Never had runaways from Berande been more zealously hunted. The deeds of
Gogoomy and his fellows had been a bad example for the one hundred and
fifty new recruits. Murder had been planned, a gang-boss had been
killed, and the murderers had broken their contracts by fleeing to the
bush. Sheldon saw how imperative it was to teach his new-caught
cannibals that bad examples were disastrous things to pattern after, and
he urged Seelee on night and day, while with the Tahitians he practically
lived in the bush, leaving Joan in charge of the plantation. To the
north Boucher did good work, twice turning the fugitives back when they
attempted to gain the coast.
One by one the boys were captured. In the first man-drive through the
mangrove swamp Seelee caught two. Circling around to the north, a third
was wounded in the thigh by Boucher, and this one, dragging behind in the
chase, was later gathered in by Seelee's hunters. The three captives,
heavily ironed, were exposed each day in the compound, as good examples
of what happened to bad examples, all for the edification of the seven
score and ten half-wild Poonga-Poonga men. Then the _Minerva_, running
past for Tulagi, was signalled to send a boat, and the three prisoners
were carried away to prison to await trial.
Five were still at large, but escape was impossible. They could not get
down to the coast, nor dared they venture too far inland for fear of the
wild bushmen. Then one of the five came in voluntarily and gave himself
up, and Sheldon learned that Gogoomy and two others were all that were at
large. There should have been a fourth, but according to the man who had
given himself up, the fourth man had been killed and eaten. It had been
fear of a similar fate that had driven him in. He was a Malu man, from
north-western Malaita, as likewise had been the one that was eaten.
Gogoomy's two other companions were from Port Adams. As for himself, the
black declared his preference for government trial and punishment to
being eaten by his companions in the bush.
"Close up Gogoomy _kai-kai_ me," he said. "My word, me no like boy _kai-
kai_ me."
Three days later Sheldon caught one of the boys, helpless from swamp
fever, and unable to fight or run away. On the same day Seelee caught
the second boy in similar condition. Gogoomy alone remained at large;
and, as the pursuit closed in on him, he conquered his fear of the
bushmen and headed straight in for the mountainous backbone of the
island. Sheldon with four Tahitians, and Seelee with thirty of his
hunters, followed Gogoomy's trail a dozen miles into the open
grass-lands, and then Seelee and his people lost heart. He confessed
that neither he nor any of his tribe had ever ventured so far inland
before, and he narrated, for Sheldon's benefit, most horrible tales of
the horrible bushmen. In the old days, he said, they had crossed the
grass-lands and attacked the salt-water natives; but since the coming of
the white men to the coast they had remained in their interior
fastnesses, and no salt-water native had ever seen them again.
"Gogoomy he finish along them fella bushmen," he assured Sheldon. "My
word, he finish close up, _kai-kai_ altogether."
So the expedition turned back. Nothing could persuade the coast natives
to venture farther, and Sheldon, with his four Tahitians, knew that it
was madness to go on alone. So he stood waist-deep in the grass and
looked regretfully across the rolling savannah and the soft-swelling
foothills to the Lion's Head, a massive peak of rock that upreared into
the azure from the midmost centre of Guadalcanal, a landmark used for
bearings by every coasting mariner, a mountain as yet untrod by the foot
of a white man.
That night, after dinner, Sheldon and Joan were playing billiards, when
Satan barked in the compound, and Lalaperu, sent to see, brought back a
tired and travel-stained native, who wanted to talk with the "big fella
white marster." It was only the man's insistence that procured him
admittance at such an hour. Sheldon went out on the veranda to see him,
and at first glance at the gaunt features and wasted body of the man knew
that his errand was likely to prove important. Nevertheless, Sheldon
demanded roughly,--
"What name you come along house belong me sun he go down?"
"Me Charley," the man muttered apologetically and wearily. "Me stop
along Binu."
"Ah, Binu Charley, eh? Well, what name you talk along me? What place
big fella marster along white man he stop?"
Joan and Sheldon together listened to the tale Binu Charley had brought.
He described Tudor's expedition up the Balesuna; the dragging of the
boats up the rapids; the passage up the river where it threaded the grass-
lands; the innumerable washings of gravel by the white men in search of
gold; the first rolling foothills; the man-traps of spear-staked pits in
the jungle trails; the first meeting with the bushmen, who had never seen
tobacco, and knew not the virtues of smoking; their friendliness; the
deeper penetration of the interior around the flanks of the Lion's Head;
the bush-sores and the fevers of the white men, and their madness in
trusting the bushmen.
"Allee time I talk along white fella marster," he said. "Me talk, 'That
fella bushman he look 'm eye belong him. He savvee too much. S'pose
musket he stop along you, that fella bushman he too much good friend
along you. Allee time he look sharp eye belong him. S'pose musket he no
stop along you, my word, that fella bushman he chop 'm off head belong
you. He _kai-kai_ you altogether.'"
But the patience of the bushmen had exceeded that of the white men. The
weeks had gone by, and no overt acts had been attempted. The bushmen
swarmed in the camp in increasing numbers, and they were always making
presents of yams and taro, of pig and fowl, and of wild fruits and
vegetables. Whenever the gold-hunters moved their camp, the bushmen
volunteered to carry the luggage. And the white men waxed ever more
careless. They grew weary prospecting, and at the same time carrying
their rifles and the heavy cartridge-belts, and the practice began of
leaving their weapons behind them in camp.
"I tell 'm plenty fella white marster look sharp eye belong him. And
plenty fella white marster make 'm big laugh along me, say Binu Charley
allee same pickaninny--my word, they speak along me allee same
pickaninny."
Came the morning when Binu Charley noticed that the women and children
had disappeared. Tudor, at the time, was lying in a stupor with fever in
a late camp five miles away, the main camp having moved on those five
miles in order to prospect an outcrop of likely quartz. Binu Charley was
midway between the two camps when the absence of the women and children
struck him as suspicious.
"My word," he said, "me t'ink like hell. Him black Mary, him pickaninny,
walk about long way big bit. What name? Me savvee too much trouble
close up. Me fright like hell. Me run. My word, me run."
Tudor, quite unconscious, was slung across his shoulder, and carried a
mile down the trail. Here, hiding new trail, Binu Charley had carried
him for a quarter of a mile into the heart of the deepest jungle, and
hidden him in a big banyan tree. Returning to try to save the rifles and
personal outfit, Binu Charley had seen a party of bushmen trotting down
the trail, and had hidden in the bush. Here, and from the direction of
the main camp, he had heard two rifle shots. And that was all. He had
never seen the white men again, nor had he ventured near their old camp.
He had gone back to Tudor, and hidden with him for a week, living on wild
fruits and the few pigeons and cockatoos he had been able to shoot with
bow and arrow. Then he had journeyed down to Berande to bring the news.
Tudor, he said, was very sick, lying unconscious for days at a time, and,
when in his right mind, too weak to help himself.
"What name you no kill 'm that big fella marster?" Joan demanded. "He
have 'm good fella musket, plenty calico, plenty tobacco, plenty knife-
fee, and two fella pickaninny musket shoot quick, bang-bang-bang--just
like that."
The black smiled cunningly.
"Me savvee too much. S'pose me kill 'm big fella marster, bimeby plenty
white fella marster walk about Binu cross like hell. 'What name this
fellow musket?' those plenty fella white marster talk 'm along me. My
word, Binu Charley finish altogether. S'pose me kill 'm him, no good
along me. Plenty white fella marster cross along me. S'pose me no kill
'm him, bimeby he give me plenty tobacco, plenty calico, plenty
everything too much."
"There is only the one thing to do," Sheldon said to Joan.
She drummed with her hand and waited, while Binu Charley gazed wearily at
her with unblinking eyes.
"I'll start the first thing in the morning," Sheldon said.
"We'll start," she corrected. "I can get twice as much out of my
Tahitians as you can, and, besides, one white should never be alone under
such circumstances."
He shrugged his shoulders in token, not of consent, but of surrender,
knowing the uselessness of attempting to argue the question with her, and
consoling himself with the reflection that heaven alone knew what
adventures she was liable to engage in if left alone on Berande for a
week. He clapped his hands, and for the next quarter of an hour the
house-boys were kept busy carrying messages to the barracks. A man was
sent to Balesuna village to command old Seelee's immediate presence. A
boat's-crew was started in a whale-boat with word for Boucher to come
down. Ammunition was issued to the Tahitians, and the storeroom
overhauled for a few days' tinned provisions. Viaburi turned yellow when
told that he was to accompany the expedition, and, to everybody's
surprise, Lalaperu volunteered to take his place.
Seelee arrived, proud in his importance that the great master of Berande
should summon him in the night-time for council, and firm in his refusal
to step one inch within the dread domain of the bushmen. As he said, if
his opinion had been asked when the gold-hunters started, he would have
foretold their disastrous end. There was only one thing that happened to
any one who ventured into the bushmen's territory, and that was that he
was eaten. And he would further say, without being asked, that if
Sheldon went up into the bush he would be eaten too.
Sheldon sent for a gang-boss and told him to bring ten of the biggest,
best, and strongest Poonga-Poonga men.
"Not salt-water boys," Sheldon cautioned, "but bush boys--leg belong him
strong fella leg. Boy no savvee musket, no good. You bring 'm boy shoot
musket strong fella."
They were ten picked men that filed up on the veranda and stood in the
glare of the lanterns. Their heavy, muscular legs advertised that they
were bushmen. Each claimed long experience in bush-fighting, most of
them showed scars of bullet or spear-thrust in proof, and all were wild
for a chance to break the humdrum monotony of plantation labour by going
on a killing expedition. Killing was their natural vocation, not wood-
cutting; and while they would not have ventured the Guadalcanal bush
alone, with a white man like Sheldon behind them, and a white Mary such
as they knew Joan to be, they could expect a safe and delightful time.
Besides, the great master had told them that the eight gigantic Tahitians
were going along.
The Poonga-Poonga volunteers stood with glistening eyes and grinning
faces, naked save for their loin-cloths, and barbarously ornamented. Each
wore a flat, turtle-shell ring suspended through his nose, and each
carried a clay pipe in an ear-hole or thrust inside a beaded biceps
armlet. A pair of magnificent boar tusks graced the chest of one. On
the chest of another hung a huge disc of polished fossil clam-shell.
"Plenty strong fella fight," Sheldon warned them in conclusion.
They grinned and shifted delightedly.
"S'pose bushmen _kai-kai_ along you?" he queried.
"No fear," answered their spokesman, one Koogoo, a strapping,
thick-lipped Ethiopian-looking man. "S'pose Poonga-Poonga boy _kai-kai_
bush-boy?"
Sheldon shook his head, laughing, and dismissed them, and went to
overhaul the dunnage-room for a small shelter tent for Joan's use.