ged up the smooth water to Guvutu anchorage. The
harbour was deserted, save for a small ketch which lay close in to the
shore reef. Grief recognized it as the _Wanda_. She had evidently just
got in by the Tulagi Passage, for her black crew was still at work
furling the sails. As he rounded alongside, McTavish himself extended a
hand to help him over the rail.

"What's the matter?" Grief asked. "Haven't you started yet?"

McTavish nodded. "And got back. Everything's all right on board."

"How's New Gibbon?"

"All there, the last I saw of it, barrin' a few inconsequential frills
that a good eye could make out lacking from the landscape."

He was a cold flame of a man, small as Koho, and as dried up, with a
mahogany complexion and small, expressionless blue eyes that were more
like gimlet-points than the eyes of a Scotchman. Without fear, without
enthusiasm, impervious to disease and climate and sentiment, he was lean
and bitter and deadly as a snake. That his present sour look boded ill
news, Grief was well aware.

"Spit it out!" he said. "What's happened?"

"'Tis a thing severely to be condemned, a damned shame, this joking with
heathen niggers," was the reply. "Also, 'tis very expensive. Come below,
Mr. Grief. You'll be better for the information with a long glass in
your hand. After you."

"How did you settle things?" his employer demanded as soon as they were
seated in the cabin.

The little Scotchman shook his head. "There was nothing to settle. It
all depends how you look at it. The other way would be to say it was
settled, entirely settled, mind you, before I got there."

"But the plantation, man? The plantation?"

"No plantation. All the years of our work have gone for naught. 'Tis
back where we started, where the missionaries started, where the Germans
started--and where they finished. Not a stone stands on another at the
landing pier. The houses are black ashes. Every tree is hacked down, and
the wild pigs are rooting out the yams and sweet potatoes. Those boys
from New Georgia, a fine bunch they were, five score of them, and they
cost you a pretty penny. Not one is left to tell the tale."

He paused and began fumbling in a large locker under the
companion-steps.

"But Worth? And Denby? And Wallenstein?"

"That's what I'm telling you. Take a look."

McTavish dragged out a sack made of rice matting and emptied its
contents on the floor. David Grief pulled himself together with a jerk,
for he fo