Her last words came out of the darkness, which wrapped itself

solidly about the boat. Yet they continued to stare into the
blackness in the direction in which the boat had disappeared,

listening to the steady click of the oars in the rowlocks until it
faded away and ceased.

"She is only a girl," Christian Young said with slow solemnity.
The discovery seemed to have been made on the spur of the moment.

"She is only a girl," he repeated with greater solemnity.
"A dashed pretty one, and a good traveller," Tudor laughed. "She

certainly has spunk, eh, Sheldon?"
"Yes, she is brave," was the reluctant answer for Sheldon did not

feel disposed to talk about her.
"That's the American of it," Tudor went on. "Push, and go, and

energy, and independence. What do you think, skipper?"
"I think she is young, very young, only a girl," replied the

captain of the Minerva, continuing to stare into the blackness that
hid the sea.

The blackness seemed suddenly to increase in density, and they
stumbled up the beach, feeling their way to the gate.

"Watch out for nuts," Sheldon warned, as the first blast of the
squall shrieked through the palms. They joined hands and staggered

up the path, with the ripe cocoanuts thudding in a monstrous rain
all around them. They gained the veranda, where they sat in

silence over their whisky, each man staring straight out to sea,
where the wildly swinging riding-light of the Minerva could be seen

in the lulls of the driving rain.
Somewhere out there, Sheldon reflected, was Joan Lackland, the girl

who had not grown up, the woman good to look upon, with only a
boy's mind and a boy's desires, leaving Berande amid storm and

conflict in much the same manner that she had first arrived, in the
stern-sheets of her whale-boat, Adamu Adam steering, her savage

crew bending to the oars. And she was taking her Stetson hat with
her, along with the cartridge-belt and the long-barrelled revolver.

He suddenly discovered an immenseaffection for those fripperies of
hers at which he had secretly laughed when first he saw them. He

became aware of the sentimental direction in which his fancy was
leading him, and felt inclined to laugh. But he did not laugh.

The next moment he was busy visioning the hat, and belt, and
revolver. Undoubtedly this was love, he thought, and he felt a

tiny glow of pride in him in that the Solomons had not succeeded in
killing all his sentiment.

An hour later, Christian Young stood up, knocked out his pipe, and
prepared to go aboard and get under way.

"She's all right," he said, apropos of nothing spoken, and yet
distinctly relevant to what was in each of their minds. "She's got

a good boat's-crew, and she's a sailor herself. Good-night, Mr.
Sheldon. Anything I can do for you down Marau-way?" He turned and

pointed to a widening space of starry sky. "It's going to be a
fine night after all. With this favouring bit of breeze she has

sail on already, and she'll make Guvutu by daylight. Good-night."
"I guess I'll turn in, old man," Tudor said, rising and placing his

glass on the table. "I'll start the first thing in the morning.
It's been disgraceful the way I've been hanging on here. Good-

night."
Sheldon, sitting on alone, wondered if the other man would have

decided to pull out in the morning had Joan not sailed away. Well,
there was one bit of consolation in it: Joan had certainly

lingered at Berande for no man, not even Tudor. "I start in an
hour"--her words rang in his brain, and under his eyelids he could

see her as she stood up and uttered them. He smiled. The instant
she heard the news she had made up her mind to go. It was not very

flattering to man, but what could any man count in her eyes when a
schoonerwaiting to be bought in Sydney was in the wind? What a

creature! What a creature!
Berande was a lonely place to Sheldon in the days that followed.

In the morning after Joan's departure, he had seen Tudor's
expedition off on its way up the Balesuna; in the late afternoon,

through his telescope, he had seen the smoke of the Upolu that was
bearing Joan away to Sydney; and in the evening he sat down to

dinner in solitary state, devoting more of his time to looking at
her empty chair than to his food. He never came out on the veranda

without glancing first of all at her grass house in the corner of
the compound; and one evening, idly knocking the balls about on the

billiard table, he came to himself to find himself standing staring
at the nail upon which from the first she had hung her Stetson hat

and her revolver-belt.
Why should he care for her? he demanded of himself angrily. She

was certainly the last woman in the world he would have thought of
choosing for himself. Never had he encountered one who had so

thoroughly irritated him, rasped his feelings, smashed his
conventions, and violated nearly every attribute of what had been

his ideal of woman. Had he been too long away from the world? Had
he forgotten what the race of women was like? Was it merely a case

of propinquity? And she wasn't really a woman. She was a
masquerader. Under all her seeming of woman, she was a boy,

playing a boy's pranks, diving for fish amongst sharks, sporting a
revolver, longing for adventure, and, what was more, going out in

search of it in her whale-boat, along with her savage islanders and
her bag of sovereigns. But he loved her--that was the point of it

all, and he did not try to evade it. He was not sorry that it was
so. He loved her--that was the overwhelming, astounding fact.

Once again he discovered a big enthusiasm for Berande. All the
bubble-illusions concerning the life of the tropicalplanter had

been pricked by the stern facts of the Solomons. Following the
death of Hughie, he had resolved" target="_blank" title="a.决心的；坚定的">resolved to muddle along somehow with the

plantation; but this resolve had not been based upon desire.
Instead, it was based upon the inherent stubbornness of his nature

and his dislike to give over an attempted task.
But now it was different. Berande meant everything. It must

succeed--not merely because Joan was a partner in it, but because
he wanted to make that partnership permanentlybinding. Three more

years and the plantation would be a splendid-paying investment.
They could then take yearly trips to Australia, and oftener; and an

occasional run home to England--or Hawaii, would come as a matter
of course.

He spent his evenings poring over accounts, or making endless
calculations based on cheaper freights for copra and on the

possible maximum and minimum market prices for that staple of
commerce. His days were spent out on the plantation. He undertook

more clearing of bush; and clearing and planting went on, under his
personal supervision, at a faster pace than ever before. He

experimented with premiums for extra work performed by the black
boys, and yearned continually for more of them to put to work. Not

until Joan could return on the schooner would this be possible, for
the professional recruiters were all under long contracts to the

Fulcrum Brothers, Morgan and Raff, and the Fires, Philp Company;
while the Flibberty-Gibbet was wholly occupied in running about

among his widely scattered trading stations, which extended from
the coast of New Georgia in one direction to Ulava and Sikiana in

the other. Blacks he must have, and, if Joan were fortunate in
getting a schooner, three months at least must elapse before the

first recruits could be landed on Berande.
A week after the Upolu's departure, the Malakula dropped anchor and

her skipper came ashore for a game of billiards and to gossip until
the land breezesprang up. Besides, as he told his super-cargo, he

simply had to come ashore, not merely to deliver the large package
of seeds with full instructions for planting from Joan, but to

shock Sheldon with the little surprise born of information he was
bringing with him.

Captain Auckland played the billiards first, and it was not until
he was comfortably seated in a steamer-chair, his second whisky