Short Stories
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 ca-
noe 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 re-
quired a year and eight months' labor. So Port Adams was
now five years away.
His homesickness was greater than ever, and it did not ap-
peal 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 is-
land 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.
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