The Seed of McCoy et al
by Jack London
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman

CONTENTS

The House of Mapuhi

The Whale Tooth

Mauki

"Yah! Yah! Yah!"

The Heathen

The Terrible Solomons

The Inevitable White Man

The Seed of McCoy

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHI

Despite the heavy clumsiness of her lines, the Aorai handled easily in the
light breeze, and her captain ran her well in before he hove to just outside
the suck of the surf. The atoll of Hikueru lay low on the water, a circle of
pounded coral sand a hundred yards wide, twenty miles in circumference, and
from three to five feet above high-water mark. On the bottom of the huge and
glassy lagoon was much pearl shell, and from the deck of the schooner, across
the slender ring of the atoll, the divers could be seen at work. But the
lagoon had no entrance for even a trading schooner. With a favoring breeze
cutters could win in through the tortuous and shallow channel, but the
schooners lay off and on outside and sent in their small boats.

The Aorai swung out a boat smartly, into which sprang half a dozen
brown-skinned sailors clad only in scarlet loincloths. They took the oars,
while in the stern sheets, at the steering sweep, stood a young man garbed in
the tropic white that marks the European. The golden strain of Polynesia
betrayed itself in the sun-gilt of his fair skin and cast up golden sheens and
lights through the glimmering blue of his eyes. Raoul he was, Alexandre Raoul,
youngest son of Marie Raoul, the wealthy quarter-caste, who owned and managed
half a dozen trading schooners similar to the Aorai. Across an eddy just
outside the entrance, and in and through and over a boiling tide-rip, the boat
fought its way to the mirrored calm of the lagoon. Young Raoul leaped out upon
the white sand and shook hands with a tall native. The man's chest and
shoulders were magnificent, but the stump of a right arm, beyond the flesh of
which the age-whitened bone projected several inches, attested the encounter
with a shark that had put an end to his diving days and made him a fawner and
an intriguer for small favors.

"Have you heard, Alec?" were his first words. "Mapuhi has found a pearl--such
a pearl. Never was there one like it ever fished up in Hikueru, nor in all the
Paumotus, nor in all the world. Buy it from him. He has it now. And remember
that I told you first. He is a fool and you can get it cheap. Have you any
tobacco?"

Straight up the beach to a shack under a pandanus tree Raoul headed. He was
his mother's supercargo, and his business was to comb all the Paumotus for the
wealth of copra, shell, and pearls that they yielded up.

He was a young supercargo, it was his second voyage in such capacity, and he
suffered much secret worry from his lack of experience in pricing pearls. But
when Mapuhi exposed the pearl to his sight he managed to suppress the startle
it gave him, and to maintain a careless, commercial expression on his face.
For the pearl had struck him a blow. It was large as a pigeon egg, a perfect
sphere, of a whiteness that reflected opalescent lights from all colors about
it. It was alive. Never had he seen anything like it. When Mapuhi dropped it
into his hand he was surprised by the weight of it. That showed that it was a
good pearl. He examined it closely, through a pocket magnifying glass. It was
without flaw or blemish. The purity of it seemed almost to melt into the
atmosphere out of his hand. In the shade it was softly luminous, gleaming like
a tender moon. So translucently white was it, that when he dropped it into a
glass of water he had difficulty in finding it. So straight and swiftly had it
sunk to the bottom that he knew its weight was excellent.

"Well, what do you want for it?" he asked, with a fine assumption of
nonchalance.

"I want--" Mapuhi began, and behind him, framing his own dark face, the dark
faces of two women and a girl nodded concurrence in what he wanted. Their
heads were bent forward, they were animated by a suppressed eagerness, their
eyes flashed avariciously.

"I want a house," Mapuhi went on. "It must have a roof of galvanized iron and
an octagon-drop-clock. It must be six fathoms long with a porch all around. A
big room must be in the centre, with a round table in the middle of it and the
octagon-drop-clock on the wall. There must be four bedrooms, two on each side
of the big room, and in each bedroom must be an iron bed, two chairs, and a
washstand. And back of the house must be a kitchen, a good kitchen, with pots
and pans and a stove. And you must build the house on my island, which is
Fakarava."

"Is that all?" Raoul asked incredulously.

"There must be a sewing machine," spoke up Tefara, Mapuhi's wife.

"Not forgetting the octagon-drop-clock," added Nauri, Mapuhi's mother.

"Yes, that is all," said Mapuhi.

Young Raoul laughed. He laughed long and heartily. But while he laughed he
secretly performed problems in mental arithmetic. He had never built a house
in his life, and his notions concerning house building were hazy. While he
laughed, he calculated the cost of the voyage to Tahiti for materials, of the
materials themselves, of the voyage back again to Fakarava, and the cost of
landing the materials and of building the house. It would come to four
thousand French dollars, allowing a margin for safety--four thousand French
dollars were equivalent to twenty thousad francs. It was impossible. How was
he to know the value of such a pearl? Twenty thousand francs was a lot of
money--and of his mother's money at that.

"Mapuhi," he said, "you are a big fool. Set a money price."

But Mapuhi shook his head, and the three heads behind him shook with his.

"I want the house," he said. "It must be six fathoms long with a porch all
around--"

"Yes, yes," Raoul interrupted. "I know all about your house, but it won't do.
I'll give you a thousand Chili dollars."

The four heads chorused a silent negative.

"And a hundred Chili dollars in trade."

"I want the house," Mapuhi began.

"What good will the house do you?" Raoul demanded. "The first hurricane that
comes along will wash it away. You ought to know.

Captain Raffy says it looks like a hurricane right now."

"Not on Fakarava," said Mapuhi. "The land is much higher there. On this
island, yes. Any hurricane can sweep Hikueru. I will have the house on
Fakarava. It must be six fathoms long with a porch all around--"

And Raoul listened again to the tale of the house. Several hours he spent in
the endeavor to hammer the house obsession out of Mapuhi's mind; but Mapuhi's
mother and wife, and Ngakura, Mapuhi's daughter, bolstered him in his resolve
for the house. Through the open doorway, while he listened for the twentieth
time to the detailed description of the house that was wanted, Raoul saw his
schooner's second boat draw up on the beach. The sailors rested on the oars,
advertising haste to be gone. The first mate of the Aorai sprang ashore,
exchanged a word with the one-armed native, then hurried toward Raoul. The day
grew suddenly dark, as a squall obscured the face of the sun. Across the
lagoon Raoul could see approaching the ominous line of the puff of wind.

"Captain Raffy says you've got to get to hell outa here," was the mate's
greeting. "If there's any shell, we've got to run the risk of picking it up
later on--so he says. The barometer's dropped to twenty-nine-seventy."

The gust of wind struck the pandanus tree overhead and tore through the palms
beyond, flinging half a dozen ripe cocoanuts with heavy thuds to the ground.
Then came the rain out of the distance, advancing with the roar of a gale of
wind and causing the water of the lagoon to smoke in driven windrows. The
sharp rattle of the first drops was on the leaves when Raoul sprang to his
feet.

"A thousand Chili dollars, cash down, Mapuhi," he said. "And two hundred Chili
dollars in trade."

"I want a house--" the other began.

"Mapuhi!" Raoul yelled, in order to make himself heard. "You are a fool!"

He flung out of the house, and, side by side with the mate, fought his way
down the beach toward the boat. They could not see the boat. The tropic rain
sheeted about them so that they could see only the beach under their feet and
the spiteful little waves from the lagoon that snapped and bit at the sand. A
figure appeared through the deluge. It was Huru-Huru, the man with the one
arm.

"Did you get the pearl?" he yelled in Raoul's ear.

"Mapuhi is a fool!" was the answering yell, and the next moment they were lost
to each other in the descending water.

Half an hour later, Huru-Huru, watching from the seaward side of the atoll,
saw the two boats hoisted in and the Aorai pointing her nose out to sea. And
near her, just come in from the sea on the wings of the squall, he saw another
schooner hove to and dropping a boat into the water. He knew her. It was the
OROHENA, owned by Toriki, the half-caste trader, who served as his own
supercargo and who doubtlessly was even then in the stern sheets of the boat.
Huru-Huru chuckled. He knew that Mapuhi owed Toriki for trade goods advanced
the year before.

The squall had passed. The hot sun was blazing down, and the lagoon was once
more a mirror. But the air was sticky like mucilage, and the weight of it
seemed to burden the lungs and make breathing difficult.

"Have you heard the news, Toriki?" Huru-Huru asked. "Mapuhi has found a pearl.
Never was there a pearl like it ever fished up in Hikueru, nor anywhere in the
Paumotus, nor anywhere in all the world. Mapuhi is a fool. Besides, he owes
you money. Remember that I told you first. Have you any tobacco?"

And to the grass shack of Mapuhi went Toriki. He was a masterful man, withal a
fairly stupid one. Carelessly he glanced at the wonderful pearl--glanced for a
moment only; and carelessly he dropped it into his pocket.

"You are lucky," he said. "It is a nice pearl. I will give you credit on the
books."

"I want a house," Mapuhi began, in consternation. "It must be six fathoms--"

"Six fathoms your grandmother!" was the trader's retort. "You want to pay up
your debts, that's what you want. You owed me twelve hundred dollars Chili.
Very well; you owe them no longer. The amount is squared. Besides, I will give
you credit for two hundred Chili. If, when I get to Tahiti, the pearl sells
well, I will give you credit for another hundred--that will make three
hundred. But mind, only if the pearl sells well. I may even lose money on it."

Mapuhi folded his arms in sorrow and sat with bowed head. He had been robbed
of his pearl. In place of the house, he had paid a debt. There was nothing to
show for the pearl.

"You are a fool," said Tefara.

"You are a fool," said Nauri, his mother. "Why did you let the pearl into his
hand?"

"What was I to do?" Mapuhi protested. "I owed him the money. He knew I had the
pearl. You heard him yourself ask to see it. I had not told him. He knew.
Somebody else told him. And I owed him the money."

"Mapuhi is a fool," mimicked Ngakura.

She was twelve years old and did not know any better. Mapuhi relieved his
feelings by sending her reeling from a box on the ear; while Tefara and Nauri
burst into tears and continued to upbraid him after the manner of women.

Huru-Huru, watching on the beach, saw a third schooner that he knew heave to
outside the entrance and drop a boat. It was the Hira, well named, for she was
owned by Levy, the German Jew, the greatest pearl buyer of them all, and, as
was well known, Hira was the Tahitian god of fishermen and thieves.

"Have you heard the news?" Huru-Huru asked, as Levy, a fat man with massive
asymmetrical features, stepped out upon the beach. "Mapuhi has found a pearl.
There was never a pearl like it in Hikueru, in all the Paumotus, in all the
world. Mapuhi is a fool. He has sold it to Toriki for fourteen hundred
Chili--I listened outside and heard. Toriki is likewise a fool. You can buy it
from him cheap. Remember that I told you first. Have you any tobacco?"

"Where is Toriki?"

"In the house of Captain Lynch, drinking absinthe. He has been there an hour."

And while Levy and Toriki drank absinthe and chaffered over the pearl,
Huru-Huru listened and heard the stupendous price of twenty-five thousand
francs agreed upon.

It was at this time that both the OROHENA and the Hira, running in close to
the shore, began firing guns and signalling frantically. The three men stepped
outside in time to see the two schooners go hastily about and head off shore,
dropping mainsails and flying jibs on the run in the teeth of the squall that
heeled them far over on the whitened water. Then the rain blotted them out.

"They'll be back after it's over," said Toriki. "We'd better be getting out of
here."

"I reckon the glass has fallen some more," said Captain Lynch.

He was a white-bearded sea-captain, too old for service, who had learned that
the only way to live on comfortable terms with his asthma was on Hikueru. He
went inside to look at the barometer.

"Great God!" they heard him exclaim, and rushed in to join him at staring at a
dial, which marked twenty-nine-twenty.

Again they came out, this time anxiously to consult sea and sky. The squall
had cleared away, but the sky remained overcast. The two schooners, under all
sail and joined by a third, could be seen making back. A veer in the wind
induced them to slack off sheets, and five minutes afterward a sudden veer
from the opposite quarter caught all three schooners aback, and those on shore
could see the boom-tackles being slacked away or cast off on the jump. The
sound of the surf was loud, hollow, and menacing, and a heavy swell was
setting in. A terrible sheet of lightning burst before their eyes,
illuminating the dark day, and the thunder rolled wildly about them.

Toriki and Levy broke into a run for their boats, the latter ambling along
like a panic-stricken hippopotamus. As their two boats swept out the entrance,
they passed the boat of the Aorai coming in. In the stern sheets, encouraging
the rowers, was Raoul. Unable to shake the vision of the pearl from his mind,
he was returning to accept Mapuhi's price of a house.

He landed on the beach in the midst of a driving thunder squall that was so
dense that he collided with Huru-Huru before he saw him.

"Too late," yelled Huru-Huru. "Mapuhi sold it to Toriki for fourteen hundred
Chili, and Toriki sold it to Levy for twenty-five thousand francs. And Levy
will sell it in France for a hundred thousand francs. Have you any tobacco?"

Raoul felt relieved. His troubles about the pearl were over. He need not worry
any more, even if he had not got the pearl. But he did not believe Huru-Huru.
Mapuhi might well have sold it for fourteen hundred Chili, but that Levy, who
knew pearls, should have paid twenty-five thousand francs was too wide a
stretch. Raoul decided to interview Captain Lynch on the subject, but when he
arrived at that ancient mariner's house, he found him looking wide-eyed at the
barometer.

"What do you read it?" Captain Lynch asked anxiously, rubbing his spectables
and staring again at the instrument.

"Twenty-nine-ten," said Raoul. "I have never seen it so low before."

"I should say not!" snorted the captain. "Fifty years boy and man on all the
seas, and I've never seen it go down to that. Listen!"

They stood for a moment, while the surf rumbled and shook the house. Then they
went outside. The squall had passed. They could see the Aorai lying becalmed a
mile away and pitching and tossing madly in the tremendous seas that rolled in
stately procession down out of the northeast and flung themselves furiously
upon the coral shore. One of the sailors from the boat pointed at the mouth of
the passage and shook his head. Raoul looked and saw a white anarchy of foam
and surge.

"I guess I'll stay with you tonight, Captain," he said; then turned to the
sailor and told him to haul the boat out and to find shelter for himself and
fellows.

"Twenty-nine flat," Captain Lynch reported, coming out from another look at
the barometer, a chair in his hand.

He sat down and stared at the spectacle of the sea. The sun came out,
increasing the sultriness of the day, while the dead calm still held. The seas
continued to increase in magnitude.

"What makes that sea is what gets me," Raoul muttered petulantly.

"There is no wind, yet look at it, look at that fellow there!"

Miles in length, carrying tens of thousands of tons in weight, its impact
shook the frail atoll like an earthquake. Captain Lynch was startled.

"Gracious!" he bellowed, half rising from his chair, then sinking back.

"But there is no wind," Raoul persisted. "I could understand it if there was
wind along with it."

"You'll get the wind soon enough without worryin' for it," was the grim reply.

The two men sat on in silence. The sweat stood out on their skin in myriads of
tiny drops that ran together, forming blotches of moisture, which, in turn,
coalesced into rivulets that dripped to the ground. They panted for breath,
the old man's efforts being especially painful. A sea swept up the beach,
licking around the trunks of the cocoanuts and subsiding almost at their feet.

"Way past high water mark," Captain Lynch remarked; "and I've been here eleven
years." He looked at his watch. "It is three o'clock."

A man and woman, at their heels a motley following of brats and curs, trailed
disconsolately by. They came to a halt beyond the house, and, after much
irresolution, sat down in the sand. A few minutes later another family trailed
in from the opposite direction, the men and women carrying a heterogeneous
assortment of possessions. And soon several hundred persons of all ages and
sexes were congregated about the captain's dwelling. He called to one new
arrival, a woman with a nursing babe in her arms, and in answer received the
information that her house had just been swept into the lagoon.

This was the highest spot of land in miles, and already, in many places on
either hand, the great seas were making a clean breach of the slender ring of
the atoll and surging into the lagoon. Twenty miles around stretched the ring
of the atoll, and in no place was it more than fifty fathoms wide. It was the
height of the diving season, and from all the islands around, even as far as
Tahiti, the natives had gathered.

"There are twelve hundred men, women, and children here," said Captain Lynch.
"I wonder how many will be here tomorrow morning."

"But why don't it blow?--that's what I want to know," Raoul demanded.

"Don't worry, young man, don't worry; you'll get your troubles fast enough."

Even as Captain Lynch spoke, a great watery mass smote the atoll.

The sea water churned about them three inches deep under the chairs. A low
wail of fear went up from the many women. The children, with clasped hands,
stared at the immense rollers and cried piteously. Chickens and cats, wading
perturbedly in the water, as by common consent, with flight and scramble took
refuge on the roof of the captain's house. A Paumotan, with a litter of
new-born puppies in a basket, climbed into a cocoanut tree and twenty feet
above the ground made the basket fast. The mother floundered about in the
water beneath, whining and yelping.

And still the sun shone brightly and the dead calm continued. They sat and
watched the seas and the insane pitching of the Aorai. Captain Lynch gazed at
the huge mountains of water sweeping in until he could gaze no more. He
covered his face with his hands to shut out the sight; then went into the
house.

"Twenty-eight-sixty," he said quietly when he returned.

In his arm was a coil of small rope. He cut it into two-fathom lengths, giving
one to Raoul and, retaining one for himself, distributed the remainder among
the women with the advice to pick out a tree and climb.

A light air began to blow out of the northeast, and the fan of it on his cheek
seemed to cheer Raoul up. He could see the Aorai trimming her sheets and
heading off shore, and he regretted that he was not on her. She would get away
at any rate, but as for the atoll--A sea breached across, almost sweeping him
off his feet, and he selected a tree. Then he remembered the barometer and ran
back to the house. He encountered Captain Lynch on the same errand and
together they went in.

"Twenty-eight-twenty," said the old mariner. "It's going to be fair hell
around here--what was that?"

The air seemed filled with the rush of something. The house quivered and
vibrated, and they heard the thrumming of a mighty note of sound. The windows
rattled. Two panes crashed; a draught of wind tore in, striking them and
making them stagger. The door opposite banged shut, shattering the latch. The
white door knob crumbled in fragments to the floor. The room's walls bulged
like a gas balloon in the process of sudden inflation. Then came a new sound
like the rattle of musketry, as the spray from a sea struck the wall of the
house. Captain Lyncyh looked at his watch. It was four o'clock. He put on a
coat of pilot cloth, unhooked the barometer, and stowed it away in a capacious
pocket. Again a sea struck the house, with a heavy thud, and the light
building tilted, twisted, quarter around on its foundation, and sank down, its
floor at an angle of ten degrees.

Raoul went out first. The wind caught him and whirled him away. He noted that
it had hauled around to the east. With a great effort he threw himself on the
sand, crouching and holding his own. Captain Lynch, driven like a wisp of
straw, sprawled over him. Two of the Aorai'S sailors, leaving a cocoanut tree
to which they had been clinging, came to their aid, leaning against the wind
at impossible angles and fighting and clawing every inch of the way.

The old man's joints were stiff and he could not climb, so the sailors, by
means of short ends of rope tied together, hoisted him up the trunk, a few
feet at a time, till they could make him fast, at the top of the tree, fifty
feet from the ground. Raoul passed his length of rope around the base of an
adjacent tree and stood looking on. The wind was frightful. He had never
dreamed it could blow so hard. A sea breached across the atoll, wetting him to
the knees ere it subsided into the lagoon. The sun had disappeared, and a
lead-colored twilight settled down. A few drops of rain, driving horizontally,
struck him. The impact was like that of leaden pellets. A splash of salt spray
struck his face. It was like the slap of a man's hand. His cheeks stung, and
involuntary tears of pain were in his smarting eyes. Several hundred natives
had taken to the trees, and he could have laughed at the bunches of human
fruit clustering in the tops. Then, being Tahitian-born, he doubled his body
at the waist, clasped the trunk of his tree with his hands, pressed the soles
of his feet against the near surface of the trunk, and began to walk up the
tree. At the top he found two women, two children, and a man. One little girl
clasped a housecat in her arms.

From his eyrie he waved his hand to Captain Lynch, and that doughty patriarch
waved back. Raoul was appalled at the sky. It had approached much nearer--in
fact, it seemed just over his head; and it had turned from lead to black. Many
people were still on the ground grouped about the bases of the trees and
holding on. Several such clusters were praying, and in one the Mormon
missionary was exhorting. A weird sound, rhythmical, faint as the faintest
chirp of a far cricket, enduring but for a moment, but in the moment
suggesting to him vaguely the thought of heaven and celestial music, came to
his ear. He glanced about him and saw, at the base of another tree, a large
cluster of people holding on by ropes and by one another. He could see their
faces working and their lips moving in unison. No sound came to him, but he
knew that they were singing hymns.

Still the wind continued to blow harder. By no conscious process could he
measure it, for it had long since passed beyond all his experience of wind;
but he knew somehow, nevertheless, that it was blowing harder. Not far away a
tree was uprooted, flinging its load of human beings to the ground. A sea
washed across the strip of sand, and they were gone. Things were happening
quickly. He saw a brown shoulder and a black head silhouetted against the
churning white of the lagoon. The next instant that, too, had vanished. Other
trees were going, falling and criss-crossing like matches. He was amazed at
the power of the wind. His own tree was swaying perilously, one woman was
wailing and clutching the little girl, who in turn still hung on to the cat.

The man, holding the other child, touched Raoul's arm and pointed. He looked
and saw the Mormon church careering drunkenly a hundred feet away. It had been
torn from its foundations, and wind and sea were heaving and shoving it toward
the lagoon. A frightful wall of water caught it, tilted it, and flung it
against half a dozen cocoanut trees. The bunches of human fruit fell like ripe
cocoanuts. The subsiding wave showed them on the ground, some lying
motionless, others squirming and writhing. They reminded him strangely of
ants. He was not shocked. He had risen above horror. Quite as a matter of
course he noted the succeeding wave sweep the sand clean of the human
wreckage. A third wave, more colossal than any he had yet seen, hurled the
church into the lagoon, where it floated off into the obscurity to leeward,
half-submerged, reminding him for all the world of a Noah's ark.

He looked for Captain Lynch's house, and was surprised to find it gone. Things
certainly were happening quickly. He noticed that many of the people in the
trees that still held had descended to the ground. The wind had yet again
increased. His own tree showed that. It no longer swayed or bent over and
back. Instead, it remained practically stationary, curved in a rigid angle
from the wind and merely vibrating. But the vibration was sickening. It was
like that of a tuning-fork or the tongue of a jew's-harp. It was the rapidity
of the vibration that made it so bad. Even though its roots held, it could not
stand the strain for long. Something would have to break.

Ah, there was one that had gone. He had not seen it go, but there it stood,
the remnant, broken off half-way up the trunk. One did not know what happened
unless he saw it. The mere crashing of trees and wails of human despair
occupied no place in that mighty volume of sound. He chanced to be looking in
Captain Lynch's direction when it happened. He saw the trunk of the tree,
half-way up, splinter and part without noise. The head of the tree, with three
sailors of the Aorai and the old captain sailed off over the lagoon. It did
not fall to the ground, but drove through the air like a piece of chaff. For a
hundred yards he followed its flight, when it struck the water. He strained
his eyes, and was sure that he saw Captain Lynch wave farewell.

Raoul did not wait for anything more. He touched the native and made signs to
descend to the ground. The man was willing, but his women were paralayzed from
terror, and he elected to remain with them. Raoul passed his rope around the
tree and slid down. A rush of salt water went over his head. He held his
breath and clung desperately to the rope. The water subsided, and in the
shelter of the trunk he breathed once more. He fastened the rope more
securely, and then was put under by another sea. One of the women slid down
and joined him, the native remaining by the other woman, the two children, and
the cat.

The supercargo had noticed how the groups clinging at the bases of the other
trees continually diminished. Now he saw the process work out alongside him.
It required all his strength to hold on, and the woman who had joined him was
growing weaker. Each time he emerged from a sea he was surprised to find
himself still there, and next, surprised to find the woman still there. At
last he emerged to find himself alone. He looked up. The top of the tree had
gone as well. At half its original height, a splintered end vibrated. He was
safe. The roots still held, while the tree had been shorn of its windage. He
began to climb up. He was so weak that he went slowly, and sea after sea
caught him before he was above them. Then he tied himself to the trunk and
stiffened his soul to face the night and he knew not what.

He felt very lonely in the darkness. At times it seemed to him that it was the
end of the world and that he was the last one left alive. Still the wind
increased. Hour after hour it increased. By what he calculated was eleven
o'clock, the wind had become unbelievable. It was a horrible, monstrous thing,
a screaming fury, a wall that smote and passed on but that continued to smite
and pass on--a wall without end. It seemed to him that he had become light and
ethereal; that it was he that was in motion; that he was being driven with
inconceivable velocity through unending solidness. The wind was no longer air
in motion. It had become substantial as water or quicksilver. He had a
feeling that he could reach into it and tear it out in chunks as one might do
with the meat in the carcass of a steer; that he could seize hold of the wind
and hang on to it as a man might hang on to the face of a cliff.

The wind strangled him. He could not face it and breathe, for it rushed in
through his mouth and nostrils, distending his lungs like bladders. At such
moments it seemed to him that his body was being packed and swollen with solid
earth. Only by pressing his lips to the trunk of the tree could he breathe.
Also, the ceaseless impact of the wind exhausted him. Body and brain became
wearied. He no longer observed, no longer thought, and was but semiconscious.
One idea constituted his consciousness: SO THIS WAS A HURRICANE. That one idea
persisted irregularly. It was like a feeble flame that flickered occasionally.
From a state of stupor he would return to it--SO THIS WAS A HURRICANE. Then
he would go off into another stupor.

The height of the hurricane endured from eleven at night till three in the
morning, and it was at eleven that the tree in which clung Mapuhi and his
women snapped off. Mapuhi rose to the surface of the lagoon, still clutching
his daughter Ngakura. Only a South Sea islander could have lived in such a
driving smother. The pandanus tree, to which he attached himself, turned over
and over in the froth and churn; and it was only by holding on at times and
waiting, and at other times shifting his grips rapidly, that he was able to
get his head and Ngakura's to the surface at intervals sufficiently near
together to keep the breath in them. But the air was mostly water, what with
flying spray and sheeted rain that poured along at right angles to the
perpendicular.

It was ten miles across the lagoon to the farther ring of sand. Here, tossing
tree trunks, timbers, wrecks of cutters, and wreckage of houses, killed nine
out of ten of the miserable beings who survived the passage of the lagoon.
Half-drowned, exhausted, they were hurled into this mad mortar of the elements
and battered into formless flesh. But Mapuhi was fortunate. His chance was the
one in ten; it fell to him by the freakage of fate. He emerged upon the sand,
bleeding from a score of wounds.

Ngakura's left arm was broken; the fingers of her right hand were crushed; and
cheek and forehead were laid open to the bone. He clutched a tree that yet
stood, and clung on, holding the girl and sobbing for air, while the waters of
the lagoon washed by knee-high and at times waist-high.

At three in the morning the backbone of the hurricane broke. By five no more
than a stiff breeze was blowing. And by six it was dead calm and the sun was
shining. The sea had gone down. On the yet restless edge of the lagoon, Mapuhi
saw the broken bodies of those that had failed in the landing. Undoubtedly
Tefara and Nauri were among them. He went along the beach examining them, and
came upon his wife, lying half in and half out of the water. He sat down and
wept, making harsh animal noises after the manner of primitive grief. Then she
stirred uneasily, and groaned. He looked more closely. Not only was she alive,
but she was uninjured. She was merely sleeping. Hers also had been the one
chance in ten.

Of the twelve hundred alive the night before but three hundred remained. The
mormon missionary and a gendarme made the census. The lagoon was cluttered
with corpses. Not a house nor a hut was standing. In the whole atoll not two
stones remained one upon another. One in fifty of the cocoanut palms still
stood, and they were wrecks, while on not one of them remained a single nut.

There was no fresh water. The shallow wells that caught the surface seepage of
the rain were filled with salt. Out of the lagoon a few soaked bags of flour
were recovered. The survivors cut the hearts out of the fallen cocoanut trees
and ate them. Here and there they crawled into tiny hutches, made by
hollowing out the sand and covering over with fragments of metal roofing. The
missionary made a crude still, but he could not distill water for three
hundred persons. By the end of the second day, Raoul, taking a bath in the
lagoon, discovered that his thirst was somewhat relieved. He cried out the
news, and thereupon three hundred men, women, and children could have been
seen, standing up to their necks in the lagoon and trying to drink water in
through their skins. Their dead floated about them, or were stepped upon where
they still lay upon the bottom. On the third day the people buried their dead
and sat down to wait for the rescue steamers.

In the meantime, Nauri, torn from her family by the hurricane, had been swept
away on an adventure of her own. Clinging to a rough plank that wounded and
bruised her and that filled her body with splinters, she was thrown clear over
the atoll and carried away to sea. Here, under the amazing buffets of
mountains of water, she lost her plank. She was an old woman nearly sixty; but
she was Paumotan-born, and she had never been out of sight of the sea in her
life. Swimming in the darkness, strangling, suffocating, fighting for air, she
was struck a heavy blow on the shoulder by a cocoanut. On the instant her plan
was formed, and she seized the nut. In the next hour she captured seven more.
Tied together, they formed a life-buoy that preserved her life while at the
same time it threatened to pound her to a jelly. She was a fat woman, and she
bruised easily; but she had had experience of hurricanes, and while she prayed
to her shark god for protection from sharks, she waited for the wind to break.
But at three o'clock she was in such a stupor that she did not know. Nor did
she know at six o'clock when the dead calm settled down. She was shocked into
consciousness when she was thrown upon the sand. She dug in with raw and
bleeding hands and feet and clawed against the backwash until she was beyond
the reach of the waves.

She knew where she was. This land could be no other than the tiny islet of
Takokota. It had no lagoon. No one lived upon it.

Hikueru was fifteen miles away. She could not see Hikueru, but she knew that
it lay to the south. The days went by, and she lived on the cocoanuts that had
kept her afloat. They supplied her with drinking water and with food. But she
did not drink all she wanted, nor eat all she wanted. Rescue was
problematical. She saw the smoke of the rescue steamers on the horizon, but
what steamer could be expected to come to lonely, uninhabited Takokota?

From the first she was tormented by corpses. The sea persisted in flinging
them upon her bit of sand, and she persisted, until her strength failed, in
thrusting them back into the sea where the sharks tore at them and devoured
them. When her strength failed, the bodies festooned her beach with ghastly
horror, and she withdrew from them as far as she could, which was not far.

By the tenth day her last cocoanut was gone, and she was shrivelling from
thirst. She dragged herself along the sand, looking for cocoanuts. It was
strange that so many bodies floated up, and no nuts. Surely, there were more
cocoanuts afloat than dead men! She gave up at last, and lay exhausted. The
end had come. Nothing remained but to wait for death.

Coming out of a stupor, she became slowly aware that she was gazing at a patch
of sandy-red hair on the head of a corpse. The sea flung the body toward her,
then drew it back. It turned over, and she saw that it had no face. Yet there
was something familiar about that patch of sandy-red hair. An hour passed. She
did not exert herself to make the identification. She was waiting to die, and
it mattered little to her what man that thing of horror once might have been.

But at the end of the hour she sat up slowly and stared at the corpse. An
unusually large wave had thrown it beyond the reach of the lesser waves. Yes,
she was right; that patch of red hair could belong to but one man in the
Paumotus. It was Levy, the German Jew, the man who had bought the pearl and
carried it away on the Hira. Well, one thing was evident: The Hira had been
lost. The pearl buyer's god of fishermen and thieves had gone back on him.

She crawled down to the dead man. His shirt had been torn away, and she could
see the leather money belt about his waist. She held her breath and tugged at
the buckles. They gave easier than she had expected, and she crawled hurriedly
away across the sand, dragging the belt after her. Pocket after pocket she
unbuckled in the belt and found empty. Where could he have put it? In the last
pocket of all she found it, the first and only pearl he had bought on the
voyage. She crawled a few feet farther, to escape the pestilence of the belt,
and examined the pearl. It was the one Mapuhi had found and been robbed of by
Toriki. She weighed it in her hand and rolled it back and forth caressingly.
But in it she saw no intrinsic beauty. What she did see was the house Mapuhi
and Tefara and she had builded so carefully in their minds. Each time she
looked at the pearl she saw the house in all its details, including the
octagon-drop-clock on the wall. That was something to live for.

She tore a strip from her ahu and tied the pearl securely about her neck. Then
she went on along the beach, panting and groaning, but resolutely seeking for
cocoanuts. Quickly she found one, and, as she glanced around, a second. She
broke one, drinking its water, which was mildewy, and eating the last particle
of the meat. A little later she found a shattered dugout. Its outrigger was
gone, but she was hopeful, and, before the day was out, she found the
outrigger. Every find was an augury. The pearl was a talisman. Late in the
afternoon she saw a wooden box floating low in the water. When she dragged it
out on the beach its contents rattled, and inside she found ten tins of
salmon. She opened one by hammering it on the canoe. When a leak was started,
she drained the tin. After that she spent several hours in extracting the
salmon, hammering and squeezing it out a morsel at a time.

Eight days longer she waited for rescue. In the meantime she fastened the
outrigger back on the canoe, using for lashings all the cocoanut fibre she
could find, and also what remained of her ahu. The canoe was badly cracked,
and she could not make it water-tight; but a calabash made from a cocoanut she
stored on board for a bailer. She was hard put for a paddle. With a piece of
tin she sawed off all her hair close to the scalp. Out of the hair she braided
a cord; and by means of the cord she lashed a three-foot piece of broom handle
to a board from the salmon case.

She gnawed wedges with her teeth and with them wedged the lashing.

On the eighteenth day, at midnight, she launched the canoe through the surf
and started back for Hikueru. She was an old woman. Hardship had stripped her
fat from her till scarcely more than bones and skin and a few stringy muscles
remained. The canoe was large and should have been paddled by three strong
men.

But she did it alone, with a make-shift paddle. Also, the canoe leaked badly,
and one-third of her time was devoted to bailing. By clear daylight she
looked vainly for Hikueru. Astern, Takokota had sunk beneath the sea rim. The
sun blazed down on her nakedness, compelling her body to surrender its
moisture. Two tins of salmon were left, and in the course of the day she
battered holes in them and drained the liquid. She had no time to waste in
extracting the meat. A current was setting to the westward, she made westing
whether she made southing or not.

In the eary afternoon, standing upright in the canoe, she sighted Hikueru Its
wealth of cocoanut palms was gone. Only here and there, at wide intervals,
could she see the ragged remnants of trees. The sight cheered her. She was
nearer than she had thought. The current was setting her to the westward. She
bore up against it and paddled on. The wedges in the paddle lashing worked
loose, and she lost much time, at frequent intervals, in driving them tight.
Then there was the bailing. One hour in three she had to cease paddling in
order to bail. And all the time she driftd to the westward.

By sunset Hikueru bore southeast from her, three miles away. There was a full
moon, and by eight o'clock the land was due east and two miles away. She
struggled on for another hour, but the land was as far away as ever. She was
in the main grip of the current; the canoe was too large; the paddle was too
inadequate; and too much of her time and strength was wasted in bailing.
Besides, she was very weak and growing weaker. Despite her efforts, the canoe
was drifting off to the westward.

She breathed a prayer to her shark god, slipped over the side, and began to
swim. She was actually refreshed by the water, and quickly left the canoe
astern. At the end of an hour the land was perceptibly nearer. Then came her
fright. Right before her eyes, not twenty feet away, a large fin cut the
water. She swam steadily toward it, and slowly it glided away, curving off
toward the right and circling around her. She kept her eyes on the fin and
swam on. When the fin disappeared, she lay face downward in the water and
watched. When the fin reappeared she resumed her swimming. The monster was
lazy--she could see that. Without doubt he had been well fed since the
hurricane. Had he been very hungry, she knew he would not have hesitated from
making a dash for her. He was fifteen feet long, and one bite, she knew, could
cut her in half.

But she did not have any time to waste on him. Whether she swam or not, the
current drew away from the land just the same. A half hour went by, and the
shark began to grow bolder. Seeing no harm in her he drew closer, in narrowing
circles, cocking his eyes at her impudently as he slid past. Sooner or later,
she knew well enough, he would get up sufficient courage to dash at her. She
resolved to play first. It was a desperate act she meditated. She was an old
woman, alone in the sea and weak from starvation and hardship; and yet she, in
the face of this sea tiger, must anticipate his dash by herself dashing at
him. She swam on, waiting her chance. At last he passed languidly by, barely
eight feet away. She rushed at him suddenly, feigning that she was attacking
him. He gave a wild flirt of his tail as he fled away, and his sandpaper hide,
striking her, took off her skin from elbow to shoulder. He swam rapidly, in a
widening circle, and at last disappeared.

In the hole in the sand, covered over by fragments of metal roofing, Mapuhi
and Tefara lay disputing.

"If you had done as I said," charged Tefara, for the thousandth time, "and
hidden the pearl and told no one, you would have it now."

"But Huru-Huru was with me when I opened the shell--have I not told you so
times and times and times without end?"

"And now we shall have no house. Raoul told me today that if you had not sold
the pearl to Toriki--"

"I did not sell it. Toriki robbed me."

"--that if you had not sold the pearl, he would give you five thousand French
dollars, which is ten thousand Chili."

"He has been talking to his mother," Mapuhi explained. "She has an eye for a
pearl."

"And now the pearl is lost," Tefara complained.

"It paid my debt with Toriki. That is twelve hundred I have made, anyway."

"Toriki is dead," she cried. "They have heard no word of his schooner. She was
lost along with the Aorai and the Hira. Will Toriki pay you the three hundred
credit he promised? No, because Toriki is dead. And had you found no pearl,
would you today owe Toriki the twelve hundred? No, because Toriki is dead, and
you cannot pay dead men."

"But Levy did not pay Toriki," Mapuhi said. "He gave him a piece of paper that
was good for the money in Papeete; and now Levy is dead and cannot pay; and
Toriki is dead and the paper lost with him, and the pearl is lost with Levy.
You are right, Tefara. I have lost the pearl, and got nothing for it. Now let
us sleep."

He held up his hand suddenly and listened. From without came a noise, as of
one who breathed heavily and with pain. A hand fumbled against the mat that
served for a door.

"Who is there?" Mapuhi cried.

"Nauri," came the answer. "Can you tell me where is my son, Mapuhi?"

Tefara screamed and gripped her husband's arm.

"A ghost! she chattered. "A ghost!"

Mapuhi's face was a ghastly yellow. He clung weakly to his wife.

"Good woman," he said in faltering tones, striving to disguise his vice, "I
know your son well. He is living on the east side of the lagoon."

From without came the sound of a sigh. Mapuhi began to feel elated. He had
fooled the ghost.

"But where do you come from, old woman?" he asked.

"From the sea," was the dejected answer.

"I knew it! I knew it!" screamed Tefara, rocking to and fro.

"Since when has Tefara bedded in a strange house?" came Nauri's voice through
the matting.

Mapuhi looked fear and reproach at his wife. It was her voice that had
betrayed them.

"And since when has Mapuhi, my son, denied his old mother?" the voice went on.

"No, no, I have not--Mapuhi has not denied you," he cried. "I am not Mapuhi.
He is on the east end of the lagoon, I tell you."

Ngakura sat up in bed and began to cry. The matting started to shake.

"What are you doing?" Mapuhi demanded.

"I am coming in," said the voice of Nauri.

One end of the matting lifted. Tefara tried to dive under the blankets, but
Mapuhi held on to her. He had to hold on to something. Together, struggling
with each other, with shivering bodies and chattering teeth, they gazed with
protruding eyes at the lifting mat. They saw Nauri, dripping with sea water,
without her ahu, creep in. They rolled over backward from her and fought for
Ngakura's blanket with which to cover their heads.

"You might give your old mother a drink of water," the ghost said plaintively.

"Give her a drink of water," Tefara commanded in a shaking voice.

"Give her a drink of water," Mapuhi passed on the command to Ngakura.

And together they kicked out Ngakura from under the blanket. A minute later,
peeping, Mapuhi saw the ghost drinking. When it reached out a shaking hand and
laid it on his, he felt the weight of it and was convinced that it was no
ghost. Then he emerged, dragging Tefara after him, and in a few minutes all
were listening to Nauri's tale. And when she told of Levy, and dropped the
pearl into Tefara's hand, even she was reconciled to the reality of her
mother-in-law.

"In the morning," said Tefara, "you will sell the pearl to Raoul for five
thousand French."

"The house?" objected Nauri.

"He will build the house," Tefara answered. "He ways it will cost four
thousand French. Also will he give one thousand French in credit, which is two
thousand Chili."

"And it will be six fathoms long?" Nauri queried.

"Ay," answered Mapuhi, "six fathoms."

"And in the middle room will be the octagon-drop-clock?"

"Ay, and the round table as well."

"Then give me something to eat, for I am hungry," said Nauri, complacently.
"And after that we will sleep, for I am weary. And tomorrow we will have more
talk about the house before we sell the pearl. It will be better if we take
the thousand French in cash. Money is ever better than credit in buying goods
from the traders."

THE WHALE TOOTH

It was in the early days in Fiji, when John Starhurst arose in the mission
house at Rewa Village and announced his intention of carrying the gospel
throughout all Viti Levu. Now Viti Levu means the "Great Land," it being the
largest island in a group composed of many large islands, to say nothing of
hundreds of small ones. Here and there on the coasts, living by most
precarious tenure, was a sprinkling of missionaries, traders, bˆche-de-mer
fishers, and whaleship deserters. The smoke of the hot ovens arose under their
windows, and the bodies of the slain were dragged by their doors on the way to
the feasting.

The Lotu, or the Worship, was progressing slowly, and, often, in crablike
fashion. Chiefs, who announced themselves Christians and were welcomed into
the body of the chapel, had a distressing habit of backsliding in order to
partake of the flesh of some favorite enemy. Eat or be eaten had been the law
of the land; and eat or be eaten promised to remain the law of the land for a
long time to come. There were chiefs, such as Tanoa, Tuiveikoso, and
Tuikilakila, who had literally eaten hundreds of their fellow men. But among
these gluttons Ra Undreundre ranked highest. Ra Undreundre lived at Takiraki.
He kept a register of his gustatory exploits. A row of stones outside his
house marked the bodies he had eaten. This row was two hundred and thirty
paces long, and the stones in it numbered eight hundred and seventy-two. Each
stone represented a body. The row of stones might have been longer, had not Ra
Undreundre unfortunately received a spear in the small of his back in a bush
skirmish on Somo Somo and been served up on the table of Naungavuli, whose
mediocre string of stones numbered only forty-eight.

The hard-worked, fever-stricken missionaries stuck doggedly to their task, at
times despairing, and looking forward for some special manifestation, some
outburst of Pentecostal fire that would bring a glorious harvest of souls. But
cannibal Fiji had remained obdurate. The frizzle-headed man-eaters were loath
to leave their fleshpots so long as the harvest of human carcases was
plentiful. Sometimes, when the harvest was too plentiful, they imposed on the
missionaries by letting the word slip out that on such a day there would be a
killing and a barbecue. Promptly the missionaries would buy the lives of the
victims with stick tobacco, fathoms of calico, and quarts of trade beads.
Natheless the chiefs drove a handsome trade in thus disposing of their surplus
live meat. Also, they could always go out and catch more.

It was at this juncture that John Starhurst proclaimed that he would carry the
Gospel from coast to coast of the Great Land, and that he would begin by
penetrating the mountain fastnesses of the headwaters of the Rewa River. His
words were received with consternation.

The native teachers wept softly. His two fellow missionaries strove to
dissuade him. The King of Rewa warned him that the mountain dwellers would
surely kai-kai him--kai-kai meaning "to eat"--and that he, the King of Rewa,
having become Lotu, would be put to the necessity of going to war with the
mountain dwellers. That he could not conquer them he was perfectly aware.
That they might come down the river and sack Rewa Village he was likewise
perfectly aware. But what was he to do? If John Starhurst persisted in going
out and being eaten, there would be a war that would cost hundreds of lives.

Later in the day a deputation of Rewa chiefs waited upon John Starhurst. He
heard them patiently, and argued patiently with them, though he abated not a
whit from his purpose. To his fellow missionaries he explained that he was not
bent upon martyrdom; that the call had come for him to carry the Gospel into
Viti Levu, and that he was merely obeying the Lord's wish.

To the traders who came and objected most strenuously of all, he said: "Your
objections are valueless. They consist merely of the damage that may be done
your businesses. You are interested in making money, but I am interested in
saving souls. The heathen of this dark land must be saved."

John Starhurst was not a fanatic. He would have been the first man to deny the
imputation. He was eminently sane and practical.

He was sure that his mission would result in good, and he had private visions
of igniting the Pentecostal spark in the souls of the mountaineers and of
inaugurating a revival that would sweep down out of the mountains and across
the length and breadth of the Great Land from sea to sea and to the isles in
the midst of the sea. There were no wild lights in his mild gray eyes, but
only calm resolution and an unfaltering trust in the Higher Power that was
guiding him.

One man only he found who approved of his project, and that was Ra Vatu, who
secretly encouraged him and offered to lend him guides to the first foothills.
John Starhurst, in turn, was greatly pleased by Ra Vatu's conduct. From an
incorrigible heathen, with a heart as black as his practices, Ra Vatu was
beginning to emanate light. He even spoke of becoming Lotu. True, three years
before he had expressed a similar intention, and would have entered the church
had not John Starhurst entered objection to his bringing his four wives along
with him. Ra Vatu had had economic and ethical objections to monogamy.
Besides, the missionary's hair-splitting objection had offended him; and, to
prove that he was a free agent and a man of honor, he had swung his huge war
club over Starhurst's head. Starhurst had escaped by rushing in under the club
and holding on to him until help arrived. But all that was now forgiven and
forgotten. Ra Vatu was coming into the church, not merely as a converted
heathen, but as a converted polygamist as well. He was only waiting, he
assured Starhurst, until his oldest wife, who was very sick, should die.

John Starhurst journeyed up the sluggish Rewa in one of Ra Vatu's canoes. This
canoe was to carry him for two days, when, the head of navigation reached, it
would return. Far in the distance, lifted into the sky, could be seen the
great smoky mountains that marked the backbone of the Great Land. All day John
Starhurst gazed at them with eager yearning.

Sometimes he prayed silently. At other times he was joined in prayer by Narau,
a native teacher, who for seven years had been Lotu, ever since the day he had
been saved from the hot oven by Dr. James Ellery Brown at the trifling expense
of one hundred sticks of tobacco, two cotton blankets, and a large bottle of
painkiller. At the last moment, after twenty hours of solitary supplication
and prayer, Narau's ears had heard the call to go forth with John Starhurst on
the mission to the mountains.

"Master, I will surely go with thee," he had announced.

John Starhurst had hailed him with sober delight. Truly, the Lord was with him
thus to spur on so broken-spirited a creature as Narau.

"I am indeed without spirit, the weakest of the Lord's vessels," Narau
explained, the first day in the canoe.

"You should have faith, stronger faith," the missionary chided him.

Another canoe journeyed up the Rewa that day. But it journeyed an hour astern,
and it took care not to be seen. This canoe was also the property of Ra Vatu.
In it was Erirola, Ra Vatu's first cousin and trusted henchman; and in the
small basket that never left his hand was a whale tooth. It was a magnificent
tooth, fully six inches long, beautifully proportioned, the ivory turned
yellow and purple with age. This tooth was likewise the property of Ra Vatu;
and in Fiji, when such a tooth goes forth, things usually happen. For this is
the virtue of the whale tooth: Whoever accepts it cannot refuse the request
that may accompany it or follow it. The request may be anything from a human
life to a tribal alliance, and no Fijian is so dead to honor as to deny the
request when once the tooth has been accepted. Sometimes the request hangs
fire, or the fulfilment is delayed, with untoward consequences.

High up the Rewa, at the village of a chief, Mongondro by name, John Starhurst
rested at the end of the second day of the journey. In the morning, attended
by Narau, he expected to start on foot for the smoky mountains that were now
green and velvety with nearness. Mongondro was a sweet-tempered, mild-mannered
little old chief, short-sighted and afflicted with elephantiasis, and no
longer inclined toward the turbulence of war. He received the missionary with
warm hospitality, gave him food from his own table, and even discussed
religious matters with him. Mongondro was of an inquiring bent of mind, and
pleased John Starhurst greatly by asking him to account for the existence and
beginning of things. When the missionary had finished his summary of the
Creation according to Genesis, he saw that Mongondro was deeply affected. The
little old chief smoked silently for some time. Then he took the pipe from
his mouth and shook his head sadly.

"It cannot be," he said. "I, Mongondro, in my youth, was a good workman with
the adze. Yet three months did it take me to make a canoe--a small canoe, a
very small canoe. And you say that all this land and water was made by one
man--"

"Nay, was made by one God, the only true God," the missinary interrupted.

"It is the same thing," Mongondro went on, "that all the land and all the
water, the trees, the fish, and bush and mountains, the sun, the moon, and the
stars, were made in six days! No, no. I tell you that in my youth I was an
able man, yet did it require me three months for one small canoe. It is a
story to frighten children with; but no man can believe it."

"I am a man," the missionary said.

"True, you are a man. But it is not given to my dark understanding to know
what you believe."

"I tell you, I do believe that everything was made in six days."

"So you say, so you say," the old cannibal murmured soothingly.

It was not until after John Starhurst and Narau had gone off to bed that
Erirola crept into the chief's house, and, after diplomatic speech, handed the
whale tooth to Mongondro.

The old chief held the tooth in his hands for a long time. It was a beautiful
tooth, and he yearned for it. Also, he divined the request that must accompany
it. "No, no; whale teeth were beautiful," and his mouth watered for it, but he
passed it back to Erirola with many apologies.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .  .

In the early dawn John Starhurst was afoot, striding along the bush trail in
his big leather boots, at his heels the faithful Narau, himself at the heels
of a naked guide lent him by Mongondro to show the way to the next village,
which was reached by midday. Here a new guide showed the way. A mile in the
rear plodded Erirola, the whale tooth in the basket slung on his shoulder. For
two days more he brought up the missionary's rear, offering the tooth to the
village chiefs. But village after village refused the tooth. It followed so
quickly the missionary's advent that they divined the request that would be
made, and would have none of it.

They were getting deep into the mountains, and Erirola took a secret trail,
cut in ahead of the missionary, and reached the stronghold of the Buli of
Gatoka. Now the Buli was unaware of John Starhurst's imminent arrival. Also,
the tooth was beautiful--an extraordinary specimen, while the coloring of it
was of the rarest order. The tooth was presented publicly. The Buli of Gatoka,
seated on his best mat, surrounded by his chief men, three busy fly-brushers
at his back, deigned to receive from the hand of his herald the whale tooth
presented by Ra Vatu and carried into the mountains by his cousin, Erirola. A
clapping of hands went up at the acceptance of the present, the assembled
headman, heralds, and fly-brushers crying aloud in chorus:

"A! woi! woi! woi! A! woi! woi! woi! A tabua levu! woi! woi! A mudua, mudua,
mudua!'

"Soon will come a man, a white man," Erirola began, after the proper pause.
"He is a missionary man, and he will come today. Ra Vatu is pleased to desire
his boots. He wishes to present them to his good friend, Mongondro, and it is
in his mind to send them with the feet along in them, for Mongondro is an old
man and his teeth are not good. Be sure, O Buli, that the feet go along in the
boots. As for the rest of him, it may stop here."

The delight in the whale tooth faded out of the Buli's eyes, and he glanced
about him dubiously. Yet had he already accepted the tooth.

"A little thing like a missionary does not matter," Erirola prompted.

"No, a little thing like a missionary does not matter," the Buli answered,
himself again. "Mongondro shall have the boots. Go, you young men, some three
or four of you, and meet the missionary on the trail. Be sure you bring back
the boots as well."

"It is too late," said Erirola. "Listen! He comes now."

Breaking through the thicket of brush, John Starhurst, with Narau close on his
heels, strode upon the scene. The famous boots, having filled in wading the
stream, squirted fine jets of water at every step. Starhurst looked about him
with flashing eyes. Upborne by an unwavering trust, untouched by doubt or
fear, he exulted in all he saw. He knew that since the beginning of time he
was the first white man ever to tread the mountain stronghold of Gatoka.

The grass houses clung to the steep mountain side or overhung the rushing
Rewa. On either side towered a mighty precipice. At the best, three hours of
sunlight penetrated that narrow gorge. No cocoanuts nor bananas were to be
seen, though dense, tropic vegetation overran everything, dripping in airy
festoons from the sheer lips of the precipices and running riot in all the
crannied ledges. At the far end of the gorge the Rewa leaped eight hundred
feet in a single span, while the atmosphere of the rock fortress pulsed to the
rhythmic thunder of the fall.

From the Buli's house, John Starhurst saw emerging the Buli and his followers.

"I bring you good tidings," was the missionary's greeting.

"Who has sent you?" the Buli rejoined quietly.

"God."

"It is a new name in Viti Levu," the Buli grinned. "Of what islands, villages,
or passes may he be chief?"

"He is the chief over all islands, all villages, all passes," John Starhurst
answered solemnly. "He is the Lord over heaven and earth, and I am come to
bring His word to you."

"Has he sent whale teeth?" was the insolent query.

"No, but more precious than whale teeth is the--"

"It is the custom, between chiefs, to send whale teeth," the Buli interrupted.

"Your chief is either a niggard, or you are a fool, to come empty-handed into
the mountains. Behold, a more generous than you is before you."

So saying, he showed the whale tooth he had received from Erirola.

Narau groaned.

"It is the whale tooth of Ra Vatu," he whispered to Starhurst. "I know it
well. Now are we undone."

"A gracious thing," the missionary answered, passing his hand through his long
beard and adjusting his glasses. "Ra Vatu has arranged that we should be well
received."

But Narau groaned again, and backed away from the heels he had dogged so
faithfully.

"Ra Vatu is soon to become Lotu," Starhurst explained, "and I have come
bringing the Lotu to you."

"I want none of your Lotu," said the Buli, proudly. "And it is in my mind that
you will be clubbed this day."

The Buli nodded to one of his big mountaineers, who stepped forward, swinging
a club. Narau bolted into the nearest house, seeking to hide among the woman
and mats; but John Starhurst sprang in under the club and threw his arms
around his executioner's neck. From this point of vantage he proceeded to
argue. He was arguing for his life, and he knew it; but he was neither excited
nor afraid.

"It would be an evil thing for you to kill me," he told the man. "I have done
you no wrong, nor have I done the Buli wrong."

So well did he cling to the neck of the one man that they dared not strike
with their clubs. And he continued to cling and to dispute for his life with
those who clamored for his death.

"I am John Starhurst," he went on calmly. "I have labored in Fiji for three
years, and I have done it for no profit. I am here among you for good. Why
should any man kill me? To kill me will not profit any man."

The Buli stole a look at the whale tooth. He was well paid for the deed.

The missionary was surrounded by a mass of naked savages, all struggling to
get at him. The death song, which is the song of the oven, was raised, and his
expostulations could no longer be heard. But so cunningly did he twine and
wreathe his body about his captor's that the death blow could not be struck.
Erirola smiled, and the Buli grew angry.

"Away with you!" he cried. "A nice story to go back to the coast--a dozen of
you and one missionary, without weapons, weak as a woman, overcoming all of
you."

"Wait, O Buli," John Starhurst called out from the thick of the scuffle, "and
I will overcome even you. For my weapons are Truth and Right, and no man can
withstand them."

"Come to me, then," the Buli answered, "for my weapon is only a poor miserable
club, and, as you say, it cannot withstand you."

The group separated from him, and John Starhurst stood alone, facing the Buli,
who was leaning on an enormous, knotted warclub.

"Come to me, missionary man, and overcome me," the Buli challenged.

"Even so will I come to you and overcome you," John Starhurst made answer,
first wiping his spectacles and settling them properly, then beginning his
advance.

The Buli raised the club and waited.

"In the first place, my death will profit you nothing," began the argument.

"I leave the answer to my club," was the Buli's reply.

And to every point he made the same reply, at the same time watching the
missionary closely in order to forestall that cunning run-in under the lifted
club. Then, and for the first time, John Starhurst knew that his death was at
hand. He made no attempt to run in. Bareheaded, he stood in the sun and prayed
aloud--the mysterious figure of the inevitable white man, who, with Bible,
bullet, or rum bottle, has confronted the amazed savage in his every
stronghold. Even so stood John Starhurst in the rock fortress of the Buli of
Gatoka.

"Forgive them, for they know not what they do," he prayed. "O Lord! Have mercy
upon Fiji. Have compasssion for Fiji. O Jehovah, hear us for His sake, Thy
Son, whom Thou didst give that through Him all men might also become Thy
children. From Thee we came, and our mind is that to Thee we may return. The
land is dark, O Lord, the land is dark. But Thou art mighty to save. Reach
out Thy hand, O Lord, and save Fiji, poor cannibal Fiji."

The Buli grew impatient.

"Now will I answer thee," he muttered, at the same time swinging his club with
both hands.

Narau, hiding among the women and the mats, heard the impact of the blow and
shuddered. Then the death song arose, and he knew his beloved missionary's
body was being dragged to the oven as he heard the words:

"Drag me gently. Drag me gently."

"For I am the champion of my land."

"Give thanks! Give thanks! Give thanks!"

Next, a single voice arose out of the din, asking:

"Where is the brave man?"

A hundred voices bellowed the answer:

"Gone to be dragged into the oven and cooked."

"Where is the coward?" the single voice demanded.

"Gone to report!" the hundred voices bellowed back. "Gone to report! Gone to
report!"

Narau groaned in anguish of spirit. The words of the old song were true. He
was the coward, and nothing remained to him but to go and report.

MAUKI

He weighed one hundred and ten pounds. His hair was kinky and negroid, and he
was black. He was peculiarly black. He was neither blue-black nor
purple-black, but plum-black. His name was Mauki, and he was the son of a
chief. He had three tambos. Tambo is Melanesian for taboo, and is first
cousin to that Polynesian word. Mauki's three tambos were as follows: First,
he must never shake hands with a woman, nor have a woman's hand touch him or
any of his personal belongings; secondly, he must never eat clams nor any food
from a fire in which clams had been cooked; thirdly, he must never touch a
crocodile, nor travel in a canoe that carried any part of a crocodile even if
as large as a tooth.

Of a different black were his teeeth, which were deep black, or, perhaps
better, LAMP-black. They had been made so in a single night, by his mother,
who had compressed about them a powdered mineral which was dug from the
landslide back of Port Adams. Port Adams is a salt-water village on Malaita,
and Malaita is the most savage island in the Solomons--so savage that no
traders or planters have yet gained a foothold on it; while, from the time of
the earliest bˆche-de-mer fishers and sandalwood traders down to the latest
labor recruiters equipped with automatic rifles and gasolene engines, scores
of white adventurers have been passed out by tomahawks and soft-nosed Snider
bullets. So Malaita remains today, in the twentieth century, the stamping
ground of the labor recruiters, who farm its coasts for laborers who engage
and contract themselves to toil on the plantations of the neighboring and more
civilized islands for a wage of thirty dollars a year. The natives of those
neighboring and more civilized islands have themselves become too civilized to
work on plantations.

Mauki's ears were pierced, not in one place, nor two places, but in a couple
of dozen places. In one of the smaller holes he carried a clay pipe. The
larger holes were too large for such use. The bowl of the pipe would have
fallen through. In fact, in the largest hole in each ear he habitually wore
round wooden plugs that were an even four inches in diameter. Roughly
speaking, the circumference of said holes was twelve and one-half inches.
Mauki was catholic in his tastes. In the various smaller holes he carried such
things as empty rifle cartridges, horseshoe nails, copper screws, pieces of
string, braids of sennit, strips of green leaf, and, in the cool of the day,
scarlet hibiscus flowers. From which it will be seen that pockets were not
necessary to his well-being. Besides, pockets were impossible, for his only
wearing apparel consisted of a piece of calico several inches wide. A pocket
knife he wore in his hair, the blade snapped down on a kinky lock. His most
prized possession was the handle of a china cup, which he suspended from a
ring of turtle-shell, which, in turn, was passed through the
partition-cartilage of his nose.

But in spite of embellishments, Mauki had a nice face. It was really a pretty
face, viewed by any standard, and for a Melanesian it was a remarkably
good-looking face. Its one fault was its lack of strength. It was softly
effeminate, almost girlish. The features were small, regular, and delicate.
The chin was weak, and the mouth was weak. There was no strength nor character
in the jaws, forehead, and nose. In the eyes only could be caught any hint of
the unknown quantities that were so large a part of his make-up and that other
persons could not understand. These unknown quantities were pluck,
pertinacity, fearlessness, imagination, and cunning; and when they found
expression in some consistent and striking action, those about him were
astounded.

Mauki's father was chief over the village at Port Adams, and thus, by birth a
salt-water man, Mauki was half amphibian. He knew the way of the fishes and
oysters, and the reef was an open book to him. Canoes, also, he knew. He
learned to swim when he was a year old. At seven years he could hold his
breath a full minute and swim straight down to bottom through thirty feet of
water. And at seven years he was stolen by the bushmen, who cannot even swim
and who are afraid of salt water. Thereafter Mauki saw the sea only from a
distance, through rifts in the jungle and from open spaces on the high
mountain sides. He became the slave of old Fanfoa, head chief over a score of
scattered bush-villages on the range-lips of Malaita, the smoke of which, on
calm mornings, is about the only evidence the seafaring white men have of the
teeming interior population. For the whites do not penetrate Malaita. They
tried it once, in the days when the search was on for gold, but they always
left their heads behind to grin from the smoky rafters of the bushmen's huts.

When Mauki was a young man of seventeen, Fanfoa got out of tobacco. He got
dreadfully out of tobacco. It was hard times in all his villages. He had been
guilty of a mistake. Suo was a harbor so small that a large schooner could not
swing at anchor in it. It was surrounded by mangroves that overhung the deep
water. It was a trap, and into the trap sailed two white men in a small ketch.
They were after recruits, and they possessed much tobacco and trade goods, to
say nothing of three rifles and plenty of ammunition. Now there were no
salt-water men living at Suo, and it was there that the bushmen could come
down to the sea. The ketch did a splendid traffic. It signed on twenty
recruits the first day. Even old Fanfoa signed on. And that same day the score
of new recruits chopped off the two white men's head, killed the boat's crew,
and burned the ketch. Thereafter, and for three months, there was tobacco and
trade goods in plenty and to spare in all the bush villages. Then came the
man-of-war that threw shells for miles into the hills, frightening the people
out of their villages and into the deeper bush. Next the man-of-war sent
landing parties ashore. The villages were all burned, along with the tobacco
and trade stuff.

The cocoanuts and bananas were chopped down, the taro gardens uprooted, and
the pigs and chickens killed.

It taught Fanfoa a lesson, but in the meantime he was out of tobacco. Also,
his young men were too frightened to sign on with the recruiting vessels. That
was why Fanfoa ordered his slave, Mauki, to be carried down and signed on for
half a case of tobacco advance, along with knives, axes, calico, and beads,
which he would pay for with his toil on the plantations. Mauki was sorely
frightened when they brought him on board the schooner. He was a lamb led to
the slaughter. White men were ferocious creatures. They had to be, or else
they would not make a practice of venturing along the Malaita coast and into
all harbors, two on a schooner, when each schooner carried from fifteen to
twenty blacks as boat's crew, and often as high as sixty or seventy black
recruits. In addition to this, there was always the danger of the shore
population, the sudden attack and the cutting off of the schooner and all
hands. Truly, white men must be terrible. Besides, they were possessed of such
devil-devils--rifles that shot very rapidly many times, things of iron and
brass that made the schooners go when there was no wind, and boxes that talked
and laughed just as men talked and laughed.

Ay, and he had heard of one white man whose particular devil-devil was so
powerful that he could take out all his teeth and put them back at will.

Down into the cabin they took Mauki. On deck, the one white man kept guard
with two revolvers in his belt. In the cabin the other white man sat with a
book before him, in which he inscribed strange marks and lines. He looked at
Mauki as though he had been a pig or a fowl, glanced under the hollows of his
arms, and wrote in the book. Then he held out the writing stick and Mauki just
barely touched it with his hand, in so doing pledging himself to toil for
three years on the plantations of the Moongleam Soap Company. It was not
explained to him that the will of the ferocious white men would be used to
enforce the pledge, and that, behind all, for the same use, was all the power
and all the warships of Great Britain.

Other blacks there were on board, from unheard-of far places, and when the
white man spoke to them, they tore the long feather from Mauki's hair, cut
that same hair short, and wrapped about his waist a lava-lava of bright yellow
calico.

After many days on the schooner, and after beholding more land and islands
than he had ever dreamed of, he was landed on New Georgia, and put to work in
the field clearing jungle and cutting cane grass. For the first time he knew
what work was. Even as a slave to Fanfoa he had not worked like this. And he
did not like work. It was up at dawn and in at dark, on two meals a day. And
the food was tiresome. For weeks at a time they were given nothing but sweet
potatoes to eat, and for weeks at a time it would be nothing but rice. He cut
out the cocoanut from the shells day after day; and for long days and weeks he
fed the fires that smoked the copra, till his eyes got sore and he was set to
felling trees. He was a good axe-man, and later he was put in the
bridge-building gang. Once, he was punished by being put in the road-building
gang. At times he served as boat's crew in the whale boats, when they brought
in copra from distant beaches or when the white men went out to dynamite fish.

Among other things he learned beche-de-mer English, with which he could talk
with all white men, and with all recruits who otherwise would have talked in a
thousand different dialects. Also, he learned certain things about the white
men, principally that they kept their word. If they told a boy he was going to
receive a stick of tobacco, he got it. If they told a boy they would knock
seven bells out of him if he did a certain thing, when he did that thing,
seven bells invariably were knocked out of him. Mauki did not know what seven
bells were, but they occurred in beche-de-mer, and he imagined them to be the
blood and teeth that sometimes accompanied the process of knocking out seven
bells. One other thing he learned: no boy was struck or punished unless he did
wrong. Even when the white men were drunk, as they were frequently, they never
struck unless a rule had been broken.

Mauki did not like the plantation. He hated work, and he was the son of a
chief. Furthermore, it was ten years since he had been stolen from Port Adams
by Fanfoa, and he was homesick. He was even homesick for the slavery under
Fanfoa. So he ran away. He struck back into the bush, with the idea of working
southward to the beach and stealing a canoe in which to go home to Port Adams.

But the fever got him, and he was captured and brought back more dead than
alive.

A second time he ran away, in the company of two Malaita boys. They got down
the coast twenty miles, and were hidden in the hut of a Malaita freeman, who
dwelt in that village. But in the dead of night two white men came, who were
not afraid of all the village people and who knocked seven bells out of the
three runaways, tied them like pigs, and tossed them into the whale boat. But
the man in whose house they had hidden--seven times seven bells must have been
knocked out of him from the way the hair, skin, and teeth flew, and he was
discouraged for the rest of his natural life from harboring runaway laborers.

For a year Mauki toiled on. Then he was made a house-boy, and had good food
and easy times, with light work in keeping the house clean and serving the
white men with whiskey and beer at all hours of the day and most hours of the
night. He liked it, but he liked Port Adams more. He had two years longer to
serve, but two years were too long for him in the throes of homesickness. He
had grown wiser with his year of service, and, being now a house-boy, he had
opportunity. He had the cleaning of the rifles, and he knew where the key to
the store room was hung. He planned to escape, and one night ten Malaita boys
and one boy from San Cristoval sneaked from the barracks and dragged one of
the whale boats down to the beach. It was Mauki who supplied the key that
opened the padlock on the boat, and it was Mauki who equipped the boat with a
dozen Winchesters, an immense amount of ammunition, a case of dynamite with
detonators and fuse, and ten cases of tobacco.

The northwest monsoon was blowing, and they fled south in the night time,
hiding by day on detached and uninhabited islets, or dragging their whale boat
into the bush on the large islands. Thus they gained Guadalcanar, skirted
halfway along it, and crossed the Indispensable Straits to Florida Island. It
was here that they killed the San Cristoval boy, saving his head and cooking
and eating the rest of him. The Malaita coast was only twenty miles away, but
the last night a strong current and baffling winds prevented them from gaining
across. Daylight found them still several miles from their goal. But daylight
brought a cutter, in which were two white men, who were not afraid of eleven
Malaita men armed with twelve rifles. Mauki and his companions were carried
back to Tulagi, where lived the great white master of all the white men. And
the great white master held a court, after which, one by one, the runaways
were tied up and given twenty lashes each, and sentenced to a fine of fifteen
dollars. They were sent back to New Georgia, where the white men knocked seven
bells out of them all around and put them to work. But Mauki was no longer
house-boy. He was put in the road-making gang. The fine of fifteen dollars had
been paid by the white men from whom he had run away, and he was told that he
would have to work it out, which meant six months' additional toil. Further,
his share of the stolen tobacco earned him another year of toil.

Port Adams was now three years and a half away, so he stole a canoe one night,
hid on the islets in Manning Straits, passed through the Straits, and began
working along the eastern coast of Ysabel, only to be captured, two-thirds of
the way along, by the white men on Meringe Lagoon. After a week, he escaped
from them and took to the bush. There were no bush natives on Ysabel, only
salt-water men, who were all Christians. The white men put up a reward of
five-hundred sticks of tobacco, and every time Mauki ventured down to the sea
to steal a canoe he was chased by the salt-water men. Four months of this
passed, when, the reward having been raised to a thousand sticks, he was
caught and sent back to New Georgia and the road-building gang. Now a thousand
sticks are worth fifty dollars, and Mauki had to pay the reward himself, which
required a year and eight months' labor. So Port Adams was now five years
away.

His homesickness was greater than ever, and it did not appeal to him to settle
down and be good, work out his four years, and go home. The next time, he was
caught in the very act of running away. His case was brought before Mr.
Haveby, the island manager of the Moongleam Soap Company, who adjudged him an
incorrigible. The Company had plantations on the Santa Cruz Islands, hundreds
of miles across the sea, and there it sent its Solomon Islands' incorrigibles.
And there Mauki was sent, though he never arrived. The schooner stopped at
Santa Anna, and in the night Mauki swam ashore, where he stole two rifles and
a case of tobacco from the trader and got away in a canoe to Cristoval.
Malaita was now to the north, fifty or sixty miles away. But when he attempted
the passage, he was caught by a light gale and driven back to Santa Anna,
where the trader clapped him in irons and held him against the return of the
schooner from Santa Cruz. The two rifles the trader recovered, but the case
of tobacco was charged up to Mauki at the rate of another year. The sum of
years he now owed the Company was six.

On the way back to New Georgia, the schooner dropped anchor in Marau Sound,
which lies at the southeastern extremity of Guadalcanar. Mauki swam ashore
with handcuffs on his wrists and got away to the bush. The schooner went on,
but the Moongleam trader ashore offered a thousand sticks, and to him Mauki
was brought by the bushmen with a year and eight months tacked on to his
account. Again, and before the schooner called in, he got away, this time in a
whale boat accompanied by a case of the trader's tobacco. But a northwest gale
wrecked him upon Ugi, where the Christian natives stole his tobacco and turned
him over to the Moongleam trader who resided there. The tobacco the natives
stole meant another year for him, and the tale was now eight years and a half.

"We'll send him to Lord Howe," said Mr. Haveby. "Bunster is there, and we'll
let them settle it between them. It will be a case, I imagine, of Mauki
getting Bunster, or Bunster getting Mauki, and good riddance in either event."

If one leaves Meringe Lagoon, on Ysabel, and steers a course due north,
magnetic, at the end of one hundred and fifty miles he will lift the pounded
coral beaches of Lord Howe above the sea. Lord Howe is a ring of land some
one hundred and fifty miles in circumference, several hundred yards wide at
its widest, and towering in places to a height of ten feet above sea level.
Inside this ring of sand is a mighty lagoon studded with coral patches. Lord
Howe belongs to the Solomons neither geographically nor ethnologically. It is
an atoll, while the Solomons are high islands; and its people and language are
Polynesian, while the inhabitants of the Solomons are Melanesian.

Lord Howe has been populated by the westward Polynesian drift which continues
to this day, big outrigger canoes being washed upon its beaches by the
southeast trade. That there has been a slight Melanesian drift in the period
of the northwest monsoon, is also evident.

Nobody ever comes to Lord Howe, or Ontong-Java as it is sometimes called.
Thomas Cook & Son do not sell tickets to it, and tourists do not dream of its
existence. Not even a white missionary has landed on its shore. Its five
thousand natives are as peaceable as they are primitive. Yet they were not
always peaceable. The Sailing Directions speak of them as hostile and
treacherous. But the men who compile the Sailing Directions have never heard
of the change that was worked in the hearts of the inhabitants, who, not many
years ago, cut off a big bark and killed all hands with the exception of the
second mate. The survivor carried the news to his brothers. The captains of
three trading schooners returned with him to Lord Howe. They sailed their
vessels right into the lagoon and proceeded to preach the white man's gospel
that only white men shall kill white men and that the lesser breeds must keep
hands off. The schooners sailed up and down the lagoon, harrying and
destroying. There was no escape from the narrow sand-circle, no bush to which
to flee. The men were shot down at sight, and there was no avoiding being
sighted. The villages were burned, the canoes smashed, the chickens and pigs
killed, and the precious cocoanut trees chopped down. For a month this
continued, when the schooner sailed away; but the fear of the white man had
been seared into the souls of the islanders and never again were they rash
enough to harm one.

Max Bunster was the one white man on Lord Howe, trading in the pay of the
ubiquitous Moongleam Soap Company. And the Company billeted him on Lord Howe,
because, next to getting rid of him, it was the most out-of-the-way place to
be found. That the Company did not get rid of him was due to the difficulty of
finding another man to take his place. He was a strapping big German, with
something wrong in his brain. Semi-madness would be a charitable statement of
his condition. He was a bully and a coward, and a thrice-bigger savage than
any savage on the island.

Being a coward, his brutality was of the cowardly order. When he first went
into the Company's employ, he was stationed on Savo. When a consumptive
colonial was sent to take his place, he beat him up with his fists and sent
him off a wreck in the schooner that brought him.

Mr. Haveby next selected a young Yorkshire giant to relieve Bunster. The
Yorkshire man had a reputation as a bruiser and preferred fighting to eating.
But Bunster wouldn't fight. He was a regular little lamb--for ten days, at the
end of which time the Yorkshire man was prostrated by a combined attack of
dysentery and fever. Then Bunster went for him, among other things getting him
down and jumping on him a score or so of times. Afraid of what would happen
when his victim recovered. Bunster fled away in a cutter to Guvutu, where he
signalized himself by beating up a young Englishman already crippled by a Boer
bullet through both hips.

Then it was that Mr. Haveby sent Bunster to Lord Howe, the falling-off place.
He celebrated his landing by mopping up half a case of gin and by thrashing
the elderly and wheezy mate of the schooner which had brought him. When the
schooner departed, he called the kanakas down to the beach and challenged them
to throw him in a wrestling bout, promising a case of tobacco to the one who
succeeded. Three kanakas he threw, but was promptly thrown by a fourth, who,
instead of receiving the tobacco, got a bullet through his lungs.

And so began Bunster's reign on Lord Howe. Three thousand people lived in the
principal village; but it was deserted, even in broad day, when he passed
through. Men, women, and children fled before him. Even the dogs and pigs got
out of the way, while the king was not above hiding under a mat. The two prime
ministers lived in terror of Bunster, who never discussed any moot subject,
but struck out with his fists instead.

And to Lord Howe came Mauki, to toil for Bunster for eight long years and a
half. There was no escaping from Lord Howe. For better or worse, Bunster and
he were tied together. Bunster weighed two hundred pounds. Mauki weighed one
hundred and ten. Bunster was a degenerate brute. But Mauki was a primitive
savage. While both had wills and ways of their own.

Mauki had no idea of the sort of master he was to work for. He had had no
warnings, and he had concluded as a matter of course that Bunster would be
like other white men, a drinker of much whiskey, a ruler and a lawgiver who
always kept his word and who never struck a boy undeserved. Bunster had the
advantage. He knew all about Mauki, and gloated over the coming into
possession of him. The last cook was suffering from a broken arm and a
dislocated shoulder, so Bunster made Mauki cook and general house-boy.

And Mauki soon learned that there were white men and white men. On the very
day the schooner departed he was ordered to buy a chicken from Samisee, the
native Tongan missionary. But Samisee had sailed across the lagoon and would
not be back for three days. Mauki returned with the information. He climbed
the steep stairway (the house stood on piles twelve feet above the sand), and
entered the living room to report. The trader demanded the chicken. Mauki
opened his mouth to explain the missionary's absence. But Bunster did not care
for explanations. He struck out with his fist. The blow caught Mauki on the
mouth and lifted him into the air. Clear through the doorway he flew, across
the narrow veranda, breaking the top railing, and down to the ground.

His lips were a contused, shapeless mass, and his mouth was full of blood and
broken teeth.

"That'll teach you that back talk don't go with me," the trader shouted,
purple with rage, peering down at him over the broken railing.

Mauki had never met a white man like this, and he resolved to walk small and
never offend. He saw the boat boys knocked about, and one of them put in irons
for three days with nothing to eat for the crime of breaking a rowlock while
pulling. Then, too, he heard the gossip of the village and learned why Bunster
had taken a third wife--by force, as was well known. The first and second
wives lay in the graveyard, under the white coral sand, with slabs of coral
rock at head and feet. They had died, it was said, from beatings he had given
them. The third wife was certainly ill-used, as Mauki could see for himself.

But there was no way by which to avoid offending the white man who seemed
offended with life. When Mauki kept silent, he was struck and called a sullen
brute. When he spoke, he was struck for giving back talk. When he was grave,
Bunster accused him of plotting and gave him a thrashing in advance; and when
he strove to be cheerful and to smile, he was charged with sneering at his
lord and master and given a taste of stick. Bunster was a devil.

The village would have done for him, had it not remembered the lesson of the
three schooners. It might have done for him anyway, if there had been a bush
to which to flee. As it was, the murder of the white men, of any white man,
would bring a man-of-war that would kill the offenders and chop down the
precious cocoanut trees. Then there were the boat boys, with minds fully made
up to drown him by accident at the first opportunity to capsize the cutter.
Only Bunster saw to it that the boat did not capsize.

Mauki was of a different breed, and escape being impossible while Bunster
lived, he was resolved to get the white man. The trouble was that he could
never find a chance. Bunster was always on guard. Day and night his revolvers
were ready to hand. He permitted nobody to pass behind his back, as Mauki
learned after having been knocked down several times. Bunster knew that he had
more to fear from the good-natured, even sweet-faced, Malaita boy than from
the entire population of Lord Howe; and it gave added zest to the programme of
torment he was carrying out. And Mauki walked small, accepted his punishments,
and waited.

All other white men had respected his tambos, but not so Bunster.

Mauki's weekly allowance of tobacco was two sticks. Bunster passed them to his
woman and ordered Mauki to receive them from her hand. But this could not be,
and Mauki went without his tobacco. In the same way he was made to miss many a
meal, and to go hungry many a day. He was ordered to make chowder out of the
big clams that grew in the lagoon. This he could not do, for clams were tambo.
Six times in succession he refused to touch the clams, and six times he was
knocked senseless. Bunster knew that the boy would die first, but called his
refusal mutiny, and would have killed him had there been another cook to take
his place.

One of the trader's favorite tricks was to catch Mauki's kinky locks and bat
his head against the wall. Another trick was to catch Mauki unawares and
thrust the live end of a cigar against his flesh. This Bunster called
vaccination, and Mauki was vaccinated a number of times a week. Once, in a
rage, Bunster ripped the cup handle from Mauki's nose, tearing the hole clear
out of the cartilage.

"Oh, what a mug!" was his comment, when he surveyed the damage he had wrought.

The skin of a shark is like sandpaper, but the skin of a ray fish is like a
rasp. In the South Seas the natives use it as a wood file in smoothing down
canoes and paddles. Bunster had a mitten made of ray fish skin. The first time
he tried it on Mauki, with one sweep of the hand it fetched the skin off his
back from neck to armpit. Bunster was delighted. He gave his wife a taste of
the mitten, and tried it out thoroughly on the boat boys. The prime ministers
came in for a stroke each, and they had to grin and take it for a joke.

"Laugh, damn you, laugh!" was the cue he gave.

Mauki came in for the largest share of the mitten. Never a day passed without
a caress from it. There were times when the loss of so much cuticle kept him
awake at night, and often the half-healed surface was raked raw afresh by the
facetious Mr. Bunster. Mauki continued his patient wait, secure in the
knowledge that sooner or later his time would come. And he knew just what he
was going to do, down to the smallest detail, when the time did come.

One morning Bunster got up in a mood for knocking seven bells out of the
universe. He began on Mauki, and wound up on Mauki, in the interval knocking
down his wife and hammering all the boat boys. At breakfast he called the
coffee slops and threw the scalding contents of the cup into Mauki's face. By
ten o'clock Bunster was shivering with ague, and half an hour later he was
burning with fever. It was no ordinary attack. It quickly became pernicious,
and developed into black-water fever. The days passed, and he grew weaker and
weaker, never leaving his bed. Mauki waited and watched, the while his skin
grew intact once more. He ordered the boys to beach the cutter, scrub her
bottom, and give her a general overhauling. They thought the order emanated
from Bunster, and they obeyed. But Bunster at the time was lying unconscious
and giving no orders. This was Mauki's chance, but still he waited.

When the worst was past, and Bunster lay convalescent and conscious, but weak
as a baby, Mauki packed his few trinkets, including the china cup handle, into
his trade box. Then he went over to the village and interviewed the king and
his two prime ministers.

"This fella Bunster, him good fella you like too much?" he asked.

They explained in one voice that they liked the trader not at all. The
ministers poured forth a recital of all the indignities and wrongs that had
been heaped upon them. The king broke down and wept. Mauki interrupted rudely.

"You savve me--me big fella marster my country. You no like m this fella white
marster. Me no like m. Plenty good you put hundred cocoanut, two hundred
cocoanut, three hundred cocoa