She quickly saw the unrest of the contract labourers, and was not blind to the danger, always imminent, that both she and Sheldon ran.

Neither of them ever ventured out without a revolver, and the sailors who stood the night watches by Joan's grass house were armed with rifles.

But Joan insisted that this reign of terror had been caused by the reign of fear practised by the white men.

She had been brought up with the gentle Hawaiians, who never were ill-treated nor roughly handled, and she generalized that the Solomon Islanders, under kind treatment, would grow gentle.
One evening a terrific uproar arose in the barracks, and Sheldon, aided by Joan's sailors, succeeded in rescuing two women whom the blacks were beating to death.

To save them from the vengeance of the blacks, they were guarded in the cook-house for the night.