Chapter 12

CHAPTER XII--MR. MORGAN AND MR. RAFF

Sheldon was back in the plantation superintending the building of a
bridge, when the schooner Malakula ran in close and dropped anchor.
Joan watched the taking in of sail and the swinging out of the boat
with a sailor's interest, and herself met the two men who came
ashore. While one of the house-boys ran to fetch Sheldon, she had
the visitors served with whisky and soda, and sat and talked with
them.

They seemed awkward and constrained in her presence, and she caught
first one and then the other looking at her with secret curiosity.
She felt that they were weighing her, appraising her, and for the
first time the anomalous position she occupied on Berande sank
sharply home to her. On the other hand, they puzzled her. They
were neither traders nor sailors of any type she had known. Nor
did they talk like gentlemen, despite the fact that there was
nothing offensive in their bearing and that the veneer of ordinary
social nicety was theirs. Undoubtedly, they were men of affairs--
business men of a sort; but what affairs should they have in the
Solomons, and what business on Berande? The elder one, Morgan, was
a huge man, bronzed and moustached, with a deep bass voice and an
almost guttural speech, and the other, Raff, was slight and
effeminate, with nervous hands and watery, washed-out gray eyes,
who spoke with a faint indefinable accent that was hauntingly
reminiscent of the Cockney, and that was yet not Cockney of any
brand she had ever encountered. Whatever they were, they were
self-made men, she concluded; and she felt the impulse to shudder
at thought of falling into their hands in a business way. There,
they would be merciless.

She watched Sheldon closely when he arrived, and divined that he
was not particularly delighted to see them. But see them he must,
and so pressing was the need that, after a little perfunctory
general conversation, he led the two men into the stuffy office.
Later in the afternoon, she asked Lalaperu where they had gone.

"My word," quoth Lalaperu; "plenty walk about, plenty look 'm.
Look 'm tree; look 'm ground belong tree; look 'm all fella bridge;
look 'm copra-house; look 'm grass-land; look 'm river; look 'm
whale-boat--my word, plenty big fella look 'm too much."

"What fella man them two fella?" she queried.

"Big fella marster along white man," was the extent of his
description.

But Joan decided that they were men of importance in the Solomons,
and that their examination of the plantation and of its accounts
was of sinister significance.

At dinner no word was dropped that gave a hint of their errand.
The conversation was on general topics; but Joan could not help
noticing the