Page:Barbour--Joan of the ilsand.djvu/25

Rh Taleile had been the "boss boy" on the plantation ever since she first saw the island, four years before. He had been "recruited" originally from New Guinea. His brothers and sisters and mothers-in-law were all, doubtless, raw cannibals, and Taleile had bred true up to a point, but he had had little opportunity lately of indulging any cannibalistic tendencies inherited from his forebears. This was the second plantation on which he had worked. For a New Guinea native he had a certain amount of common sense, and that had shown him the infinite wisdom of being on the side of law and order as prescribed by the white man. There were occasions when Taleile had been almost human. There was nothing to encourage the girl in his little beady eyes, which glittered and shifted, but at the moment the fact remained he came the nearest thing to being a protector of any kind that she had. Not that she felt desperately in need of protection. On a peg, within easy reach, hung a .45 Colt with which she could pierce a match box six times in ten seconds at fifteen paces, and not a black on the island was ignorant of that significant fact. But Boris, her Great Dane, had died mysteriously the previous day; and in the presence of Boris every black had felt the necessity of circumspection if not even politeness. More than once Taleile had gone out of his way to show that his sympathies were not altogether with his kinky-haired brethren. The