Josh Thurlow was hopelessly lost on the island of New Georgia. But then . . . "Cheerio, Mastah," came a lilting, feminine voice.

     Where a moment before, there had been but a charnel house of massed vegetation, there now stood a young Marie wearing nothing but a bright blue lap-lap that started at her slim waist and ended about six inches above her pretty, dimpled knees. She walked toward him, her bare feet somehow impervious to the thorns and stickers that littered the clearing, and came so near that Josh had to lift his eyes from where they'd naturally been diverted, to her full and round and gorgeous breasts. Her skin, black as the night sky, was oiled, and she exuded the scent of sweet coconut. There was a bright pink hibiscus pushed into her short, curly hair just above her left ear. She smiled at him with fulsome lips, seemingly taking delight in his open-mouthed astonishment at her appearance. "You afraid good fella Marie?" she asked.
     "No," he said, although for some reason, he was. "The Whitman Plantation. Which way I go?"
     She pointed off in a direction that seemed random. "No worry-worry," she said. "My name Penelope."
     "Penelope?" Josh pushed up the brim of his cap with his finger in a gesture of confusion. "That's no usual Marie name."
     "Well, Mastah, you see, I'm no usual Marie," she replied, switching to King's English. "And what, pray, would be your name?" And after Josh told her, she said, "Hello Josh. Now you will give me a present."
     "For what?"
     "I pointed you to the Whitman Plantation and therefore you owe me a gift for my work. That is the local custom."
     "But I don't have a present."
     "Look in your pockets."
     Josh looked in his pockets and brought forth a small copper wire he'd picked up on the cave floor near Stobs's radio, a washer found on the deck of the PBY, and a spool of brown thread he kept to patch tears in his uniform. "The thread, please," the girl said.
     Josh handed it over. "How do you know English so good and how come you spoke pidgin?"
     "I know English well, " she corrected him. "I was raised in a missionary school, which also explains my English name. As for the pidgin, I used it because it amused me to do so. Don't you like to be amused, Mastah Josh?"

     Every morning, Missus Felicity Markham made an appearance at the Raider camp on Melagi, walking from the old plantation guest house along a well-worn path that led between the few stately coconut palms left standing. Her procession was invariably greeted by a gathering of Raiders and other strap-hangers, hungry to see an actual white woman, and a damned fine-looking dish at that. Some were even so inspired, they sang Bless 'em all to her, while others simply stared, holding their caps in reverence as she passed.

     Such devotion might seem to a man just arrived from the outer world as more than the woman warranted. There was nothing even faintly sensuous in the way Felicity Markham walked. She kept her back as straight and her shoulders as square as a parade field Sergeant Major, and she held her chin high, aloofly so. She had sharp cheekbones, clear blue eyes, concerned lips, and long, thick brown hair she usually kept tied up in a tight bun. She hid her figure, though evidently a fine one, beneath a uniform of baggy culottes, and loose cotton blouses. She was also not young, being well into her thirties. Even so, she was one half of an intense fantasy devised by nearly every Raider on Melagi, each of whom had made up a kind of little story in his mind that would eventually see Felicity Markham and him clinging to one another beneath a Monkey Pod or Frangipani or any other kind of tropical tree available at the moment, lost in hot and sweaty love of the most explosive variety.

     "Good morning, ma'am," the shaved-headed Marines said one by one, tearing off their caps as she and her son John-Bull passed through their gauntlet. Felicity heard a few low wolf whistles, which made her frown even though inside she was warmed. Little did they know she had managed a few fantasies of her own about some of them. It had been a very long time since Felicity had embraced a man and wrapped her long legs about him. The malarial black water that had taken her husband Bryce had debilitated him for weeks before the final ravages and that had been now three years ago. In the meantime, no suitable man had presented himself to her at her Noa-Noa plantation, which was located far to the north. Now, there was the war, and a hateful quarantine on Melagi, and the need to remain chaste in a sea of men who might go a bit bonkers if she selected but one of them for her favors.