riable
process in a black man's brain when, on his native heath, he encounters a
stranger. His first thought is one of fear. Will the stranger kill him?
His next thought, seeing that he is not killed, is: Can he kill the
stranger? There was Packard, a Colonial trader, some twelve miles down
the coast. He boasted that he ruled by kindness and never struck a blow.
The result was that he did not rule at all. He used to come down in his
whale-boat to visit Hughie and me. When his boat's crew decided to go
home, he had to cut his visit short to accompany them. I remember one
Sunday afternoon when Packard had accepted our invitation to stop to
dinner. The soup was just served, when Hughie saw a nigger peering in
through the door. He went out to him, for it was a violation of Berande
custom. Any nigger has to send in word by the house-boys, and to keep
outside the compound. This man, who was one of Packard's boat's-crew,
was on the veranda. And he knew better, too. 'What name?' said Hughie.
'You tell 'm white man close up we fella boat's-crew go along. He no
come now, we fella boy no wait. We go.' And just then Hughie fetched
him a clout that knocked him clean down the stairs and off the veranda."

"But it was needlessly cruel," Joan objected. "You wouldn't treat a
white man that way."

"And that's just the point. He wasn't a white man. He was a low black
nigger, and he was deliberately insulting, not alone his own white
master, but every white master in the Solomons. He insulted me. He
insulted Hughie. He insulted Berande."

"Of course, according to your lights, to your formula of the rule of the
strong--"

"Yes," Sheldon interrupted, "but it was according to the formula of the
rule of the weak that Packard ruled. And what was the result? I am
still alive. Packard is dead. He was unswervingly kind and gentle to
his boys, and his boys waited till one day he was down with fever. His
head is over on Malaita now. They carried away two whale-boats as well,
filled with the loot of the store. Then there was Captain Mackenzie of
the ketch _Minota_. He believed in kindness. He also contended that
better confidence was established by carrying no weapons. On his second
trip to Malaita, recruiting, he ran into Bina, which is near Langa Langa.
The rifles with which the boat's-crew should have been armed, were locked
up in his cabin. When the whale-boat went ashore after recruits, he
paraded around the