ment, would grow gentle.

One evening a terrific uproar arose in the barracks, and Sheldon, aided
by Joan's sailors, succeeded in rescuing two women whom the blacks were
beating to death. To save them from the vengeance of the blacks, they
were guarded in the cook-house for the night. They were the two women
who did the cooking for the labourers, and their offence had consisted of
one of them taking a bath in the big cauldron in which the potatoes were
boiled. The blacks were not outraged from the standpoint of cleanliness;
they often took baths in the cauldrons themselves. The trouble lay in
that the bather had been a low, degraded, wretched female; for to the
Solomon Islander all females are low, degraded, and wretched.

Next morning, Joan and Sheldon, at breakfast, were aroused by a swelling
murmur of angry voices. The first rule of Berande had been broken. The
compound had been entered without permission or command, and all the two
hundred labourers, with the exception of the boss-boys, were guilty of
the offence. They crowded up, threatening and shouting, close under the
front veranda. Sheldon leaned over the veranda railing, looking down
upon them, while Joan stood slightly back. When the uproar was stilled,
two brothers stood forth. They were large men, splendidly muscled, and
with faces unusually ferocious, even for Solomon Islanders. One was
Carin-Jama, otherwise The Silent; and the other was Bellin-Jama, The
Boaster. Both had served on the Queensland plantations in the old days,
and they were known as evil characters wherever white men met and gammed.

"We fella boy we want 'm them dam two black fella Mary," said
Bellin-Jama.

"What you do along black fella Mary?" Sheldon asked.

"Kill 'm," said Bellin-Jama.

"What name you fella boy talk along me?" Sheldon demanded, with a show of
rising anger. "Big bell he ring. You no belong along here. You belong
along field. Bime by, big fella bell he ring, you stop along _kai-kai_,
you come talk along me about two fella Mary. Now all you boy get along
out of here."

The gang waited to see what Bellin-Jama would do, and Bellin-Jama stood
still.

"Me no go," he said.

"You watch out, Bellin-Jama," Sheldon said sharply, "or I send you along
Tulagi one big fella lashing. My word, you catch 'm strong fella."

Bellin-Jama glared up belligerently.

"You want 'm fight," he said, putting up his fists in approved, returned-
Queenslander style.

Now