He rolled back on his couch with a sigh of relief. The day's work was
done. A rifle lay on the couch beside him. His revolver was within
reach of his hand. An hour passed, during which he did not move. He lay
in a state of half-slumber, half-coma. He became suddenly alert. A
creak on the back veranda was the cause. The room was L-shaped; the
corner in which stood his couch was dim, but the hanging lamp in the main
part of the room, over the billiard table and just around the corner, so
that it did not shine on him, was burning brightly. Likewise the
verandas were well lighted. He waited without movement. The creaks were
repeated, and he knew several men lurked outside.

"What name?" he cried sharply.

The house, raised a dozen feet above the ground, shook on its pile
foundations to the rush of retreating footsteps.

"They're getting bold," he muttered. "Something will have to be done."

The full moon rose over Malaita and shone down on Berande. Nothing
stirred in the windless air. From the hospital still proceeded the
moaning of the sick. In the grass-thatched barracks nearly two hundred
woolly-headed man-eaters slept off the weariness of the day's toil,
though several lifted their heads to listen to the curses of one who
cursed the white man who never slept. On the four verandas of the house
the lanterns burned. Inside, between rifle and revolver, the man himself
moaned and tossed in intervals of troubled sleep.