Sheldon had a visitor. He had had the couch taken out on the veranda,
and he was lying on it when the canoes paddled in and hauled out on the
beach. Forty men, armed with spears, bows and arrows, and war-clubs,
gathered outside the gate of the compound, but only one entered. They
knew the law of Berande, as every native knew the law of every white
man's compound in all the thousand miles of the far-flung Solomons. The
one man who came up the path, Sheldon recognized as Seelee, the chief of
Balesuna village. The savage did not mount the steps, but stood beneath
and talked to the white lord above.

Seelee was more intelligent than the average of his kind, but his
intelligence only emphasized the lowness of that kind. His eyes, close
together and small, advertised cruelty and craftiness. A gee-string and
a cartridge-belt were all the clothes he wore. The carved pearl-shell
ornament that hung from nose to chin and impeded speech was purely
ornamental, as were the holes in his ears mere utilities for carrying
pipe and tobacco. His broken-fanged teeth were stained black by betel-
nut, the juice of which he spat upon the ground.

As he talked or listened, he made grimaces like a monkey. He said yes by
dropping his eyelids and thrusting his chin forward. He spoke with
childish arrogance strangely at variance with the subservient position he
occupied beneath the veranda. He, with his many followers, was lord and
master of Balesuna village. But the white man, without followers, was
lord and master of Berande--ay, and on occasion, single-handed, had made
himself lord and master of Balesuna village as well. Seelee did not like
to remember that episode. It had occurred in the course of learning the
nature of white men and of learning to abominate them. He had once been
guilty of sheltering three runaways from Berande. They had given him all
they possessed in return for the shelter and for promised aid in getting