or not I should have pulled through had you not happened along.
But that is not the point. Personally, purely selfishly

personally, I should be sorry to see you go. But I am not
considering myself. I am considering you. It--it is hardly the

proper thing, you know. If I were married--if there were some
woman of your own race here--but as it is--"

She threw up her hands in mock despair.
"I cannot follow you," she said. "In one breath you tell me I must

go, and in the next breath you tell me there is no place to go and
that you will not permit me to go. What is a poor girl to do?"

"That's the trouble," he said helplessly.
"And the situation annoys you."

"Only for your sake."
"Then let me save your feelings by telling you that it does not

annoy me at all--except for the row you are making about it. I
never allow what can't be changed to annoy me. There is no use in

fighting the inevitable. Here is the situation. You are here. I
am here. I can't go elsewhere, by your own account. You certainly

can't go elsewhere and leave me here alone with a whole plantation
and two hundred woolly cannibals on my hands. Therefore you stay,

and I stay. It is very simple. Also, it is adventure. And
furthermore, you needn't worry for yourself. I am not

matrimonially inclined. I came to the Solomons for a plantation,
not a husband."

Sheldon flushed, but remained silent.
"I know what you are thinking," she laughed gaily. "That if I were

a man you'd wring my neck for me. And I deserve it, too. I'm so
sorry. I ought not to keep on hurting your feelings."

"I'm afraid I rather invite it," he said, relieved by the signs of
the tempest subsiding.

"I have it," she announced. "Lend me a gang of your boys for to-
day. I'll build a grass house for myself over in the far corner of

the compound--on piles, of course. I can move in to-night. I'll
be comfortable and safe. The Tahitians can keep an anchor watch

just as aboard ship. And then I'll study cocoanut planting. In
return, I'll run the kitchen end of your household and give you

some decent food to eat. And finally, I won't listen to any of
your protests. I know all that you are going to say and offer--

your giving the bungalow up to me and building a grass house for
yourself. And I won't have it. You may as well consider

everything settled. On the other hand, if you don't agree, I will
go across the river, beyond your jurisdiction, and build a village

for myself and my sailors, whom I shall send in the whale-boat to
Guvutu for provisions. And now I want you to teach me billiards."

CHAPTER VII--A HARD-BITTEN GANG
Joan took hold of the household with no uncertain grip,

revolutionizing things till Sheldon hardly recognized the place.
For the first time the bungalow was clean and orderly. No longer

the house-boys loafed and did as little as they could; while the
cook complained that "head belong him walk about too much," from

the strenuous course in cookery which she put him through. Nor did
Sheldon escape being roundly lectured for his laziness in eating

nothing but tinned provisions. She called him a muddler and a
slouch, and other invidious names, for his slackness and his

disregard of healthful food.
She sent her whale-boat down the coast twenty miles for limes and

oranges, and wanted to know scathingly why said fruits had not long
since been planted at Berande, while he was beneath contempt

because there was no kitchen garden. Mummy apples, which he had
regarded as weeds, under her guidance appeared as appetizing

breakfast fruit, and, at dinner, were metamorphosed into puddings
that elicited his unqualified admiration. Bananas, foraged from

the bush, were served, cooked and raw, a dozen different ways, each
one of which he declared was better than any other. She or her

sailors dynamited fish daily, while the Balesuna natives were paid
tobacco for bringing in oysters from the mangrove swamps. Her

achievements with cocoanuts were a revelation. She taught the cook
how to make yeast from the milk, that, in turn, raised light and

airy bread. From the tip-top heart of the tree she concocted a
delicious salad. From the milk and the meat of the nut she made

various sauces and dressings, sweet and sour, that were served,
according to preparation, with dishes that ranged from fish to

pudding. She taught Sheldon the superiority of cocoanut cream over
condensed cream, for use in coffee. From the old and sprouting

nuts she took the solid, spongy centres and turned them into
salads. Her forte seemed to be salads, and she astonished him with

the deliciousness of a salad made from young bamboo shoots. Wild
tomatoes, which had gone to seed or been remorselessly hoed out

from the beginning of Berande, were foraged for salads, soups, and
sauces. The chickens, which had always gone into the bush and

hidden their eggs, were given laying-bins, and Joan went out
herself to shoot wild duck and wild pigeons for the table.

"Not that I like to do this sort of work," she explained, in
reference to the cookery; "but because I can't get away from Dad's

training."
Among other things, she burned the pestilential hospital,

quarrelled with Sheldon over the dead, and, in anger, set her own
men to work building a new, and what she called a decent, hospital.

She robbed the windows of their lawn and muslin curtains, replacing
them with gaudy calico from the trade-store, and made herself

several gowns. When she wrote out a list of goods and clothing for
herself, to be sent down to Sydney by the first steamer, Sheldon

wondered how long she had made up her mind to stay.
She was certainly unlike any woman he had ever known or dreamed of.

So far as he was concerned she was not a woman at all. She neither
languished nor blandished. No feminine lures were wasted on him.

He might have been her brother, or she his brother, for all sex had
to do with the strange situation. Any mere polite gallantry on his

part was ignored or snubbed, and he had very early given up
offering his hand to her in getting into a boat or climbing over a

log, and he had to acknowledge to himself that she was eminently
fitted to take care of herself. Despite his warnings about

crocodiles and sharks, she persisted in swimming in deep water off
the beach; nor could he persuade her, when she was in the boat, to

let one of the sailors throw the dynamite when shooting fish. She
argued that she was at least a little bit more intelligent than

they, and that, therefore, there was less liability of an accident
if she did the shooting. She was to him the most masculine and at

the same time the most feminine woman he had ever met.
A source of continual trouble between them was the disagreement

over methods of handling the black boys. She ruled by stern
kindness, rarely rewarding, never punishing, and he had to confess

that her own sailors worshipped her, while the house-boys were her
slaves, and did three times as much work for her as he had ever got

out of them. She quickly saw the unrest of the contract labourers,
and was not blind to the danger, always imminent, that both she and

Sheldon ran. Neither of them ever ventured out without a revolver,
and the sailors who stood the night watches by Joan's grass house

were armed with rifles. But Joan insisted that this reign of
terror had been caused by the reign of fear practised by the white

men. She had been brought up with the gentle Hawaiians, who never
were ill-treated nor roughly handled, and she generalized that the

Solomon Islanders, under kind treatment, would grow gentle.
One evening a terrificuproar arose in the barracks, and Sheldon,

aided by Joan's sailors, succeeded in rescuing two women whom the
blacks were beating to death. To save them from the vengeance of

the blacks, they were guarded in the cook-house for the night.
They were the two women who did the cooking for the labourers, and

their offence had consisted of one of them taking a bath in the big
cauldron in which the potatoes were boiled. The blacks were not

outraged from the standpoint of cleanliness; they often took baths
in the cauldrons themselves. The trouble lay in that the bather