sweep. I was doing my best by my owners, you see. Only that Adamu

gives me a shove down on the bottom-boards, puts one foot on me to
hold me down, and goes on steering. And that's all. The shock of

the whole thing brought on fever. And now I've come to find out
whether I'm skipper of the Flibberty, or that chit of yours with

her pirating, heathen boat's-crew."
"Never mind, skipper. You can take a vacation on pay." Sheldon

spoke with more assurance than he felt. "If Miss Lackland, who is
my partner, has seen fit to take charge of the Flibberty-Gibbet,

why, it is all right. As you will agree, there was no time to be
lost if the Martha was to be got off. It is a bad reef, and any

considerable sea would knock her bottom out. You settle down here,
skipper, and rest up and get the fever out of your bones. When the

Flibberty-Gibbet comes back, you'll take charge again, of course."
After Dr. Welshmere and the Apostle departed and Captain Oleson had

turned in for a sleep in a verandahammock, Sheldon opened Joan's
letter.

DEAR MR. SHELDON,--Please forgive me for stealing the Flibberty-
Gibbet. I simply had to. The Martha means everything to us.

Think of it, only fifty-five pounds for her, two hundred and
seventy-five dollars. If I don't save her, I know I shall be able

to pay all expenses out of her gear, which the natives will not
have carried off. And if I do save her, it is the haul of a life-

time. And if I don't save her, I'll fill the Emily and the
Flibberty-Gibbet with recruits. Recruits are needed right now on

Berande more than anything else.
And please, please don't be angry with me. You said I shouldn't go

recruiting on the Flibberty, and I won't. I'll go on the Emily.
I bought two cows this afternoon. That trader at Nogi died of

fever, and I bought them from his partner, Sam Willis his name is,
who agrees to deliver them--most likely by the Minerva next time

she is down that way. Berande has been long enough on tinned milk.
And Dr. Welshmere has agreed to get me some orange and lime trees

from the mission station at Ulava. He will deliver them the next
trip of the Apostle. If the Sydney steamer arrives before I get

back, plant the sweet corn she will bring between the young trees
on the high bank of the Balesuna. The current is eating in against

that bank, and you should do something to save it.
I have ordered some fig-trees and loquats, too, from Sydney. Dr.

Welshmere will bring some mango-seeds. They are big trees and
require plenty of room.

The Martha is registered 110 tons. She is the biggest schooner in
the Solomons, and the best. I saw a little of her lines and guess

the rest. She will sail like a witch. If she hasn't filled with
water, her engine will be all right. The reason she went ashore

was because it was not working. The engineer had disconnected the
feed-pipes to clean out the rust. Poor business, unless at anchor

or with plenty of sea room.
Plant all the trees in the compound, even if you have to clean out

the palms later on.
And don't plant the sweet corn all at once. Let a few days elapse

between plantings.
JOAN LACKLAND.

He fingered the letter, lingering over it and scrutinizing the
writing in a way that was not his wont. How characteristic, was

his thought, as he studied the boyish scrawl--clear to read,
painfully, clear, but none the less boyish. The clearness of it

reminded him of her face, of her cleanly stencilled brows, her
straightly chiselled nose, the very clearness of the gaze of her

eyes, the firmly yet delicately moulded lips, and the throat,
neither fragile nor robust, but--but just right, he concluded, an

adequate and beautiful pillar for so shapely a burden.
He looked long at the name. Joan Lackland--just an assemblage of

letters, of commonplace letters, but an assemblage that generated a
subtle and heady magic. It crept into his brain and twined and

twisted his mental processes until all that constituted him at that
moment went out in love to that scrawled signature. A few

commonplace letters--yet they caused him to know in himself a lack
that sweetly hurt and that expressed itself in vague spiritual

outpourings and delicious yearnings. Joan Lackland! Each time he
looked at it there arose visions of her in a myriad moods and

guises--coming in out of the flying smother of the gale that had
wrecked her schooner; launching a whale-boat to go a-fishing;

running dripping from the sea, with streaming hair and clinging
garments, to the fresh-water shower; frightening four-score

cannibals with an empty chlorodyne bottle; teaching Ornfiri how to
make bread; hanging her Stetson hat and revolver-belt on the hook

in the living-room; talking gravely about winning to hearth and
saddle of her own, or juvenilely rattling on about romance and

adventure, bright-eyed, her face flushed and eager with enthusiasm.
Joan Lackland! He mused over the cryptic wonder of it till the

secrets of love were made clear and he felt a keen sympathy for
lovers who carved their names on trees or wrote them on the beach-

sands of the sea.
Then he came back to reality, and his face hardened. Even then she

was on the wild coast of Malaita, and at Poonga-Poonga, of all
villainous and dangerous portions the worst, peopled with a teeming

population of head-hunters, robbers, and murderers. For the
instant he entertained the rash thought of calling his boat's-crew

and starting immediately in a whale-boat for Poonga-Poonga. But
the next instant the idea was dismissed. What could he do if he

did go? First, she would resent it. Next, she would laugh at him
and call him a silly; and after all he would count for only one

rifle more, and she had many rifles with her. Three things only
could he do if he went. He could command her to return; he could

take the Flibberty-Gibbet away from her; he could dissolve their
partnership;--any and all of which he knew would be foolish and

futile, and he could hear her explain in terse set terms that she
was legally of age and that nobody could say come or go to her.

No, his pride would never permit him to start for Poonga-Poonga,
though his heart whispered that nothing could be more welcome than

a message from her asking him to come and lend a hand. Her very
words--"lend a hand"; and in his fancy, he could see and hear her

saying them.
There was much in her wilful conduct that caused him to wince in

the heart of him. He was appalled by the thought of her shoulder
to shoulder with the drunken rabble of traders and beachcombers at

Guvutu. It was bad enough for a clean, fastidious man; but for a
young woman, a girl at that, it was awful. The theft of the

Flibberty-Gibbet was merely amusing, though the means by which the
theft had been effected gave him hurt. Yet he found consolation in

the fact that the task of making Oleson drunk had been turned over
to the three scoundrels. And next, and swiftly, came the vision of

her, alone with those same three scoundrels, on the Emily, sailing
out to sea from Guvutu in the twilight with darkness coming on.

Then came visions of Adamu Adam and Noa Noah and all her brawny
Tahitian following, and his anxiety faded away, being replaced by

irritation that she should have been capable of such wildness of
conduct.

And the irritation was still on him as he got up and went inside to
stare at the hook on the wall and to wish that her Stetson hat and

revolver-belt were hanging from it.
CHAPTER XVIII--MAKING THE BOOKS COME TRUE

Several quiet weeks slipped by. Berande, after such an unusual run
of visiting vessels, drifted back into her old solitude. Sheldon

went on with the daily round, clearing bush, planting cocoanuts,
smoking copra, building bridges, and riding about his work on the

horses Joan had bought. News of her he had none. Recruiting
vessels on Malaita left the Poonga-Poonga coast severely alone; and

the Clansman, a Samoan recruiter, dropping anchor one sunset for
billiards and gossip, reported rumours amongst the Sio natives that