We've been slowly getting in new labour. That
is why we bought the _Jessie_. We wanted to select our own labour. 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. She was too occupied in glimpsing the
vision of the one lone white man as she had first seen him, helpless from
fever, a collapsed wraith in a steamer-chair, who, up to the last heart-
beat, by some strange alchemy of race, was pledged to mastery.
"It is a pity," she said. "But the white man has to rule, I suppose."
"I don't like it," Sheldon assured her. "To save my life I can't imagine
how I ever came here. But here I am, and I can't run away."
"Blind destiny of race," she said, faintly smiling. "We whites have been
land robbers and sea robbers from remotest time. It is in our blood, I
guess, and we can't get away from it."
"I never thought about it so abstractly," he confessed. "I've been too
busy puzzling over why I came here."
CHAPTER VIII--LOCAL COLOUR
At sunset a small ketch fanned in to anchorage, and a little later the
skipper came ashore.
Pages:
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93