Chapter 27

CHAPTER XXVII--MODERN DUELLING

Barely had Sheldon reached the Balesuna, when he heard the faint
report of a distant rifle and knew it was the signal of Tudor,
giving notice that he had reached the Berande, turned about, and
was coming back. Sheldon fired his rifle into the air in answer,
and in turn proceeded to advance. He moved as in a dream, absent-
mindedly keeping to the open beach. The thing was so preposterous
that he had to struggle to realize it, and he reviewed in his mind
the conversation with Tudor, trying to find some clue to the
common-sense of what he was doing. He did not want to kill Tudor.
Because that man had blundered in his love-making was no reason
that he, Sheldon, should take his life. Then what was it all
about? True, the fellow had insulted Joan by his subsequent
remarks and been knocked down for it, but because he had knocked
him down was no reason that he should now try to kill him.

In this fashion he covered a quarter of the distance between the
two rivers, when it dawned upon him that Tudor was not on the beach
at all. Of course not. He was advancing, according to the terms
of the agreement, in the shelter of the cocoanut trees. Sheldon
promptly swerved to the left to seek similar shelter, when the
faint crack of a rifle came to his ears, and almost immediately the
bullet, striking the hard sand a hundred feet beyond him,
ricochetted and whined onward on a second flight, convincing him
that, preposterous and unreal as it was, it was nevertheless sober
fact. It had been intended for him. Yet even then it was hard to
believe. He glanced over the familiar landscape and at the sea
dimpling in the light but steady breeze. From the direction of
Tulagi he could see the white sails of a schooner laying a tack
across toward Berande. Down the beach a horse was grazing, and he
idly wondered where the others were. The smoke rising from the
copra-drying caught his eyes, which roved on over the barracks, the
tool-houses, the boat- sheds, and the bungalow, and came to rest on
Joan's little grass house in the corner of the compound.

Keeping now to the shelter of the trees, he went forward another
quarter of a mile. If Tudor had advanced with equal speed they
should have come together at that point, and Sheldon concluded that
the other was circling. The difficulty was to locate him. The
rows of trees, running at right angles, enabled him to see along
only one narrow avenue at a time. His enemy might be coming along
the next avenue, or the next, to right or left. He might be a
hundred feet away or half a mile. Sheldon plodded on, and decided
that the old stereotyped duel was far simpler and easier than this
protracted hide-and-seek affair. He, too, tried circling, in the