Down on the beach he built a bonfire out of the contents
of the canoes, his blacks smashing, breaking, and
looting everything they laid hands on. The canoes
themselves, splintered and broken, filled with sand
and coral-boulders, were towed out to ten fathoms
of water and sunk.
“Ten fathoms will be deep enough for them to
work in,” Sheldon said, as they walked back
to the compound.
Here a Saturnalia had broken loose. The war-songs
and dances were more unrestrained, and, from abuse,
the plantation blacks had turned to pelting their
helpless foes with pieces of wood, handfuls of pebbles,
and chunks of coral-rock. And the seventy-five
lusty cannibals clung stoically to their tree-perches,
enduring the rain of missiles and snarling down promises
of vengeance.
“There’ll be wars for forty years on Malaita
on account of this,” Sheldon laughed.
“But I always fancy old Telepasse will never
again attempt to rush a plantation.”
“Eh, you old scoundrel,” he added, turning
to the old chief, who sat gibbering in impotent rage
at the foot of the steps. “Now head belong
you bang ’m too. Come on, Miss Lackland,
bang ’m just once. It will be the crowning
indignity.”
“Ugh, he’s too dirty. I’d
rather give him a bath. Here, you, Adamu Adam,
give this devil-devil a wash. Soap and water!
Fill that wash-tub. Ornfiri, run and fetch ’m
scrub-brush.”
The Tahitians, back from their fishing and grinning
at the bedlam of the compound, entered into the joke.
“Tambo! Tambo!” shrieked
the cannibals from the trees, appalled at so awful
a desecration, as they saw their chief tumbled into
the tub and the sacred dirt rubbed and soused from
his body.
Joan, who had gone into the bungalow, tossed down
a strip of white calico, in which old Telepasse was
promptly wrapped, and he stood forth, resplendent
and purified, withal he still spat and strangled from
the soap-suds with which Noa Noah had gargled his
throat.
The house-boys were directed to fetch handcuffs, and,
one by one, the Lunga runaways were haled down out
of their trees and made fast. Sheldon ironed
them in pairs, and ran a steel chain through the links
of the irons. Gogoomy was given a lecture for
his mutinous conduct and locked up for the afternoon.
Then Sheldon rewarded the plantation hands with an
afternoon’s holiday, and, when they had withdrawn
from the compound, permitted the Port Adams men to
descend from the trees. And all afternoon he
and Joan loafed in the cool of the veranda and watched
them diving down and emptying their sunken canoes
of the sand and rocks. It was twilight when
they embarked and paddled away with a few broken paddles.
A breeze had sprung up, and the Flibberty-Gibbet
had already sailed for Lunga to return the runaways.
Sheldon was back in the plantation superintending
the building of a bridge, when the schooner Malakula
ran in close and dropped anchor. Joan watched
the taking in of sail and the swinging out of the boat
with a sailor’s interest, and herself met the
two men who came ashore. While one of the house-boys
ran to fetch Sheldon, she had the visitors served
with whisky and soda, and sat and talked with them.
