Seelee arrived, proud in his importance that the great master of Berande should summon him in the night-time for council, and firm in his refusal to step one inch within the dread domain of the bushmen.  As he said, if his opinion had been asked when the gold-hunters started, he would have foretold their disastrous end.  There was only one thing that happened to any one who ventured into the bushmen’s territory, and that was that he was eaten.  And he would further say, without being asked, that if Sheldon went up into the bush he would be eaten too.

Sheldon sent for a gang-boss and told him to bring ten of the biggest, best, and strongest Poonga-Poonga men.

“Not salt-water boys,” Sheldon cautioned, “but bush boys—­leg belong him strong fella leg.  Boy no savvee musket, no good.  You bring ’m boy shoot musket strong fella.”

They were ten picked men that filed up on the veranda and stood in the glare of the lanterns.  Their heavy, muscular legs advertised that they were bushmen.  Each claimed long experience in bush-fighting, most of them showed scars of bullet or spear-thrust in proof, and all were wild for a chance to break the humdrum monotony of plantation labour by going on a killing expedition.  Killing was their natural vocation, not wood-cutting; and while they would not have ventured the Guadalcanar bush alone, with a white man like Sheldon behind them, and a white Mary such as they knew Joan to be, they could expect a safe and delightful time.  Besides, the great master had told them that the eight gigantic Tahitians were going along.

The Poonga-Poonga volunteers stood with glistening eyes and grinning faces, naked save for their loin-cloths, and barbarously ornamented.  Each wore a flat, turtle-shell ring suspended through his nose, and each carried a clay pipe in an ear-hole or thrust inside a beaded biceps armlet.  A pair of magnificent boar tusks graced the chest of one.  On the chest of another hung a huge disc of polished fossil clam-shell.

“Plenty strong fella fight,” Sheldon warned them in conclusion.

They grinned and shifted delightedly.

“S’pose bushmen kai-kai along you?” he queried.

“No fear,” answered their spokesman, one Koogoo, a strapping, thick-lipped Ethiopian-looking man.  “S’pose Poonga-Poonga boy kai-kai bush-boy?”

Sheldon shook his head, laughing, and dismissed them, and went to overhaul the dunnage-room for a small shelter tent for Joan’s use.

CHAPTER XXIV—­IN THE BUSH

It was quite a formidable expedition that departed from Berande at break of day next morning in a fleet of canoes and dinghies.  There were Joan and Sheldon, with Binu Charley and Lalaperu, the eight Tahitians, and the ten Poonga-Poonga men, each proud in the possession of a bright and shining modern rifle.  In addition, there were two of the plantation boat’s-crews of six men each.  These, however, were to go no farther than Carli, where water transportation ceased and where they were to wait with the boats.  Boucher remained behind in charge of Berande.