Short Stories
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 cur-
rent 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 ri-
fles. 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. Then 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. Fur-
ther, 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
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