nd chopping down a
hundred coconut trees. Scarcely had the war vessel passed out to open
sea, when the people of Ano Ano were back from the bush to the village.
Shell fire on flimsy grass houses is not especially destructive. A few
hours' labour of the women put that little matter right. As for the
forty dead pigs, the entire tribe fell upon the carcasses, roasted them
under the ground with hot stones, and feasted. The tender tips of the
fallen palms were likewise eaten, while the thousands of coconuts were
husked and split and sun-dried and smoke-cured into copra to be sold to
the next passing trader.

Thus, the penalty exacted had proved a picnic and a feast--all of which
appealed to the thrifty, calculating brain of Bashti. And what was good
for Ano Ano, in his judgment was surely good for Somo. Since such were
white men's ways who sailed under the British flag and killed pigs and
cut down coconuts in cancellation of blood-debts and headtakings, Bashti
saw no valid reason why he should not profit as Ano Ano had profited. The
price to be paid at some possible future time was absurdly
disproportionate to the immediate wealth to be gained. Besides, it had
been over two years since the last British war vessel had appeared in the
Solomons.

And thus, Bashti, with a fine fresh idea inside his head, bowed his
chief's head in consent that his people could flock aboard and trade.
Very few of them knew what his idea was or that he even had an idea.

Trade grew still brisker as more canoes came alongside and black men and
women thronged the deck. Then came the recruits, new-caught, young,
savage things, timid as deer, yet yielding to stern parental and tribal
law and going down into the _Arangi's_ cabin, one by one, their fathers
and mothers and relatives accompanying them in family groups, to confront
the big fella white marster, who wrote their names down in a mysterious
book, had them ratify the three years' contract of their labour by a
touch of the right hand to the pen with which he wrote, and who paid the
first year's advance in trade goods to the heads of their respective
families.

Old Bashti sat near, taking his customary heavy tithes out of each
advance, his three old wives squatting humbly at his feet and by their
mere presence giving confidence to Van Horn, who was elated by the stroke
of business. At such rate his cruise on Malaita would be a short one,
when he would sail away with a full ship.

On