The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas, by
Lloyd Osbourne

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Title: Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas

Author: Lloyd Osbourne

Release Date: August 6, 2009 [EBook #29621]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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WILD JUSTICE

[Illustration: "'Jack,' she said suddenly, 'you come along with us.'"]

WILD JUSTICE

STORIES OF THE SOUTH SEAS

BY

LLOYD OSBOURNE

AUTHOR OF "BABY BULLET"

[Illustration]

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK :: MCMXXI

COPYRIGHT, 1906, 1921, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

PREFACE

Deep in every heart there seems to be a longing for a more primitive
existence; and though in practice it is often an illusion, the South
Seas lend themselves better to such dreams than any other part of the
world. There are fewer races more attractive than the Polynesians.
Frank, winning, gay and extraordinarily well-mannered, the higher types
are often remarkably good-looking, and scarcely darker than Southern
Europeans. Some aspects of their life are truly poetic. Half naked, with
flowers in their hair, and just sufficient work to keep them in superb
physical condition, they have an almost unlimited leisure to share with
the wayfarer in their midst. And dirt, that greatest of all human
barriers, is nonexistent. No people are cleaner; none have so intense a
personal self-respect. One wonders sometimes whether it is not the white
man who is the savage, and these in some ways his superiors.

I went to the Pacific when I was a boy of twenty, remaining there till I
was twenty-eight. For two years I sailed in various ships, visiting not
only all the principal groups, but stopping at many a lost little
paradise like Manihiki, Nieue or Gente Hermosa, which lie so lonely and
apart that