“I think I’ll have to abandon Ugi,” Sheldon remarked.
“It’s the second trader you’ve lost there in a year,” Young concurred. “To make it safe there ought to be two white men at least. Those Malaita canoes are always raiding down that way, and you know what that Port Adams lot is. I’ve got a dog for you. Tommy Jones sent it up from Neal Island. He said he’d promised it to you. It’s a first-class nigger-chaser. Hadn’t been on board two minutes when he had my whole boat’s-crew in the rigging. Tommy calls him Satan.”
“I’ve wondered several times why you had no dogs here,” Joan said.
“The trouble is to keep them. They’re always eaten by the crocodiles.”
“Jack Hanley was killed at Marovo Lagoon two months ago,” Young announced in his mild voice. “The news just came down on the Apostle.”
“Where is Marovo Lagoon?” Joan asked.
“New Georgia, a couple of hundred miles to the westward,” Sheldon answered. “Bougainville lies just beyond.”
“His own house-boys did it,” Young went on; “but they were put up to it by the Marovo natives. His Santa Cruz boat’s-crew escaped in the whale-boat to Choiseul, and Mather, in the Lily, sailed over to Marovo. He burned a village, and got Hanley’s head back. He found it in one of the houses, where the niggers had it drying. And that’s all the news I’ve got, except that there’s a lot of new Lee-Enfields loose on the eastern end of Ysabel. Nobody knows how the natives got them. The government ought to investigate. And—oh yes, a war vessel’s in the group, the Cambrian. She burned three villages at Bina—on account of the Minota, you know—and shelled the bush. Then she went to Sio to straighten out things there.”
The conversation became general, and just before Young left to go on board Joan asked,—
“How can you manage all alone, Mr. Young?”