in a pair of sandals several sizes too large for her feet, and
disappeared in rosy confusion.

"By Jove, those are my sandals," he thought to himself. "The girl hasn't
a thing to wear except what she landed on the beach in, and she certainly
landed in sea-boots."

CHAPTER V--SHE WOULD A PLANTER BE

Sheldon mended rapidly. The fever had burned out, and there was nothing
for him to do but gather strength. Joan had taken the cook in hand, and
for the first time, as Sheldon remarked, the chop at Berande was white
man's chop. With her own hands Joan prepared the sick man's food, and
between that and the cheer she brought him, he was able, after two days,
to totter feebly out upon the veranda. The situation struck him as
strange, and stranger still was the fact that it did not seem strange to
the girl at all. She had settled down and taken charge of the household
as a matter of course, as if he were her father, or brother, or as if she
were a man like himself.

"It is just too delightful for anything," she assured him. "It is like a
page out of some romance. Here I come along out of the sea and find a
sick man all alone with two hundred slaves--"

"Recruits," he corrected. "Contract labourers. They serve only three
years, and they are free agents when they enter upon their contracts."

"Yes, yes," she hurried on. "--A sick man alone with two hundred
recruits on a cannibal island--they are cannibals, aren't they? Or is it
all talk?"

"Talk!" he said, with a smile. "It's a trifle more than that. Most of
my boys are from the bush, and every bushman is a cannibal."

"But not after they become recruits? Surely, the boys you have here
wouldn't be guilty."

"They'd eat you if the chance afforded."

"Are you just saying so, on theory, or do you really know?" she asked.

"I know."

"Why? What makes you think so? Your own men here?"

"Yes, my own men here, the very house-boys, the cook that at the present
moment is making such delicious rolls, thanks to you. Not more than
three months ago eleven of them sneaked a whale-boat and ran for Malaita.
Nine of them belonged to Malaita. Two were bushmen from San Cristoval.
They were fools--the two from San Cristoval, I mean; so would any two
Malaita men be who trusted themselves in a boat with nine from San
Cristoval."

"Yes?" she asked eagerly. "Then what happened?"

"The nine Malaita men ate the two from San Cristoval, all except the
heads, which