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. Their heavy, muscular legs advertised that they
were bushmen. Each claimed long experience in bush-fighting, most of
them showed scars of bullet or spear-thrust in proof, and all were wild
for a chance to break the humdrum monotony of plantation labour by going
on a killing expedition. Killing was their natural vocation, not wood-
cutting; and while they would not have ventured the Guadalcanar bush
alone, with a white man like Sheldon behind them, and a white Mary such
as they knew Joan to be, they could expect a safe and delightful time.
Besides, the great master had told them that the eight gigantic Tahitians
were going along.
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. On
the chest of another hung a huge disc of polished fossil clam-shell.
"Plenty strong fella fight," Sheldon warned them in conclusion.
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