Viaburi brought two lighted lanterns to the white
man for inspection. He glanced at them and saw
that they were burning brightly with clear, broad
flames, and nodded his head. One was hoisted
up to the gaff of the flagstaff, and the other was
placed on the wide veranda. They were the leading
lights to the Berande anchorage, and every night in
the year they were so inspected and hung out.
He rolled back on his couch with a sigh of relief.
The day’s work was done. A rifle lay
on the couch beside him. His revolver was within
reach of his hand. An hour passed, during which
he did not move. He lay in a state of half-slumber,
half-coma. He became suddenly alert. A
creak on the back veranda was the cause. The
room was L-shaped; the corner in which stood his couch
was dim, but the hanging lamp in the main part of
the room, over the billiard table and just around the
corner, so that it did not shine on him, was burning
brightly. Likewise the verandas were well lighted.
He waited without movement. The creaks were
repeated, and he knew several men lurked outside.
“What name?” he cried sharply.
The house, raised a dozen feet above the ground, shook
on its pile foundations to the rush of retreating
footsteps.
“They’re getting bold,” he muttered.
“Something will have to be done.”
The full moon rose over Malaita and shone down on
Berande. Nothing stirred in the windless air.
From the hospital still proceeded the moaning of
the sick. In the grass-thatched barracks nearly
two hundred woolly-headed man-eaters slept off the
weariness of the day’s toil, though several
lifted their heads to listen to the curses of one who
cursed the white man who never slept. On the
four verandas of the house the lanterns burned.
Inside, between rifle and revolver, the man himself
moaned and tossed in intervals of troubled sleep.
CHAPTER II—SOMETHING IS DONE
In the morning David Sheldon decided that he was worse.
That he was appreciably weaker there was no doubt,
and there were other symptoms that were unfavourable.
He began his rounds looking for trouble. He
wanted trouble. In full health, the strained
situation would have been serious enough; but as it
was, himself growing helpless, something had to be
done. The blacks were getting more sullen and
defiant, and the appearance of the men the previous
night on his veranda—one of the gravest
of offences on Berande—was ominous.
Sooner or later they would get him, if he did not
get them first, if he did not once again sear on their
dark souls the flaming mastery of the white man.
