ontinued to curse the Solomons with oaths culled from four
languages.

Next morning, visible from the masthead of the _Wonder_, the bush
was alive with signal-smokes. From promontory to promontory, and back
through the solid jungle, the smoke-pillars curled and puffed and
talked. Remote villages on the higher peaks, beyond the farthest raids
McTavish had ever driven, joined in the troubled conversation. From
across the river persisted a bedlam of conches; while from everywhere,
drifting for miles along the quiet air, came the deep, booming
reverberations of the great war-drums--huge tree trunks, hollowed by
fire and carved with tools of stone and shell. "You're all right as long
as you stay close," Grief told his manager. "I've got to get along
to Guvutu. They won't come out in the open and attack you. Keep the
work-gangs close. Stop the clearing till this blows over. They'll get
any detached gangs you send out. And, whatever you do, don't be fooled
into going into the bush after Koho. If you do, he'll get you. All
you've got to do is wait for McTavish. I'll send him up with a bunch of
his Malaita bush-men. He's the only man who can go inside. Also, until
he comes, I'll leave Denby with you. You don't mind, do you, Mr. Denby?
I'll send McTavish up with the _Wanda_, and you can go back on her and
rejoin the _Wonder_. Captain Ward can manage without you for a trip."

"It was just what I was going to volunteer," Denby answered. "I never
dreamed all this muss would be kicked up over a joke. You see, in a way
I consider myself responsible for it."

"So am I responsible," Wallenstein broke in.

"But I started it," the supercargo urged.

"Maybe you did, but I carried it along."

"And Koho finished it," Grief said.

"At any rate, I, too, shall remain," said the German.

"I thought you were coming to Guvutu with me," Grief protested.

"I was. But this is my jurisdiction, partly, and I have made a fool of
myself in it completely. I shall remain and help get things straight
again."

At Guvutu, Grief sent full instructions to McTavish by a recruiting
ketch which was just starting for Malaita. Captain Ward sailed in the
_Wonder_ for the Santa Cruz Islands; and Grief, borrowing a whaleboat
and a crew of black prisoners from the British Resident, crossed the
channel to Guadalcanar, to examine the grass lands back of Penduffryn.

Three weeks later, with a free sheet and a lusty breeze, he threaded the
coral patches and sur