Sheldon still held the whip hand, and he intended to keep it.

“Clear out, all you fella boys,” he ordered.  “Clear out and walk along salt water.  Savvee!”

“Me talk,” spoke up a fat and filthy savage whose hairy chest was caked with the unwashed dirt of years.

“Oh, is that you, Telepasse?” the white man queried genially.  “You tell ’m boys clear out, and you stop and talk along me.”

“Him good fella boy,” was the reply.  “Him stop along.”

“Well, what do you want?” Sheldon asked, striving to hide under assumed carelessness the weakness of concession.

“That fella boy belong along me.”  The old chief pointed out Gogoomy, whom Sheldon recognized.

“White Mary belong you too much no good,” Telepasse went on.  “Bang ’m head belong Gogoomy.  Gogoomy all the same chief.  Bimeby me finish, Gogoomy big fella chief.  White Mary bang ’m head.  No good.  You pay me plenty tobacco, plenty powder, plenty calico.”

“You old scoundrel,” was Sheldon’s comment.  An hour before, he had been chuckling over Joan’s recital of the episode, and here, an hour later, was Telepasse himself come to collect damages.

“Gogoomy,” Sheldon ordered, “what name you walk about here?  You get along quarters plenty quick.”

“Me stop,” was the defiant answer.

“White Mary b’long you bang ’m head,” old Telepasse began again.  “My word, plenty big fella trouble you no pay.”

“You talk along boys,” Sheldon said, with increasing irritation.  “You tell ’m get to hell along beach.  Then I talk with you.”

Sheldon felt a slight vibration of the veranda, and knew that Joan had come out and was standing by his side.  But he did not dare glance at her.  There were too many rifles down below there, and rifles had a way of going off from the hip.

Again the veranda vibrated with her moving weight, and he knew that Joan had gone into the house.  A minute later she was back beside him.  He had never seen her smoke, and it struck him as peculiar that she should be smoking now.  Then he guessed the reason.  With a quick glance, he noted the hand at her side, and in it the familiar, paper-wrapped dynamite.  He noted, also, the end of fuse, split properly, into which had been inserted the head of a wax match.

“Telepasse, you old reprobate, tell ’m boys clear out along beach.  My word, I no gammon along you.”

“Me no gammon,” said the chief.  “Me want ’m pay white Mary bang ’m head b’long Gogoomy.”

“I’ll come down there and bang ’m head b’long you,” Sheldon replied, leaning toward the railing as if about to leap over.

An angry murmur arose, and the blacks surged restlessly.  The muzzles of many guns were rising from the hips.  Joan was pressing the lighted end of the cigarette to the fuse.  A Snider went off with the roar of a bomb-gun, and Sheldon heard a pane of window-glass crash behind him.  At the same moment Joan flung the dynamite, the fuse hissing and spluttering, into the thick of the blacks.  They scattered back in too great haste to do any more shooting.  Satan, aroused by the one shot, was snarling and panting to be let out.  Joan heard, and ran to let him out; and thereat the tragedy was averted, and the comedy began.