«And thinking we was going home with our recruits,» Sparrowhawk slipped in. «Lord lumme, that Miss Lackland ain't never satisfied. 'I'll take 'em on the Martha,' says she, 'and you can go back and fill up again.'»
«But I told her it couldn't be done,» Munster went on. «I told her the Martha hadn't a license for recruiting. 'Oh,' she said, 'it can't be done, eh?' and she stood and thought a few minutes.»
«And I'd seen her think before,» cried Sparrowhawk, «and I knew at wunst that the thing was as good as done.»
Munster lighted his cigarette and resumed.
«'You see that spit,' she says to me, 'with the little ripple breaking around it? There's a current sets right across it and on it. And you see them bafflin' little cat's-paws? It's good weather and a falling tide. You just start to beat out, the two of you, and all you have to do is miss stays in the same baffling puff and the current will set you nicely aground.'»
«'That little wash of sea won't more than start a sheet or two of copper,' says she, when Munster kicked,» Sparrowhawk explained. «Oh, she's no green un, that girl.»
«'Then I'll rescue your recruits and sail away-simple, ain't it?' says she,» Munster continued. «'You hang up one tide,' says she; 'the next is the big high water. Then you kedge off and go after more recruits. There's no law against recruiting when you're empty.' 'But there is against starving 'em,' I said; 'you know yourself there ain't any kai-kai to speak of aboard of us, and there ain't a crumb on the Martha.'»
«We'd all been pretty well on native kai-kai, as it was,» said Sparrowhawk.
«'Don't let the kai-kai worry you, Captain Munster,' says she; 'if I can find grub for eighty-four mouths on the Martha, the two of you can do as much by your two vessels. Now go ahead and get aground before a steady breeze comes up and spoils the manoeuvre. I'll send my boats the moment you strike. And now, good-day, gentlemen.'»
«And we went and did it,» Sparrowhawk said solemnly, and then emitted a series of chuckling noises. «We laid over, starboard tack, and I pinched the Emily against the spit. 'Go about,' Captain Munster yells at me; 'go about, or you'll have me aground!' He yelled other things, much worse. But I didn't mind. I missed stays, pretty as you please, and the Flibberty drifted down on him and fouled him, and we went ashore together in as nice a mess as you ever want to see. Miss Lackland transferred the recruits, and the trick was done.»
«But where was she during the nor'wester?» Sheldon asked.
«At Langa-Langa. Ran up there as it was coming on, and laid there the whole week and traded for grub with the niggers. When we got to Tulagi, there she was waiting for us and scrapping with Burnett. I tell you, Mr. Sheldon, she's a wonder, that girl, a perfect wonder.»
Munster refilled his glass, and while Sheldon glanced across at Joan's house, anxious for her coming, Sparrowhawk took up the tale.
«Gritty! She's the grittiest thing, man or woman, that ever blew into the Solomons. You should have seen Poonga-Poonga the morning we arrived-Sniders popping on the beach and in the mangroves, war– drums booming in the bush, and signal-smokes raising everywhere. 'It's all up,' says Captain Munster.»
«Yes, that's what I said,» declared that mariner.
«Of course it was all up. You could see it with half an eye and hear it with one ear.»
«'Up your granny,' she says to him,» Sparrowhawk went on. «'Why, we haven't arrived yet, much less got started. Wait till the anchor's down before you get afraid.'»
«That's what she said to me,» Munster proclaimed. «And of course it made me mad so that I didn't care what happened. We tried to send a boat ashore for a pow-wow, but it was fired upon. And every once and a while some nigger'd take a long shot at us out of the mangroves.»
«They was only a quarter of a mile off,» Sparrowhawk explained, «and it was damned nasty. 'Don't shoot unless they try to board,' was Miss Lackland's orders; but the dirty niggers wouldn't board. They just lay off in the bush and plugged away. That night we held a council of war in the Flibberty's cabin. 'What we want,' says Miss Lackland, 'is a hostage.'»
«'That's what they do in books,' I said, thinking to laugh her away from her folly,» Munster interrupted. «'True,' says she, 'and have you never seen the books come true?' I shook my head. 'Then you're not too old to learn,' says she. 'I'll tell you one thing right now,' says I, 'and that is I'll be blowed if you catch me ashore in the night-time stealing niggers in a place like this.'»
«You didn't say blowed,» Sparrowhawk corrected. «You said you'd be damned.»
«That's what I did, and I meant it, too.»
«'Nobody asked you to go ashore,' says she, quick as lightning,» Sparrowhawk grinned. «And she said more. She said, 'And if I catch you going ashore without orders there'll be trouble– understand, Captain Munster?'»
«Who in hell's telling this, you or me?» the skipper demanded wrathfully.
«Well, she did, didn't she?» insisted the mate.
«Yes, she did, if you want to make so sure of it. And while you're about it, you might as well repeat what she said to you when you said you wouldn't recruit on the Poonga-Poonga coast for twice your screw.»
Sparrowhawk's sun-reddened face flamed redder, though he tried to pass the situation off by divers laughings and chucklings and face– twistings.
«Go on, go on,» Sheldon urged; and Munster resumed the narrative.
«'What we need,' says she, 'is the strong hand. It's the only way to handle them; and we've got to take hold firm right at the beginning. I'm going ashore to-night to fetch Kina-Kina himself on board, and I'm not asking who's game to go for I've got every man's work arranged with me for him. I'm taking my sailors with me, and one white man.' 'Of course, I'm that white man,' I said; for by that time I was mad enough to go to hell and back again. 'Of course you're not,' says she. 'You'll have charge of the covering boat. Curtis stands by the landing boat. Fowler goes with me. Brahms takes charge of the Flibberty, and Sparrowhawk of the Emily. And we start at one o'clock.'
«My word, it was a tough job lying there in the covering boat. I never thought doing nothing could be such hard work. We stopped about fifty fathoms off, and watched the other boat go in. It was so dark under the mangroves we couldn't see a thing of it. D'ye know that little, monkey-looking nigger, Sheldon, on the Flibberty-
–the cook, I mean? Well, he was cabin-boy twenty years ago on the Scottish Chiefs, and after she was cut off he was a slave there at Poonga-Poonga. And Miss Lackland had discovered the fact. So he was the guide. She gave him half a case of tobacco for that night's work-«
«And scared him fit to die before she could get him to come along,» Sparrowhawk observed.
«Well, I never saw anything so black as the mangroves. I stared at them till my eyes were ready to burst. And then I'd look at the stars, and listen to the surf sighing along the reef. And there was a dog that barked. Remember that dog, Sparrowhawk? The brute nearly gave me heart-failure when he first began. After a while he stopped-wasn't barking at the landing party at all; and then the silence was harder than ever, and the mangroves grew blacker, and it was all I could do to keep from calling out to Curtis in there in the landing boat, just to make sure that I wasn't the only white man left alive.
«Of course there was a row. It had to come, and I knew it; but it startled me just the same. I never heard such screeching and yelling in my life. The niggers must have just dived for the bush without looking to see what was up, while her Tahitians let loose, shooting in the air and yelling to hurry 'em on. And then, just as sudden, came the silence again-all except for some small kiddie that had got dropped in the stampede and that kept crying in the bush for its mother.
