Short Stories
beaches by the southeast trade. That there has been a slight
Melanesian drift in the period of the northwest monsoon, is al-
so 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 al-
ways peaceable. The Sailing Directions speak of them as hos-
tile and treacherous. But the men who compile the Sailing Di-
rections 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 sec-
ond mate. This 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 pro-
ceeded 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, har-
rying 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 schooners 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
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