Chapter 26

CHAPTER XXVI--BURNING DAYLIGHT

The ten days of Tudor's convalescence that followed were peaceful
days on Berande. The work of the plantation went on like clock-
work. With the crushing of the premature outbreak of Gogoomy and
his following, all insubordination seemed to have vanished. Twenty
more of the old-time boys, their term of service up, were carried
away by the Martha, and the fresh stock of labour, treated fairly,
was proving of excellent quality. As Sheldon rode about the
plantation, acknowledging to himself the comfort and convenience of
a horse and wondering why he had not thought of getting one
himself, he pondered the various improvements for which Joan was
responsible--the splendid Poonga-Poonga recruits; the fruits and
vegetables; the Martha herself, snatched from the sea for a song
and earning money hand over fist despite old Kinross's slow and
safe method of running her; and Berande, once more financially
secure, approaching each day nearer the dividend-paying time, and
growing each day as the black toilers cleared the bush, cut the
cane-grass, and planted more cocoanut palms.

In these and a thousand ways Sheldon was made aware of how much he
was indebted for material prosperity to Joan--to the slender,
level-browed girl with romance shining out of her gray eyes and
adventure shouting from the long-barrelled Colt's on her hip, who
had landed on the beach that piping gale, along with her stalwart
Tahitian crew, and who had entered his bungalow to hang with boy's
hands her revolver-belt and Baden-Powell hat on the nail by the
billiard table. He forgot all the early exasperations, remembering
only her charms and sweetnesses and glorying much in the traits he
at first had disliked most--her boyishness and adventurousness, her
delight to swim and risk the sharks, her desire to go recruiting,
her love of the sea and ships, her sharp authoritative words when
she launched the whale-boat and, with firestick in one hand and
dynamite-stick in the other, departed with her picturesque crew to
shoot fish in the Balesuna; her super-innocent disdain for the
commonest conventions, her juvenile joy in argument, her
fluttering, wild-bird love of freedom and mad passion for
independence. All this he now loved, and he no longer desired to
tame and hold her, though the paradox was the winning of her
without the taming and the holding.

There were times when he was dizzy with thought of her and love of
her, when he would stop his horse and with closed eyes picture her
as he had seen her that first day, in the stern-sheets of the
whale-boat, dashing madly in to shore and marching belligerently
along his veranda to remark that it was pretty hospitality this
letting strangers sink or