e deadliest black. This cheerful excrescence on the
face of suffering nature is a native church.

The people have mostly assimilated themselves, in their manners and
mode of life generally, to the new order of things represented by the
fearful-looking structure aforementioned. That is to say, even as the
Tongan and Fijian, they have degenerated from a fierce, hardy, warlike
race into white-shirted, black-coated saints, whose ideal of a lovely
existence is to have public prayer twice a day on week-days and all day
on Sundays. To them it is a good thing to get half a dollar from the
white trader for a sick fowl--which, when bought, will be claimed by
another native, who will have the white man fined two dollars for
buying stolen property. Had the white man paid a dollar he had done
wisely--that coin sometimes goes far in the Tokelaus. For instance, the
truly unctuous native Christian may ask a dollar for two fowls, but
he will also lease out his wife for a similar amount. Time was, in the
Ellices, when the undue complaisance of a married woman meant a sudden
and inartistic compression of the jugular, or a swift blow from
the heavy, ebony-wood club of the wronged man. Nowadays, since the
smug-faced native teacher hath shown them the Right Way, such domestic
troubles are condoned by--a dollar. That is, if it be a genuine American
dollar or two British florins; for outraged honour would not accept the
cast-iron Bolivian money or the poor silver of Chili and Peru. And for a
dollar the native "Christian" can all but pay for a nicely-bound Bible,
printed in the Samoan tongue, and thus, no doubt, out of evil would come
good; for he could, by means of his newly-acquired purchase, picture to
his dusky mate the terrors that await those who look upon strange men
and _tupe fa'apupula_ (bright and shining money).

*****

But I want to tell about Kennedy. Kennedy the Boatsteerer he was called;
although twenty years had passed and gone since that day at Wallis
Island when he, a bright-eyed, bronze-faced lad--with the fighting-blood
of the old Puritan Endicotts running like fire through his veins despite
his New England bringing-up--ran his knife into a shipmate's heart and
fled for ever from all white associations. Over a woman it was, and only
a copper-coloured one at that; but then she was young and beautiful,
with dreamy, glistening eyes, and black, wavy hair, ornamented with a
wreath of orange-flowers and coil upon coil of bright-