sombre sense of romance of this dark jungle event wherein men
killed even strangers because a pig was dead.

Scouts out on the runways, Kwaque continued, brought word of the coming
of the two bereaved pig-owners, and the village had fled into the jungle
and climbed trees--all except Kwaque, who was unable to climb trees.

"My word," Kwaque concluded, "me no make 'm that fella pig sick."

"My word," quoth Dag Daughtry, "you devil-devil along that fella pig too
much. You look 'm like hell. You make 'm any fella thing sick look
along you. You make 'm me sick too much."

It became quite a custom for the steward, as he finished his sixth bottle
before turning in, to call upon Kwaque for his story. It carried him
back to his boyhood when he had been excited by tales of wild cannibals
in far lands and dreamed some day to see them for himself. And here he
was, he would chuckle to himself, with a real true cannibal for a slave.

A slave Kwaque was, as much as if Daughtry had bought him on the auction-
block. Whenever the steward transferred from ship to ship of the Burns
Philp fleet, he always stipulated that Kwaque should accompany him and be
duly rated at ten shillings. Kwaque had no say in the matter. Even had
he desired to escape in Australian ports, there was no need for Daughtry
to watch him. Australia, with her "all-white" policy, attended to that.
No dark-skinned human, whether Malay, Japanese, or Polynesian, could land
on her shore without putting into the Government's hand a cash security
of one hundred pounds.

Nor at the other islands visited by the _Makambo_ had Kwaque any desire
to cut and run for it. King William Island, which was the only land he
had ever trod, was his yard-stick by which he measured all other islands.
And since King William Island was cannibalistic, he could only conclude
that the other islands were given to similar dietary practice.

As for King William Island, the _Makambo_, on the former run of the
_Cockspur_, stopped there every ten weeks; but the direst threat Daughtry
ever held over him was the putting ashore of him at the place where the
two active young men still mourned their pig. In fact, it was their
regular programme, each trip, to paddle out and around the _Makambo_ and
make ferocious grimaces up at Kwaque, who grimaced back at them from over
the rail. Daughtry even encouraged this exchange of facial amenities for
the purpose of deterring him from ever hoping to wi