Short Stories
Mauki no longer weighs one hundred and ten pounds. His
stomach is three times its former girth, and he has four wives.
He has many other things—rifles and revolvers, the handle of a
china cup, and an excellent collection of bushmen's heads. But
more precious than the entire collection is another head, perfect-
ly dried and cured, with sandy hair and a yellowish beard,
which is kept wrapped in the finest of fibre lava-lavas. When
Mauki goes to war with villages beyond his 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 on the
village, and not even a pickaninny dares make a noise. The head
is esteemed the most powerful devil-devil on Malaita, and to the
possession of it is ascribed all of Mauki's greatness.
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