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How did she happen to buy it?" "First, the schooner Martha," the skipper answered, checking his replies off on his fingers. "Second, the Martha is on the outside reef at Poonga-Poonga, looted clean of everything portable, and ready to go to pieces with the first bit of lively sea. And third, Miss Lackland bought her at auction.
All the time, while the tale of happening at Poonga-Poonga had been going on, he had pictured her as the woman he had always known, clad roughly, skirt made out of window-curtain stuff, an undersized man's shirt for a blouse, straw sandals for foot covering, with the Stetson hat and the eternal revolver completing her costume. The ready-made clothes from Sydney had transformed her.
No, his pride would never permit him to start for Poonga-Poonga, though his heart whispered that nothing could be more welcome than a message from her asking him to come and lend a hand. Her very words "lend a hand"; and in his fancy, he could see and hear her saying them. There was much in her wilful conduct that caused him to wince in the heart of him.
She paused, and with heightened colour and sparkling eyes gazed seaward at the schooner. "My! but she is a witch! Look at her eating up the water, and there's no wind to speak of. She's not got ordinary white metal either. It's man- of-war copper, every inch of it. I had them polish it with cocoanut husks when she was careened at Poonga-Poonga.
The Poonga-Poonga volunteers stood with glistening eyes and grinning faces, naked save for their loin-cloths, and barbarously ornamented. Each wore a flat, turtle-shell ring suspended through his nose, and each carried a clay pipe in an ear-hole or thrust inside a beaded biceps armlet. A pair of magnificent boar tusks graced the chest of one.
These alone remained, the wounded having been carried off. The Tahitians and Poonga-Poonga men had warmed up and were for pursuit, but this Sheldon would not permit.
She's certainly a hustler, that little girl of yours." "She is my partner," Sheldon corrected. "Well, she's a good one, that's all, and a cool one. My word! a white woman on Malaita, and at Poonga-Poonga of all places! Oh, I forgot to tell you she palavered Burnett into lending her eight rifles for her men, and three cases of dynamite.
Sheldon sent for a gang-boss and told him to bring ten of the biggest, best, and strongest Poonga-Poonga men. "Not salt-water boys," Sheldon cautioned, "but bush boys leg belong him strong fella leg. Boy no savvee musket, no good. You bring 'm boy shoot musket strong fella." They were ten picked men that filed up on the veranda and stood in the glare of the lanterns.
"On the way she told me about the Martha, and how she'd bought her, and was going to float her. She said she'd chartered the Emily, and was sailing as soon as I could get the Flibberty underway. It struck me that her gammon was reasonable enough, and I agreed to pull out for Berande right O, and get your orders to go along to Poonga-Poonga.
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.
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