, in the Solomons, where whites are few and blacks are many, and where
the whites do the ruling, such an offer to fight is the deadliest insult.
Blacks are not supposed to dare so highly as to offer to fight a white
man. At the best, all they can look for is to be beaten by the white
man.

A murmur of admiration at Bellin-Jama's bravery went up from the
listening blacks. But Bellin-Jama's voice was still ringing in the air,
and the murmuring was just beginning, when Sheldon cleared the rail,
leaping straight downward. From the top of the railing to the ground it
was fifteen feet, and Bellin-Jama was directly beneath. Sheldon's flying
body struck him and crushed him to earth. No blows were needed to be
struck. The black had been knocked helpless. Joan, startled by the
unexpected leap, saw Carin-Jama, The Silent, reach out and seize Sheldon
by the throat as he was half-way to his feet, while the five-score blacks
surged forward for the killing. Her revolver was out, and Carin-Jama let
go his grip, reeling backward with a bullet in his shoulder. In that
fleeting instant of action she had thought to shoot him in the arm,
which, at that short distance, might reasonably have been achieved. But
the wave of savages leaping forward had changed her shot to the shoulder.
It was a moment when not the slightest chance could be taken.

The instant his throat was released, Sheldon struck out with his fist,
and Carin-Jama joined his brother on the ground. The mutiny was quelled,
and five minutes more saw the brothers being carried to the hospital, and
the mutineers, marshalled by the gang-bosses, on the way to the fields.

When Sheldon came up on the veranda, he found Joan collapsed on the
steamer-chair and in tears. The sight unnerved him as the row just over
could not possibly have done. A woman in tears was to him an
embarrassing situation; and when that woman was Joan Lackland, from whom
he had grown to expect anything unexpected, he was really frightened. He
glanced down at her helplessly, and moistened his lips.

"I want to thank you," he began. "There isn't a doubt but what you saved
my life, and I must say--"

She abruptly removed her hands, showing a wrathful and tear-stained face.

"You brute! You coward!" she cried. "You have made me shoot a man, and
I never shot a man in my life before."

"It's only a flesh-wound, and he isn't going to die," Sheldon managed to
interpolate.

"What of that? I shot hi