"And I can feed my men all the tinned goods I want?" she rushed on. "Till the cows come home," he answered, attempting her own lightness, then adding, "that is, to Berande. You see we don't have any cows at Berande." She fixed him coldly with her eyes. "Is that a joke?" she demanded. "I really don't know--I--I thought it was, but then, you see, I'm sick." "You're English, aren't you?" was her next query. "Now that's too much, even for a sick man," he cried. "You know well enough that I am." "Oh," she said absently, "then you are?" He frowned, tightened his lips, then burst into laughter, in which she joined. "It's my own fault," he confessed. "I shouldn't have baited you. I'll be careful in the future." "In the meantime go on laughing, and I'll see about breakfast. Is there anything you would fancy?" He shook his head. "It will do you good to eat something. Your fever has burned out, and you are merely weak. Wait a moment." She hurried out of the room in the direction of the kitchen, tripped at the door in a pair of sandals several sizes too large for her feet, and disappeared in rosy confusion. "By Jove, those are my sandals," he thought to himself. "The girl hasn't a thing to wear except what she landed on the beach in, and she certainly landed in sea-boots." CHAPTER V--SHE WOULD A PLANTER BE Sheldon mended rapidly. The fever had burned out, and there was nothing for him to do but gather strength. Joan had taken the cook in hand, and for the first time, as Sheldon remarked, the chop at Berande was white man's chop. With her own hands Joan prepared the sick man's food, and between that and the cheer she brought him, he was able, after two days, to totter feebly out upon the veranda. The situation struck him as strange, and stranger still was the fact that it did not seem strange to the girl at all. She had settled down and taken charge of the household as a matter of course, as if he were her father, or brother, or as if she were a man like himself. "It is just too delightful for anything," she assured him. "It is like a page out of some romance. Here I come along out of the sea and find a sick man all alone with two hundred slaves--" "Recruits," he corrected. "Contract labourers. They serve only three years, and they are free agents when they enter upon their contracts." "Yes, yes," she hurried on. "--A sick man alone with two hundred recruits on a cannibal island--they are cannibals, aren't they? Or is it all talk?" "Talk!" he said, with a smile. "It's a trifle more than that. Most of my boys are from the bush, and every bushman is a cannibal." "But not after they become recruits? Surely, the boys you have here wouldn't be guilty." "They'd eat you if the chance afforded." "Are you just saying so, on theory, or do you really know?" she asked. "I know." "Why? What makes you think so? Your own men here?"