ood and tobacco. And such
was the terror of his name and his chiefly prestige that no one dared
refuse. Sometimes, moved by the lust for slaughter, he would command
that the food he demanded should be carried before him and placed in
his canoe. Then he would shoot the unfortunate bearer dead on the
beach. Against his half-brother's families he manifested the most deadly
hatred; and on one occasion, meeting a girl, a slave of Rao's widow,
on a little islet some miles away from Ailap, he shot the poor child
through her legs, breaking them both, and left her to perish of
starvation. Palmer well knew that he was willingly supplied with food by
the people of his own village, although they asserted their innocence of
aiding him in any way, and expressed the utmost fear and horror of
the outlaw. That his death would be a relief to them as well as to the
people of Ailap was certainly true, but Palmer and his wife Letane
were well aware that none of Jinaban's own people would ever raise hand
against him; and, indeed, the Ailap people, though they now had the
strongest feelings of friendship for the white man, were so smitten with
terror at the constantly recurring bloody deeds perpetrated by Jinaban,
that they were too terrified to accompany the trader over to the
outlaw's island and track him to his lair. Twice had Palmer crossed over
in the darkness of night, and, Winchester in hand, carefully sought for
traces of Jinaban's hiding-place, but without success. The interior
of the island was a dense thicket of scrub which seemed to defy
penetration. On the last occasion Palmer had hidden among a mass of
broken and vine-covered coral boulders which covered the eastern shore.
Here for a whole night and the following day he remained, keeping a
keen watch upon the line of beach in the hope that he would see Jinaban
carrying his canoe down to the water to make one of his murderous
descents upon the Ailap village. His own canoe he had carefully
concealed among the scrub, and as he had landed on a very dark night
upon a ledge of rocks that stretched from the water's edge to the
thicket, and carried the canoe up, he was sure that no trace of his
landing would be visible to Jinaban. At dark on the following evening he
gave up his quest and paddled slowly over to the village, sick at heart
with fear for his wife Letane, for the outlaw had made a threat that she
should soon fall a victim to his implacable hatred.

Halfway across the lagoon