But he held his ground and waited the dog.
“He is the Fearless One—that is what his name means,” Joan explained to Sheldon.
The Tahitian watched Satan coolly, and when that sanguine-mouthed creature lifted into the air in the final leap, the man’s hand shot out. It was a fair grip on the lower jaw, and Satan described a half circle and was flung to the rear, turning over in the air and falling heavily on his back. Three times he leaped, and three times that grip on his jaw flung him to defeat. Then he contented himself with trotting at Matauare’s heels, eyeing him and sniffing him suspiciously.
“It’s all right, Satan; it’s all right,” Sheldon assured him. “That good fella belong along me.”
But Satan dogged the Tahitian’s movements for a full hour before he made up his mind that the man was an appurtenance of the place. Then he turned his attention to the three house-boys, cornering Ornfiri in the kitchen and rushing him against the hot stove, stripping the lava-lava from Lalaperu when that excited youth climbed a veranda-post, and following Viaburi on top the billiard-table, where the battle raged until Joan managed a rescue.
CHAPTER IX—AS BETWEEN A MAN AND A WOMAN
It was Satan’s inexhaustible energy and good spirits that most impressed them. His teeth seemed perpetually to ache with desire, and in lieu of black legs he husked the cocoanuts that fell from the trees in the compound, kept the enclosure clear of intruding hens, and made a hostile acquaintance with every boss-boy who came to report. He was unable to forget the torment of his puppyhood, wherein everlasting hatred of the black had been woven into the fibres of consciousness; and such a terror did he make himself that Sheldon was forced to shut him up in the living room when, for any reason, strange natives were permitted in the compound. This always hurt Satan’s feelings and fanned his wrath, so that even the house-boys had to watch out for him when he was first released.
Christian Young sailed away in the Minerva, carrying an invitation (that would be delivered nobody knew when) to Tommy Jones to drop in at Berande the next time he was passing.
“What are your plans when you get to Sydney?” Sheldon asked, that night, at dinner.
“First I’ve heard that I’m going to Sydney,” Joan retorted. “I suppose you’ve received information, by bush-telegraph, that that third assistant understrapper and ex-sailorman at Tulagi is going to deport me as an undesirable immigrant.”