ted floor and pounds the green root with a rounded piece of
jade upon a hollowed stone.

The kava is drunk, and then Kusis takes off his cumbrous girdle of grass
and replaces it by a narrow band of closely-woven banana fibre, stained
black and yellow (there be fashions in these parts of the world) and
reaches down his pig-spear from the cross-beams overhead, while Tulpe,
his wife, ties cinnet sandals upon the white man's feet. Then, good man
and true, Kusis takes his pipe from his mouth and gives his wife a draw
ere he goes, and the two men step outside upon the hot, gravelly path,
Denison carrying his Winchester and Kusis leading two sad-faced mongrel
dogs. As they pass along the village street other men join them, some
carrying spears and some heavy muskets, and also leading more sad-faced
dogs. Black-haired, oval-faced women and girls come to the doors of the
houses and look indolently at the hunters, but they neither speak nor
smile, for it is not the nature of the Strong's Islanders to speak when
there is no necessity for words. Once, fifty years ago, when they were
numbered by thousands, and their villages but a mile apart along the
coast, it was different; now they are a broken and fast-vanishing race.

As the hunters, walking in single file, disappear into the deep jungle
shades, the women and girls resume their daily tasks. Some, who squat
upon the floor, with thighs and knees together and feet turned outward
and backward, face curious little looms and weave girdles from the
shining fibre of the banana stalk; others, who sit cross-legged, plait
mats or hats of pandanus leaf for their men folk; while outside, in the
cook-sheds, the younger children make ready the earthen ovens of red-hot
stones to cook the sunset meal. Scarcely a word is spoken, though
sometimes the women sing softly together as they weave and stitch.

And so another hour has gone, and the coco-palms along the shore begin
to throw long lines of shadows across the sloping beach. Then far off
a musket-shot sounds, and the women cease their work and listen for
the yelping of the hunters' dogs as they rush at their wounded prey,
battling fiercely for his life upon the thick carpet of forest leaves.

By and by the huntsmen come back, their brown skins dripping with sweat
and their naked legs stained with the bright red clay of the sodden
mountain-paths. Two of them carry slung on a pole a gaunt, razorbacked
boar, with hideous yellow tusks curving b