Chapter 18 - Page 2

was just backing down into the crowd, while another, called out by
name, was coming up. It was Joan's voice that had called him, and
Sheldon reined in his horse and watched. She sat at the head of
the steps, behind a table, between Munster and his white mate, the
three of them checking long lists, Joan asking the questions and
writing the answers in the big, red-covered, Berande labour-
journal.

"What name?" she demanded of the black man on the steps.

"Tagari," came the answer, accompanied by a grin and a rolling of
curious eyes; for it was the first white-man's house the black had
ever seen.

"What place b'long you?"

"Bangoora."

No one had noticed Sheldon, and he continued to sit his horse and
watch. There was a discrepancy between the answer and the record
in the recruiting books, and a consequent discussion, until Munster
solved the difficulty.

"Bangoora?" he said. "That's the little beach at the head of the
bay out of Latta. He's down as a Latta-man--see, there it is,
'Tagari, Latta.'"

"What place you go you finish along white marster?" Joan asked.

"Bangoora," the man replied; and Joan wrote it down.

"Ogu!" Joan called.

The black stepped down, and another mounted to take his place. But
Tagari, just before he reached the bottom step, caught sight of
Sheldon. It was the first horse the fellow had ever seen, and he
let out a frightened screech and dashed madly up the steps. At the
same moment the great mass of blacks surged away panic-stricken
from Sheldon's vicinity. The grinning house-boys shouted
encouragement and explanation, and the stampede was checked, the
new-caught head-hunters huddling closely together and staring
dubiously at the fearful monster.

"Hello!" Joan called out. "What do you mean by frightening all my
boys? Come on up."

"What do you think of them?" she asked, when they had shaken hands.
"And what do you think of her?"--with a wave of the hand toward the
Martha. "I thought you'd deserted the plantation, and that I might
as well go ahead and get the men into barracks. Aren't they
beauties? Do you see that one with the split nose? He's the only
man who doesn't hail from the Poonga-Poonga coast; and they said
the Poonga-Poonga natives wouldn't recruit. Just look at them and
congratulate me. There are no kiddies and half-grown youths among
them. They're men, every last one of them. I have such a long
story I don't know where to begin, and I won't begin anyway till
we're through with this and until you have told me that you are not
angry with me."

"Ogu--what place b'long you?" she went on with her catechism.

But Ogu was a bushman, lacking knowledge of the almost universal