nds more
of nondescript cartridges of all sorts and makes and calibres.

The contraband and stolen property was piled in assorted heaps on the
back veranda of the bungalow. A few paces from the bottom of the steps
were grouped the forty-odd culprits, with behind them, in solid array,
the several hundred blacks of the plantation. At the head of the steps
Joan and Sheldon were seated, while on the steps stood the gang-bosses.
One by one the culprits were called up and examined. Nothing definite
could be extracted from them. They lied transparently, but persistently,
and when caught in one lie explained it away with half a dozen others.
One boy complacently announced that he had found eleven sticks of
dynamite on the beach. Matapuu's revolver, found in the box of one Kapu,
was explained away by that boy as having been given to him by Lervumie.
Lervumie, called forth to testify, said he had got it from Noni; Noni had
got it from Sulefatoi; Sulefatoi from Choka; Choka from Ngava; and Ngava
completed the circle by stating that it had been given to him by Kapu.
Kapu, thus doubly damned, calmly gave full details of how it had been
given to him by Lervumie; and Lervumie, with equal wealth of detail, told
how he had received it from Noni; and from Noni to Sulefatoi it went on
around the circle again.

Divers articles were traced indubitably to the house-boys, each of whom
steadfastly proclaimed his own innocence and cast doubts on his fellows.
The boy with the billiard ball said that he had never seen it in his life
before, and hazarded the suggestion that it had got into his box through
some mysterious and occultly evil agency. So far as he was concerned it
might have dropped down from heaven for all he knew how it got there. To
the cooks and boats'-crews of every vessel that had dropped anchor off
Berande in the past several years were ascribed the arrival of scores of
the stolen articles and of the major portion of the ammunition. There
was no tracing the truth in any of it, though it was without doubt that
the unidentified weapons and unfamiliar cartridges had come ashore off
visiting craft.

"Look at it," Sheldon said to Joan. "We've been sleeping over a volcano.
They ought to be whipped--"

"No whip me," Gogoomy cried out from below. "Father belong me big fella
chief. Me whip, too much trouble along you, close up, my word."

"What name you fella Gogoomy!" Sheldon shouted. "I knock seven bells out
of you. H