k grinned. "And she said more. She said, 'And if I catch you
going ashore without orders there'll be trouble--understand, Captain
Munster?'"

"Who in hell's telling this, you or me?" the skipper demanded wrathfully.

"Well, she did, didn't she?" insisted the mate.

"Yes, she did, if you want to make so sure of it. And while you're about
it, you might as well repeat what she said to you when you said you
wouldn't recruit on the Poonga-Poonga coast for twice your screw."

Sparrowhawk's sun-reddened face flamed redder, though he tried to pass
the situation off by divers laughings and chucklings and face-twistings.

"Go on, go on," Sheldon urged; and Munster resumed the narrative.

"'What we need,' says she, 'is the strong hand. It's the only way to
handle them; and we've got to take hold firm right at the beginning. I'm
going ashore to-night to fetch Kina-Kina himself on board, and I'm not
asking who's game to go for I've got every man's work arranged with me
for him. I'm taking my sailors with me, and one white man.' 'Of course,
I'm that white man,' I said; for by that time I was mad enough to go to
hell and back again. 'Of course you're not,' says she. 'You'll have
charge of the covering boat. Curtis stands by the landing boat. Fowler
goes with me. Brahms takes charge of the _Flibberty_, and Sparrowhawk of
the _Emily_. And we start at one o'clock.'

"My word, it was a tough job lying there in the covering boat. I never
thought doing nothing could be such hard work. We stopped about fifty
fathoms off, and watched the other boat go in. It was so dark under the
mangroves we couldn't see a thing of it. D'ye know that little, monkey-
looking nigger, Sheldon, on the _Flibberty_--the cook, I mean? Well, he
was cabin-boy twenty years ago on the _Scottish Chiefs_, and after she
was cut off he was a slave there at Poonga-Poonga. And Miss Lackland had
discovered the fact. So he was the guide. She gave him half a case of
tobacco for that night's work--"

"And scared him fit to die before she could get him to come along,"
Sparrowhawk observed.

"Well, I never saw anything so black as the mangroves. I stared at them
till my eyes were ready to burst. And then I'd look at the stars, and
listen to the surf sighing along the reef. And there was a dog that
barked. Remember that dog, Sparrowhawk? The brute nearly gave me heart-
failure when he first began. After a while he stopped--wasn't barking at
the l