Chapter 21 - Page 2

dozen messengers, in relay, shouting along the line the
names of the boys wanted. Each boy brought the key to his
particular box, and was permitted to look on while the contents
were overhauled by the boss-boys.

A wealth of loot was recovered. There were fully a dozen cane-
knives--big hacking weapons with razor-edges, capable of
decapitating a man at a stroke. Towels, sheets, shirts, and
slippers, along with toothbrushes, wisp-brooms, soap, the missing
billiard ball, and all the lost and forgotten trifles of many
months, came to light. But most astonishing was the quantity of
ammunition-cartridges for Lee-Metfords, for Winchesters and
Marlins, for revolvers from thirty-two calibre to forty-five, shot-
gun cartridges, Joan's two boxes of thirty-eight, cartridges of
prodigious bore for the ancient Sniders of Malaita, flasks of black
powder, sticks of dynamite, yards of fuse, and boxes of detonators.
But the great find was in the house occupied by Gogoomy and five
Port Adams recruits. The fact that the boxes yielded nothing
excited Sheldon's suspicions, and he gave orders to dig up the
earthen floor. Wrapped in matting, well oiled, free from rust, and
brand new, two Winchesters were first unearthed. Sheldon did not
recognize them. They had not come from Berande; neither had the
forty flasks of black powder found under the corner-post of the
house; and while he could not be sure, he could remember no loss of
eight boxes of detonators. A big Colt's revolver he recognized as
Hughie Drummond's; while Joan identified a thirty-two Ivor and
Johnson as a loss reported by Matapuu the first week he landed at
Berande. The absence of any cartridges made Sheldon persist in the
digging up of the floor, and a fifty-pound flour tin was his
reward. With glowering eyes Gogoomy looked on while Sheldon took
from the tin a hundred rounds each for the two Winchesters and
fully as many rounds more of nondescript cartridges of all sorts
and makes and calibres.

The contraband and stolen property was piled in assorted heaps on
the back veranda of the bungalow. A few paces from the bottom of
the steps were grouped the forty-odd culprits, with behind them, in
solid array, the several hundred blacks of the plantation. At the
head of the steps Joan and Sheldon were seated, while on the steps
stood the gang-bosses. One by one the culprits were called up and
examined. Nothing definite could be extracted from them. They
lied transparently, but persistently, and when caught in one lie
explained it away with half a dozen others. One boy complacently
announced that he had found eleven sticks of dynamite on the beach.
Matapuu's revolver, found in the box of one Kapu, was explained
away by that boy as having been given to