I'm going to bed. Send
Noa Noah and Viaburi to me. Tell Ornfiri to make hot water. I'll be out
of my head in fifteen minutes. But I'll be all right by evening. Short
and sharp is the way it takes me. Too bad to lose the shooting. Thank
you, I'm all right."
Sheldon obeyed her instructions, rushed hot-water bottles along to her,
and then sat on the veranda vainly trying to interest himself in a two-
months-old file of Sydney newspapers. He kept glancing up and across the
compound to the grass house. Yes, he decided, the contention of every
white man in the islands was right; the Solomons was no place for a
woman.
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.
"What name, you?" he demanded. "Sangui?"
"Me Mahua," was the answer.
"All right, you fella Mahua. You finish cook along boys. You stop along
white Mary. All the time you stop along. You savvee?"
"Me savvee," she grunted, and obeyed his gesture to go to the grass house
immediately.
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