He had never read of anything to compare with it.
The fictionists, as usual, were exceeded by fact.
The whole thing was too preposterous to be true.
He gnawed his moustache and smoked cigarette after
cigarette. Satan, back from a prowl around the
compound, ran up to him and touched his hand with
a cold, damp nose. Sheldon caressed the animal’s
ears, then threw himself into a chair and laughed
heartily. What would the Commissioner of the
Solomons think? What would his people at home
think? And in the one breath he was glad that
the partnership had been effected and sorry that Joan
Lackland had ever come to the Solomons. Then
he went inside and looked at himself in a hand-mirror.
He studied the reflection long and thoughtfully and
wonderingly.
They were deep in a game of billiards the next morning,
after the eleven o’clock breakfast, when Viaburi
entered and announced,—
“Big fella schooner close up.”
Even as he spoke, they heard the rumble of chain through
hawse-pipe, and from the veranda saw a big black-painted
schooner, swinging to her just-caught anchor.
“It’s a Yankee,” Joan cried.
“See that bow! Look at that elliptical
stern! Ah, I thought so—” as
the Stars and Stripes fluttered to the mast-head.
Noa Noah, at Sheldon’s direction, ran the Union
Jack up the flagstaff.
“Now what is an American vessel doing down here?”
Joan asked. “It’s not a yacht, though
I’ll wager she can sail. Look! Her
name! What is it?”
“Martha, San Francisco,” Sheldon
read, looking through the telescope. “It’s
the first Yankee I ever heard of in the Solomons.
They are coming ashore, whoever they are. And,
by Jove, look at those men at the oars. It’s
an all-white crew. Now what reason brings them
here?”
“They’re not proper sailors,” Joan
commented. “I’d be ashamed of a crew
of black-boys that pulled in such fashion. Look
at that fellow in the bow—the one just
jumping out; he’d be more at home on a cow-pony.”
The boat’s-crew scattered up and down the beach,
ranging about with eager curiosity, while the two
men who had sat in the stern-sheets opened the gate
and came up the path to the bungalow. One of
them, a tall and slender man, was clad in white ducks
that fitted him like a semi-military uniform.
The other man, in nondescript garments that were both
of the sea and shore, and that must have been uncomfortably
hot, slouched and shambled like an overgrown ape.
To complete the illusion, his face seemed to sprout
in all directions with a dense, bushy mass of red
whiskers, while his eyes were small and sharp and restless.
