em
Sharp's rifle make a hole you could put your fist into.

"The girl dropped too--sheer funk. Old Lebauro, the cook, slid through
the trees and stood over him, and said, 'U, GUK! He's a fine-made man,'
and gave me her knife; and then I collared Le-jennabon, and----"

"For God's sake, Ned, don't tell me you killed her too!"

He shook his head slowly.

"No, I couldn't hurt HER. But I held her with one hand, she feeling
dead and cold, like a wet deck-swab; then the old cook-woman undid my
flash man's long hair, and, twining her skinny old claws in it, pulled
it taut, while I sawed at the chap's neck with my right hand. The knife
was heavy and sharp, and I soon got the job through. Then I gave the
thing to Le-jennabon to carry.

* * * * *

"I made her walk in front of me. Every time she dropped the head I
slewed her round and made her lift it up again. And the old cook-devil
trotted astern o' us. When we came close to the town, I says to
Le-jennabon:

"'Do you want to live?'

"'Yes,' says she, in a voice like a whisper.

"'Then sing,' says I, 'sing loud--

"'Marriage hides the tricks of lovers,'

And she sang it in a choky kind of quaver.

"There was a great rush o' people ter see the procession. They stood in
a line on both sides of the path, and stared and said nothin'.

"Presently we comes to where all the Likieb chief's people was
quartered. They knew the head and ran back for their rifles, but my
crowd in the village was too strong, and, o' course, sided with me, and
took away their guns. Then the crowd gathers round my place, and I
makes Le-jennabon hold up the head and sing again--sing that devil's
chant.

"'Listen,' I says to the people, 'listen to my wife singing a love
song.' Then I takes the thing, wet and bloody, and slings it into the
middle of the Likieb people, and gave Le-jennabon a shove and sent her
inside."

* * * * *

I was thinking what would be the best thing to say, and could only
manage "It's a bad business, Ned."

"Bad! That's where you're wrong," and, rising, Ned brushed the sand off
the legs of his pyjamas. "It's just about the luckiest thing as could
ha' happened. Ye see, it's given Le-jennabon a good idea of what may
happen to her if she ain't mighty correct. An' it's riz me a lot in the
esteem of the people generally as a man who hez business principles."

A TRULY GREAT MAN

A Mid-Pacific Sketch

Then the flag of "Bobby" Towns, of Sydney, was still mig