Adventure

J >> Jack London >> Adventure


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 hope of cutting the other's circle; but, without
catching a glimpse of him, he finally emerged upon a fresh clearing where
the young trees, waist-high, afforded little shelter and less hiding.
Just as he emerged, stepping out a pace, a rifle cracked to his right,
and though he did not hear the bullet in passing, the thud of it came to
his ears when it struck a palm-trunk farther on.

He sprang back into the protection of the larger trees. Twice he had
exposed himself and been fired at, while he had failed to catch a single
glimpse of his antagonist. A slow anger began to burn in him. It was
deucedly unpleasant, he decided, this being peppered at; and nonsensical
as it really was, it was none the less deadly serious. There was no
avoiding the issue, no firing in the air and getting over with it as in
the old-fashioned duel. This mutual man-hunt must keep up until one got
the other. And if one neglected a chance to get the other, that
increased the other's chance to get him. There could be no false
sentiment about it. Tudor had been a cunning devil when he proposed this
sort of duel, Sheldon concluded, as he began to work along cautiously in
the direction of the last shot.

When he arrived at the spot, Tudor was gone, and only his foot-prints
remained, pointing out the course he had taken into the depths of the
plantation. Once, ten minutes later, he caught a glimpse of Tudor, a
hundred yards away, crossing the same avenue as himself but going in the
opposite direction. His rifle half-leaped to his shoulder, but the other
was gone. More in whim than in hope of result, grinning to himself as he
did so, Sheldon raised his automatic pistol and in two seconds sent eight
shots scattering through the trees in the direction in which Tudor had
disappeared. Wishing he had a shot-gun, Sheldon dropped to the ground
behind a tree, slipped a fresh clip up the hollow butt of the pistol,
threw a cartridge into the chamber, shoved the safety catch into place,
and reloaded the empty clip.

It was but a short time after that that Tudor tried the same trick on
him, the bullets pattering about him like spiteful rain, thudding into
the palm trunks, or glancing off in whining ricochets. The last bullet
of all, making a double ricochet from two different trees and losing most
of its momentum, struck Sheldon a sharp blow on the forehead and dropped
at his feet. He was partly stunned for the moment, but on investigation
found no greater harm than a nasty lump that soon rose to the size of a
pigeon's egg.

The hunt went on. Once, coming to the edge of the grove near the
bungalow, he saw the house-boys and the cook, clustered on the back
veranda and peering curiously among the trees, talking and laughing with
one another in their queer falsetto voices. Another time he came upon a
working-gang busy at hoeing weeds. They scarcely noticed him when he
came up, though they knew thoroughly well what was going on. It was no
affair of theirs that the enigmatical white men should be out trying to
kill each other, and whatever interest in the proceedings might be theirs
they were careful to conceal it from Sheldon. He ordered them to
continue hoeing weeds in a distant and out-of-the-way corner, and went on
with the pursuit of Tudor.

Tiring of the endless circling, Sheldon tried once more to advance
directly on his foe, but the latter was too crafty, taking advantage of
his boldness to fire a couple of shots at him, and slipping away on some
changed and continually changing course. For an hour they dodged and
turned and twisted back and forth and around, and hunted each other among
the orderly palms. They caught fleeting glimpses of each other and
chanced flying shots which were without result. On a grassy shelter
behind a tree, Sheldon came upon where Tudor had rested and smoked a
cigarette. The pressed grass showed where he had sat. To one side lay
the cigarette stump and the charred match which had lighted it. In front
lay a scattering of bright metallic fragments. Sheldon recognized their
significance. Tudor was notching his steel-jacketed bullets, or cutting
them blunt, so that they would spread on striking--in short, he was
making them into the vicious dum-dum prohibited in modern warfare.
Sheldon knew now what would happen to him if a bullet struck his body. It
would leave a tiny hole where it entered, but the hole where it emerged
would be the size of a saucer.

He decided to give up the pursuit, and lay down in the grass, protected
right and left by the row of palms, with on either hand the long avenue
extending. This he could watch. Tudor would have to come to him or else
there would be no termination of the affair. He wiped the sweat from his
face and tied the handkerchief around his neck to keep off the stinging
gnats that lurked in the grass. Never had he felt so great a disgust for
the thing called "adventure." Joan had been bad enough, with her Baden-
Powell and long-barrelled Colt's; but here was this newcomer also looking
for adventure, and finding it in no other way than by lugging a peace-
loving planter into an absurd and preposterous bush-whacking duel. If
ever adventure was well damned, it was by Sheldon, sweating in the
windless grass and fighting gnats, the while he kept close watch up and
down the avenue.

Then Tudor came. Sheldon happened to be looking in his direction at the
moment he came into view, peering quickly up and down the avenue before
he stepped into the open. Midway he stopped, as if debating what course
to pursue. He made a splendid mark, facing his concealed enemy at two
hundred yards' distance. Sheldon aimed at the centre of his chest, then
deliberately shifted the aim to his right shoulder, and, with the
thought, "That will put him out of business," pulled the trigger. The
bullet, driving with momentum sufficient to perforate a man's body a mile
distant, struck Tudor with such force as to pivot him, whirling him half
around by the shock of its impact and knocking him down.

"'Hope I haven't killed the beggar," Sheldon muttered aloud, springing to
his feet and running forward.

A hundred feet away all anxiety on that score was relieved by Tudor, who
made shift with his left hand, and from his automatic pistol hurled a
rain of bullets all around Sheldon. The latter dodged behind a palm
trunk, counting the shots, and when the eighth had been fired he rushed
in on the wounded man. He kicked the pistol out of the other's hand, and
then sat down on him in order to keep him down.

"Be quiet," he said. "I've got you, so there's no use struggling."

Tudor still attempted to struggle and to throw him off.

"Keep quiet, I tell you," Sheldon commanded. "I'm satisfied with the
outcome, and you've got to be. So you might as well give in and call
this affair closed."

Tudor reluctantly relaxed.

"Rather funny, isn't it, these modern duels?" Sheldon grinned down at
him as he removed his weight. "Not a bit dignified. If you'd struggled
a moment longer I'd have rubbed your face in the earth. I've a good mind
to do it anyway, just to teach you that duelling has gone out of fashion.
Now let us see to your injuries."

"You only got me that last," Tudor grunted sullenly, "lying in ambush
like--"

"Like a wild Indian. Precisely. You've caught the idea, old man."
Sheldon ceased his mocking and stood up. "You lie there quietly until I
send back some of the boys to carry you in. You're not seriously hurt,
and it's lucky for you I didn't follow your example. If you had been
struck with one of your own bullets, a carriage and pair would have been
none too large to drive through the hole it would have made. As it is,
you're drilled clean--a nice little perforation. All you need is
antiseptic washing and dressing, and you'll be around in a month. Now
take it easy, and I'll send a stretcher for you."




CHAPTER XXVIII--CAPITULATION


When Sheldon emerged from among the trees he found Joan waiting at the
compound gate, and he could not fail to see that she was visibly
gladdened at the sight of him.

"I can't tell you how glad I am to see you," was her greeting. "What's
become of Tudor? That last flutter of the automatic wasn't nice to
listen to. Was it you or Tudor?"

"So you know all about it," he answered coolly. "Well, it was Tudor, but
he was doing it left-handed. He's down with a hole in his shoulder." He
looked at her keenly. "Disappointing, isn't it?" he drawled.

"How do you mean?"

"Why, that I didn't kill him."

"But I didn't want him killed just because he kissed me," she cried.

"Oh, he did kiss you!" Sheldon retorted, in evident surprise. "I thought
you said he hurt your arm."

"One could call it a kiss, though it was only on the end of the nose."
She laughed at the recollection. "But I paid him back for that myself. I
boxed his face for him. And he did hurt my arm. It's black and blue.
Look at it."

She pulled up the loose sleeve of her blouse, and he saw the bruised
imprints of two fingers.

Just then a gang of blacks came out from among the trees carrying the
wounded man on a rough stretcher.

"Romantic, isn't it?" Sheldon sneered, following Joan's startled gaze.
"And now I'll have to play surgeon and doctor him up. Funny, this
twentieth-century duelling. First you drill a hole in a man, and next
you set about plugging the hole up."

They had stepped aside to let the stretcher pass, and Tudor, who had
heard the remark, lifted himself up on the elbow of his sound arm and
said with a defiant grin,--

"If you'd got one of mine you'd have had to plug with a dinner-plate."

"Oh, you wretch!" Joan cried. "You've been cutting your bullets."

"It was according to agreement," Tudor answered. "Everything went. We
could have used dynamite if we wanted to."

"He's right," Sheldon assured her, as they swung in behind. "Any weapon
was permissible. I lay in the grass where he couldn't see me, and
bushwhacked him in truly noble fashion. That's what comes of having
women on the plantation. And now it's antiseptics and drainage tubes, I
suppose. It's a nasty mess, and I'll have to read up on it before I
tackle the job."

"I don't see that it's my fault," she began. "I couldn't help it because
he kissed me. I never dreamed he would attempt it."

"We didn't fight for that reason. But there isn't time to explain. If
you'll get dressings and bandages ready I'll look up 'gun-shot wounds'
and see what's to be done."

"Is he bleeding seriously?" she asked.

"No; the bullet seems to have missed the important arteries. But that
would have been a pickle."

"Then there's no need to bother about reading up," Joan said. "And I'm
just dying to hear what it was all about. The _Apostle_ is lying
becalmed inside the point, and her boats are out to wing. She'll be at
anchor in five minutes, and Doctor Welshmere is sure to be on board. So
all we've got to do is to make Tudor comfortable. We'd better put him in
your room under the mosquito-netting, and send a boat off to tell Dr.
Welshmere to bring his instruments."

An hour afterward, Dr. Welshmere left the patient comfortable and
attended to, and went down to the beach to go on board, promising to come
back to dinner. Joan and Sheldon, standing on the veranda, watched him
depart.

"I'll never have it in for the missionaries again since seeing them here
in the Solomons," she said, seating herself in a steamer-chair.

She looked at Sheldon and began to laugh.

"That's right," he said. "It's the way I feel, playing the fool and
trying to murder a guest."

"But you haven't told me what it was all about."

"You," he answered shortly.

"Me? But you just said it wasn't."

"Oh, it wasn't the kiss." He walked over to the railing and leaned
against it, facing her. "But it was about you all the same, and I may as
well tell you. You remember, I warned you long ago what would happen
when you wanted to become a partner in Berande. Well, all the beach is
gossiping about it; and Tudor persisted in repeating the gossip to me. So
you see it won't do for you to stay on here under present conditions. It
would be better if you went away."

"But I don't want to go away," she objected with rueful countenance.

"A chaperone, then--"

"No, nor a chaperone."

"But you surely don't expect me to go around shooting every slanderer in
the Solomons that opens his mouth?" he demanded gloomily.

"No, nor that either," she answered with quick impulsiveness. "I'll tell
you what we'll do. We'll get married and put a stop to it all. There!"

He looked at her in amazement, and would have believed that she was
making fun of him had it not been for the warm blood that suddenly
suffused her cheeks.

"Do you mean that?" he asked unsteadily. "Why?"

"To put a stop to all the nasty gossip of the beach. That's a pretty
good reason, isn't it?"

The temptation was strong enough and sudden enough to make him waver, but
all the disgust came back to him that was his when he lay in the grass
fighting gnats and cursing adventure, and he answered,--

"No; it is worse than no reason at all. I don't care to marry you as a
matter of expedience--"

"You are the most ridiculous creature!" she broke in, with a flash of her
old-time anger. "You talk love and marriage to me, very much against my
wish, and go mooning around over the plantation week after week because
you can't have me, and look at me when you think I'm not noticing and
when all the time I'm wondering when you had your last square meal
because of the hungry look in your eyes, and make eyes at my revolver-
belt hanging on a nail, and fight duels about me, and all the
rest--and--and now, when I say I'll marry you, you do yourself the honour
of refusing me."

"You can't make me any more ridiculous than I feel," he answered, rubbing
the lump on his forehead reflectively. "And if this is the accepted
romantic programme--a duel over a girl, and the girl rushing into the
arms of the winner--why, I shall not make a bigger ass of myself by going
in for it."

"I thought you'd jump at it," she confessed, with a naivete he could not
but question, for he thought he saw a roguish gleam in her eyes.

"My conception of love must differ from yours then," he said. "I should
want a woman to marry me for love of me, and not out of romantic
admiration because I was lucky enough to drill a hole in a man's shoulder
with smokeless powder. I tell you I am disgusted with this adventure
tomfoolery and rot. I don't like it. Tudor is a sample of the adventure-
kind--picking a quarrel with me and behaving like a monkey, insisting on
fighting with me--'to the death,' he said. It was like a penny
dreadful."

She was biting her lip, and though her eyes were cool and level-looking
as ever, the tell-tale angry red was in her cheeks.

"Of course, if you don't want to marry me--"

"But I do," he hastily interposed.

"Oh, you do--"

"But don't you see, little girl, I want you to love me," he hurried on.
"Otherwise, it would be only half a marriage. I don't want you to marry
me simply because by so doing a stop is put to the beach gossip, nor do I
want you to marry me out of some foolish romantic notion. I shouldn't
want you . . . that way."

"Oh, in that case," she said with assumed deliberateness, and he could
have sworn to the roguish gleam, "in that case, since you are willing to
consider my offer, let me make a few remarks. In the first place, you
needn't sneer at adventure when you are living it yourself; and you were
certainly living it when I found you first, down with fever on a lonely
plantation with a couple of hundred wild cannibals thirsting for your
life. Then I came along--"

"And what with your arriving in a gale," he broke in, "fresh from the
wreck of the schooner, landing on the beach in a whale-boat full of
picturesque Tahitian sailors, and coming into the bungalow with a Baden-
Powell on your head, sea-boots on your feet, and a whacking big Colt's
dangling on your hip--why, I am only too ready to admit that you were the
quintessence of adventure."

"Very good," she cried exultantly. "It's mere simple arithmetic--the
adding of your adventure and my adventure together. So that's settled,
and you needn't jeer at adventure any more. Next, I don't think there
was anything romantic in Tudor's attempting to kiss me, nor anything like
adventure in this absurd duel. But I do think, now, that it was romantic
for you to fall in love with me. And finally, and it is adding romance
to romance, I think . . . I think I do love you, Dave--oh, Dave!"

The last was a sighing dove-cry as he caught her up in his arms and
pressed her to him.

"But I don't love you because you played the fool to-day," she whispered
on his shoulder. "White men shouldn't go around killing each other."

"Then why do you love me?" he questioned, enthralled after the manner of
all lovers in the everlasting query that for ever has remained
unanswered.

"I don't know--just because I do, I guess. And that's all the
satisfaction you gave me when we had that man-talk. But I have been
loving you for weeks--during all the time you have been so deliciously
and unobtrusively jealous of Tudor."

"Yes, yes, go on," he urged breathlessly, when she paused.

"I wondered when you'd break out, and because you didn't I loved you all
the more. You were like Dad, and Von. You could hold yourself in check.
You didn't make a fool of yourself."

"Not until to-day," he suggested.

"Yes, and I loved you for that, too. It was about time. I began to
think you were never going to bring up the subject again. And now that I
have offered myself you haven't even accepted."

With both hands on her shoulders he held her at arm's-length from him and
looked long into her eyes, no longer cool but seemingly pervaded with a
golden flush. The lids drooped and yet bravely did not droop as she
returned his gaze. Then he fondly and solemnly drew her to him.

"And how about that hearth and saddle of your own?" he asked, a moment
later.

"I well-nigh won to them. The grass house is my hearth, and the _Martha_
my saddle, and--and look at all the trees I've planted, to say nothing of
the sweet corn. And it's all your fault anyway. I might never have
loved you if you hadn't put the idea into my head."

"There's the _Nongassla_ coming in around the point with her boats out,"
Sheldon remarked irrelevantly. "And the Commissioner is on board. He's
going down to San Cristoval to investigate that missionary killing. We're
in luck, I must say."

"I don't see where the luck comes in," she said dolefully. "We ought to
have this evening all to ourselves just to talk things over. I've a
thousand questions to ask you."

"And it wouldn't have been a man-talk either," she added.

"But my plan is better than that." He debated with himself a moment.
"You see, the Commissioner is the one official in the islands who can
give us a license. And--there's the luck of it--Doctor Welshmere is here
to perform the ceremony. We'll get married this evening."

Joan recoiled from him in panic, tearing herself from his arms and going
backward several steps. He could see that she was really frightened.

"I . . . I thought . . ." she stammered.

Then, slowly, the change came over her, and the blood flooded into her
face in the same amazing blush he had seen once before that day. Her
cool, level-looking eyes were no longer level-looking nor cool, but
warmly drooping and just unable to meet his, as she came toward him and
nestled in the circle of his arms, saying softly, almost in a whisper,--

"I am ready, Dave."




FOOTNOTES


{1} Eaten.

{2} Food.

{3} Mary--beche-de-mer English for woman.

{4} _Ngari-ngari_--literally "scratch-scratch"--a vegetable
skin-poisoning that, while not serious, is decidedly uncomfortable.

{5} Paddle