e 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,"
Sparrowhaw