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In another year the time will be up for most of the original gang. You see, they were recruited during the first year of Berande, and their contracts expire on different months. Naturally, they have contaminated the new boys to a certain extent; but that can soon be remedied, and then Berande will be a respectable plantation." Joan nodded but remained silent.
This was a most necessary precaution, for the blacks were in a funk, and a whale-boat left lying on the beach in the evening meant a loss of twenty blacks by morning. Since the blacks were worth thirty dollars apiece, or less, according to how much of their time had been worked out, Berande plantation could ill afford the loss.
The scattered paths of the different boys, where they broke back after the disastrous attempt to rush the Tahitian, soon led together. They traced it to the Berande, which the runaways had crossed with the clear intention of burying themselves in the huge mangrove swamp that lay beyond. "There is no use our going any farther," Sheldon said.
Then he remembered the accounts of Berande, and the cropper that was coming, and scowled. He became aware that she was speaking. "I beg pardon," he said. "What's that you were saying?" "You weren't listening to a word I knew it," she chided.
"No, they're good business men, that is all. As they told me, a thing is worth no more than one is willing to pay or to receive." "And how much do you need to carry on Berande for three years?" Joan hurried on. "Two hundred boys at six pounds a year means thirty-six hundred pounds that's the main item." "My, how cheap labour does mount up!
He clapped his hands, and Lalaperu came running. "Here, you!" he ordered; "go along barracks, bring 'm black fella Mary, plenty too much, altogether." A few minutes later the dozen black women of Berande were ranged before him. He looked them over critically, finally selecting one that was young, comely as such creatures went, and whose body bore no signs of skin-disease.
In full health, the strained situation would have been serious enough; but as it was, himself growing helpless, something had to be done. The blacks were getting more sullen and defiant, and the appearance of the men the previous night on his veranda one of the gravest of offences on Berande was ominous.
"My word," she went on. "One big fella talk. Sun he go down talk-talk; sun he come up talk-talk; all the time talk-talk. What name that fella talk-talk? "Oh, nothing much." He shrugged his shoulders. "They were trying to buy Berande, that was all." She looked at him challengingly. "It must have been more than that. It was you who wanted to sell."
They were all there, nine of them, white men's heads, the faces of which he had been familiar with when their owners had camped in Berande compound and set up the poling-boats. Binu Charley, hugely interested, lent a hand, turning the heads around for identification, noting the hatchet-strokes, and remarking the distorted expressions.
He shrugged his shoulders in token, not of consent, but of surrender, knowing the uselessness of attempting to argue the question with her, and consoling himself with the reflection that heaven alone knew what adventures she was liable to engage in if left alone on Berande for a week.
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