Chapter 23

CHAPTER XXIII--A MESSAGE FROM THE BUSH

Never had runaways from Berande been more zealously hunted. The
deeds of Gogoomy and his fellows had been a bad example for the one
hundred and fifty new recruits. Murder had been planned, a gang-
boss had been killed, and the murderers had broken their contracts
by fleeing to the bush. Sheldon saw how imperative it was to teach
his new-caught cannibals that bad examples were disastrous things
to pattern after, and he urged Seelee on night and day, while with
the Tahitians he practically lived in the bush, leaving Joan in
charge of the plantation. To the north Boucher did good work,
twice turning the fugitives back when they attempted to gain the
coast.

One by one the boys were captured. In the first man-drive through
the mangrove swamp Seelee caught two. Circling around to the
north, a third was wounded in the thigh by Boucher, and this one,
dragging behind in the chase, was later gathered in by Seelee's
hunters. The three captives, heavily ironed, were exposed each day
in the compound, as good examples of what happened to bad examples,
all for the edification of the seven score and ten half-wild
Poonga-Poonga men. Then the Minerva, running past for Tulagi, was
signalled to send a boat, and the three prisoners were carried away
to prison to await trial.

Five were still at large, but escape was impossible. They could
not get down to the coast, nor dared they venture too far inland
for fear of the wild bushmen. Then one of the five came in
voluntarily and gave himself up, and Sheldon learned that Gogoomy
and two others were all that were at large. There should have been
a fourth, but according to the man who had given himself up, the
fourth man had been killed and eaten. It had been fear of a
similar fate that had driven him in. He was a Malu man, from
north-western Malaita, as likewise had been the one that was eaten.
Gogoomy's two other companions were from Port Adams. As for
himself, the black declared his preference for government trial and
punishment to being eaten by his companions in the bush.

"Close up Gogoomy kai-kai me," he said. "My word, me no like boy
kai-kai me."

Three days later Sheldon caught one of the boys, helpless from
swamp fever, and unable to fight or run away. On the same day
Seelee caught the second boy in similar condition. Gogoomy alone
remained at large; and, as the pursuit closed in on him, he
conquered his fear of the bushmen and headed straight in for the
mountainous backbone of the island. Sheldon with four Tahitians,
and Seelee with thirty of his hunters, followed Gogoomy's trail a
dozen miles into the open grass-lands, and then Seelee and his
people lost heart. He confessed that neither he