s g-get f-fever when there's any excitement. W-w-wh-what
are you going to do?"

"Gather up the guns first of all."

Under Sheldon's direction the house-boys and gang-bosses collected the
scattered arms and piled them in a heap on the veranda. The modern
rifles, stolen from Lunga, Sheldon set aside; the Sniders he smashed into
fragments; the pile of spears, clubs, and tomahawks he presented to Joan.

"A really unique addition to your collection," he smiled; "picked up
right on the battlefield."

Down on the beach he built a bonfire out of the contents of the canoes,
his blacks smashing, breaking, and looting everything they laid hands on.
The canoes themselves, splintered and broken, filled with sand and coral-
boulders, were towed out to ten fathoms of water and sunk.

"Ten fathoms will be deep enough for them to work in," Sheldon said, as
they walked back to the compound.

Here a Saturnalia had broken loose. The war-songs and dances were more
unrestrained, and, from abuse, the plantation blacks had turned to
pelting their helpless foes with pieces of wood, handfuls of pebbles, and
chunks of coral-rock. And the seventy-five lusty cannibals clung
stoically to their tree-perches, enduring the rain of missiles and
snarling down promises of vengeance.

"There'll be wars for forty years on Malaita on account of this," Sheldon
laughed. "But I always fancy old Telepasse will never again attempt to
rush a plantation."

"Eh, you old scoundrel," he added, turning to the old chief, who sat
gibbering in impotent rage at the foot of the steps. "Now head belong
you bang 'm too. Come on, Miss Lackland, bang 'm just once. It will be
the crowning indignity."

"Ugh, he's too dirty. I'd rather give him a bath. Here, you, Adamu
Adam, give this devil-devil a wash. Soap and water! Fill that wash-tub.
Ornfiri, run and fetch 'm scrub-brush."

The Tahitians, back from their fishing and grinning at the bedlam of the
compound, entered into the joke.

"_Tambo_! _Tambo_!" shrieked the cannibals from the trees, appalled at
so awful a desecration, as they saw their chief tumbled into the tub and
the sacred dirt rubbed and soused from his body.

Joan, who had gone into the bungalow, tossed down a strip of white
calico, in which old Telepasse was promptly wrapped, and he stood forth,
resplendent and purified, withal he still spat and strangled from the
soap-suds with which Noa Noah had gargled his throat.

The house-boys we