Mauki
He weighed one hundred and ten pounds. His hair was kinky and negroid, and hewas black. He was peculiarly black. He was neither blue-black norpurple-black, but plum-black. His name was Mauki, and he was the son of achief. He had three tambos. Tambo is Melanesian for taboo, and is firstcousin 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 orany of his personal belongings; secondly, he must never eat clams nor any foodfrom a fire in which clams had been cooked; thirdly, he must never touch acrocodile, nor travel in a canoe that carried any part of a crocodile even ifas large as a tooth.Of a different black were his teeeth, which were deep black, or, perhapsbetter, 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 thelandslide 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 notraders or planters have yet gained a foothold on it; while, from the time ofthe earliest beche-de-mer fishers and sandalwood traders down to the latestlabor recruiters equipped with automatic rifles and gasolene engines, scoresof white adventurers have been passed out by tomahawks and soft-nosed Sniderbullets. So Malaita remains today, in the twentieth century, the stampingground of the labor recruiters, who farm its coasts for laborers who engageand contract themselves to toil on the plantations of the neighboring and morecivilized islands for a wage of thirty dollars a year. The natives of thoseneighboring and more civilized islands have themselves become too civilized towork on plantations.Mauki's ears were pierced, not in one place, nor two places, but in a coupleof dozen places. In one of the smaller holes he carried a clay pipe. Thelarger holes were too large for such use. The bowl of the pipe would havefallen through. In fact, in the largest hole in each ear he habitually woreround wooden plugs that were an even four inches in diameter. Roughlyspeaking, the circumference of said holes was twelve and one-half inches.Mauki was catholic in his tastes. In the various smaller holes he carried suchthings as empty rifle cartridges, horseshoe nails, copper screws, pieces ofstring, 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 notnecessary to his well-being. Besides, pockets were impossible, for his onlywearing apparel consisted of a piece of calico several inches wide. A pocketknife he wore in his hair, the blade snapped down on a kinky lock. His mostprized possession was the handle of a china cup, which he suspended from aring of turtle-shell, which, in turn, was passed through thepartition-cartilage of his nose.But in spite of embellishments, Mauki had a nice face. It was really a prettyface, viewed by any standard, and for a Melanesian it was a remarkablygood-looking face. Its one fault was its lack of strength. It was softlyeffeminate, almost girlish. The features were small, regular, and delicate.The chin was weak, and the mouth was weak. There was no strength nor characterin the jaws, forehead, and nose. In the eyes only could be caught any hint ofthe unknown quantities that were so large a part of his make-up and that otherpersons could not understand. These unknown quantities were pluck,pertinacity, fearlessness, imagination, and cunning; and when they foundexpression in some consistent and striking action, those about him wereastounded.Mauki's father was chief over the village at Port Adams, and thus, by birth asalt-water man, Mauki was half amphibian. He knew the way of the fishes andoysters, and the reef was an open book to him. Canoes, also, he knew. Helearned to swim when he was a year old. At seven years he could hold hisbreath a full minute and swim straight down to bottom through thirty feet ofwater. And at seven years he was stolen by the bushmen, who cannot even swimand who are afraid of salt water. Thereafter Mauki saw the sea only from adistance, through rifts in the jungle and from open spaces on the highmountain sides. He became the slave of old Fanfoa, head chief over a score ofscattered bush-villages on the range-lips of Malaita, the smoke of which, oncalm mornings, is about the only evidence the seafaring white men have of theteeming interior population. For the whites do not penetrate Malaita. Theytried it once, in the days when the search was on for gold, but they alwaysleft 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 gotdreadfully out of tobacco. It was hard times in all his villages. He had beenguilty of a mistake. Suo was a harbor so small that a large schooner could notswing at anchor in it. It was surrounded by mangroves that overhung the deepwater. 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, tosay nothing of three rifles and plenty of ammunition. Now there were nosalt-water men living at Suo, and it was there that the bushmen could comedown to the sea. The ketch did a splendid traffic. It signed on twentyrecruits the first day. Even old Fanfoa signed on. And that same day the scoreof 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 andtrade goods in plenty and to spare in all the bush villages. Then came theman-of-war that threw shells for miles into the hills, frightening the peopleout of their villages and into the deeper bush. Next the man-of-war sentlanding parties ashore. The villages were all burned, along with the tobaccoand trade stuff.The cocoanuts and bananas were chopped down, the taro gardens uprooted, andthe 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. Thatwas why Fanfoa ordered his slave, Mauki, to be carried down and signed on forhalf 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 sorelyfrightened when they brought him on board the schooner. He was a lamb led tothe slaughter. White men were ferocious creatures. They had to be, or elsethey would not make a practice of venturing along the Malaita coast and intoall harbors, two on a schooner, when each schooner carried from fifteen totwenty blacks as boat's crew, and often as high as sixty or seventy blackrecruits. In addition to this, there was always the danger of the shorepopulation, the sudden attack and the cutting off of the schooner and allhands. Truly, white men must be terrible. Besides, they were possessed of suchdevil-devils--rifles that shot very rapidly many times, things of iron andbrass that made the schooners go when there was no wind, and boxes that talkedand laughed just as men talked and laughed.Ay, and he had heard of one white man whose particular devil-devil was sopowerful 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 guardwith two revolvers in his belt. In the cabin the other white man sat with abook before him, in which he inscribed strange marks and lines. He looked atMauki as though he had been a pig or a fowl, glanced under the hollows of hisarms, and wrote in the book. Then he held out the writing stick and Mauki justbarely touched it with his hand, in so doing pledging himself to toil forthree years on the plantations of the Moongleam Soap Company. It was notexplained to him that the will of the ferocious white men would be used toenforce the pledge, and that, behind all, for the same use, was all the powerand all the warships of Great Britain.Other blacks there were on board, from unheard-of far places, and when thewhite man spoke to them, they tore the long feather from Mauki's hair, cutthat same hair short, and wrapped about his waist a lava-lava of bright yellowcalico.After many days on the schooner, and after beholding more land and islandsthan he had ever dreamed of, he was landed on New Georgia, and put to work inthe field clearing jungle and cutting cane grass. For the first time he knewwhat work was. Even as a slave to Fanfoa he had not worked like this. And hedid not like work. It was up at dawn and in at dark, on two meals a day. Andthe food was tiresome. For weeks at a time they were given nothing but sweetpotatoes to eat, and for weeks at a time it would be nothing but rice. He cutout the cocoanut from the shells day after day; and for long days and weeks hefed the fires that smoked the copra, till his eyes got sore and he was set tofelling trees. He was a good axe-man, and later he was put in thebridge-building gang. Once, he was punished by being put in the road-buildinggang. At times he served as boat's crew in the whale boats, when they broughtin 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 talkwith all white men, and with all recruits who otherwise would have talked in athousand different dialects. Also, he learned certain things about the whitemen, principally that they kept their word. If they told a boy he was going toreceive a stick of tobacco, he got it. If they told a boy they would knockseven 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 sevenbells were, but they occurred in beche-de-mer, and he imagined them to be theblood and teeth that sometimes accompanied the process of knocking out sevenbells. One other thing he learned: no boy was struck or punished unless he didwrong. Even when the white men were drunk, as they were frequently, they neverstruck unless a rule had been broken.Mauki did not like the plantation. He hated work, and he was the son of achief. Furthermore, it was ten years since he had been stolen from Port Adamsby Fanfoa, and he was homesick. He was even homesick for the slavery underFanfoa. So he ran away. He struck back into the bush, with the idea of workingsouthward 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 thanalive.A second time he ran away, in the company of two Malaita boys. They got downthe coast twenty miles, and were hidden in the hut of a Malaita freeman, whodwelt in that village. But in the dead of night two white men came, who werenot afraid of all the village people and who knocked seven bells out of thethree runaways, tied them like pigs, and tossed them into the whale boat. Butthe man in whose house they had hidden--seven times seven bells must have beenknocked out of him from the way the hair, skin, and teeth flew, and he wasdiscouraged 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 foodand easy times, with light work in keeping the house clean and serving thewhite men with whiskey and beer at all hours of the day and most hours of thenight. He liked it, but he liked Port Adams more. He had two years longer toserve, but two years were too long for him in the throes of homesickness. Hehad grown wiser with his year of service, and, being now a house-boy, he hadopportunity. He had the cleaning of the rifles, and he knew where the key tothe store room was hung. He planned to escape, and one night ten Malaita boysand one boy from San Cristoval sneaked from the barracks and dragged one ofthe whale boats down to the beach. It was Mauki who supplied the key thatopened the padlock on the boat, and it was Mauki who equipped the boat with adozen Winchesters, an immense amount of ammunition, a case of dynamite withdetonators 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 boatinto the bush on the large islands. Thus they gained Guadalcanar, skirtedhalfway along it, and crossed the Indispensable Straits to Florida Island. Itwas here that they killed the San Cristoval boy, saving his head and cookingand eating the rest of him. The Malaita coast was only twenty miles away, butthe last night a strong current and baffling winds prevented them from gainingacross. Daylight found them still several miles from their goal. But daylightbrought a cutter, in which were two white men, who were not afraid of elevenMalaita men armed with twelve rifles. Mauki and his companions were carriedback to Tulagi, where lived the great white master of all the white men. Andthe great white master held a court, after which, one by one, the runawayswere tied up and given twenty lashes each, and sentenced to a fine of fifteendollars. They were sent back to New Georgia, where the white men knocked sevenbells out of them all around and put them to work. But Mauki was no longerhouse-boy. He was put in the road-making gang. The fine of fifteen dollars hadbeen paid by the white men from whom he had run away, and he was told that hewould 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 beganworking along the eastern coast of Ysabel, only to be captured, two-thirds ofthe way along, by the white men on Meringe Lagoon. After a week, he escapedfrom them and took to the bush. There were no bush natives on Ysabel, onlysalt-water men, who were all Christians. The white men put up a reward offive-hundred sticks of tobacco, and every time Mauki ventured down to the seato steal a canoe he was chased by the salt-water men. Four months of thispassed, when, the reward having been raised to a thousand sticks, he wascaught and sent back to New Georgia and the road-building gang. Now a thousandsticks are worth fifty dollars, and Mauki had to pay the reward himself, whichrequired a year and eight months' labor. So Port Adams was now five yearsaway.His homesickness was greater than ever, and it did not appeal to him to settledown and be good, work out his four years, and go home. The next time, he wascaught 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 anincorrigible. The Company had plantations on the Santa Cruz Islands, hundredsof miles across the sea, and there it sent its Solomon Islands' incorrigibles.And there Mauki was sent, though he never arrived. The schooner stopped atSanta Anna, and in the night Mauki swam ashore, where he stole two rifles anda 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 attemptedthe 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 theschooner from Santa Cruz. The two rifles the trader recovered, but the caseof tobacco was charged up to Mauki at the rate of another year. The sum ofyears 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 ashorewith 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 Maukiwas brought by the bushmen with a year and eight months tacked on to hisaccount. Again, and before the schooner called in, he got away, this time in awhale boat accompanied by a case of the trader's tobacco. But a northwest galewrecked him upon Ugi, where the Christian natives stole his tobacco and turnedhim over to the Moongleam trader who resided there. The tobacco the nativesstole 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'lllet them settle it between them. It will be a case, I imagine, of Maukigetting 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 poundedcoral beaches of Lord Howe above the sea. Lord Howe is a ring of land someone hundred and fifty miles in circumference, several hundred yards wide atits 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. LordHowe belongs to the Solomons neither geographically nor ethnologically. It isan atoll, while the Solomons are high islands; and its people and language arePolynesian, while the inhabitants of the Solomons are Melanesian.Lord Howe has been populated by the westward Polynesian drift which continuesto this day, big outrigger canoes being washed upon its beaches by thesoutheast trade. That there has been a slight Melanesian drift in the periodof 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 itsexistence. Not even a white missionary has landed on its shore. Its fivethousand natives are as peaceable as they are primitive. Yet they were notalways peaceable. The Sailing Directions speak of them as hostile andtreacherous. But the men who compile the Sailing Directions have never heardof the change that was worked in the hearts of the inhabitants, who, not manyyears ago, cut off a big bark and killed all hands with the exception of thesecond mate. The survivor carried the news to his brothers. The captains ofthree trading schooners returned with him to Lord Howe. They sailed theirvessels right into the lagoon and proceeded to preach the white man's gospelthat only white men shall kill white men and that the lesser breeds must keephands off. The schooners sailed up and down the lagoon, harrying anddestroying. There was no escape from the narrow sand-circle, no bush to whichto flee. The men were shot down at sight, and there was no avoiding beingsighted. The villages were burned, the canoes smashed, the chickens and pigskilled, and the precious cocoanut trees chopped down. For a month thiscontinued, when the schooner sailed away; but the fear of the white man hadbeen seared into the souls of the islanders and never again were they rashenough to harm one.Max Bunster was the one white man on Lord Howe, trading in the pay of theubiquitous 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 tobe found. That the Company did not get rid of him was due to the difficulty offinding another man to take his place. He was a strapping big German, withsomething wrong in his brain. Semi-madness would be a charitable statement ofhis condition. He was a bully and a coward, and a thrice-bigger savage thanany savage on the island.Being a coward, his brutality was of the cowardly order. When he first wentinto the Company's employ, he was stationed on Savo. When a consumptivecolonial was sent to take his place, he beat him up with his fists and senthim off a wreck in the schooner that brought him.Mr. Haveby next selected a young Yorkshire giant to relieve Bunster. TheYorkshire 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 theend of which time the Yorkshire man was prostrated by a combined attack ofdysentery and fever. Then Bunster went for him, among other things getting himdown and jumping on him a score or so of times. Afraid of what would happenwhen his victim recovered. Bunster fled away in a cutter to Guvutu, where hesignalized himself by beating up a young Englishman already crippled by a Boerbullet 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 thrashingthe elderly and wheezy mate of the schooner which had brought him. When theschooner departed, he called the kanakas down to the beach and challenged themto throw him in a wrestling bout, promising a case of tobacco to the one whosucceeded. 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 theprincipal village; but it was deserted, even in broad day, when he passedthrough. Men, women, and children fled before him. Even the dogs and pigs gotout of the way, while the king was not above hiding under a mat. The two primeministers 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 ahalf. There was no escaping from Lord Howe. For better or worse, Bunster andhe were tied together. Bunster weighed two hundred pounds. Mauki weighed onehundred and ten. Bunster was a degenerate brute. But Mauki was a primitivesavage. 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 nowarnings, and he had concluded as a matter of course that Bunster would belike other white men, a drinker of much whiskey, a ruler and a lawgiver whoalways kept his word and who never struck a boy undeserved. Bunster had theadvantage. He knew all about Mauki, and gloated over the coming intopossession of him. The last cook was suffering from a broken arm and adislocated shoulder, so Bunster made Mauki cook and general house-boy.And Mauki soon learned that there were white men and white men. On the veryday the schooner departed he was ordered to buy a chicken from Samisee, thenative Tongan missionary. But Samisee had sailed across the lagoon and wouldnot be back for three days. Mauki returned with the information. He climbedthe steep stairway (the house stood on piles twelve feet above the sand), andentered the living room to report. The trader demanded the chicken. Maukiopened his mouth to explain the missionary's absence. But Bunster did not carefor explanations. He struck out with his fist. The blow caught Mauki on themouth and lifted him into the air. Clear through the doorway he flew, acrossthe 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 andbroken 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 andnever offend. He saw the boat boys knocked about, and one of them put in ironsfor three days with nothing to eat for the crime of breaking a rowlock whilepulling. Then, too, he heard the gossip of the village and learned why Bunsterhad taken a third wife--by force, as was well known. The first and secondwives lay in the graveyard, under the white coral sand, with slabs of coralrock at head and feet. They had died, it was said, from beatings he had giventhem. 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 seemedoffended with life. When Mauki kept silent, he was struck and called a sullenbrute. 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 whenhe strove to be cheerful and to smile, he was charged with sneering at hislord 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 thethree schooners. It might have done for him anyway, if there had been a bushto 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 theprecious cocoanut trees. Then there were the boat boys, with minds fully madeup 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 Bunsterlived, he was resolved to get the white man. The trouble was that he couldnever find a chance. Bunster was always on guard. Day and night his revolverswere ready to hand. He permitted nobody to pass behind his back, as Maukilearned after having been knocked down several times. Bunster knew that he hadmore to fear from the good-natured, even sweet-faced, Malaita boy than fromthe entire population of Lord Howe; and it gave added zest to the programme oftorment 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 hiswoman 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 ameal, and to go hungry many a day. He was ordered to make chowder out of thebig 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 wasknocked senseless. Bunster knew that the boy would die first, but called hisrefusal mutiny, and would have killed him had there been another cook to takehis place.One of the trader's favorite tricks was to catch Mauki's kinky locks and bathis head against the wall. Another trick was to catch Mauki unawares andthrust the live end of a cigar against his flesh. This Bunster calledvaccination, and Mauki was vaccinated a number of times a week. Once, in arage, Bunster ripped the cup handle from Mauki's nose, tearing the hole clearout 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 arasp. In the South Seas the natives use it as a wood file in smoothing downcanoes and paddles. Bunster had a mitten made of ray fish skin. The first timehe tried it on Mauki, with one sweep of the hand it fetched the skin off hisback from neck to armpit. Bunster was delighted. He gave his wife a taste ofthe mitten, and tried it out thoroughly on the boat boys. The prime ministerscame 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 withouta caress from it. There were times when the loss of so much cuticle kept himawake at night, and often the half-healed surface was raked raw afresh by thefacetious Mr. Bunster. Mauki continued his patient wait, secure in theknowledge that sooner or later his time would come. And he knew just what hewas 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 theuniverse. He began on Mauki, and wound up on Mauki, in the interval knockingdown his wife and hammering all the boat boys. At breakfast he called thecoffee slops and threw the scalding contents of the cup into Mauki's face. Byten o'clock Bunster was shivering with ague, and half an hour later he wasburning with fever. It was no ordinary attack. It quickly became pernicious,and developed into black-water fever. The days passed, and he grew weaker andweaker, never leaving his bed. Mauki waited and watched, the while his skingrew intact once more. He ordered the boys to beach the cutter, scrub herbottom, and give her a general overhauling. They thought the order emanatedfrom Bunster, and they obeyed. But Bunster at the time was lying unconsciousand giving no orders. This was Mauki's chance, but still he waited.When the worst was past, and Bunster lay convalescent and conscious, but weakas a baby, Mauki packed his few trinkets, including the china cup handle, intohis trade box. Then he went over to the village and interviewed the king andhis 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. Theministers poured forth a recital of all the indignities and wrongs that hadbeen 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 whitemarster. Me no like m. Plenty good you put hundred cocoanut, two hundredcocoanut, three hundred cocoanut along cutter. Him finish, you go sleep m goodfella. Altogether kanaka sleep m good fella. Bime by big fella noise alonghouse, you no savve hear m that fella noise. You altogether sleep strong fellatoo much."In like manner Mauki interviewed the boat boys. Then he ordered Bunster's wifeto return to her family house. Had she refused, he would have been in aquandary, for his tambo would not have permitted him to lay hands on her.The house deserted, he entered the sleeping room, where the trader lay in adoze. Mauki first removed the revolvers, then placed the ray fish mitten onhis hand. Bunster's first warning was a stroke of the mitten that removed theskin the full length of his nose."Good fella, eh?" Mauki grinned, between two strokes, one of which swept theforehead bare and the other of which cleaned off one side of his face. "Laugh,damn you, laugh."Mauki did his work throughly, and the kanakas, hiding in their houses, heardthe "big fella noise" that Bunster made and continued to make for an hour ormore.When Mauki was done, he carried the boat compass and all the rifles andammunition down to the cutter, which he proceeded to ballast with cases oftobacco. It was while engaged in this that a hideous, skinless thing came outof the house and ran screaming down the beach till it fell in the sand andmowed and gibbered under the scorching sun. Mauki looked toward it andhesitated. Then he went over and removed the head, which he wrapped in a matand stowed in the stern locker of the cutter.So soundly did the kanakas sleep through that long hot day that they did notsee the cutter run out through the passage and head south, close-hauled on thesoutheast trade. Nor was the cutter ever sighted on that long tack to theshores of Ysabel, and during the tedious head-beat from there to Malaita. Helanded at Port Adams with a wealth of rifles and tobacco such as no one manhad ever possessed before. But he did not stop there. He had taken a whiteman's head, and only the bush could shelter him. So back he went to the bushvillages, where he shot old Fanfoa and half a dozen of the chief men, and madehimself the chief over all the villages. When his father died, Mauki's brotherruled in Port Adams, and joined together, salt-water men and bushmen, theresulting combination was the strongest of the ten score fighting tribes ofMalaita.More than his fear of the British government was Mauki's fear of theall-powerful Moongleam Soap Company; and one day a message came up to him inthe bush, reminding him that he owed the Company eight and one-half years oflabor. He sent back a favorable answer, and then appeared the inevitable whiteman, the captain of the schooner, the only white man during Mauki's reign, whoventured the bush and came out alive. This man not only came out, but hebrought with him seven hundred and fifty dollars in gold sovereigns--the moneyprice of eight years and a half of labor plus the cost price of certain riflesand cases of tobacco.Mauki no longer weighs one hundred and ten pounds. His stomach is three timesits former girth, and he has four wives. He has many other things--rifles andrevolvers, the handle of a china cup, and an excellent collection of bushmen'sheads. But more precious than the entire collection is another head, perfectlydried and cured, with sandy hair and a yellowish beard, which is kept wrappedin the finest of fibre lava-lavas. When Mauki goes to war with villages beyondhis realm, he invariably gets out this head, and alone in his grass palace,contemplates it long and solemnly. At such times the hush of death falls onthe village, and not even a pickaninny dares make a noise. The head isesteemed the most powerful devil-devil on Malaita, and to the possession of itis ascribed all of Mauki's greatness.
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