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“This is where you keep it? I hope you lock the drawer during the day. Sit down and let’s be friendly.”

She inclined her head towards an easy chair but herself took a tapestry-seated ladderback and clasped her thin, capable hands in her lap. Julian sat on the arm of the easy chair, regarding her thoughtfully.

Phil Crane looked too intelligent to be treated as a recalcitrant child and too young to be accorded the status of a woman. Her wide, smooth forehead had an innocence about it which he had never before noticed in girls of her age, and the hazel eyes were startlingly clear and unwavering. She was entirely unselfconscious.

“Ever used that gun?” he asked abruptly.

“Only once, apart from practice. I heard a noise in the garden one night and fired. Next morning I found a dead monkey.”

“Some shot,” he commented.

She smiled, an unaffected curving of the mouth. “I told Matt Bryson about it and he didn’t believe I’d killed the thing in the dark. He rigged up a target and we had a match. I scored eleven out of twelve, and he made ten. He gave me a length of silk as a prize.”

“Bryson?” Julian frowned. “What sort of neighbour is he?”

“Grand.” Her lids lowered. “He always helped during my brother’s fevers, and he was here when Nigel died. 1 didn’t have to do a thing, except . . . grieve.” The crack in her voice mended swiftly. “Matt may be the rogue they say he is, but he’s a marvellous friend.”

“It’s unwise to trust anyone in these places,” said Julian sharply. “A man of Bryson’s reputation doesn’t dispense kindness without a motive. You should keep clear of him. What about the other men who live near?”

“They’re all right,” she said slowly, staring at him curiously. “I don’t see much of Mr. Dakers . . . he’s away a good deal. Mr. Drew sort of looks through me, but he doesn’t mind my going up for a game of tennis on Sundays with Roger Crawford. They have quite a presentable court.”

Julian inserted a cigarette between his lips and snapped shut the case.

“May I have one?” she murmured.

He offered them, and bent forward with his lighter. “Why do you remain on the island?”

She answered through a veil of smoke. “This is my home. Where else could I go?”

“You have a mother somewhere.”

She leaned back. “So you’ve heard all about me. Now I know why you’re here tonight. Someone from the mission has been to see you.”

He admitted it with a nod, and persisted, “What about your mother?”

“She left my father when I was ten, but I haven’t seen her since I was seven, when I started boarding-school in England. My parents were out East before they came here.”

“You’ve no idea where she is?”

“None. Sometimes I wonder, but I’m not really anxious to meet her, though I don’t hate her as Nigel did. He was eight years older than I,” she explained, “and he remembered her. I’m afraid I don’t.”

“You came here from South Africa?”

“From Cape Town. Nigel and I both lived with a family there to begin with. Then he came to Valeira and I went to another boarding-school. I was horribly lonely, but he insisted that I must be much older before I could join him.”

Julian took a deep pull at his cigarette and for want of an ashtray near by flicked ash into the cream carpet and ground his heel on it. She got up and fetched a tiny flat bowl, which she placed on the chair arm, close to his knee.

“You’ve never been married, have you, Mr. Caswell?”

He smiled briefly. “One loses some of the graces in the jungle. This house surprised me. Carved cabinets and tapestries are rare on the Equator.”

“The materials are rotting,” she said regretfully, “and the legs of the furniture have to be stood in tins of paraffin to keep it free from ants.” She was in front of him, rather awkwardly pressing out her cigarette. “I keep a little whisky. Would you like some?”

“Do you drink it yourself?”

“No. To be candid, I seldom smoke, either, but I didn’t care for the way you shut up your case right under my nose. I’m a person, not a tiresome infant.”

“You could be a tiresome person,” he suggested. “In fact you are. Why don’t you go and live at the mission?”

“The doctor’s a half-wit and Sister Harrington’s haunted. I’d go nuts living with such people in a hospital atmosphere.”

Julian sighed. “Look here,” he said. “You can’t go on living among men. You’ve got through so far because they’ve respected your feelings for your brother. You might be safe for a few more weeks, but sure as death there’ll come a night when one of them will be cockeyed enough to . . . well, forget himself. You’re not a fool,” he tacked on roughly. “You haven’t lived on the island a year without learning that the men—white men —fight among each other over nothing. There are times when the heat and monotony rouse passions in them which are ungovernable—times when a girl wouldn’t stand much chance.” He paused and stubbed his cigarette. “I’m not
asking
you to go and stay at the mission. I’m
telling
you that if you don’t I’ll have you deported, if I have to carry you aboard ship myself.”

Phil had backed away from the steely glint in the grey-blue eyes.

“D’you think I enjoy being alone?” she demanded, all the huskiness gone from her voice, leaving it hard and angry. “I’m not sub-human. This is the only home I’ve ever known. My father used to write me letters from this house —and then Nigel did the same. He and I were here together for a while. . . .”

“Cut out the sentiment and be sane. What’s the good of four walls and a lot of memories in a place of this kind? A kid like you should be having harmless fun with boys and girls of your own age. You’re not wanted here.”

“It so happens,” she replied without a tremor, “that I’m not wanted anywhere, but on Valeira I do at least possess a furnished house and a couple of friends. Perhaps you believe that being the boss of this part of the coast entitles you to dictate to us who happen to live here. It doesn’t, though. My father paid cash for our land and the section of foreshore that goes with it.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll make you an offer on the company’s behalf. A girl with money can soon find friends in London or Cape Town.”

Phil’s smile was shrewd. “What makes you think I’d be safer in a big city? Isn’t it simply that you want me out of your way—off your conscience? For some reason you dislike women and you’re trying to take it out on me. Well, you needn’t bother, Mr. Caswell. I’ll stay in this house as long as I please. I can take care of myself.”

Irritably, Julian stood up. “You’re just as precocious as I expected, which doesn’t alter the fact that you’re out of your setting and a menace to the peace of the men. You must either go to the mission or take the next British boat.”

“I shall do neither,” she returned quietly. “You’ve done your duty, Mr. Caswell, and now you can go back to your lone house in the cacao and forget all about me.”

He twisted towards the door. “You have about a week to decide, there’s a boat in at the week-end, and it’s due out next Wednesday. Good night.”

He left the lounge door ajar, but closed the main door with a thud. Phil heard his firm footsteps on the path, the creak and crack of the gate.

Supercilious beast. He needn’t think his domineering tactics would scare her off the island before she was ready to leave. Tomorrow she would consult with Matt; he’d know how to deal with Mr. Almighty Caswell.

Smiling to herself—for she had come out of the encounter with her shield unmarked—Phil thrust home the bolts and doused the lamps. She peered through a back window and saw that the candle still burned in Manoela’s room. Pity she’d forgotten to tell the he-man how good Manoela was with a knife. A scream would have brought the coloured woman running, the knife would have flashed through the air and sunk between the masculine shoulders. Manoela’s was a comforting presence.

She kicked off her sandals, and unfastened her skirt. Some time soon she must make new clothes. The, few school-girl garments she had brought from Cape Town had become tight across the chest and rode well above her knees, and one couldn’t go about in shorts all the time. It would be rather nice, she mused, as she slipped between cool sheets and adjusted the mosquito net, to wear the white silk she had won from Matt.

Phil was in her garden next morning padding with bare feet through the mist-sodden grass and pulling a weed here and there, when Matt Bryson hailed her from his veranda, a hundred yards away.

“ ’Morning,” she cried. “I need some paternal advice. Shall I come or will you call on your way down?”

“I was out last night,” he bawled back, “and the hangover’s a beggar. You’d better come here, lovey.”

She grinned and popped back to her room for shoes. About once every ten days Matt spent an evening on the waterfront; regularly the following morning his eyes were bloodshot and he confessed to burning needles under his ribs and a tongue like sheepskin; invariably he spent the early hours on the long wicker bench on his veranda, a glass of lime and soda-water at his side.

She found him stretched there now, in singlet and slacks, hardly a figure to admire, but to Phil his grossness was as natural as the moon and the stars. It was an indispensable adjunct to his generosity and good humour. Beneath a hairy chest and a superfluity of flesh Matt possessed an understanding heart.

“Have you had any breakfast?” she asked.

“Don’t!” he groaned. “Last night I ate tinned pork and guinea-fowl and drowned them in rum.”

“In that case you’d better fast today, and drink nothing stronger than coffee. If I were you, Matt, I’d be ashamed.”

“So you should, lovey. I’m just a no-good hunk of food and liquor. Find me a cheroot, will you?”

“In your pocket?” She delved into the shapeless jacket which hung over the back of a grass chair, and waited till the cheroot had kindled to the flame of a match before enquiring: “Matt, have you met the new plantation manager?”

He nibbled and spat out a fragment of tobacco. “Not socially. He came to the store a day or two ago—said I’m to accept no chits signed by overseers unless they bear his initials. A flinty sort of chap, but I reckon the plantation needs him after Mason. Caswell hasn’t paid you a visit, has he?”

“Yes, at about nine last night.”

“Didn’t you shoot him?”

“No, but I wished afterwards that I had. He threatens to dump me on the next boat for England.”

“Oh.” Matt’s head rolled back into the middle of the cushion and he lay staring through a grey haze at the sloping roof of the veranda. “How did he put it over?”

“A little more strongly than Sister Harrington. The lone girl among men—dangerous for me and I’m disturbing their peace. Rot, of course, but he’d got the idea into his head and there was no chasing it out.”

“I don’t know about rot,” said Matt meditatively. “You don’t upset my balance because I’m more than old enough to be your father and I could never regard you as anything but a good kid. Drew is out, too. Which leaves Dakers—who’s thirty and an unknown quantity—and young Crawford.”

‘The great Julian named you as the arch-fiend.”

“The devil he did!” he exclaimed, without rancour. “At that, he’s not far out. Look at me.”

“You’re human,” she said, “which is more than he is. I’ve a horrible suspicion he meant it, Matt.”

“You bet he did. For one thing you’re a jarring note in his community of men, and for another he has no time for women.”

“How did you know that?”

“It gets around. A skipper from the Coast told me Caswell came from Kenya to Cape Palmas and began working there. An official’s wife made a play for him— he’s not bad-looking and I daresay he can be charming when he likes—anyway, he had to get out. He’d already had an affair with a woman in Kenya which left him despising the sex. He took the job on Valeira to be rid of them.”

“I’m not one of his employees,” she said stubbornly. “He’s not going to boss me.”

There was a long moment of silence. Matt smoked, gulped some lime and soda and made small noises. Phil stayed sitting on the veranda rail, her gaze moodily on the tangle of bougainvillea which Matt could never be induced to prune.

“It’s tough,” said Matt at last, “but I can see his point. The decentest men are apt to behave strangely when they have the heat to contend with as well as a lack of women. There is a way out, though. You’re rather young, but Roger Crawford’s keen on you. You could marry him.”

Phil didn’t answer. She liked Roger, and once, when she had hurt her wrist at tennis and he had kissed it, his touch had mildly excited her.

‘That way you could keep your own house,” Matt went on. “I believe Crawford has a five-year contract, so he should be going home in about two years. By that time you and he would have grown together, and he probably has a family in England who’d welcome you. It’s worth considering.”

“It might be if . . . well, I just don’t fancy marriage, with Roger or anyone else. I want to stay as I am till I can make up my mind what to do with the future. Matt, I wish you were my father!”

“Well, I’m not, lovey. But when I’ve got my legs again I'll go and see Caswell for you. Don’t expect too much.”

JUST before lunch Phil slid down the cliff and made her way along the glaring beach to the lagoon for a bathe. There was never anyone about at that time, and she could step out of her shorts, take a swim and dry out all in the space of half an hour. Except on days when huge breakers splintered over the reef of rocks and washed right up to the foot of the cliff, the water was calm and languorous, the perfect cradle for an overheated body. Out there the sun could do its damnedest.

Lying in the lilting water, Phil remembered that the beach of the lagoon belonged to the plantation. If he wished to be officious, Julian Caswell could forbid her to bathe there, but she hardly thought he would. Apart from the lagoon, the whole of this stretch of ground was rock-bound; her own few yards of foreshore were worthless.

She turned on to her front, swam strongly for a while and then made her way back through the bush behind the beach towards home.

Phil had worn a path through this bush. As she emerged from it today she saw that a man sat on her veranda; a young man with square features and straight fair hair that flopped over his right brow.