“Come on, hurry up; we’re burning daylight,”
he urged, as Sheldon searched after extra clips for
his automatic pistol.
Together they passed down the steps and out of the
compound to the beach, where they turned their backs
to each other, and each proceeded toward his destination,
their rifles in the hollows of their arms, Tudor walking
toward the Berande and Sheldon toward the Balesuna.
Barely had Sheldon reached the Balesuna, when he heard
the faint report of a distant rifle and knew it was
the signal of Tudor, giving notice that he had reached
the Berande, turned about, and was coming back.
Sheldon fired his rifle into the air in answer, and
in turn proceeded to advance. He moved as in
a dream, absent-mindedly keeping to the open beach.
The thing was so preposterous that he had to struggle
to realize it, and he reviewed in his mind the conversation
with Tudor, trying to find some clue to the common-sense
of what he was doing. He did not want to kill
Tudor. Because that man had blundered in his
love-making was no reason that he, Sheldon, should
take his life. Then what was it all about?
True, the fellow had insulted Joan by his subsequent
remarks and been knocked down for it, but because
he had knocked him down was no reason that he should
now try to kill him.
In this fashion he covered a quarter of the distance
between the two rivers, when it dawned upon him that
Tudor was not on the beach at all. Of course
not. He was advancing, according to the terms
of the agreement, in the shelter of the cocoanut trees.
Sheldon promptly swerved to the left to seek similar
shelter, when the faint crack of a rifle came to his
ears, and almost immediately the bullet, striking the
hard sand a hundred feet beyond him, ricochetted and
whined onward on a second flight, convincing him that,
preposterous and unreal as it was, it was nevertheless
sober fact. It had been intended for him.
Yet even then it was hard to believe. He glanced
over the familiar landscape and at the sea dimpling
in the light but steady breeze. From the direction
of Tulagi he could see the white sails of a schooner
laying a tack across toward Berande. Down the
beach a horse was grazing, and he idly wondered where
the others were. The smoke rising from the copra-drying
caught his eyes, which roved on over the barracks,
the tool-houses, the boat-sheds, and the bungalow,
and came to rest on Joan’s little grass house
in the corner of the compound.
Keeping now to the shelter of the trees, he went forward
another quarter of a mile. If Tudor had advanced
with equal speed they should have come together at
that point, and Sheldon concluded that the other was
circling. The difficulty was to locate him.
The rows of trees, running at right angles, enabled
him to see along only one narrow avenue at a time.
His enemy might be coming along the next avenue, or
