That evening the natives were slow in leaving the ship at sundown.  A number of them checked the mate when he ordered them ashore.

“Never mind, I’ll fix them,” said Captain Hansen, diving below.

When he came back, he showed Bertie a stick of dynamite attached to a fish-hook.  Now it happens that a paper-wrapped bottle of chlorodyne with a piece of harmless fuse projecting can fool anybody.  It fooled Bertie, and it fooled the natives.  When Captain Hansen lighted the fuse and hooked the fish-hook into the tail-end of a native’s loin-cloth, that native was smitten with so ardent a desire for the shore that he forgot to shed the loin-cloth.  He started for’ard, the fuse sizzling and spluttering at his rear, the natives in his path taking headers over the barbed wire at every jump.  Bertie was horror-stricken.  So was Captain Hansen.  He had forgotten his twenty-five recruits, on each of which he had paid thirty shillings advance.  They went over the side along with the shore-dwelling folk and followed by him who trailed the sizzling chlorodyne bottle.

Bertie did not see the bottle go off; but the mate opportunely discharging a stick of real dynamite aft where it would harm nobody, Bertie would have sworn in any admiralty court to a nigger blown to flinders.

The flight of the twenty-five recruits had actually cost the Arla forty pounds, and, since they had taken to the bush, there was no hope of recovering them.  The skipper and his mate proceeded to drown their sorrow in cold tea.  The cold tea was in whiskey bottles, so Bertie did not know it was cold tea they were mopping up.  All he knew was that the two men got very drunk and argued eloquently and at length as to whether the exploded nigger should be reported as a case of dysentery or as an accidental drowning.  When they snored off to sleep, he was the only white man left, and he kept a perilous watch till dawn, in fear of an attack from shore and an uprising of the crew.

Three more days the Arla spent on the coast, and three more nights the skipper and the mate drank overfondly of cold tea, leaving Bertie to keep watch.  They knew he could be depended upon, while he was equally certain that if he lived, he would report their drunken conduct to Captain Malu.  Then the Arla dropped anchor at Reminge Plantation, on Guadalcanar, and Bertie landed on the beach with a sigh of relief and shook hands with the manager.  Mr. Harriwell was ready for him.

“Now you mustn’t be alarmed if some of our fellows seem downcast,” Mr. Harriwell said, having drawn him aside in confidence.  “There’s been talk of an outbreak, and two or three suspicious signs I’m willing to admit, but personally I think it’s all poppycock.”

“How—­how many blacks have you on the plantation?” Bertie asked, with a sinking heart.

“We’re working four hundred just now,” replied Mr. Harriwell, cheerfully; “but the three of us, with you, of course, and the skipper and mate of the Arla, can handle them all right.”