hours from one
direction or another. The land-breezes at night alone proved regular,
and it was at night that the occasional cutters and ketches slipped by,
too eager to take advantage of the light winds to drop anchor for an
hour.

Then came the long-expected nor'wester. For eight days it raged, lulling
at times to short durations of calm, then shifting a point or two and
raging with renewed violence. Sheldon kept a precautionary eye on the
buildings, while the Balesuna, in flood, so savagely attacked the high
bank Joan had warned him about, that he told off all the gangs to battle
with the river.

It was in the good weather that followed, that he left the blacks at
work, one morning, and with a shot-gun across his pommel rode off after
pigeons. Two hours later, one of the house-boys, breathless and
scratched ran him down with the news that the _Martha_, the _Flibberty-
Gibbet_, and the _Emily_ were heading in for the anchorage.

Coming into the compound from the rear, Sheldon could see nothing until
he rode around the corner of the bungalow. Then he saw everything at
once--first, a glimpse at the sea, where the _Martha_ floated huge
alongside the cutter and the ketch which had rescued her; and, next, the
ground in front of the veranda steps, where a great crowd of fresh-caught
cannibals stood at attention. From the fact that each was attired in a
new, snow-white lava-lava, Sheldon knew that they were recruits. Part
way up the steps, one of them was just backing down into the crowd, while
another, called out by name, was coming up. It was Joan's voice that had
called him, and Sheldon reined in his horse and watched. She sat at the
head of the steps, behind a table, between Munster and his white mate,
the three of them checking long lists, Joan asking the questions and
writing the answers in the big, red-covered, Berande labour-journal.

"What name?" she demanded of the black man on the steps.

"Tagari," came the answer, accompanied by a grin and a rolling of curious
eyes; for it was the first white-man's house the black had ever seen.

"What place b'long you?"

"Bangoora."

No one had noticed Sheldon, and he continued to sit his horse and watch.
There was a discrepancy between the answer and the record in the
recruiting books, and a consequent discussion, until Munster solved the
difficulty.

"Bangoora?" he said. "That's the little beach at the head of the bay out
of Latta. He's down as a Latta-ma