster and Sparrowhawk had received a similar shock. All their air of _camaraderie_ was dissipated, and they had become abruptly and immensely respectful.

"I've opened up a new field," she said, as she began pouring the coffee.

"Old Kina-Kina will never forget me, I'm sure, and I can recruit there whenever I want. I saw Morgan at Guvutu. He's willing to contract for a thousand boys at forty shillings per head. Did I tell you that I'd taken out a recruiting license for the _Martha_? I did, and the _Martha_ can sign eighty boys every trip."

Sheldon smiled a trifle bitterly to himself. The wonderful woman who had tripped across the compound in her Sydney clothes was gone, and he was listening to the boy come back again.

CHAPTER XIX--THE LOST TOY

"Well," Joan said with a sigh, "I've shown you hustling American methods that succeed and get somewhere, and here you are beginning your muddling again."

Five days had pa.s.sed, and she and Sheldon were standing on the veranda watching the _Martha_, close-hauled on the wind, laying a tack off sh.o.r.e.

During those five days Joan had never once broached the desire of her heart, though Sheldon, in this particular instance reading her like a book, had watched her lead up to the question a score of times in the hope that he would himself suggest her taking charge of the _Martha_. She had wanted him to say the word, and she had steeled herself not to say it herself. The matter of finding a skipper had been a hard one. She was jealous of the _Martha_, and no suggested man had satisfied her.

"Oleson?" she had demanded. "He does very well on the _Flibberty_, with me and my men to overhaul her whenever she's ready to fall to pieces through his slackness. But skipper of the _Martha_? Impossible!"

"Munster? Yes, he's the only man I know in the Solomons I'd care to see in charge. And yet, there's his record. He lost the _Umbawa_--one hundred and forty drowned. He was first officer on the bridge.

Deliberate disobedience to instructions. No wonder they broke him.

"Christian Young has never had any experience with large boats. Besides, we can't afford to pay him what he's clearing on the _Minerva_.

Sparrowhawk is a good man--to take orders. He has no initiative. He's an able sailor, but he can't command. I tell you I was nervous all the time he had charge of the _Flibberty_ at Poonga-Poonga when I had to stay by the _Martha_."

And so it had gone. No name proposed was satisfactory, and, moreover, Sheldon had been surprised by the accuracy of her judgments. A dozen times she almost drove him to the statement that from the showing she made of Solomon Islands sailors, she was the only person fitted to command the _Martha_. But each time he restrained himself, while her pride prevented her from making the suggestion.

"Good whale-boat sailors do not necessarily make good schooner-handlers,"

she replied to one of his arguments. "Besides, the captain of a boat like the _Martha_ must have a large mind, see things in a large way; he must have capacity and enterprise."