"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 passed, and she and Sheldon were standing on the veranda
watching the _Martha_, close-hauled on the wind, laying a tack off shore.
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."
"But with your Tahitians on board--" Sheldon had begun another argument.
"There won't be any Tahitians on board," she had returned promptly. "My
men stay with me. I never know when I may need them. When I sail, they
sail; when I remain ashore, they remain ashore. I'll find plenty for
them to do right here on the plantation. You've seen them clearing bush,
each of them worth half a dozen of your cannibals."
So it was that Joan stood beside Sheldon and sighed as she watched the
_Martha_ beating out to sea, old Kinross, brought over from Savo, in
command.
"Kinross is an old fossil," she said, with a touch of bitterness in her
voice. "Oh, he'll never wreck her through rashness, rest assured of
that; but he's timid to childishness, and timid skippers lose just as
many vessels as rash ones. Some day, Kinross will lose the _Martha_
because there'll be only one chance and he'll be afraid to take it. I
know his sort. Afraid to take advantage of a proper breeze of wind that
will fetch him in in twenty hours, he'll get caught out in the calm that
follows and spend a whole week in getting in. The _Martha_ will make
money with him, there's no doubt of it; but she won't make near the money
that she would under a competent master."
She paused, and with heightened colour and sparkling eyes gazed seaward
at the schooner.
"My! but she is a witch! Look at her eating up the water, and there's no
wind to speak of. She's not got ordinary white metal either. It's man-
of-war copper, every inch of it. I had them polish it with cocoanut
husks when she was careened at Poonga-Poonga. She was a seal-hunter
before this gold expedition got her. And seal-hunters had to sail.
They've run away from second class Russian cruisers more than once up
there off Siberia.
"Honestly, if I'd dreamed of the chance waiting for me at Guvutu when I
bought her for less than three hundred dollars, I'd never have gone
partners with you. And in that case I'd be sailing her right now."
The justice of her contention came abruptly home to Sheldon. What she
had done she would have done just the same if she had not been his
partner. And in the saving of the _Martha_ he had played no part. Single-
handed, unadvised, in the teeth of the laughter of Guvutu and of the
competition of men like Morgan and Raff, she had gone into the adventure
and brought it through to success.
"You make me feel like a big man who has robbed a small child of a
lolly," he said with sudden contrition.
"And the small child is crying for it." She looked at him, and he noted
that her lip was slightly trembling and that her eyes were moist. It was
the boy all over, he thought; the boy crying for the wee bit boat with
which to play. And yet it was a woman, too. What a maze of
contradiction she was! And he wondered, had she been all woman and no
boy, if he would have loved her in just the same way. Then it rushed in
upon his consciousness that he really loved her for what she was, for all
the boy in her and all the rest of her--for the total of her that would
have been a different total in direct proportion to any differing of the
parts of her.
"But the small child won't cry any more for it," she was saying. "This
is the last sob. Some day, if Kinross doesn't lose her, you'll turn her
over to your partner, I know. And I won't nag you any more. Only I do
hope you know how I feel. It isn't as if I'd merely bought the _Martha_,
or merely built her. I saved her. I took her off the reef. I saved her
from the grave of the sea when fifty-five pounds was considered a big
risk. She is mine, peculiarly mine. Without me she wouldn't exist. That
big nor'wester would have finished her the first three hours it blew. And
then I've sailed her, too; and she is a witch, a perfect witch. Why, do
you know, she'll steer by the wind with half a spoke, give and take. And
going about! Well, you don't have to baby her, starting head-sheets,
flattening mainsail, and gentling her with the wheel. Put your wheel
down, and around she comes, like a colt with the bit in its teeth. And
you can back her like a steamer. I did it at Langa-Langa, between that
shoal patch and the shore-reef. It was wonderful.
"But you don't love boats like I do, and I know you think I'm making a
fool of myself. But some day I'm going to sail the _Martha_ again. I
know it. I know it."
In reply, and quite without premeditation, his hand went out to hers,
covering it as it lay on the railing. But he knew, beyond the shadow of
a doubt, that it was the boy that returned the pressure he gave, the boy
sorrowing over the lost toy. The thought chilled him. Never had he been
actually nearer to her, and never had she been more convincingly remote.
She was certainly not acutely aware that his hand was touching hers. In
her grief at the departure of the _Martha_ it was, to her, anybody's
hand--at the best, a friend's hand.
He withdrew his hand and walked perturbedly away.
"Why hasn't he got that big fisherman's staysail on her?" she demanded
irritably. "It would make the old girl just walk along in this breeze. I
know the sort old Kinross is. He's the skipper that lies three days
under double-reefed topsails waiting for a gale that doesn't come. Safe?
Oh, yes, he's safe--dangerously safe."
Sheldon retraced his steps.
"Never mind," he said. "You can go sailing on the _Martha_ any time you
please--recruiting on Malaita if you want to."
It was a great concession he was making, and he felt that he did it
against his better judgment. Her reception of it was a surprise to him.
"With old Kinross in command?" she queried. "No, thank you. He'd drive
me to suicide. I couldn't stand his handling of her. It would give me
nervous prostration. I'll never step on the _Martha_ again, unless it is
to take charge of her. I'm a sailor, like my father, and he could never
bear to see a vessel mishandled. Did you see the way Kinross got under
way? It was disgraceful. And the noise he made about it! Old Noah did
better with the Ark."
"But we manage to get somewhere just the same," he smiled.
"So did Noah."
"That was the main thing."
"For an antediluvian."
She took another lingering look at the _Martha_, then turned to Sheldon.
"You are a slovenly lot down here when it comes to boats--most of you
are, any way. Christian Young is all right though, Munster has a slap-
dash style about him, and they do say old Nielsen was a crackerjack. But
with the rest I've seen, there's no dash, no go, no cleverness, no real
sailor's pride. It's all humdrum, and podgy, and slow-going, any going
so long as you get there heaven knows when. But some day I'll show you
how the _Martha_ should be handled. I'll break out anchor and get under
way in a speed and style that will make your head hum; and I'll bring her
alongside the wharf at Guvutu without dropping anchor and running a
line."
She came to a breathless pause, and then broke into laughter, directed,
he could see, against herself.
"Old Kinross is setting that fisherman's staysail," he remarked quietly.
"No!" she cried incredulously, swiftly looking, then running for the
telescope.
She regarded the manoeuvre steadily through the glass, and Sheldon,
watching her face, could see that the skipper was not making a success of
it.
She finally lowered the glass with a groan.
"He's made a mess of it," she said, "and now he's trying it over again.
And a man like that is put in charge of a fairy like the _Martha_! Well,
it's a good argument against marriage, that's all. No, I won't look any
more. Come on in and play a steady, conservative game of billiards with
me. And after that I'm going to saddle up and go after pigeons. Will
you come along?"
An hour later, just as they were riding out of the compound, Joan turned
in the saddle for a last look at the _Martha_, a distant speck well over
toward the Florida coast.
"Won't Tudor be surprised when he finds we own the _Martha_?" she
laughed. "Think of it! If he doesn't strike pay-dirt he'll have to buy
a steamer-passage to get away from the Solomons."
Still laughing gaily, she rode through the gate. But suddenly her
laughter broke flatly and she reined in the mare. Sheldon glanced at her
sharply, and noted her face mottling, even as he looked, and turning
orange and green.
"It's the fever," she said. "I'll have to turn back."
By the time they were in the compound she was shivering and shaking, and
he had to help her from her horse.
"Funny, isn't it?" she said with chattering teeth. "Like seasickness--not
serious, but horribly miserable while it lasts. I'm going to bed. Send
Noa Noah and Viaburi to me. Tell Ornfiri to make hot water. I'll be out
of my head in fifteen minutes. But I'll be all right by evening. Short
and sharp is the way it takes me. Too bad to lose the shooting. Thank
you, I'm all right."
Sheldon obeyed her instructions, rushed hot-water bottles along to her,
and then sat on the veranda vainly trying to interest himself in a two-
months-old file of Sydney newspapers. He kept glancing up and across the
compound to the grass house. Yes, he decided, the contention of every
white man in the islands was right; the Solomons was no place for a
woman.
He clapped his hands, and Lalaperu came running.
"Here, you!" he ordered; "go along barracks, bring 'm black fella Mary,
plenty too much, altogether."
A few minutes later the dozen black women of Berande were ranged before
him. He looked them over critically, finally selecting one that was
young, comely as such creatures went, and whose body bore no signs of
skin-disease.
"What name, you?" he demanded. "Sangui?"
"Me Mahua," was the answer.
"All right, you fella Mahua. You finish cook along boys. You stop along
white Mary. All the time you stop along. You savvee?"
"Me savvee," she grunted, and obeyed his gesture to go to the grass house
immediately.
"What name?" he asked Viaburi, who had just come out of the grass house.
"Big fella sick," was the answer. "White fella Mary talk 'm too much
allee time. Allee time talk 'm big fella schooner."
Sheldon nodded. He understood. It was the loss of the _Martha_ that had
brought on the fever. The fever would have come sooner or later, he
knew; but her disappointment had precipitated it. He lighted a
cigarette, and in the curling smoke of it caught visions of his English
mother, and wondered if she would understand how her son could love a
woman who cried because she could not be skipper of a schooner in the
cannibal isles.