Page:Barbour--Joan of the ilsand.djvu/33

Rh witness his treatment of Baloo. His dark hair was tinged at the temples with grey, though he could not yet be thirty. He had a firm mouth about which were humorous lines, and his grey eyes suggested determination and quiet power, but could twinkle pleasantly enough at times. He neither spoke nor acted as did the only deck hands she had ever seen, and yet there was no reason for disbelieving his story.

Where Joan expected her brother to return from did not immediately become clear to the man who called himself Keith. Obviously the planter was not on the island, for it was only three miles across and the visitor learned that Chester Trent had been absent several days. Without being unduly inquisitive, Keith was puzzled to know what pressing business had called him away, leaving his sister alone with a gang of natives in charge of a "boss boy," who was a South Sea islander himself, and a house boy who, in the event of trouble, would naturally join his black brothers. Joan, however, avoided the subject as though reluctant to allow blame to rest on her brother's shoulders; and Keith, anxious though he was to do anything in his power for this unprotected girl, refrained from questioning her. During the day she took him over the plantation, which struck him as being woefully neglected. There was missing from it that air of prosperity and order which he had seen on many island