Short Stories
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 ac-
cident at the first opportunity to capsize the cutter. Only Bun-
ster saw to it that the boat did not capsize.
Mauki was of a different breed, and, escape being impossi-
ble 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, ac-
cepted 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 re-
ceive 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.
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