, the terrible white man
had fined him and Balesuna village ten thousand cocoanuts. After that he
had sheltered no more runaway Malaita men. Instead, he had gone into the
business of catching them. It was safer. Besides, he was paid one case
of tobacco per head. But if he ever got a chance at that white man, if
he ever caught him sick or stood at his back when he stumbled and fell on
a bush-trail--well, there would be a head that would fetch a price in
Malaita.

Sheldon was pleased with what Seelee told him. The seventh man of the
last batch of runaways had been caught and was even then at the gate. He
was brought in, heavy-featured and defiant, his arms bound with cocoanut
sennit, the dry blood still on his body from the struggle with his
captors.

"Me savvee you good fella, Seelee," Sheldon said, as the chief gulped
down a quarter-tumbler of raw trade-gin. "Fella boy belong me you catch
short time little bit. This fella boy strong fella too much. I give you
fella one case tobacco--my word, one case tobacco. Then, you good fella
along me, I give you three fathom calico, one fella knife big fella too
much."

The tobacco and trade goods were brought from the storeroom by two house-
boys and turned over to the chief of Balesuna village, who accepted the
additional reward with a non-committal grunt and went away down the path
to his canoes. Under Sheldon's directions the house-boys handcuffed the
prisoner, by hands and feet, around one of the pile supports of the
house. At eleven o'clock, when the labourers came in from the field,
Sheldon had them assembled in the compound before the veranda. Every
able man was there, including those who were helping about the hospital.
Even the women and the several pickaninnies of the plantation were lined
up with the rest, two deep--a horde of naked savages a trifle under two
hundred strong. In addition to their ornaments of bead and shell and
bone, their pierced ears and nostrils were burdened with safety-pins,
wire nails, metal hair-pins, rusty iron handles of cooking utensils, and
the patent keys for opening corned beef tins. Some wore penknives
clasped on their kinky locks for safety. On the chest of one a china
door-knob was suspended, on the chest of another the brass wheel of an
alarm clock.

Facing them, clinging to the railing of the veranda for support, stood
the sick white man. Any one of them could have knocked him over with the
blow of a little finger