"Me savvee you good fella, Seelee," Sheldon said, as the chief gulped
down a quarter-tumbler of raw trade-gin. "Fella boy belong me you catch
short time little bit. This fella boy strong fella too much. I give you
fella one case tobacco--my word, one case tobacco. Then, you good fella
along me, I give you three fathom calico, one fella knife big fella too
much."

The tobacco and trade goods were brought from the storeroom by two house-
boys and turned over to the chief of Balesuna village, who accepted the
additional reward with a non-committal grunt and went away down the path
to his canoes. Under Sheldon's directions the house-boys handcuffed the
prisoner, by hands and feet, around one of the pile supports of the
house. At eleven o'clock, when the labourers came in from the field,
Sheldon had them assembled in the compound before the veranda. Every
able man was there, including those who were helping about the hospital.
Even the women and the several pickaninnies of the plantation were lined
up with the rest, two deep--a horde of naked savages a trifle under two
hundred strong. In addition to their ornaments of bead and shell and
bone, their pierced ears and nostrils were burdened with safety-pins,
wire nails, metal hair-pins, rusty iron handles of cooking utensils, and
the patent keys for opening corned beef tins. Some wore penknives
clasped on their kinky locks for safety. On the chest of one a china
door-knob was suspended, on the chest of another the brass wheel of an
alarm clock.

Facing them, clinging to the railing of the veranda for support, stood
the sick white man. Any one of them could have knocked him over with the
blow of a little finger. Despite his firearms, the gang could have
rushed him and delivered that blow, when his head and the plantation
would have been theirs. Hatred and murder and lust for revenge they