men and women cannot endure. I told you so at the beginning."

"Oh, yes; it is quite clear to me what you did." She was angry
again, and the feminineappeal had disappeared. "You were very

discreet in your warning. You took good care to warn me against
every other man in the Solomons except yourself."

It was a blow in the face to Sheldon. He smarted with the truth of
it, and at the same time he smarted with what he was convinced was

the injustice of it. A gleam of triumph that flickered in her eye
because of the hit she had made decided him.

"It is not so one-sided as you seem to think it is," he began. "I
was doing very nicely on Berande before you came. At least I was

not suffering indignities, such as being accused of cowardly
conduct, as you have just accused me. Remember--please remember, I

did not invite you to Berande. Nor did I invite you to stay on at
Berande. It was by staying that you brought about this--to you--

unpleasant situation. By staying you made yourself a temptation,
and now you would blame me for it. I did not want you to stay. I

wasn't in love with you then. I wanted you to go to Sydney; to go
back to Hawaii. But you insisted on staying. You virtually--"

He paused for a softer word than the one that had risen to his
lips, and she took it away from him.

"Forced myself on you--that's what you meant to say," she cried,
the flags of battle painting her cheeks. "Go ahead. Don't mind my

feelings."
"All right; I won't," he said decisively, realizing that the

discussion was in danger of becoming a vituperative, schoolboy
argument. "You have insisted on being considered as a man.

Consistency would demand that you talk like a man, and like a man
listen to man-talk. And listen you shall. It is not your fault

that this unpleasantness has arisen. I do not blame you for
anything; remember that. And for the same reason you should not

blame me for anything."
He noticed her bosom heaving as she sat with clenched hands, and it

was all he could do to conquer the desire to flash his arms out and
around her instead of going on with his coolly planned campaign.

As it was, he nearly told her that she was a most adorable boy.
But he checked all such wayward fancies, and held himself rigidly

down to his disquisition.
"You can't help being yourself. You can't help being a very

desirable creature so far as I am concerned. You have made me want
you. You didn't intend to; you didn't try to. You were so made,

that is all. And I was so made that I was ripe to want you. But I
can't help being myself. I can't by an effort of will cease from

wanting you, any more than you by an effort of will can make
yourself undesirable to me."

"Oh, this desire! this want! want! want!" she broke in
rebelliously. "I am not quite a fool. I understand some things.

And the whole thing is so foolish and absurd--and uncomfortable. I
wish I could get away from it. I really think it would be a good

idea for me to marry Noa Noah, or Adamu Adam, or Lalaperu there, or
any black boy. Then I could give him orders, and keep him penned

away from me; and men like you would leave me alone, and not talk
marriage and 'I want, I want.'"

Sheldon laughed in spite of himself, and far from any genuine
impulse to laugh.

"You are positively soulless," he said savagely.
"Because I've a soul that doesn't yearn for a man for master?" she

took up the gage. "Very well, then. I am soulless, and what are
you going to do about it?"

"I am going to ask you why you look like a woman? Why have you the
form of a woman? the lips of a woman? the wonderful hair of a

woman? And I am going to answer: because you are a woman--though
the woman in you is asleep--and that some day the woman will wake

up."
"Heaven forbid!" she cried, in such sudden and genuinedismay as to

make him laugh, and to bring a smile to her own lips against
herself.

"I've got some more to say to you," Sheldon pursued. "I did try to
protect you from every other man in the Solomons, and from yourself

as well. As for me, I didn't dream that danger lay in that
quarter. So I failed to protect you from myself. I failed to

protect you at all. You went your own wilful way, just as though I
didn't exist--wrecking schooners, recruiting on Malaita, and

sailing schooners; one lone, unprotected girl in the company of
some of the worst scoundrels in the Solomons. Fowler! and Brahms!

and Curtis! And such is the perverseness of human nature--I am
frank, you see--I love you for that too. I love you for all of

you, just as you are."
She made a moue of distaste and raised a hand protestingly.

"Don't," he said. "You have no right to recoil from the mention of
my love for you. Remember this is a man-talk. From the point of

view of the talk, you are a man. The woman in you is only
incidental, accidental, and irrelevant. You've got to listen to

the bald statement of fact, strange though it is, that I love you."
"And now I won't bother you any more about love. We'll go on the

same as before. You are better off and safer on Berande, in spite
of the fact that I love you, than anywhere else in the Solomons.

But I want you, as a final item of man-talk, to remember, from time
to time, that I love you, and that it will be the dearest day of my

life when you consent to marry me. I want you to think of it
sometimes. You can't help but think of it sometimes. And now we

won't talk about it any more. As between men, there's my hand."
He held out his hand. She hesitated, then gripped it heartily, and

smiled through her tears.
"I wish--" she faltered, "I wish, instead of that black Mary, you'd

given me somebody to swear for me."
And with this enigmatic utterance she turned away.

CHAPTER XXI--CONTRABAND
Sheldon did not mention the subject again, nor did his conduct

change from what it had always been. There was nothing of the
pining lover, nor of the lover at all, in his demeanour. Nor was

there any awkwardness between them. They were as frank and
friendly in their relations as ever. He had wondered if his

belligerent love declaration might have aroused some womanly self-
consciousness in Joan, but he looked in vain for any sign of it.

She appeared as unchanged as he; and while he knew that he hid his
real feelings, he was firm in his belief that she hid nothing. And

yet the germ he had implanted must be at work; he was confident of
that, though he was without confidence as to the result. There was

no forecasting this strange girl's processes. She might awaken, it
was true; and on the other hand, and with equal chance, he might be

the wrong man for her, and his declaration of love might only more
firmly set her in her views on single blessedness.

While he devoted more and more of his time to the plantation
itself, she took over the house and its multitudinous affairs; and

she took hold firmly, in sailor fashion, revolutionizing the system
and discipline. The labour situation on Berande was improving.

The Martha had carried away fifty of the blacks whose time was up,
and they had been among the worst on the plantation--five-year men

recruited by Billy Be-blowed, men who had gone through the old days
of terrorism when the original owners of Berande had been driven

away. The new recruits, being broken in under the new regime, gave
better promise. Joan had joined with Sheldon from the start in the

programme that they must be gripped with the strong hand, and at
the same time be treated with absolute justice, if they were to

escape being contaminated by the older boys that still remained.
"I think it would be a good idea to put all the gangs at work close

to the house this afternoon," she announced one day at breakfast.
"I've cleaned up the house, and you ought to clean up the barracks.

There is too much stealing going on."
"A good idea," Sheldon agreed. "Their boxes should be searched.

I've just missed a couple of shirts, and my best toothbrush is
gone."

"And two boxes of my cartridges," she added, "to say nothing of
handkerchiefs, towels, sheets, and my best pair of slippers. But

what they want with your toothbrush is more than I can imagine.
They'll be stealing the billiard balls next."

"One did disappear a few weeks before you came," Sheldon laughed.
"We'll search the boxes this afternoon."

And a busy afternoon it was. Joan and Sheldon, both armed, went
through the barracks, house by house, the boss-boys assisting, and

half a dozen messengers, in relay, shouting along the line the
names of the boys wanted. Each boy brought the key to his

particular box, and was permitted to look on while the contents
were overhauled by the boss-boys.

A wealth of loot was recovered. There were fully a dozen cane-
knives--big hacking weapons with razor-edges, capable of

decapitating a man at a stroke. Towels, sheets, shirts, and
slippers, along with toothbrushes, wisp-brooms, soap, the missing

billiard ball, and all the lost and forgotten trifles of many
months, came to light. But most astonishing was the quantity of

ammunition-cartridges for Lee-Metfords, for Winchesters and
Marlins, for revolvers from thirty-two calibre to forty-five, shot-

gun cartridges, Joan's two boxes of thirty-eight, cartridges of
prodigious bore for the ancient Sniders of Malaita, flasks of black

powder, sticks of dynamite, yards of fuse, and boxes of detonators.
But the great find was in the house occupied by Gogoomy and five

Port Adams recruits. The fact that the boxes yielded nothing
excited Sheldon's suspicions, and he gave orders to dig up the

earthen floor. Wrapped in matting, well oiled, free from rust, and
brand new, two Winchesters were first unearthed. Sheldon did not

recognize them. They had not come from Berande; neither had the
forty flasks of black powder found under the corner-post of the

house; and while he could not be sure, he could remember no loss of
eight boxes of detonators. A big Colt's revolver he recognized as

Hughie Drummond's; while Joan identified a thirty-two Ivor and
Johnson as a loss reported by Matapuu the first week he landed at

Berande. The absence of any cartridges made Sheldon persist in the
digging up of the floor, and a fifty-pound flour tin was his

reward. With glowering eyes Gogoomy looked on while Sheldon took
from the tin a hundred rounds each for the two Winchesters and

fully as many rounds more of nondescript cartridges of all sorts
and makes and calibres.

The contraband and stolen property was piled in assorted heaps on
the back veranda of the bungalow. A few paces from the bottom of

the steps were grouped the forty-odd culprits, with behind them, in
solid array, the several hundred blacks of the plantation. At the

head of the steps Joan and Sheldon were seated, while on the steps
stood the gang-bosses. One by one the culprits were called up and

examined. Nothing definite could be extracted from them. They
lied transparently, but persistently, and when caught in one lie

explained it away with half a dozen others. One boy complacently
announced that he had found eleven sticks of dynamite on the beach.

Matapuu's revolver, found in the box of one Kapu, was explained
away by that boy as having been given to him by Lervumie.

Lervumie, called forth to testify, said he had got it from Noni;
Noni had got it from Sulefatoi; Sulefatoi from Choka; Choka from

Ngava; and Ngava completed the circle by stating that it had been
given to him by Kapu. Kapu, thus doublydamned, calmly gave full

details of how it had been given to him by Lervumie; and Lervumie,
with equal wealth of detail, told how he had received it from Noni;

and from Noni to Sulefatoi it went on around the circle again.
Divers articles were traced indubitably to the house-boys, each of

whom steadfastly proclaimed his own innocence and cast doubts on
his fellows. The boy with the billiard ball said that he had never

seen it in his life before, and hazarded the suggestion that it had
got into his box through some mysterious and occultly evil agency.

So far as he was concerned it might have dropped down from heaven
for all he knew how it got there. To the cooks and boats'-crews of

every vessel that had dropped anchor off Berande in the past
several years were ascribed the arrival of scores of the stolen

• endure [in´djuə] vt.忍耐，忍受；坚持 (初中英语单词)
• triumph [´traiəmf] n.胜利 vi.得胜，战胜 (初中英语单词)
• nicely [naisli] ad.恰好地；谨慎地 (初中英语单词)
• suffering [´sʌfəriŋ] n.痛苦；灾害 (初中英语单词)
• painting [´peintiŋ] n.绘画；(油)画；着色 (初中英语单词)
• conquer [´kɔŋkə] v.征服；克服；抑制 (初中英语单词)
• dismay [dis´mei] n.惊慌 vt.使惊慌 (初中英语单词)
• bother [´bɔðə] v.打扰 n.麻烦(事) (初中英语单词)
• anywhere [´eniweə] ad.无论何处；任何地方 (初中英语单词)
• belief [bi´li:f] n.相信；信仰，信条 (初中英语单词)
• awaken [ə´weikən] v.唤起，叫醒 (初中英语单词)
• firmly [´fə:mli] ad.坚固地，稳定地 (初中英语单词)
• discipline [´disiplin] n.纪律；训练 (初中英语单词)
• absolute [´æbsəlu:t] a.绝对的 n.绝对 (初中英语单词)
• wealth [welθ] n.财富，财产 (初中英语单词)
• capable [´keipəbəl] a.有能力；能干的 (初中英语单词)
• absence [´æbsəns] n.不在，缺席；缺乏 (初中英语单词)
• stolen [´stəulən] steal 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
• definite [´definit] a.确定的，明确的 (初中英语单词)
• circle [´sə:kəl] n.圆圈 v.环绕；盘旋 (初中英语单词)
• calmly [´kɑ:mli] ad.平静地；无风浪地 (初中英语单词)
• suggestion [sə´dʒestʃən] n.建议，提议；暗示 (初中英语单词)
• mysterious [mi´stiəriəs] a.神秘的；难以理解的 (初中英语单词)
• vessel [´vesəl] n.容器；船；脉管 (初中英语单词)
• anchor [´æŋkə] n.锚 v.抛锚 (初中英语单词)
• arrival [ə´raivəl] n.到达；到达的人(物) (初中英语单词)
• appeal [ə´pi:l] vi.&n.请求；呼吁；上诉 (高中英语单词)
• injustice [in´dʒʌstis] n.不公正，不公平 (高中英语单词)
• decided [di´saidid] a.明显的；决定的 (高中英语单词)
• concerned [kən´sə:nd] a.有关的；担心的 (高中英语单词)
• uncomfortable [ʌn´kʌmftəbəl] a.不舒服的，不自在的 (高中英语单词)
• positively [´pɔzətivli] ad.确实；断然；绝对 (高中英语单词)
• genuine [´dʒenjuin] a.真正的；真诚的 (高中英语单词)
• heartily [´hɑ:tili] ad.衷心地；亲切地 (高中英语单词)
• declaration [,deklə´reiʃən] n.宣布；宣言；申报 (高中英语单词)
• confident [´kɔnfidənt] a.有信心的，自信的 (高中英语单词)
• regime [rei´ʒi:m] n.政体；社会制度 (高中英语单词)
• astonishing [əs´tɔniʃiŋ] a.令人惊讶的 (高中英语单词)
• persist [pə´sist] vi.坚持；固执；持续 (高中英语单词)
• plantation [plæn´teiʃən] n.种植园；栽植；移民 (高中英语单词)
• testify [´testifai] v.证明；证实；表明 (高中英语单词)
• damned [dæmd] a.该死的 ad.非常，极 (高中英语单词)
• innocence [´inəsəns] n.无罪；天真 (高中英语单词)
• feminine [´feminin] a.女性的 (英语四级单词)
• warning [´wɔ:niŋ] n.警告；前兆 a.预告的 (英语四级单词)
• arisen [ə´rizn] arise的过去分词 (英语四级单词)
• coolly [´ku:li] ad.冷(静地)，沉着地 (英语四级单词)
• accidental [,æksi´dentl] a.偶然的；附属的 (英语四级单词)
• utterance [´ʌtərəns] n.发音；言辞；所说的话 (英语四级单词)
• demeanour [di´mi:nə] n.行为；举止；态度 (英语四级单词)
• devoted [di´vəutid] a.献身...的，忠实的 (英语四级单词)
• revolver [ri´vɔlvə] n.左轮手枪；旋转者 (英语四级单词)
• veranda [və´rændə] n.游廊；阳台 (英语四级单词)
• bungalow [´bʌŋgələu] n.(有凉台的)平房 (英语四级单词)
• sydney [´sidni] n.悉尼 (英语六级单词)
• hawaii [hɑ:´waii:] n.夏威夷(州) (英语六级单词)
• wayward [´weiwəd] a.任性的；不易控制的 (英语六级单词)
• undesirable [,ʌndi´zaiərəbəl] a.&n.不受欢迎的(人) (英语六级单词)
• recoil [ri´kɔil] vi.&n.退缩；弹回 (英语六级单词)
• unchanged [ʌn´tʃeindʒd] a.不变的；依然如故的 (英语六级单词)
• dynamite [´dainəmait] n.&vt.(用)炸药(爆破) (英语六级单词)
• doubly [´dʌbli] ad.加倍地，双重地 (英语六级单词)