Adventure by Jack London Part 22

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 ma.s.s 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.

"h.e.l.lo!" 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 beche-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-antic.i.p.ated 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 Telepa.s.se and dirtier," she a.s.sured 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s house, the realization came to him crushingly that Berande and that little gra.s.s house was the only place in the world she could call "home."

"And Burnett said, 'Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned--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 pa.s.sengers 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 pa.s.s 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 sc.r.a.p-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 pa.s.sed 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 n.i.g.g.e.rs, 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 n.i.g.g.e.rs 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 G.o.d into the n.i.g.g.e.rs' 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."