Chapter 23 - Page 2

nor any of his
tribe had ever ventured so far inland before, and he narrated, for
Sheldon's benefit, most horrible tales of the horrible bushmen. In
the old days, he said, they had crossed the grasslands and attacked
the salt-water natives; but since the coming of the white men to
the coast they had remained in their interior fastnesses, and no
salt-water native had ever seen them again.

"Gogoomy he finish along them fella bushmen," he assured Sheldon.
"My word, he finish close up, kai-kai altogether."

So the expedition turned back. Nothing could persuade the coast
natives to venture farther, and Sheldon, with his four Tahitians,
knew that it was madness to go on alone. So he stood waist-deep in
the grass and looked regretfully across the rolling savannah and
the soft-swelling foothills to the Lion's Head, a massive peak of
rock that upreared into the azure from the midmost centre of
Guadalcanar, a landmark used for bearings by every coasting
mariner, a mountain as yet untrod by the foot of a white man.

That night, after dinner, Sheldon and Joan were playing billiards,
when Satan barked in the compound, and Lalaperu, sent to see,
brought back a tired and travel-stained native, who wanted to talk
with the "big fella white marster." It was only the man's
insistence that procured him admittance at such an hour. Sheldon
went out on the veranda to see him, and at first glance at the
gaunt features and wasted body of the man knew that his errand was
likely to prove important. Nevertheless, Sheldon demanded roughly,
-

"What name you come along house belong me sun he go down?"

"Me Charley," the man muttered apologetically and wearily. "Me
stop along Binu."

"Ah, Binu Charley, eh? Well, what name you talk along me? What
place big fella marster along white man he stop?"

Joan and Sheldon together listened to the tale Binu Charley had
brought. He described Tudor's expedition up the Balesuna; the
dragging of the boats up the rapids; the passage up the river where
it threaded the grass-lands; the innumerable washings of gravel by
the white men in search of gold; the first rolling foothills; the
man-traps of spear-staked pits in the jungle trails; the first
meeting with the bushmen, who had never seen tobacco, and knew not
the virtues of smoking; their friendliness; the deeper penetration
of the interior around the flanks of the Lion's Head; the bush-
sores and the fevers of the white men, and their madness in
trusting the bushmen.

"Allee time I talk along white fella marster," he said. "Me talk,
'That fella bushman he look 'm eye belong him. He savvee too much.
S'pose musket he stop along you, that fella bushman he too much
good friend along you. Allee time