n to ordinary trading again, with
what good spirits you can imagine. We didn't even dare walk on the
weather side of the island, lest they'd carry out their next threat,
which was to shoot us; and the only revenge we had was raising prices
on them and monkeying with the scales, winning out in both ways. But it
was a poor set off to a quarter of a million of cold coin where almost
we could lay our hands on it, and if there was in the whole world a
human being more blue and miserable than me, it was Tom Riley. Then, to
make matters worse, the whole thing was common property now, the Kanakas
knowing as much as we did, and more, and the news was passed along to
every ship that came--all about Old Dibs and the money in the graveyard.
You might be surprised the natives didn't take a leaf out of our book
and dig it up for themselves; but you'll never really civilize a Kanaka
if you try a thousand years, and they wouldn't have turned up their dead
grandmothers and fathers and aunts for all the gold in the Bank of
England--being sunk in superstition and slavishly afraid of spirits and
the like.

We had to sit with folded hands and pretend to be pleased, while every
ship that called had to take its whack at the graveyard. First it was
the _Lorelei_, getting off scot-free with only a taboo; then it was the
_Tasmanian_, with a bullet through the captain's leg; then the cutter
_Sprite_, with concussion of the brain. I never saw the Kanakas drove so
wild, till at last, when there was a ship off the settlement, they'd set
an anchor watch on the graveyard and do sentry go with loaded guns.

Then one fine day a French schooner from Tahiti ran in, unloaded sixteen
men armed with rifles and carrying pickaxes and spades, who marched
across the island singing the "Marseillaise," and proceeded to take up
the whole place. The natives rallied with everything they could lay
their hands on, from Winchesters to fish spears, and my, if they didn't
chase out them Frenchmen at the double! They got away, leaving one dead
and carrying three, making a bee line for the beach, the schooner
covering their retreat with a blazing Nordenfeldt. They were in such a
hurry to be gone that they cut away their moorings with an ax, and I had
the privilege, later on, of buying their anchor, second hand, for ten
dollars in trade.

The natives got wilder than ever after this, and were almost afraid to
die, lest they'd be dug up again and their bones cast to the wind