Viaburi brought two lighted lanterns to the white man for inspection.  He glanced at them and saw that they were burning brightly with clear, broad flames, and nodded his head.  One was hoisted up to the gaff of the flagstaff, and the other was placed on the wide veranda.  They were the leading lights to the Berande anchorage, and every night in the year they were so inspected and hung out.

He rolled back on his couch with a sigh of relief.  The day’s work was done.  A rifle lay on the couch beside him.  His revolver was within reach of his hand.  An hour passed, during which he did not move.  He lay in a state of half-slumber, half-coma.  He became suddenly alert.  A creak on the back veranda was the cause.  The room was L-shaped; the corner in which stood his couch was dim, but the hanging lamp in the main part of the room, over the billiard table and just around the corner, so that it did not shine on him, was burning brightly.  Likewise the verandas were well lighted.  He waited without movement.  The creaks were repeated, and he knew several men lurked outside.

“What name?” he cried sharply.

The house, raised a dozen feet above the ground, shook on its pile foundations to the rush of retreating footsteps.

“They’re getting bold,” he muttered.  “Something will have to be done.”

The full moon rose over Malaita and shone down on Berande.  Nothing stirred in the windless air.  From the hospital still proceeded the moaning of the sick.  In the grass-thatched barracks nearly two hundred woolly-headed man-eaters slept off the weariness of the day’s toil, though several lifted their heads to listen to the curses of one who cursed the white man who never slept.  On the four verandas of the house the lanterns burned.  Inside, between rifle and revolver, the man himself moaned and tossed in intervals of troubled sleep.

CHAPTER II—­SOMETHING IS DONE

In the morning David Sheldon decided that he was worse.  That he was appreciably weaker there was no doubt, and there were other symptoms that were unfavourable.  He began his rounds looking for trouble.  He wanted trouble.  In full health, the strained situation would have been serious enough; but as it was, himself growing helpless, something had to be done.  The blacks were getting more sullen and defiant, and the appearance of the men the previous night on his veranda—­one of the gravest of offences on Berande—­was ominous.  Sooner or later they would get him, if he did not get them first, if he did not once again sear on their dark souls the flaming mastery of the white man.